Vegetarians and those interested in a meat-free diet will have some common ground to stand on this Monday.? October 1 marks World Vegetarian Day, an event founded by the North American Vegetarian Society (NAVS) to raise support and awareness for a vegetarian lifestyle.
The North American Vegetarian Society is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1974. According to their website, the organization has two focuses: To provide a support network for its members, affiliated groups and those who follow a vegetarian diet; and to inform the general public about the benefits vegetarianism provides to ?humans, animals and the Earth.
The group seeks to carry out these goals through various means, including a quarterly magazine, spreading their message via a growing body of publications, holding conferences, and providing resources and information to the media and other organizations that may take interest.
World Vegetarian Day was founded in 1977 and received official endorsement by the International Vegetarian Union in 1978. October 1 may be World Vegetarian Day, but it kicks off Vegetarian Awareness Month, which seeks to create ?a better world because vegetarian diets have proven health benefits, save animals? lives and help preserve the Earth.?
There are numerous ways to get involved in World Vegetarian Day this Monday, including displaying a free poster provided by NAVS in your community and, of course, eating vegetarian. There is also an opportunity for non-vegetarian eaters to win up to $1,000 if they pledge to go meat free in October. Pledging information is available on the World Vegetarian Day website.
In addition to founding World Vegetarian Day, the NAVS also organizes annual education conferences including the Vegetarian Summerfest, which is open to anyone interested in learning more about vegetarianism. The national event attracts 500-600 people of all ages wanting to know more about a vegetarian diet. Information on the topic is provided via lectures, classes and cooking demonstrations. Lecturers include leading figures in health such as top doctors, dietitians, chefs , authors and social activists. Information about this event can be found at the Vegetarian Summerfest website.
If those around you need more persuasion to try a vegetarian diet, there?s plenty of research backing its benefits. In a study conducted by the German Cancer Research Center, men eating a vegetarian diet were shown to have a 50 percent lower risk of early death, and women saw a 30 percent lower risk.?Vegetarians also see lower risks of heart disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer, and typically weigh less and have more energy than meat eaters.
Share this convincing information with your circle of friends and family and ask if they?ll pledge to try out a vegetarian diet in October. If they do, their eating habits will not only benefit the environment and their personal health, but also save animals? lives.
RELATED ARTICLES: 10 Surprising Sources of Vegetarian Protein Sources and How Much Protein You Need Gallup Asks Americans if They?re Vegan for the First Time 10 Delicious Vegetarian Recipes
It would be pretty difficult for a company to go out of business if it is debt free, compared with companies that are heavily encumbered with loans. If you are able to buy a stock for less than the book value, that is even better. The book value is, in very simple terms, all assets minus all liabilities, divided by the number of shares. In other words, if the company went out of business today and was able to liquidate everything immediately, what each shareholder would receive.
However, an even better buy would be if you could buy the company's stock for less than the amount of cash it has for each share. It may be hard to believe, but there are over 15 stocks trading at less than the cash per share, according to the latest list of Stocks Selling Below Cash per Share at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.
One example is Amtech Systems Inc. (ASYS), a Tempe, Arizona based company which manufactures and markets the capital equipment used in the manufacture of wafers, primarily for the semiconductor and solar industries. This debt-free company, which closed at 3.31 on Friday, is selling way below its book value of 10.90, and about a 25% discount to the amount of cash per share of 4.47. Net revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2012 was $24.3 million, up 13% from $21.6 million for the preceding quarter. The net loss for the third quarter of fiscal 2012 was $3 million or a loss of $0.31 per share compared to a net loss of $5.1 million or $0.54 per share in the preceding quarter.
If you trust the financials from Chinese based companies, you may want to take a look at UTStarcom Holdings Corp. (UTSI), a Beijing, China based business which makes and markets Internet protocol-based telecommunications infrastructure products to telecommunications service providers. Customers are based in China, Japan, India, the United States, Latin America, and Europe. The stock trades at 25.8 times earnings, and based on its closing price on Friday of 1.03, is selling at an approximately 45% discount to the cash per share of 1.86. During July and August, the company repurchased $2.2 million of its shares as part of its ongoing $20 million share repurchase program that was launched in August 2011. The company has no debt.
