June 10, 2013 ? Bacteria in the gut that are under attack by antibiotics have allies no one had anticipated, a team of Wyss Institute scientists has found. Gut viruses that usually commandeer the bacteria, it turns out, enable them to survive the antibiotic onslaught, most likely by handing them genes that help them withstand the drug.
What's more, the gut viruses, called bacteriophage or simply phage, deliver genes that help the bacteria to survive not just the antibiotic they've been exposed to, but other types of antibiotics as well, the scientists reported online June 9 in Nature. That suggests that phages in the gut may be partly responsible for the emergence of dangerous superbugs that withstand multiple antibiotics, and that drug targeting of phages could offer a potential new path to mitigate development of antibiotic resistance.
"The results mean that the antibiotic-resistance situation is even more troubling than we thought," said senior author Jim Collins, Ph.D., a pioneer of synthetic biology and Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, who is also the William F. Warren Distinguished Professor at Boston University, where he leads the Center of Synthetic Biology.
Today disease-causing bacteria have adapted to antibiotics faster than scientists can generate new drugs to kill them, creating a serious global public-health threat. Patients who are hospitalized with serious bacterial infections tend to have longer, more expensive hospital stays, and they are twice as likely to die as those infected with antibiotic-susceptible bacteria, according to the World Health Organization. In addition, because first-line drugs fail more often than before, more expensive therapies must be used, raising health-care costs.
In the past, Collins and other scientists have probed the ways gut bacteria adapt to antibiotics, but they've focused on the bacteria themselves. But Collins and Sheetal Modi, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in Collins' laboratory and at the Wyss Institute, knew that phage were also abundant in the gut, and that they were adept at ferrying genes from one bacterium to another.
The researchers wondered whether treating mice with antibiotics led phage in the gut to pick up more drug-resistance genes, and if so, whether that made gut bacteria stronger.
They gave mice either ciprofloxacin or ampicillin -- two commonly prescribed antibiotics. After eight weeks, they harvested all the viruses in the mice's feces, and identified the viral genes present by comparing them with a large database of known genes.
They found that the phages from antibiotic-treated mice carried significantly higher numbers of bacterial drug-resistance genes than they would have carried by chance. What's more, phage from ampicillin-treated mice carried more genes that help bacteria fight off ampicillin and related penicillin-like drugs, while phage from ciprofloxacin-treated mice carried more genes that help them fight off ciprofloxacin and related drugs.
"When we treat mice with certain classes of drugs, we see enrichment of resistance genes to those drug classes," Modi said.
The phage did more than harbor drug-resistance genes. They could also transfer them back to gut bacteria -- a necessary step in conferring drug resistance. The researchers demonstrated this by isolating phage from either antibiotic-treated mice or untreated mice, then adding those phage to gut bacteria from untreated mice. Phage from ampicillin-treated mice tripled the amount of ampicillin resistance, while phage from ciprofloxacin-treated mice doubled the amount of ciprofloxacin resistance.
That was bad enough, but the scientists also found signs that the phage could do yet more to foster antibiotic resistance. That's because gut phage from mice treated with one drug carried high levels of genes that confer resistance to different drugs, which means that the phage could serve as backup when bacteria must find ways to withstand a variety of antibiotics.
"With antibiotic treatment, the microbiome has a means to protect itself by expanding the antibiotic resistance reservoir, enabling bugs to come back to be potentially stronger and more resistant than before," Collins said.
"Antibiotic resistance is as pressing a global health problem as they come, and to fight it, it's critical to understand it," said Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Wyss Institute Founding Director. "Jim's novel findings offer a previously unknown way to approach this problem -- by targeting the phage that live in our intestine, rather than the pathogens themselves."
This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award Program, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. In addition to Collins and Modi, the research team included: Henry H. Lee, Ph.D., a former graduate student at Boston University who's currently at Harvard Medical School, and Catherine S. Spina, an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at Boston University and researcher at the Wyss Institute.
When EA reps took the stage at Microsoft's Xbox One unveiling event a few weeks back, they were part of a very small group of game companies represented. The world got a first look at EA's new sports game engine, Ignite, and a tease of what to expect come this holiday, but we're betting there'll be even more interesting stuff presented during the company's press briefing this afternoon at E3 2013. A closer look at Battlefield 4 and a thorough detailing of EA Sports' various annual franchises are locks, as is a second premiere of Respawn's new game Titanfall. What's got us really excited is a possible Mirror's Edge sequel reveal. Find out with us in real time with the liveblog just below the break.
Climate change is not a particularly hot topic among residents of Midland Beach, a seaside enclave of middle-class families in New York?s politically conservative Staten Island.
Six months after Superstorm Sandy propelled a 10-foot wall of ocean over the low-lying community, most people are too busy reconstructing their shattered homes and lives to talk about greenhouse gases and extreme weather patterns.
But eventually, they know the subject must come up.
?Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. Maybe it will bring up that conversation, and something good can come out of all this,? says Thomas Cunsolo, an 18-year resident of Midland Beach whose three-story home was totaled by Sandy.
Cunsolo, a 52-year-old retired carpenter, needs no convincing that human-caused climate change contributed to the lethal fury of Sandy. ?Any person who really thinks about it honestly has to know the proof is in the pudding,? he says. ?Katrina was the first big eye-opener.?
If Katrina was a once-in-a-lifetime storm, Cunsolo asks, ?Then how do you explain Sandy? Something?s going on to get these storms to this magnitude.? Do we all believe in it yet? Publicly, people aren?t talking about reducing emissions?but they know it?s a big issue that we need to start talking about.?
Experts and scientists overwhelmingly agree.
?I don?t think anybody would try to correlate one event to global warming,? says Tim Barnett, a research marine physicist at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. ?But it does make things worse. ?With Katrina, Gulf temperatures were the highest on record,? he notes. ?That?s what gave Katrina its kick.? Barnett also estimates that half of Sandy?s force can be attributed to global warming.
The probability of bigger storms, meanwhile, ?shifted in one direction: the 100-year storm is now a 20-year storm. There?s an increasing probability it will happen again.?
