Mystery clouds deadly clash in western China with 'suspected terrorists'

Some say that Beijing deliberately exaggerates the terrorist threat in order to justify the iron grip it keeps on the Muslim majority province of Xinjiang in?western China.

By Peter Ford,?Staff Writer / April 24, 2013

A woman looks up as a dust storm hits Kashgar, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, last week. Xinjiang, once a predominantly Muslim province in China's far west, has seen massive settlement by ethnic Han immigrants in recent decades.

Reuters

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Mystery surrounds official Chinese reports Wednesday of a violent clash between ?suspected terrorists? and the authorities in the restive Muslim province of Xinjiang yesterday that left 21 people dead, including 15 officials.

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Beijing Bureau Chief

Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.

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According to a statement on the provincial government website, a group ?planning to conduct violent terrorist activities? armed with knives seized three local officials who had surprised them in a house near the city of Kashgar (see map).

They then killed the three hostages and 12 of the policemen and local community workers who came to the rescue, setting fire to the house before armed police regained control of the situation, killing six of the suspects and arresting eight of them, the statement said.

The Chinese authorities have given only sketchy details of the incident, and have not accused any particular group of responsibility. Beijing has previously blamed Islamist separatists for earlier violent attacks on officials.

Xinjiang, once a predominantly Muslim province in China?s far west, has seen massive settlement by ethnic Han immigrants in recent decades. Local people complain that their culture and language are being eroded and that Han now outnumber original inhabitants, who are ethnic Uighurs, with linguistic and cultural ties to central Asian peoples.

Violence flares sporadically, despite a stiflingly heavy handed police and army presence. In 2009 almost 200 people were killed ? mostly ethnic Han ? in deadly rioting in the provincial capital of Urumqi. Last month the government announced that courts in Xinjiang had sentenced 20 men to prison terms as long as life for plotting jihadi attacks.

The men ?had their thoughts poisoned by religious extremism,? according to the Xinjiang provincial website, and had ?spread Muslim religious propaganda.?

Determining the truth behind such allegations, and incidents such as Tuesday?s clash,?is difficult. Chinese media are not allowed to carry reports other than those by the state-run news agency Xinhua and foreign reporters have found themselves restricted and harassed when trying to work in Xinjiang.

A leading Uighur activist, Dilxat Raxit, who lives in Germany, questioned the official account, telling the AP that local residents had reported that the police sparked the incident by shooting a Uighur youth during a house search.

It was not clear how the suspects, armed only with knives, had managed to kill 15 policemen and local officials before they were subdued.

China has often accused a shadowy group known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement of being behind violence in Xinjiang, but foreign observers are dubious, with some saying that Beijing deliberately exaggerates the terrorist threat in order to justify the iron grip it keeps on Xinjiang.

The US State Department put the group on its terrorist watch list in 2002, but has since removed it amid doubts about whether the group is a real organization.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/tasBOUfpA_A/Mystery-clouds-deadly-clash-in-western-China-with-suspected-terrorists

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Calif. grocer tries to profit off botched burglary

REDDING, Calif. (AP) ? A Northern California grocery store owner is trying to profit from a suspected thief's botched burglary attempt that was caught on video and went viral.

Footage shows the man breaking the Redding store's window last month and tripping twice as he ran away.

Now store owner Kent Pfrimmer has turned it into a television commercial for his business, Kent's Meats and Groceries.

The Record Searchlight of Redding reports (http://bit.ly/11CzlcU ) that the ad for the store's pastrami features footage of the suspect throwing something at the store's window. The sound of shattering glass can be heard before pastrami appears on camera, followed by the voice-over: "So good, some people will do just about anything to get more."

A call to Redding police to check on the investigation was not immediately returned.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/calif-grocer-tries-profit-off-botched-burglary-180043152.html

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Pushing the boundaries of transcription

Public release date: 25-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Isabelle Kling
isabelle.kling@embl.de
49-622-138-78355
European Molecular Biology Laboratory

A new level of variation in messenger RNAs exposed

Like musicians in an orchestra who have the same musical score but start and finish playing at different intervals, cells with the same genes start and finish transcribing them at different points in the genome. For the first time, researchers at EMBL have described the striking diversity of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) that such start and end variation produces, even from the simple genome of yeast cells. Their findings, published today in Nature, shed new light on the importance of mRNA boundaries in determining the functional potential of genes.

Hundreds of thousands of unique mRNA transcripts are generated from a genome of only about 8000 genes, even with the same genome sequence and environmental condition. "We knew that transcription could lead to a certain amount of diversity, but we were not expecting it to be so vast," explains Lars Steinmetz, who led the project. "Based on this diversity, we would expect that no yeast cell has the same set of messenger RNA molecules as its neighbour."