O2Micro International Ltd. (OIIM) is a debt-free Cayman Islands based company involved in the creation and selling of integrated circuits for power management and e-commerce components and systems. The stock closed at 3.74, which is at a discount to its cash per share of 3.83, and way below the book value of 5.36.
For a free list of all the debt-free stocks selling below cash, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com. The list can be downloaded, sorted, and updated.
Disclosure: Author didn't own any of the above at the time that article was written.
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Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.
Dimensions, they're like buses. You wait for ages, and then three come along at once. And then another one right after that. While that might be about where the analogy ends, this week sees us off to the moon, where we then leap from the third, right into the fourth. Once there, we'll learn how we could eventually be controlled by lasers, before getting up close and personal with a 300 million-year old bug. Sound like some sort of psychedelic dream? Better than that, this is alt-week.
MEDINAH, Illinois (Reuters) - Phil Mickelson looked on like a proud father as he watched Keegan Bradley enjoy a spectacular Ryder Cup debut teaming up with his young protege to contribute two wins to the United States 5-3 lead over Europe on Friday.
Mickelson, the most experienced member of the U.S. Ryder Cup brigade with nine appearances, provided the knowhow and Bradley the youthful energy.
They combined to brush aside Briton Luke Donald and Spaniard Sergio Garcia 4&3 in the morning foursomes then followed up with a 2&1 victory over the Northern Ireland duo of world number one Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell.
"His (Bradley) energy is so positive, it's so good," Mickelson gushed. "His driver and his putter is off the charts.
"We've had a lot of fun, and that brings out best golf out."
When Bradley joined the PGA Tour in 2011, he and Mickelson struck up an instant friendship that has blossomed into a full-fledged bromance.
The two golfers displayed an obvious chemistry, enjoying every minute they spent inside the Ryder Cup pressure cooker, playfully slapping each other on the back, trading fist-pumps and high-fives and charming the pro-American galleries who roared their support.
"I just loved every second of it," said Bradley, who won the PGA Championship in his rookie season. "To be able to walk down the fairway with Phil and do this is just a dream come true.
"It's another moment in my life that I can't believe I'm a part of. It could be the best day of my life. It's just a blast.
"This is literally what I've dreamt about since I was a little kid and I got to do it next to my idol all day."
Bradley dropped the decisive putt to cap the morning match and did much of the heavy lifting in the afternoon, carding six birdies.
But it was Mickelson who delivered the decisive blow with a pinpoint tee shot at the 17th that ended the match with a handshake as McIlroy and McDowell conceded defeat.
"It's awesome and right here on the 17th, it was incredible," said Mickelson. "We've had so much fun and it's what brought our best golf out and to close out with that shot feels spectacular.
"This is one of the most emotional days playing a Ryder Cup that we'll ever have.
"I felt young, and it felt great. To finish it like this was just great."
Balmi Blue prominent in the Stadium Bookmakers Stayers
The Grade OR Stadium Bookmakers Stayers at Oxford on Friday, 28th September has gathered six talented hounds for the ?150 prize money. Taking their shot at the 645 metres flat track are Amazon Warrior, Scala Cosey, Queen Vic, Droopys Xavier, Dippy
Boy and Balmi Blue. Only the first trap is emerging from a level not at par with the open company, but all the rest are well seasoned as far as the bench mark for today is concerned.
The 6 to 4 entry, Balmi Blue, reserves the title of the most preferred entry in the field. The three-year-old blue dog has been racing since the last season, and has come clean out of the progressive challenges ranging from Grade T1 to OR. He has raced at
multiple race tracks and over varying distances.
The last five races of the season have been at the open level, but Duke Special?s son could win only once, and got qualified as the runner-up twice. The D. Mullins? trained had his first shot after the Grade T2 on 17th August, 2012 in the third
heat of the Gain Feeds Yorkshire St Leger on 24th August, 2012 at Doncaster over 661 metres.
Balmi Blue had to share the second position with, Trickys On Fire, as both missed on the winner?s spot by the margin of ? of a length. As tonight, he had drawn the sixth trap back in August too.