***
On the morning of October 29, 2012, Cunsolo, his wife Karen, his sister, two sons, daughter, and 18-month-old grandson were at home. And though Sandy loomed on the southern horizon amid talk of evacuations, they weren?t particularly concerned.
?We didn?t think Staten Island would be hit,? Cunsolo recalls. ?They cried wolf the year before with [Hurricane] Irene. Everybody evacuated and nothing happened. So with Sandy, we thought, ?This is baloney.? ?
By 7:30 that night, Cunsolo had changed his mind. As he frantically packed his family and dog into the car, power went out everywhere. Terrified, the Cunsolos fled, but two-foot-high floodwaters slowed their escape.
?Then I look back in the mirror and see an eight-foot wall of water coming at us,? Cunsolo says. ?Only by the Grace of God did we make it out.?
His neighbor was not so lucky: He was still home.
Cunsolo brought his family to a nephew?s house on higher ground. He hoped to rescue his neighbor, but wind, rain and darkness made it impossible. At dawn, he tried driving home, but Midland Beach was under water.
??Trees were down, houses were down, cars were piled up and sand and raw sewage were everywhere,? Cunsolo recalls. He spent the next several hours shuttling shell-shocked neighbors to safe ground. Both evacuation centers he tried had themselves been evacuated, so he opted to drop them at a BP station under construction. ?Kids were screaming, people were bloody,? Cunsolo says. Elderly couples were wrapped in blankets and rags.
There was still no sign of his neighbor. Crews checked the house and said nobody was there. Unconvinced, Cunsolo waded through freezing-cold muck to reach the home. His neighbor, hit by a floating refrigerator, had collapsed upstairs. Cunsolo rescued his friend and managed to reunite him with his wife, who was sheltering at their daughter?s house.
The last person Cunsolo saved was a man bleeding from his leg, one hand clasped under his shirt. ?He just had a liver transplant and his health aide never evacuated him. I brought him to the firehouse. It was the only thing I could think of. I don?t know who he was, and I don?t know if he made it.?
Human deaths, of course, were Sandy?s bitterest legacy. At least two dozen died on Staten Island, though Cunsolo believes the death toll to be much higher. Either way, the hell and high water unleashed on Midland Beach, like so many communities, affected everyone. It will take years to recover.
Housing was the first crisis. Many homes, now condemned, were buckled or pushed off their foundations. Boilers and electrical systems were corroded by saltwater. Cunsolo?s house was structurally twisted, its foundation footings compromised. Repairs will cost more than tearing it down and starting over. What?s worse, work is stalled due to zoning codes and ever-changing BFE?s, or base flood elevation: the height to which homes must be raised. ?Right now, mine is 15 feet,? Cunsolo says. ?I?d literally have to take an elevator to my first floor.?
Now, the Cunsolo family, unable to find a space big enough to accommodate everyone, is camped out in two apartments located about 25 minutes apart. Their plight isn?t uncommon: Sandy triggered unprecedented rental demand in New York, with some rents spiking 65 percent.
Some residents have managed to return, but many houses remain empty, some still plastered in synthetic spider webs for a Halloween that never came. Of the 71 businesses that lined Midland Avenue, ?maybe 20 are up and running,? says Cunsolo, who has since formed the Midland Beach Alliance to assist Sandy victims.
Midland Beach waits, and languishes, half-empty. Looting is a problem: Copper pipes are often ripped from gutted houses under renovation.
And summertime brings new horrors. ?Once it reaches around 80 degrees, the mold is going to spread,? Cunsolo warns. ?If one home that didn?t have mold remediation is next to one that did, that home will get infected again. Spores can travel.?
In one report, 420 of 690 households surveyed had visible mold; remediation attempts failed in more than a third.
***
It?s worth noting that while rising global temperatures warm the oceans, giving rise to more extreme weather events, they also cause the ocean levels themselves to rise, which adds to the destructive effects of storms like Sandy.
In April, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a report stating that, ?Sea level is rising, and at an accelerating rate, especially along the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico.?
Average levels rose about eight inches from 1880 to 2009, with the rate increasing from 1993 to 2008, at 65 to 90 percent above 20th-century averages.
?Global warming is the primary cause of current sea level rise,? the UCS warns. ?Human activities, such as burning coal and oil and cutting down tropical forests, have increased atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping gases and caused the planet to warm by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880.?
Global warming, of course, unleashes far more than superstorms and coastal devastation. The grueling impact of climate change has been well documented, and it will only get worse. Heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, floods, tornadoes, rainstorms and blizzards seem to grow more severe each year.
***
The debate that hasn?t yet hit the shores of Staten Island continues to rage in the political and scientific community. Despite the evidence, a very small minority of scientists and their political allies argue that climate change is not caused by human activity.
Many such opponents balked when President Obama proclaimed in his 2013 State of the Union address that more needs to be done to combat climate change. ?We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen, were all just a freak coincidence,? he said, ?Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science.?
Critics cite concerns that the government?s attempts to curb emissions will damage the economy and shrink the job market; Forbes columnist Peter Ferrara called Obama?s ?threats? a ?global warming regulatory jihad? and said his assertion of more severe weather was ?a fairy tale.?
Most scientists reject this rhetoric as self-interest masquerading as reason.
?People who make those arguments generally come from the energy industry,? says Barnett. ?They are not published in this area. They take facts and twist them, like the era of ?safe? cigarettes, when the industry?s men in white coats were just a bunch of yahoos off the street.?
Back on Staten Island, Cunsolo, a registered Democrat who has voted for both parties, insists, ?politics are out the window. This isn?t a Democratic or a Republican thing.?
The stormy weather is only projected to worsen.
?We expect that the overall intensity of hurricanes in the North Atlantic basin will continue to increase with higher sea surface temperature, but there is no strong consensus about how the warming atmosphere and ocean will affect the number of tropical storms,? says Dr. Virginia Van Sickle-Burkett, chief scientist for global change research at the U.S. Geological Survey.