The traditional understanding of transcription was that mRNA boundaries were relatively fixed. While it has long been known that certain parts of mRNAs can be selectively 'spliced' out, this phenomenon is very rare in baker's yeast, meaning that the textbook one gene - one mRNA transcript relationship should hold. Recent studies have suggested that things aren't quite that simple, inspiring the EMBL scientists to create a new technique to capture both the start and end points of single mRNA molecules. They now discovered that each gene could be transcribed into dozens or even hundreds of unique mRNA molecules, each with different boundaries.

This suggests that not only transcript abundance, but also transcript boundaries should be considered when assessing gene function. Altering the boundaries of mRNA molecules can affect how long they stay intact, cause them to produce different proteins, or direct them or their protein products to different locations, which can have a profound biological impact. Diversifying mRNA transcript boundaries within a group of cells, therefore, could equip them to adapt to different external challenges.

The researchers expect that such an extent of boundary variation will also be found in more complex organisms, including humans, where some examples are already known to affect key biological functions. The technology to measure these variations across the entire genome as well as a catalogue of boundaries in a well-studied organism are a good starting point for further research. "Now that we are aware of how much diversity there is, we can start to figure out what factors control it," points out Vicent Pelechano, who performed the study with Wu Wei. Wei adds: "Our technique also exposed new mRNAs that other techniques could not distinguish. It will be exciting to investigate how these and general variation in transcript boundaries actually extend the functional capacity of a genome."

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?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 25-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Isabelle Kling
isabelle.kling@embl.de
49-622-138-78355
European Molecular Biology Laboratory

A new level of variation in messenger RNAs exposed

Like musicians in an orchestra who have the same musical score but start and finish playing at different intervals, cells with the same genes start and finish transcribing them at different points in the genome. For the first time, researchers at EMBL have described the striking diversity of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) that such start and end variation produces, even from the simple genome of yeast cells. Their findings, published today in Nature, shed new light on the importance of mRNA boundaries in determining the functional potential of genes.

Hundreds of thousands of unique mRNA transcripts are generated from a genome of only about 8000 genes, even with the same genome sequence and environmental condition. "We knew that transcription could lead to a certain amount of diversity, but we were not expecting it to be so vast," explains Lars Steinmetz, who led the project. "Based on this diversity, we would expect that no yeast cell has the same set of messenger RNA molecules as its neighbour."

The traditional understanding of transcription was that mRNA boundaries were relatively fixed. While it has long been known that certain parts of mRNAs can be selectively 'spliced' out, this phenomenon is very rare in baker's yeast, meaning that the textbook one gene - one mRNA transcript relationship should hold. Recent studies have suggested that things aren't quite that simple, inspiring the EMBL scientists to create a new technique to capture both the start and end points of single mRNA molecules. They now discovered that each gene could be transcribed into dozens or even hundreds of unique mRNA molecules, each with different boundaries.

This suggests that not only transcript abundance, but also transcript boundaries should be considered when assessing gene function. Altering the boundaries of mRNA molecules can affect how long they stay intact, cause them to produce different proteins, or direct them or their protein products to different locations, which can have a profound biological impact. Diversifying mRNA transcript boundaries within a group of cells, therefore, could equip them to adapt to different external challenges.

The researchers expect that such an extent of boundary variation will also be found in more complex organisms, including humans, where some examples are already known to affect key biological functions. The technology to measure these variations across the entire genome as well as a catalogue of boundaries in a well-studied organism are a good starting point for further research. "Now that we are aware of how much diversity there is, we can start to figure out what factors control it," points out Vicent Pelechano, who performed the study with Wu Wei. Wei adds: "Our technique also exposed new mRNAs that other techniques could not distinguish. It will be exciting to investigate how these and general variation in transcript boundaries actually extend the functional capacity of a genome."

###

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/embl-ptb042513.php

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Bittersweet News: Chocolate May Trigger Acne

Eating chocolate may change the immune system in ways that aggravate acne, a small new study from the Netherlands suggests.

In the study, researchers collected blood from seven healthy people before and after they ate 1.7 ounces of chocolate, each day for four days. (The chocolate contained about 30 percent cocoa.)

The researchers then exposed the blood cells to bacteria called Propionibacterium acnes, which contribute to acne when they grow inside clogged pores and cause pores to become inflamed, and to Staphylococcus aureus, another skin bacteria that can aggravate acne.

After eating chocolate, the participants' blood cells produced more interleukin-1b, a marker of immune system inflammation, when exposed to Propionibacterium acnes. This suggests chocolate consumption could increase the inflammation that contributes to acne, the researchers said.