After a fourth ending in the last race of August, the blue dog bagged the ?150 prize money of the third heat of the Champions Night Marathon on 5th September, 2012 at Romford over 750 metres.
Racing away with speed, and leading just near the line had him concluding the race in 47.97 seconds. He held the closing in rival, Westmead Jules, by the short head?s margin.
The last two outings ended in a fourth and then a second position.
Balmi Blue has drawn the sixth trap for tonight?s challenge, and has the chance to cover ground on the wide end, switch to the middle or rail near the wire, and avoid traffic through the trip.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent bettor.com?s official editorial policy.
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Los Angeles took a major step Friday toward building a downtown stadium to lure an NFL team back to the nation's second most populous city, despite questions about how a 72,000-seat venue in the city's urban core would impact notorious freeway traffic, nearby housing prices and air quality.
The 12-0 vote by City Council came after starkly contrasting predictions about what the $1.5 billion project would mean for an economically troubled city that has fretted over the loss of professional football since the Raiders and Rams fled Southern California in 1994.
Supporters said the deal with developer Anschutz Entertainment Group would create thousands of jobs, a center of civic pride and new tax dollars for cash-starved City Hall, while critics warned that nearby housing prices would soar and traffic would come to a virtual standstill on game days.
"I know the result will be the return of economic vitality," Councilman Paul Koretz predicted.
The vote was overshadowed by the recent announcement that AEG was seeking a new owner, though company officials have assured City Hall the stadium plan will remain the same, even if the company changes hands.
The biggest question about the stadium is the most obvious: There's no one to play in it. But Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other supporters hope the agreement will eventually attract a team to one of the nation's most lucrative media markets.
AEG, also the owner of Los Angeles' Staples Center arena and the NHL's Los Angeles Kings, has deep ties to City Hall. Any deal to buy the company, a subsidiary of Denver-based Anschutz Co., would mean a major shift in sports and entertainment in the region and around the world.
AEG's holdings include pro soccer's Los Angeles Galaxy, part-ownership of the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers, and major entertainment and real estate holdings in downtown Los Angeles. Outside the city, AEG owns Major League Soccer's Houston Dynamo and all or part of several arenas around the U.S. and in Sweden, China and Australia.
The project, which calls for the renovation of an adjacent convention center, is facing a lawsuit filed by anti-poverty and environmental activists that some predict could delay or derail plans for the stadium, known as Farmers Field. The activist group, Play Fair at Farmers Field Coalition, is challenging a state law intended to help swiftly resolve legal challenges to the stadium, and it also wants AEG to pay $60 million toward affordable housing in the long-struggling downtown neighborhood.
A rival group, Majestic Realty, has proposed building a stadium in the City of Industry, outside Los Angeles.
AEG is hoping to have an NFL team on the field by the 2017 season. The company has pledged about $35 million to reduce traffic problems.
As a matter of fact, most elderly people wish to remain home when they age. In this case, they wish to maintain their possessions and routines. Since it is natural that old age leads to lack of ability, some people calls for in home care. What is in home care? It refers to a range of social and health services delivered at one?s home. When it comes to in home care, this service is usually needed at the time an old person wish to stay at home but still need ongoing care which cannot be handled by family members.
There is a misunderstanding concept when we talk about senior homecare. People often think of it as a means of sending senior away to a range of facility. Some people do not want to be busy by taking care of seniors on their own, and this is why they call for in home care service to replace their task. This way is certainly a wrong concept since the nature of home care must be based on dignity. That means you still provide senior with great care and get it done when you have to work to make ends meet.
When it comes to senior homecare or companion care, it is important to still give your attention to the senior living in your home. Just in case the senior is your parent, you should do your own task as a child. In order that you can get reliable home care service for senior, you without a doubt need to consider some important aspects. First, it is necessary to determine your needs by which you can prioritize what you need help most. The next thing to consider is to ask the senior on what type of home care serve he/she want to have.
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NEW YORK (AP) ? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that his stern warning to stop Iran from going nuclear "reverberates" around the world and could ultimately prevent the Islamic Republic from getting a nuclear bomb.