She adds, ?There is presently no mechanism for humans to stop global warming, at least for the remainder of this century. Changes that have already been made in greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to warm the climate for decades to come.?
Scripps? Barnett is equally gloomy. ?Sandy destroyed the waterfront with a storm surge,? he says. ?Imagine if the normal level was a meter higher. Those beaches wouldn?t be there. At every high tide, the water would run everywhere.?
New York State has offered to buy out homes destroyed by Sandy, and Cunsolo says that option is becoming increasingly attractive. But most people want to stay.
Bad move, says Barnett. ?They can rebuild all they want, but it?s the dumbest thing in the world. As the ocean gets higher, it will win.?
Humans, he warns, ?are effectively creating another planet, whether we like it or not. And if your kids don?t like it 20, 30 years from now, there?s not a damn thing you can do. The problem is not unsolvable, but greed and power will be the downfall of the human race.?
It?s still too much for many Midland Beach residents to ponder. Even as they rebuild, they?re casting a wary eye on the Atlantic Ocean.
?Hurricane season is just a couple of weeks away,? Cunsolo says, who?s currently working on establishing evacuation routes. ?I got people calling me, saying what do we do if we get hit again??
June 10, 2013 ? Canada's Mackenzie River basin -- among the world's most important major ecosystems -- is poorly studied, inadequately monitored, and at serious risk due to climate change and resource exploitation, a panel of international scientists warn today.
In a report, nine Canadian, US and UK scientists convened by the US-based Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy, say effective governance of the massive Basin, comprising an area three times larger than France -- holds enormous national and global importance due to the watershed's biodiversity and its role in hemispheric bird migrations, stabilizing climate and the health of the Arctic Ocean.
The panel agreed the largest single threat to the Basin is a potential breach in the tailings ponds at one of the large oil sands sites mining surface bitumen. A breach in winter sending tailings liquid under the ice of the tributary Athabasca River, "would be virtually impossible to remediate or clean-up," says the report, available in full at http://bit.ly/13gc01K
"Extractive industries should be required to post a substantial performance bond which would be used to cover the costs of site clean-up should the enterprise fail financially or otherwise fail to fully remediate damage and destruction at the site in question," the report says. "The performance bond should be secured prior to site development and the commencement of operations."
Importance of the MacKenzie Basin
Researchers have compared the Mackenzie Basin to Africa's Serengeti Plain, an area of comparable size. Both ecosystems harbour high biodiversity and biological productivity compared to others in their respective regions. There are some 45,000 biologically productive lakes in the Mackenzie Basin.
Meanwhile, the ice and snow cover in the Mackenzie Basin provides a vital refrigerator-like cooling role, in weather and climate patterns throughout the northern hemisphere.
University of California Prof. Henry Vaux, Chair of the Rosenberg Forum, stressed that the average temperature in the Basin has already warmed beyond the 2 degree Celsius upon which nations agreed in Copenhagen as a limit not to be surpassed.
And, he noted, the World Meteorological Organization (2012) reported that ice cover in the Arctic between March and September of 2012 had been reduced by an area of 11.83 million square kilometers.
"To put that in perspective, Canada is about 10 million square kilometers in area; the area of Arctic sea ice that melted last summer was almost 2 million square kilometers larger," says Dr. Vaux.
The report, based on hearings conducted in Vancouver Sept. 5 to 7 last year, supported by the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, says warm air now arrives in the north earlier in the spring and often persists longer into the autumn.
The Mackenzie Basin helps moderate climate by capping hundreds of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases in permafrost soils, which cover 20% of Earth's surface. Deep permafrost -- in some places two kilometres deep -- can take 100,000 years to form.
In regions like the Mackenzie Basin, however, where average annual temperature is only slightly below freezing, permafrost is much thinner. Its melting will release massive quantities of methane (a greenhouse gas 21 times more potential per molecule than CO2) into the atmosphere.
Rising Arctic temperatures are already affecting the hydrological cycle of the Northwest Territories and other parts of Canada "and all signs indicate these changes will accelerate over time," according to the report.
Glacier coverage has declined by approximately 25 per cent in the last 25 years and in spring snow cover in the Canadian Rockies disappears about one month earlier.
Though these changes are already significant, "and in some cases border on catastrophic," the report says, climate simulations suggest increased warming will lead to even higher temperatures of a level not seen on Earth in more than 10,000 years. "Most participating stakeholders believe the region could adapt if the changes occur slowly," says the report. "However, rapid warming will make adaptation considerably more difficult."
"If vegetation and wildlife patterns are modified by climate change, then indigenous peoples' subsistence lifestyles are at risk. The effect of long-term climate change on communities, however, will also be determined by other factors, including lifestyle choices made by the region's inhabitants. Although socio-economic patterns and determinants are not well understood, it is possible that subsistence lifestyles will not be feasible in the future."
Though the total number of Arctic people living on substance lifestyle is unknown, it is estimated that about 30% of people in Canada's Northwest Territory (population: 42,500) have a diet that includes at least 50% "country food."
Says the report: "The Mackenzie River appears to be less well studied than most other major rivers of the world," and threats beyond warming temperatures include "unrestrained development, lack of attention to environmental protection and a lack of will to acknowledge and recognize the lifestyles of the Basin's indigenous peoples."
Eight principle findings and conclusions, Rosenberg Forum report
The ecologic, hydrologic and climatologic regimes of the Mackenzie River Basin are at risk from planetary warming. The area is ecologically fragile and could become more so.
The Mackenzie River Basin is a globally important resource. Its biological, hydrological and climatological properties affect the welfare of people throughout the Western Hemisphere and, to some extent, globally.
The Mackenzie River Basin is less studied than many of the other large basins of the world. The ambient environment of the Mackenzie is changing relatively rapidly. These two factors mean that management of the lands and waters of the Basin will have to occur in the face of significant uncertainties.
The Basin is fragmented jurisdictionally, making holistic management of its resources nearly impossible. Overarching authority for the management of the Basin should be vested in a strengthened Mackenzie River Basin Board (MRBB), authorized by the Mackenzie River Basin Transboundary Waters Master Agreement of 1997. A reinvigorated MRBB will need significantly more financial support and will benefit from the advice and counsel of an independent International Science Advisory Committee.