In addition, eating chocolate increased production of another immune system factor called interleukin 10 after exposure to Staphylococcus aureus. Interleukin 10 is thought to lower our bodies' defenses against microorganisms, and thus, higher levels of interleukin 10 could create conditions that allow bacteria to infect pimples, and worsen them, the researchers said.

However, the results are preliminary, and the jury is still out on whether indulging in the sweet treat can really prompt a breakout.

Future studies should look into which components of chocolate (fats, sugars, etc.) might be responsible for the effects, and whether fat-free chocolate would have a different effect, the researchers said.

A 2011 study also found that chocolate consumption worsened acne, but the study involved only 10 men who consumed pure chocolate.

Although there's a lot of talk about chocolate and other foods playing a role in acne, there's very little evidence to show they do, said Dr. Kanade Shinkai, a dermatologist at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, who specializes in acne treatments.

"I think there's 10 times more discussion about it than there is data," Shinkai said.

There is some evidence that so-called high glycemic foods, such as white bread, which release sugar very quickly into the bloodstream, may be linked to acne, Shinkai said. For instance, one study found that a population in Papua New Guinea with a low glycemic diet had no cases of acne across all ages, while in the United States more than 80 percent of teenagers have acne. Other studies looking at a possible link between diary products and acne have had conflicting results, Shinkai said.

While there may be a subset of people whose acne is influenced by diet, this is probably not true for everyone, Shinkai said. Multiple factors contribute to acne, including genetics, hormones and certain medications. [See Acne in Women Can Signal Hormone Problems.]

Shinkai said most dermatologists do not recommend dietary changes to help with acne, unless a patient is certain that a particular food is linked with his or her acne. Shinkai cautioned against broad dietary restrictions, such as avoiding diary, because diary products are important sources of calcium and vitamin D for many people, and the nutritional benefits of the products outweigh the impact of acne, she said.

Eating small amounts of chocolate has been linked with health benefits, such as a reduced risk of heart attack and stroke.

The new study, conducted by researchers at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands, was published online March 1 in the journal Cytokine.?

Pass it on: For some people, chocolate consumption may worsen acne .

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on MyHealthNewsDaily.

Copyright 2013 MyHealthNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bittersweet-news-chocolate-may-trigger-acne-162147774.html

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How to Get the Most From Your Home Warranty

Suppose someone is considering buying a home, and the furnace works but is getting on in years. The seller is not required to replace it, but the potential buyer is leery about taking on a home in which the furnace might be on its last legs.

That is where home warranties, also called home service contracts, come into play. These guarantees are designed to protect a homeowner from unexpected repair costs for major appliances like refrigerators, washers, and dryers. The home service contract is the ideal solution, and the new homeowner has the option of extending it beyond that first year.

A home service contract or warranty, which usually lasts one year, offers repairs or replacements for the major appliances and systems in a home. While coverage options vary, a home service contract usually includes interior plumbing, heating and electrical systems, water heaters, ductwork, dishwashers, stoves, washer/dryer, pool equipment, refrigerators, air-conditioning, garage-door openers, garbage disposals, and spa equipment. Typically, these contracts cost between $200 and $600. The cost varies by state and depends on the size and age of the property and the amount of coverage chosen.

Be careful, however, not to confuse these home warranties with the home warranty offered by builders, which guarantee the quality of the new-home construction itself, not the systems or appliances inside. While your home service contract will cover those appliances, most don?t cover home foundations, walls, structures, or finish.

While these contracts may seem like the ideal option when buying an older home, homeowners need to carefully read the fine print to avoid some loopholes?home service contracts are very specific.

Here are some things to watch out for, and what not to do because it could void your coverage:

? A mechanical failure that existed before the agreement was effective. Say, for instance, that the air conditioning hasn?t worked for five years. Summer comes around and the new homeowner tries to start it, only to realize he?s out of luck. In this case, repairs or replacement might not be covered. (Several firms do offer different levels of coverage that could cover your home?s preexisting conditions.)

? A failure not caused by normal wear and tear. If the family pet is using refrigerator coils as a chew toy, or if a raccoon has taken up residence in the air-conditioning unit, those repairs would not be covered.

? Inspectors finding asbestos, hazardous or toxic materials, or mold.

? Faulty workmanship on your appliances. Carefully research technicians. Check with the Better Business Bureau before choosing one to make sure it is a reputable company. Do not tackle any job on your own that you are not qualified for.

? An appliance has clearly been mistreated.

? Calling a repairman before the home warranty company gives approval for a repair or replacement. Always consult with the warranty company first.

? Changing the property use from residential to commercial. If the homeowner decides to convert the home into a beauty salon, the contract would be voided.

Follow these tips to get the most out of your home service contract:

? Make sure all appliances are installed properly, including those installed by a trained technician. Again, check with the Better Business Bureau if you are not sure about a technician.