Speaking ahead of a meeting with his Canadian counterpart, Netanyahu said Iran's uranium enrichment was the "only discernible and vulnerable part of their nuclear program" and his demand before the United Nations to draw a red line on its process could force Iran to back down.
"I tried to say something yesterday that I think reverberates now around the world," he said, "and that is to translate the agreement and principle of stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons to practice."
On Thursday, Netanyahu laid out before the U.N. General Assembly his most detailed plea for global action against Iran, saying the world had until next summer at the latest to stop Iran from getting a bomb. In his speech, the Israeli leader demonstratively flashed a diagram of a cartoon-like bomb showing the progress Iran has made, pulled out a red marker and drew a line across what he said was a threshold Iran was approaching and which Israel could not tolerate ? 90 percent of the way to the uranium enrichment needed to make an atomic bomb.
Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat, citing Iranian denials of the Holocaust, its calls for Israel's destruction, its development of missiles capable of striking the Jewish state and its support for hostile Arab militant groups.
Netanyahu has repeatedly argued that time is running out to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power and that the threat of force must be seriously considered. Israeli leaders have hinted they may strike Iran to prevent it from going nuclear.
President Barack Obama has vowed not to allow Iran to attain nuclear weapons and has said the U.S. would be prepared to use force as a last resort. But he has urged restraint, saying there is more time to diplomacy. His administration has urgently sought to hold off Israeli military action, which would likely result in the U.S. being pulled into the conflict.
Netanyahu's persistent demands for red lines have put the two leaders at odds. Netanyahu tried to smooth over the differences in his U.N. address, making a point to thank Obama for his firm stance. The reconciliation continued Friday with a phone call between them.
"The two leaders underscored that they are in full agreement on the shared goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon," the White House said in a statement.
Netanyahu also spoke to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney during his brief stay in New York. The two are old friends and colleagues and they are both backed politically by Jewish-American billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. Romney has harshly criticized Obama for throwing Israel "under the bus" and Netanyahu's perceived preference of the Republican in the upcoming elections has further strained relations with Obama.
Netanyahu's fiery rhetoric on Iran suggested he may be considering military action before the U.S. elections, against Obama's wishes. His 2013 deadline appeared to be a concession, but in an interview with Israel's Channel 10 TV he refused to commit.
"You've never heard me talking about dates. I spoke about the critical stage that Iran must not be allowed to complete," he said, in an interview aired Friday. "I did not limit or reject for a moment Israel's right to defend itself at any time."
Netanyahu's lone scheduled meeting Friday was with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper - a close ally who recently expelled the Iranian ambassador from his country. Netanyahu praised Harper as a "real statesman" and thanked him for standing by Israel.
"I think that what you did, severing ties with Iran, was not only an act of statesmanship, but an act of moral clarity," he said.
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Q: I found out the home I?m renting is in preforeclosure. I have children and gave a large deposit. If I move should I expect the deposit back so I can put it toward another place? Where do I look for help? ?Anonymous, Los Angeles, CA
A: You should seek the help of your local attorney to see what your options are but reality may be that the landlord does not have the funds to reimburse your deposit. States have different laws on deposits so check with the attorney to find out the law in CA. If they have to hold it in escrow then it may still be available to you. I would suggest that in a future rental unless it is being managed by a big firm with a great history and track record to add language that the mortgage is verified quarterly as being up to date by the tenant to avoid paying rent while a landlord lets the home be foreclosed. Mike Grumbles is a Realtor? with Exit Realty of the South in Franklin, TN.
A: Dear LA- Some Foreclosure processes have a procedure known as ?Cash for Keys? that help the unsuspecting Lessee recover from upfront deposits lost when a lease agreement is disrupted prematurely by foreclsoure proceedings.
I suggest you take the route of preparing to move to save yourself the hassle of short notice.
Should the knock at your door come before you are ready to move, ask the bank what they plan to do to aid you with financial recovery.