The reinvigorated MRBB should manage the Basin adaptively and holistically. This will require a perpetual, robust and adequately funded monitoring program that should be the responsibility of the Canadian federal government.
Adaptive management and the precautionary principle need to be employed assiduously in managing scientific uncertainty in the Mackenzie River Basin.
Extractive industries should be required to post a substantial performance bond which would be used to cover the costs of site clean-up should the enterprise fail financially or otherwise fail to fully remediate damage and destruction at the site in question. The performance bond should be secured prior to site development and the commencement of operations.
There are a number of value issues that must be addressed forthrightly and transparently. They involve the interplay of two distinctly different cultures within the Basin -- issues related to rates and types of appropriate economic growth, and the oversight and regulation of extractive industries and hydroelectric development.
About the Mackenzie River Basin
Originating in part in the Columbia Icefield in the Canadian Rockies, the Mackenzie is Canada's longest river, covering a distance of about 4,250 km.
It pours 10.3 million liters -- enough to fill four Olympic swimming pools -- into the Arctic Ocean every second, along with 100 million tons of sediment per year. That's estimated to be slightly more than the St. Lawrence River discharges into the Atlantic.
The Mackenzie Basin includes three major lakes (Great Slave, Great Bear and Athabasca, which together contain almost 4,000 cubic km of water) and many major rivers, including the Peace, Athabasca, Liard, Hay, Peel, South Nahanni and Slave.
The Mackenzie Delta -- where the river meets the Arctic Ocean -- is increasingly subject to storm surges from the Beaufort Sea and salt water intrusion due to three factors: reduced nearshore ice, sea levels rising at accelerated rates, and more frequent severe winter storms.
Complex challenges confront this immense territory rich in natural assets: forests -- vital habitat for wildlife and for birds that migrate as far as South America -- deep stores of trapped carbon, and vast deposits of oil, natural gas and minerals.
Slumping of the land due to melting results in the discharge of sediments to rivers and allows perched ponds and lakes to drain. Tributary river courses and groundwater flows can alter, leaving spawning areas disrupted. Melting permafrost can also severely damage drainage facilities, roads, buildings, and pipelines.
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GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) ? The Boy Scouts of America will convene a two-day meeting of 1,400 local leaders to consider changing its long-standing ban openly gay boys belonging to the scouting movement.
Officials of the Irving, Texas-based organization are scheduled to open the first of the ballots cast on whether to allow homosexual gay Boy Scouts. Scouting officials propose allowing openly gay Scouts but retaining the ban on gay adult Scout leaders.
The final vote is scheduled for Thursday in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Grapevine.
Some conservatives have denounced the proposal, saying the Scouts' traditions would be undermined by the presence of openly gay youth. Gay-rights supporters have welcomed the proposed change as a positive first step but want the BSA to lift the ban on gay adults as well.
May 22, 2013 ? When turned on, the gene p53 turns off cancer. However, when existing drugs boost p53, only a few tumors die -- the rest resist the challenge. A study published in the journal Cell Reports shows how: tumors that live even in the face of p53 reactivation create more of the protein p21 than the protein PUMA; tumors that die have more PUMA than p21. And, for the first time, the current study shows a handful of genes that control this ratio.
"The gene p53 is one of the most commonly mutated cancer genes. Tumors turn it off and then they can avoid controls that should kill them. Fine: we have drugs that can reactivate p53. But the bad news is when we go into the clinic with these drugs, only maybe one in ten tumors actually dies. We wanted to know what genes fine-tune this p53 effectiveness," says Joaquin Espinosa, PhD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, associate professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at CU Boulder, and the paper's senior author.
To answer that question, the group including first author Zdenek Andrisyk, PhD, postdoc in the Espinosa Lab, turned off every gene in the human genome in turn and asked if there were genes that, when deactivated, would tip the balance from p21 to PUMA, thus enhancing the likelihood of cell death.
"We found a couple dozen genes involved in this ratio -- genes that with p53 activated, lead to more p21 and better survival or more PUMA and more cell death," Espinosa says.
The hope is that in addition to drugs that reactivate the tumor-suppressor gene p53, patients could be given a second drug targeting genes that control this p21/PUMA ratio, thus making first drug more effective. Likewise, in cases in which toxicity in healthy tissue limits the use of p53 activating drugs, Espinosa's research could lead to new drugs that thumb the scale of the p21/PUMA ratio toward survival in these healthy tissues. Up or down: learning to adjust the ratio has immense promise.
The group's next step is likely repeating the genetic screen with additional tumor and healthy cell lines to discover which of their newly discovered candidate genes are common controllers of the p21/PUMA ratio across cancer types. And, interestingly, the same technique could be used to make many existing drugs more effective.
"With many of these molecularly targeted therapies, you want one effect but then you end up with many other possible effects," Espinosa says. (An example is the recently-reported side effect of low testosterone in male lung cancer patient taking the molecularly targeted drug crizotinib.) The genetic screening technique used in the Espinosa lab could help disentangle effect from side effect -- showing which secondary genes regulate the desired, tumor-killing response and which secondary genes lead to undesirable side-effects.
"Not only could this technique lead to drugs that decrease the side effects of targeted therapies, but if you're not limited by these side effects, you can simply give more drug, perhaps making existing drugs much more powerful," Espinosa says.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 43 people were killed in car bomb explosions targeting Shi'ite Muslims in the Iraqi capital and the southern oil hub of Basra on Monday, police and medics said.
About 150 people have been killed in sectarian violence over the past week and tensions between Shi'ites, who now lead Iraq, and minority Sunni Muslims have reached their highest level since U.S. troops pulled out in December 2011.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Iraq is home to a number of Sunni Islamist insurgent groups, including the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq, which has previously targeted Shi'ites in a bid to provoke a wider sectarian confrontation.
Nine people were killed in one of two car bomb explosions in Basra, a predominantly Shi'ite city 20 km (260 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police and medics said.