? Take care of routine maintenance. Don?t let rust run wild. An annual maintenance plan for air conditioning and heating is a good idea; you can avoid the rush in summer and winter when everyone else needs help.

? Make sure multiple appliances are covered. Yes, your kitchen refrigerator is covered, but what about the backup fridge in the garage?

? Find a quality home inspector. This person will make sure everything is running the way it should before you finalize the home purchase.

? If you have a problem, remember to call your home service contract company before you call a contractor. The warranty company will not pay for a claim unless you call them first. They may suggest a contractor or let you choose your own, depending on the company policy.

? If a claim is denied, don?t take ?no? for an answer. Carefully review your policy and then ask to talk to a manager. Find out what has happened with similar situations to get the problem resolved.

Visit the National Home Service Contract Association for a complete list of all registered companies. The website also includes a consumer section for fraud reports or complaints.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to-get-the-most-from-your-home-warranty-15367939?src=rss

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SES demos first Ultra HD transmission in more efficient HEVC standard

We're still a bit away from Ultra HD becoming the standard for television. One of the things standing in the way is just how much bandwidth pushing that many pixels demands. SES recently demonstrated an Ultra HD transmission that uses the up and coming HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) standard, as opposed to the more established H.264. The 3,840 x 2,160 image was broadcast at a data rate of 20 Mbps, roughly a 50-percent improvement in encoding efficiency over H.264-based MPEG-4. The demonstration was performed with support from SES's partners, Harmonic and Broadcom, the latter of which provided the BCM7445-based decoding box used for pulling in the video. The tech still isn't quite ready for prime time, but we'd say a 4K House of Cards stream is probably closer than any of us realized.

Filed under: HD

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/20/ses-demos-first-ultra-hd-transmission-in-more-efficient-hevc-sta/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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'Survival of the fittest' now applies to computers: Surprising similarities found between genetic and computer codes

Apr. 16, 2013 ? "Survival of the fittest" originally referred to natural selection in biological systems, but new research from Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University scientists shows that this evolutionary theory also applies to technological systems.

Computational biologist Sergei Maslov, a research staff member in Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), holding appointments with Stony Brook University's Department of Physics and Astronomy and Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, worked with Tin Yau Pang, a graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook, to compare the frequency with which components "survive" in two complex systems: bacterial genomes and operating systems on Linux computers. Their work, "Universal distribution of component frequencies in biological and technological systems," was published in the April 9 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Maslov, who received his PhD in Physics from Stony Brook in 1996, discussed the discovery on NPR's Marketplace Tech.

Maslov and Pang set out to determine not only why some specialized genes or computer programs are very common while others are fairly rare, but to see how many components in any system are so important that they can't be eliminated.

"If a bacteria genome doesn't have a particular gene, it will be dead on arrival," Maslov said. "How many of those genes are there? The same goes for large software systems. They have multiple components that work together and the systems require just the right components working together to thrive.'"

Using data from the massive sequencing of bacterial genomes, now a part of the Department of Energy's Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase), the researchers examined the frequency of occurrence of genes in genomes of 500 bacterial species and found a surprising similarity with the frequency of installation of 200,000 Linux packages on more than 2 million individual computers. Linux is an open source software collaboration that allows designers to modify source code to create programs for public use.

The most frequently used components in both the biological and computer systems are those that allow for the most descendants. That is, the more a component is relied upon by others, the more likely it is to be required for full functionality of a system.

It may seem logical, but the surprising part of this finding is how universal it is.

"It is almost expected that the frequency of usage of any component is correlated with how many other components depend on it," said Maslov. "But we found that we can determine the number of crucial components -- those without which other components couldn't function -- by a simple calculation that holds true both in biological systems and computer systems."

For both the bacteria and the computing systems, take the square root of the interdependent components and you can find the number of key components that are so important that not a single other piece can get by without them.

The finding applies equally to these complex networks because they are both examples of open access systems with components that are independently installed.

"Bacteria are the ultimate BitTorrents of biology," he said, referring to a popular file-sharing protocol. "They have this enormous common pool of genes that they are freely sharing with each other. Bacterial systems can easily add or remove genes from their genomes through what's called horizontal gene transfer, a kind of file sharing between bacteria," Maslov said.

The same goes for Linux operating systems, which allow free installation of components built and shared by a multitude of designers independently of one another. The theory wouldn't hold true for, say, a Windows operating system, which only runs proprietary programs.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stony Brook University.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. T. Y. Pang, S. Maslov. Universal distribution of component frequencies in biological and technological systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; 110 (15): 6235 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1217795110

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/most_popular/~3/FkyfYEdLMUs/130416171631.htm

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