Good luck! Larry Simons is a Realtor? with Century 21 Maselle & Associates in Flowood, MS
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THURSDAY, Sept. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Formal physical exercise programs for children have only a small impact on overall activity and thus on weight loss, British researchers report.
Their study raises questions about the best ways to help children attain or maintain a healthy weight.
"Physical activity interventions are not increasing physical activity sufficiently to impact on the body mass or body fat of children," said lead researcher Brad Metcalf, of the department of endocrinology and metabolism at Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry in Plymouth, England. "It is in everyone's interest to find something that works effectively," he added.
But other experts said instead of dismissing organized interventions as ineffective, policymakers should conclude that still more is needed to stem childhood obesity. In the United States, about 17 percent of children aged 2 years and older are obese.
"I disagree that the importance of physical activity to childhood obesity control, or health promotion, has been called into question by this study," said Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center in New Haven, Conn.
On the contrary, "we have cause to question if we are doing enough to make routine activity the cultural norm, so that such programming can achieve greater effects," Katz said. "An intervention, no matter how good, can only achieve so much if not surrounded by cultural supports."
Katz also faulted the study for not including data from the many studies that show a significant benefit from exercise.
For the study, published in the Sept. 27 online edition of the BMJ, the researchers analyzed 30 studies conducted between 1990 and 2012 involving children aged 16 and under.
This type of study, known as a meta-analysis, is used to find common threads running through multiple studies. Problems with this type of analysis can arise from the weakness of any of the studies included and the difficulty of combining disparate data.
Unlike some other studies of children's activity, these studies measured actual movement during children's waking hours using accelerometers and didn't rely on questionnaires.
Eight of the 30 studies included only overweight or obese children. One U.S. study followed more than 700 children, average age 11, taking part in 90 minutes of after-school physical activity three times a week. Another involved more than 250 Scottish nursery school children who did 30 minutes of physical activity three times a week.
Overall, the researchers said the programs achieved "small-to-negligible" increases in children's total activity with small improvements in time spent in moderate or vigorous intensities -- about four minutes' walking or running per day.
This could have only a minimal effect on weight, they concluded.
"It's been shown by others that four minutes extra walking/running is only associated with a 2 millimeter difference in waist circumference," Metcalf said. While the added activity sessions might offer other benefits, including better coordination, improved ability at a sport, team participation and genuine enjoyment, they won't "have a meaningful impact on obesity prevention," he said.
These programs may not work because they might replace physically demanding after-school activities that take place outdoors and last for longer periods, the researchers said. It's also possible that children eat more after these sessions, they noted.
Mark Hamer, from the department of epidemiology and public health at University College London and co-author of an accompanying journal editorial, said the study has limitations but "provides the best evidence to date on the effectiveness of physical activity interventions in childhood."
Better approaches to increasing children's physical activity are needed, Hamer said. Perhaps physical changes to the indoor and outdoor environment can facilitate activity, he suggested.
He and others maintain that a wealth of evidence supports the association between an active lifestyle and better health.
Samantha Heller, exercise physiologist and clinical nutrition coordinator at the Center for Cancer Care at Griffin Hospital in Derby, Conn., pointed out that programs that aim to boost children's activity levels may not influence sedentary behavior at home or once the programs conclude.
Also, "many interventions do not include a nutrition component that could impact food choices, overall nutrition or calorie intake," she said.
School environments need to shift toward a more active day for kids, Heller said. "We need to continue to develop programs, environments and classes that encourage and educate children and teens on the importance of exercise and physical activity in ways that are meaningful and fun for them," she added.
More information
For more information on childhood obesity, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
SOURCES: Brad Metcalf, statistician and researcher, department of endocrinology and metabolism, Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, Plymouth, England; Mark Hamer, Ph.D., department of epidemiology and public health, University College London, England; Samantha Heller, M.S., R.D., exercise physiologist, clinical nutrition coordinator, Center for Cancer Care, Griffin Hospital, Derby, Conn.; David Katz, M.D., M.P.H., director, Yale University Prevention Research Center, New Haven, Conn.; Sept. 27, 2012, BMJ, online
The Drive for Autism Foundation is pleased to announce that its annual charity golf event was able to raise more than $35,000 to benefit children with autism spectrum disorders.?