"I was on duty when a powerful blast shook the ground," said a police officer near the site of that attack in the Hayaniya neighborhood.
"The blast hit a group of day laborers gathering near a sandwich kiosk," he told Reuters, describing corpses littering the ground. "One of the dead bodies was still grabbing a blood-soaked sandwich in his hand."
Five other people were killed in a second blast inside a bus terminal in Saad Square, also in Basra, police and medics said.
In Baghdad, a parked car exploded in a busy market in the mainly Shi'ite eastern district of Kamaliya, killing seven people, police said.
A further 22 people were killed in blasts in Ilaam, Diyala Bridge, al-Shurta, Shula and Sadr City - all areas with a high concentration of Shi'ites.
Iraq's delicate intercommunal fabric has come under increasing strain from the conflict in neighboring Syria, which has drawn Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims from across the region into a proxy war.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's main regional ally is Shi'ite Iran, while the rebels fighting to overthrow him are supported by Sunni Gulf powers Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Iraq says it takes no sides in the conflict, but leaders in Tehran and Baghdad fear Assad's demise would make way for a hostile Sunni Islamist government in Syria, weakening Shi'ite influence in the Middle East.
The prospect of a possible shift in the sectarian balance of power has emboldened Iraq's Sunni minority, embittered by Shi'ite dominance since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by U.S.-led forces in 2003.
Thousands of Sunnis began staging street protests last December against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whom they accuse of marginalizing their sect.
A deadly raid by the Iraqi army on a protest camp in the town of Hawija last month ignited a bout of violence that left more than 700 people dead in April, according to a U.N. count, the highest monthly toll in almost five years.
At the height of sectarian violence in 2006-07, the monthly death toll sometimes topped 3,000.
(Additional reporting by Aref Mohammed and Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The South African Reserve Bank's monthly leading business cycle indicator fell 1.1 percent in March from February, mainly due to a decrease in the export commodity price index, the bank said on Tuesday.
The indicator collates data such as vehicle sales, job advertisements, business confidence and money supply to gauge the economic outlook.
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The massive tornado that ripped through a handful of Oklahoma City suburbs and killed at least 50 people grabbed the attention of the sports world on Monday, especially the players and coaches with ties to the area.
Kevin Durant, a three-time scoring champion for the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder, posted on his Twitter account that he was praying for everyone involved. He added: "Everybody stay safe!"
Mets pitcher Jeremy Hefner went to Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, just south of Oklahoma City. The school had its roof torn off and walls knocked down. Some of those killed died at the school.
"I mean, it's terrifying," the right-hander said.
Hefner still has family living in Moore. He said he had been in contact with his mother, who told him his cousins and uncles were OK.
"It's just unfathomable," he said. "I used to live there."
Dodgers star Matt Kemp posted on Twitter: "'m giving $1000 for tonight's HR and every HR until the All-Star break for the victims of my hometown in OKC. (hash)PrayforOklahoma"
Coverage of the tornado damage was on the clubhouse TV as the Red Sox prepared for their game at the Chicago White Sox.
"It's a tragedy when you see a natural disaster like that take place, so many innocent people that are certainly affected, if not directly by injury or possibly loss of life," Boston manager John Farrell said. "Having been though something similar back in 1997 that had probably very similar damage, it's a scary situation. Our thoughts are with all the people affected."
Farrell played for Oklahoma State in college, and then served as the assistant coach and pitching and recruiting coordinator for the Cowboys for five seasons from 1997-2001.
"The location today is very close to where it was back in '97," Farrell said. "Just that area just south of Oklahoma City seems to be right in the path of unfortunately a lot of storm fronts and certainly the tornadoes again today."
White Sox manager Robin Ventura also played his college ball at Oklahoma State, where was a three-time All-America. The Santa Maria, Calif., native said he didn't know anything about tornadoes until there were a couple that passed through the area while he was in school.
"It's scary," he said. "There's nothing you can do about it."
Browns quarterback Brandon Weeden, who played at Oklahoma State and grew up in the Oklahoma City area, was relieved that no one in his wife's family was injured.
"Devastating damage to Moore, Oklahoma due to Tornadoes," Weeden wrote on his Twitter account. "Please keep these people in your prayers. Thankfully (at)MelanieWeeden family is safe."
Kansas coach basketball coach Bill Self also went to Oklahoma State.
"We wish nothing but the very best for (those affected by the storm) and our thoughts are with them," he said.
Axel Mercado is a Health and Fitness Coach. He's a certified Physician Assistant (PA-C) with a Master?s degree in Public Health (MPH) and a Bachelor?s (BS) degree in Physician Assistant Studies. He practices internal medicine, specializing in wound management. As a Health and Fitness Coach, Primary Care cllinician, and internist, he has helped hundred?s of individuals achieve their weight and health goals.
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Vodafone has withdrawn from the running to provide a mobile service to fixed-line operator BT , two industry sources told Reuters, bringing to an end a nine-year partnership.
Vodafone had been the so-called mobile virtual network operator for BT, providing mobile services to staff, small companies and multi-national corporations which are clients to the BT Global Services division.
The Vodafone-BT tie-up was canceled once Vodafone acquired rival fixed-line business Cable & Wireless Worldwide, but Vodafone had been in the running to win a new contract with the British firm.
Its withdrawal is likely to leave Telefonica's O2 and EE in the running for the BT deal. EE is the country's largest mobile operator and is owned by France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom.
The proposition for an operator has become more attractive since BT won a large amount of spectrum in a recent auction, to enable it to boost its wifi offering and consider launching a full BT-branded mobile service to consumers.
Sources have stressed however that any offering would be some time off and would rely on a partnership with an existing operator.
"We can confirm we are making good progress with our tender for a mobile partner," a BT spokesman said.
"The 4G spectrum we obtained recently means we have a strong hand and that has been recognized in the bids we have received to date. We hope to conclude the process in the coming months and we will comment further when the tender has been concluded."
The deal could make the most sense for O2, the mobile business that demerged from BT in 2001, because it did not acquire any of the high-frequency spectrum at the auction that was bought by BT.