The foundation holds an annual golf outing each September at Royce Brook Golf Course in Hillsborough, NJ.?One hundred and eighty four golfers enjoyed a spectacular September day of blue skies and warm sunshine.
The Drive for Autism Golf Outing, which has been held since 2002, has raised and distributed more than $450,000 to local school programs.?
Previous benefactors have been the Morris Union Jointure Commission (New Providence, NJ), Union County Educational Services Foundation/Crossroads School (Westfield, NJ), Educational Partnership for Instructing Children, (Paramus, NJ), Eden II/Genesis Programs (Staten Island, NY), The Children?s Institute (Verona, NJ) and Seton Foundation/Mother Francheska Elementary School (Staten Island, N.Y)
Grant recipients have used funds to create Health and Fitness Programs, Social Skills Programs, educational curriculum and teacher training, a van for community trips and transportation to job training centers, laptop computers, computer touch screens, White Boards, iPads, video projectors, and educational toys and games.
About Drive for Autism Foundation
Based in New Providence, NJ, The Drive for Autism Foundation is a 501(3)(c) tax exempt public charity that was created in the Spring of 2002 for the sole purpose of raising and distributing funds for educational facilities, specializing in students with autism.
Drive for Autism Golf Outing 2013
The Drive for Autism XII is scheduled for Monday, Sept. 16, 2013 at Royce Brook Golf Club in Hillsborough, NJ. The event consists of a morning round of golf followed by a barbecue. Special events include golf contests, raffles and a silent auction of sports memorabilia, game tickets and golf trips. For additional information please visit their website at www.DriveForAutism.org or call (908) 665-8068.
Don't think Qualcomm is limiting its quad-core processors to superstar phones. The Snapdragon S4 Play line is growing to include the MSM8225Q and MSM8625Q, parallels to the existing two Play chips that bring four cores to entry-level devices. Besides the speed improvements that you'd expect from all that extra parallelism, the Q variants support the extra bandwidth of low-power DDR2 (LPDDR2) memory and can handle both 720p displays and movie-making. Neither is quite an all-encompassing solution, although the two will cover the bases for much of the starter demographic: while local wireless such as Bluetooth, FM radio and WiFi have to remain separate from the main processor, the two newcomers manage to pack either single-mode UMTS 3G (in the 8225Q) or dual-mode CDMA and UMTS (in the 8625Q) for their cellular fix. Along with the already promised, China-focused S4 Plus MSM8930, test samples of the faster S4 Play editions will be ready before the end of the year, with shipping phones on the way in early 2013 -- just in time to go head-to-head with a similar push by MediaTek to make quad-core the norm for a much larger slice of the population.
Jimmy Hoffa and his son, James P. Hoffa, who later also became president of the Teamsters, in a 1971 photo.
The FBI and local police in Michigan plan to take soil samples from the backyard of a house in the Detroit suburb of Roseville on Friday, acting on a dying man's tip that the body of former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa might be buried there.
Authorities have chased down hundreds of would-be leads since Hoffa disappeared 37 years ago after he met with two top Mafia operatives at a restaurant in Bloomfield Township, another Detroit suburb, in July 1975. All have led to dead ends, but authorities said this lead could be different.
NBC station WDIV-TV of Detroit reported that?an unidentified man who is dying from cancer told Roseville police that he saw men moving a black bag at the garage of the house just hours after Hoffa went missing. Acting on the tip, authorities?ran radar tests last week that picked up an image of something buried beneath a cement slab in the backyard.
Roseville Police Chief James Berlin confirmed that investigators had received the tip, telling the Detroit Free Press that "the information seemed credible, so we decided to follow up on it."
The newspaper reported that the house is in the 18700 block of Florida Street in northern Roseville, about 20 miles northeast of Detroit.
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The disappearance of Hoffa ? who ran the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the country's biggest labor union, from 1957 to 1971 ? has long fueled conspiracy theories. At various times, his body was posited to have been buried under Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.; beneath General Motors headquarters at Detroit's Renaissance Center; on a farm in Hartland Township, Mich.; in a field in Milford, Mich.; and even on the grounds of the White House.?