One industry source, who declined to be named because the talks were not public, said Vodafone had entered the process to secure a new contract with BT, but had recently withdrawn after reconsidering its options. Vodafone declined to comment.
(Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)
Google (and especially the Google+ team) are keeping very busy. While I/O 2013 may have wrapped up last week, the company's just unveiled a new update for its social network on Android devices. Packing some familiar new photo features (like auto-backup and auto-highlights), the refresh includes even more Snapseed filters and tools. Location sharing can now tap into your circle arrangements, and you'll be able to share geo-locations with specific sets of people. Related hashtags will now function within the app, like we've already seen on the web-based version, while (perhaps predictably) there's now one-tap access to Mountain View's Hangouts app too. Gotta keep 'em all connected, right?
Emergency personnel respond to one of the people hit by a car, at right, during the beginning of the Hikers Parade at the Trail Days festival in Damascus, Va., Saturday, May 18, 2013. Witnesses said the car drove into a crowd at the parade and hurt several people, but the nature of their injuries wasn't immediately known. (AP Photo/Bristol Herald Courier, Earl Neikirk)
Emergency personnel respond to one of the people hit by a car, at right, during the beginning of the Hikers Parade at the Trail Days festival in Damascus, Va., Saturday, May 18, 2013. Witnesses said the car drove into a crowd at the parade and hurt several people, but the nature of their injuries wasn't immediately known. (AP Photo/Bristol Herald Courier, Earl Neikirk)
Hiker "Quinoa" talks about being given credit for saving the lives of Carson Balckburn, Dalton Thomason, and Faith Ritchie after he ran them and others off the road with a water gun during a festival parade in Damascus, Va., Saturday, May 18, 2013. Just as the children ran off the street, a car came down the road and struck several people. (AP Photo/Bristol Herald Courier, Earl Neikirk)
People attend to a victim who was hit by a car during the Hikers Parade at the Trail Days festival in Damascus, Va., Saturday, May 18, 2013. Witnesses said the car drove into a crowd at the parade and hurt several people, but the nature of their injuries wasn't immediately known. (AP Photo/Republican-American, Bill O'Brien)
People attend to a victim who was hit by a car during the Hikers Parade at the Trail Days festival in Damascus, Va., Saturday, May 18, 2013. Witnesses said the car drove into a crowd at the parade and hurt several people, but the nature of their injuries wasn't immediately known. (AP Photo/Republican-American, Bill O'Brien)
DAMASCUS, Va. (AP) ? Authorities believe the driver who plowed into dozens of hikers marching in a Virginia mountain town parade suffered from a medical condition and did not cause the crash intentionally, an emergency official said Sunday.
Officials did not have a formal confirmation or any specifics on the condition, but based on the accounts of authorities and witnesses on the scene, they are confident the issue was medical, according to Pokey Harris, Washington County's director of emergency management. "There is no reason to believe this was intentional," she said.
In what witnesses called a frantic scene at the parade, about 50 to 60 people suffered injuries ranging from critical to superficial Saturday. No fatalities were reported. Three of the worst injured were flown by helicopter to area hospitals.
Two people were kept at hospitals overnight, but their injuries were not critical as of Sunday, Harris said. "For the most part, everyone was treated and released," she said.
The crash happened around 2:10 p.m. Saturday during the Hikers Parade at the Trail Days festival, an annual celebration of the Appalachian Trail in Damascus, near the Tennessee state line about a half-hour drive east of Bristol.
Damascus Police Chief Bill Nunley didn't release the driver's name or age but said he was participating in the parade and he had traversed the Appalachian Trail in the past. Several witnesses described him as an elderly man.
Nunley said the man's 1997 Cadillac was one of the last vehicles in the parade and the driver might have suffered an unspecified medical problem when his car accelerated to about 25 mph and struck the crowd on a two-lane bridge along the town's main road. The driver was among those taken to hospitals.
"It is under investigation, and charges may be placed," Nunley said Saturday.
On Sunday, festival events were continuing as scheduled, Harris said. Mayor Jack McCrady had encouraged people to attend the final day.
"In 27 years of this, we've never had anything of this magnitude, and is it our job to make sure it doesn't happen again," he said.
Harris said that the incident left a "sad heart and black cloud" over the event and that people were proceeding with "heightened awareness." But she emphasized the crash was an accident and said no additional security measures were taken.
On Saturday, Rudolph "Chip" Cenci, 64, of Minoa, N.Y., told The News-Item newspaper in Shamokin, Pa., that he heard people yelling "get out of the way" and turned around to find the car was about to hit him. He jumped onto the hood and held onto the gap at the base of the windshield near the wipers. He said the driver had a blank stare on his face.
"I bet you that man never realized someone was on his hood," Cenci said.
Cenci said he had a bump on his knee but was otherwise OK. He added that his wife, Susan, 63, narrowly missed being hit.
Amanda Puckett, who was watching the parade with her children, ran to the car, where she and others lifted the car off those pinned underneath.
"Everybody just threw our hands up on the car and we just lifted the car up," she said.
Keith Neumann, a hiker from South Carolina, said he was part of the group that scrambled around the car. They pushed the car backward to free a woman trapped underneath and lifted it off the ground to make sure no one else was trapped.
"There's no single heroes," he said. "We're talking about a group effort of everybody jumping in."
10 days, people! TechCrunch invades Austin in just ten days from now, with our legendary Meetup + Pitch-off series. The magic started in New York this year, with a hugely successful pitch-off, an amazing turn-out and lots of fun memories. So we're heading out on the open road with the event, which includes a networking meetup as well as a 60-second pitch-off competition with awesome prizes. Over the course of the year, we'll be hitting up Boston, San Diego, and Seattle, but the first stop on our journey is in the great state of Texas.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Justice Department is opening a criminal investigation of the Internal Revenue Service just as another probe concludes that lax management enabled agents to improperly target tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax exempt status.
Attorney General Eric Holder said he ordered the FBI to investigate Friday ? the day the IRS publicly acknowledged that it had singled out conservative groups.