What is known is that Hoffa, who was then 62, was chafing at restrictions on his activity in the Teamsters that President Richard Nixon imposed when he commuted Hoffa's 1967 federal prison sentence for fraud and jury tampering in 1971 (he continued to run the union from his prison cell). On July 30, 1975, Hoffa was scheduled to meet with?Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone, capo of the Detroit Mafia, and Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano, a former Teamsters vice president who was also a captain in the Genovese crime family, at a restaurant called the Machus Red Fox in Bloomfield Township.
In a 1976 "here we stand" memo published several years later, the FBI speculated that Hoffa reluctantly agreed to the meeting to try to smooth over differences with?Provenzano and Giacalone, who were reportedly perturbed that Hoffa was trying to get back into the Teamsters' leadership, That, presumably, would have lessened the mob's control over the union.
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"It is believed that the hit, if there was one, would have been approved at very highest levels within the Organized Crime structure," the FBI concluded. "If this be the case, it would tend to lend credence to the evidence that PROVENZANO or certainly someone at his level, both within the Teamsters Union and (Mafia), was responsible."
Read the 1976 FBI memo (.pdf)
Hoffa's body has never been found. Provenzano was later convicted of an unrelated murder and died in 1988; Giacalone, who was imprisoned for tax fraud, died in 2001.
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Apparently there is another way Mitt Romney is allegedly dodging his taxes.
Romney has set up a trust for his children and grandchildren that technically does not qualify as an inheritance, Bloomberg's Jesse Drucker reports. As a result, Romney has been able to legally sidestep estate and gift taxes. The top gift tax rate is 55 percent.
Romney has been criticized for allegedly sidestepping taxes in other ways. He holds investments abroad, including in the Cayman Islands, and a Swiss bank account -- where he does not need to pay U.S. taxes. Romney paid a 14 percent tax rate in 2010 and 2011. Middle-class households paid a 16 percent tax rate on average in 2010.
You can read the full Bloomberg News report here.
In this case, he has moved about $100 million into the family trust, which does not count toward his $250 million net worth, and it has grown in value with income from Romney's various investments, according to Bloomberg. It is unclear how much Romney has saved in gift and estate taxes.
Critics also have slammed Romney for refusing to release more than two tax returns -- from 2010 and 2011 -- which The Huffington Post's Mark Gongloff notes are not the interesting ones.
At the same time that Romney's being accused of dodging taxes, he's also been criticizing ordinary Americans for the way they pay their taxes. Romney said in a recently leaked video at a May fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans "pay no income tax," "will vote for the president no matter what," and "believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."
Though it is true that 46 percent of Americans pay no income taxes, they still pay many other taxes. The poorest fifth of Americans paid an effective tax rate of 17 percent last year, and they pay double the state and local tax rate of the top one percent.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was instituted in order to protect the personal health information held by covered entities, including doctors, pharmacies and health insurance companies. A HIPAA violation can cost an individual or entity millions of dollars in fines and can even land those responsible in prison. In our HIPAA infographic, we detail some of the most serious penalties ever dished out by the federal government and break down the various fines that are on the table for noncompliance.
Infographic authored by Inspired eLearning, aleading provider of online HIPAA compliance training solutions. To view the original post, check out the originalHIPAA violation infographic.
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Cherish Larson and her three children, the youngest yet to be born, found a home in fall of 2008. The family moved into an eight-bedroom house with seven other mothers and their children to begin healing after a lifetime of drug abuse.
Occupants share a common living room, laundry room, four bathrooms and kitchen area. Children play on the playground equipment in the backyard protected by a tall white fence. Living with seven other mothers and their children was tough because everyone had a different parenting style, Larson says. Any annoyance with her living situation was worth it to the 25-year-old Bellingham resident after seeking help from the nonprofit organization Lydia Place gave her a chance to turn her life around.
Coming from a long family line of drug and physical abuse, Larson never thought her life would improve. Before getting help, she was living on the streets of Bellingham nursing a drug addiction. Child Protective Services took her two children away and her life wasn?t improving, she says. Missing her children encouraged Larson to seek rehabilitation in September 2008. After?? finishing the program, she moved her family into a rehabilitation home two months later, Larson says.