"Those (actions) were, I think, as everyone can agree, if not criminal, they were certainly outrageous and unacceptable," Holder said. "But we are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations."
Holder is scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee.
Three congressional committees already are investigating the IRS for singling out tea party and other conservative groups during the 2010 congressional elections and the 2012 presidential election. But Holder's announcement would take the matter to another level if investigators are able to prove that laws were broken.
Ineffective management at the IRS allowed agents to improperly target tea party groups for more than 18 months, said a report released Tuesday by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The report lays much of the blame on IRS supervisors in Washington who oversaw a group of specialists in Cincinnati who screened applications for tax exempt status.
It does not indicate that Washington initiated the targeting of conservative groups. But it does say a top supervisor in Washington did not adequately supervise agents in the field even after she learned the agents were acting improperly.
"The report's findings are intolerable and inexcusable," President Barack Obama said in a statement. "The federal government must conduct itself in a way that's worthy of the public's trust, and that's especially true for the IRS. The IRS must apply the law in a fair and impartial way, and its employees must act with utmost integrity. This report shows that some of its employees failed that test."
The agency started targeting groups with "Tea Party," ''Patriots" or "9/12 Project" in their applications for tax exempt status in March 2010, the inspector general's report said. By August 2010, it was part of the written criteria used to flag groups for additional scrutiny.
Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax exempt organizations, had been briefed on the matter in June 2011. She ordered the initial tea party criteria to be scrapped, but it later evolved to include groups that promoted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The practice was ended in May 2012, the report said.
IRS agents were trying to determine whether the political activities of such groups disqualified them for tax exempt status. These groups were claiming tax exempt status as organizations promoting social welfare. Unlike other charitable groups, they can engage in political activity. But politics cannot be their primary mission.
It is up to the IRS to make the determination.
But by using improper criteria, the IRS targeted some groups, even though there were no indications that they engaged in significant political activities, the report said. Other non-tea party groups that had significant political activities were not screened, the report said.
"The criteria developed by the Determinations Unit gives the appearance that the IRS is not impartial in conducting its mission," the report said.
The additional screening resulted in long delays as IRS agents asked intrusive, sometimes inappropriate questions, or merely let applications languish, the report said. Inappropriate questions included requests for lists of donors and the political affiliation of officers.
"Unfortunately, the report raises more questions than it answers," said House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. "What we do know for sure is that the IRS personnel responsible for granting tax exemptions systematically targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny, and that officials in Washington, D.C., were aware of this practice, even while publicly claiming that it never happened."
The IRS on Friday apologized for singling out tea party and other conservative groups.
On Tuesday, the agency said, "After seeing issues with particular cases, inappropriate shortcuts were used to determine which cases may be engaging in political activities. It is important to note that the vast majority of these cases would still have been centralized based on the general criteria used for other cases."
Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller is scheduled to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee at a hearing Friday. Miller became acting commissioner in November, after Commissioner Douglas Shulman completed his five-year term. Shulman had been appointed by President George W. Bush.
___
Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap
Study reveals scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate changePublic release date: 15-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael Bishop michael.bishop@iop.org 01-179-301-032 Institute of Physics
A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among scientists that recent warming is human-caused.
The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing man-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW)
Led by John Cook at the University of Queensland, the study has been published today, Thursday 16 May, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters.
The study went one step further, asking the authors of these papers to rate their entire paper using the same criteria. Over 2000 papers were rated and among those that discussed the cause of recent global warming, 97 per cent endorsed the consensus that it is caused by humans.
The findings are in stark contrast to the public's position on global warming; a 2012 poll* revealed that more than half of Americans either disagree, or are unaware, that scientists overwhelmingly agree that the Earth is warming because of human activity.
John Cook said: "Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary.
"There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception. It's staggering given the evidence for consensus that less than half of the general public think scientists agree that humans are causing global warming.
"This is significant because when people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they're more likely to support policies that take action on it."
In March 2012, the researchers used the ISI Web of Science database to search for peer-reviewed academic articles published between 1991 and 2011 using two topic searches: "global warming" and "global climate change".
After limiting the selection to peer-reviewed climate science, the study considered 11 994 papers written by 29 083 authors in 1980 different scientific journals.
The abstracts from these papers were randomly distributed between a team of 24 volunteers recruited through the "myth-busting" website skepticalscience.com, who used set criteria to determine the level to which the abstracts endorsed that humans are the primary cause of global warming. Each abstract was analyzed by two independent, anonymous raters.
From the 11 994 papers, 32.6 per cent endorsed AGW, 66.4 per cent stated no position on AGW, 0.7 per cent rejected AGW and in 0.3 per cent of papers, the authors said the cause of global warming was uncertain.
Co-author of the study Mark Richardson, from the University of Reading, said: "We want our scientists to answer questions for us, and there are lots of exciting questions in climate science. One of them is: are we causing global warming? We found over 4000 studies written by 10 000 scientists that stated a position on this, and 97 per cent said that recent warming is mostly man made."
Visitors to the skepticalscience.com website also raised the funds required to allow the study to be accessible to the public.
Daniel Kammen, editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Research Letters, said: ""This paper demonstrates the power of the Environmental Research Letters open access model of operation in that authors working to advance our knowledge of climate science and to engage in a public discourse can guarantee all interested parties have the opportunity to review the same data and findings."
From Thursday 16 May, this paper can be downloaded from http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
Notes to Editors
Contact
1. For further information, a full draft of the journal paper or contact with one of the researchers, contact IOP
Press Officer, Michael Bishop:
Tel: 0117 930 1032
E-mail: Michael.bishop@iop.org
IOP Publishing Journalist Area
2. The IOP Publishing Journalist Area gives journalists access to embargoed press releases, advanced copies of papers, supplementary images and videos. In addition to this, a weekly news digest is uploaded into the Journalist Area every Friday, highlighting a selection of newsworthy papers set to be published in the following week.
Login details also give free access to IOPscience, IOP Publishing's journal platform.
To apply for a free subscription to this service, please email Michael Bishop, IOP Press Officer, michael.bishop@iop.org, with your name, organisation, address and a preferred username.
Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature
3. The published version of the paper 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' (John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Brbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs and Andrew Skuce 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024) will be freely available online from Thursday 16 May. It will be available at http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article.
Environmental Research Letters
4. Environmental Research Letters is an open access journal that covers all of environmental science, providing a coherent and integrated approach including research articles, perspectives and editorials.
IOP Publishing
5. IOP Publishing provides a range of journals, magazines, websites and services that enable researchers and research organisations to reach the widest possible audience for their research.
We combine the culture of a learned society with global reach and highly efficient and effective publishing systems and processes. With offices in the UK, US, Germany, China and Japan, and staff in many other locations including Mexico and Russia, we serve researchers in the physical and related sciences in all parts of the world.
IOP Publishing is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Institute of Physics. The Institute is a leading scientific society promoting physics and bringing physicists together for the benefit of all. Any profits generated by IOP Publishing are used by the Institute to support science and scientists in both the developed and developing world. Go to ioppublishing.org.
The Institute of Physics
6. The Institute of Physics is a leading scientific society. We are a charitable organisation with a worldwide membership of more than 50,000, working together to advance physics education, research and application. We engage with policymakers and the general public to develop awareness and understanding of the value of physics and, through IOP Publishing, we are world leaders in professional scientific communications. Go to http://www.iop.org
[ | 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.
Study reveals scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate changePublic release date: 15-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael Bishop michael.bishop@iop.org 01-179-301-032 Institute of Physics
A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among scientists that recent warming is human-caused.
The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing man-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW)
Led by John Cook at the University of Queensland, the study has been published today, Thursday 16 May, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters.
The study went one step further, asking the authors of these papers to rate their entire paper using the same criteria. Over 2000 papers were rated and among those that discussed the cause of recent global warming, 97 per cent endorsed the consensus that it is caused by humans.
The findings are in stark contrast to the public's position on global warming; a 2012 poll* revealed that more than half of Americans either disagree, or are unaware, that scientists overwhelmingly agree that the Earth is warming because of human activity.
John Cook said: "Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary.
"There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception. It's staggering given the evidence for consensus that less than half of the general public think scientists agree that humans are causing global warming.
"This is significant because when people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they're more likely to support policies that take action on it."
In March 2012, the researchers used the ISI Web of Science database to search for peer-reviewed academic articles published between 1991 and 2011 using two topic searches: "global warming" and "global climate change".
After limiting the selection to peer-reviewed climate science, the study considered 11 994 papers written by 29 083 authors in 1980 different scientific journals.
The abstracts from these papers were randomly distributed between a team of 24 volunteers recruited through the "myth-busting" website skepticalscience.com, who used set criteria to determine the level to which the abstracts endorsed that humans are the primary cause of global warming. Each abstract was analyzed by two independent, anonymous raters.
From the 11 994 papers, 32.6 per cent endorsed AGW, 66.4 per cent stated no position on AGW, 0.7 per cent rejected AGW and in 0.3 per cent of papers, the authors said the cause of global warming was uncertain.
Co-author of the study Mark Richardson, from the University of Reading, said: "We want our scientists to answer questions for us, and there are lots of exciting questions in climate science. One of them is: are we causing global warming? We found over 4000 studies written by 10 000 scientists that stated a position on this, and 97 per cent said that recent warming is mostly man made."
Visitors to the skepticalscience.com website also raised the funds required to allow the study to be accessible to the public.
Daniel Kammen, editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Research Letters, said: ""This paper demonstrates the power of the Environmental Research Letters open access model of operation in that authors working to advance our knowledge of climate science and to engage in a public discourse can guarantee all interested parties have the opportunity to review the same data and findings."
From Thursday 16 May, this paper can be downloaded from http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
Notes to Editors
Contact
1. For further information, a full draft of the journal paper or contact with one of the researchers, contact IOP
Press Officer, Michael Bishop:
Tel: 0117 930 1032
E-mail: Michael.bishop@iop.org
IOP Publishing Journalist Area
2. The IOP Publishing Journalist Area gives journalists access to embargoed press releases, advanced copies of papers, supplementary images and videos. In addition to this, a weekly news digest is uploaded into the Journalist Area every Friday, highlighting a selection of newsworthy papers set to be published in the following week.
Login details also give free access to IOPscience, IOP Publishing's journal platform.
To apply for a free subscription to this service, please email Michael Bishop, IOP Press Officer, michael.bishop@iop.org, with your name, organisation, address and a preferred username.
Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature
3. The published version of the paper 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' (John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Brbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs and Andrew Skuce 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024) will be freely available online from Thursday 16 May. It will be available at http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article.
Environmental Research Letters
4. Environmental Research Letters is an open access journal that covers all of environmental science, providing a coherent and integrated approach including research articles, perspectives and editorials.
IOP Publishing
5. IOP Publishing provides a range of journals, magazines, websites and services that enable researchers and research organisations to reach the widest possible audience for their research.
We combine the culture of a learned society with global reach and highly efficient and effective publishing systems and processes. With offices in the UK, US, Germany, China and Japan, and staff in many other locations including Mexico and Russia, we serve researchers in the physical and related sciences in all parts of the world.
IOP Publishing is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Institute of Physics. The Institute is a leading scientific society promoting physics and bringing physicists together for the benefit of all. Any profits generated by IOP Publishing are used by the Institute to support science and scientists in both the developed and developing world. Go to ioppublishing.org.
The Institute of Physics
6. The Institute of Physics is a leading scientific society. We are a charitable organisation with a worldwide membership of more than 50,000, working together to advance physics education, research and application. We engage with policymakers and the general public to develop awareness and understanding of the value of physics and, through IOP Publishing, we are world leaders in professional scientific communications. Go to http://www.iop.org
[ | 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.
Raspberry yogurt pretzels are crunchy pretzels generously covered in a sweet raspberry yogurt coating. Try these pretzels as a snack or use them to scoop up your favorite sweet dip. Read More ?
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Public release date: 15-May-2013
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