?I never dreamed my life could be like this,? Larsen says. ?I?m currently going to college for a degree in radiology and now have three happy, healthy children who I will be able to provide for because of the help I?ve received.?
Halfway homes are not all the same. Supportive houses are designed to help those recovering from addiction or who are homeless. There are also organizations devoted to helping those who cannot live independently due to mental illness or medical issues.
Transitional homes help those who can?t afford to pay for housing by providing resources to get them back on their feet.
In Bellingham, the need for housing often outweighs the available space. More than 600 people are on the waiting list of the Opportunity Council Homeless Housing resource center at any given time, Emily O?Connor, executive director of Lydia Place says. In winter, more people seek help to escape the inclement weather, she says.
According to a recent report, there are around 13,000 homeless in Whatcom County, says Sarah Emerson, housing referral specialist for the Opportunity Council. People are able to sign up for a housing waitlist at the downtown Opportunity Council community resource center from noon until 3:30 p.m. on weekdays. Around 40 outside volunteers at places such as Womencare, Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Services and the Lighthouse Mission are also trained to fill out paperwork to get people on the list, Emerson says. The waiting list is not getting any shorter because for every person helped, another one moves into the space, Emerson says.
Lydia Place is one of many resources in Bellingham for those who are at risk of becoming homeless. Their oldest program, and the one that helped Larson get back on her feet, is a six-month long rehabilitation for women and children wanting to improve their living arrangements, O?Connor says.
?This particular program is for women and children only. The majority of women who enter that program are from domestic violence relationships, so we try to work a lot with our community partners and organizations like Womencare, the domestic violence shelter,? O?Connor says.
To be part of this program, women must meet with a case manager several times a week and pay 30 percent of her wages to rent each month. Lydia Place, along with all other Whatcom County nonprofits, does not handle its own waitlist. People looking for help contact the Opportunity Council Housing Services, which is a community action agency. This large nonprofit acts as an umbrella organization for other groups devoted to helping homeless and low-income residents in Whatcom County. The council sends particular people to a Whatcom County nonprofit with space, O?Connor says.
Two important components of rehabilitation programs are counseling and job resources, O?Connor says. Lydia Place offers psychiatric help for both women and children of domestic violence and classes focusing on resume building, interview skills and career education. This is to help shelter users become independent and remain in society without returning to a shelter, O?Connor says.
Larson says these classes were the best part of rehabilitation for her whole family. The children were taught the importance of nutrition and self-esteem by helping grow a community garden. Psychiatric help was available for the children and their mothers. Parenting classes for specific needs, such as abuse survivors, were also available during the program.
?I learned how to help my children gain self-esteem. I also learned how to be a better parent, like not using negative words to teach them,? Larson says.
Larson now uses positive wording such as ?use nice hands? over telling her children to ?stop hitting.? This is used to encourage a positive outlook on life, Larson says.
Larson hopes people learn from her experience to make their own lives better.
?It?s not easy for me to tell my story but I?ve done it pretty frequently in [Alcoholics Anonymous],? Larson says. ?I?ve learned that sharing my story, even with a complete stranger, can have the power to help somebody.?
Larson now lives in a three-bedroom townhouse with her children. She will graduate with a degree in radiology from Bellingham Technical College in fall of 2012 and hopes to find work in Bellingham so her children can to grow up near their grandparents. She also serves as a contact through Lydia Place to share her experience of successfully using the halfway housing program.
Earlier this week, the Internet had a mini meltdown over false reports that Facebook may?ve posted users' old?private messages.
Though it was swiftly deemed untrue,?even the French government demanded answers on this non-scandal. All of that overshadowed the real news, a creepy misstep of which the world?s largest social network really?is guilty: asking Facebook users to identify friends who may be using fake names on the site.
?Help Us Make Facebook Better,? read a survey prompt that kicked up a comparatively minor amount of ire when it made the rounds on Twitter. ?Is this your friend?s real name?? the survey went on, showing a photo of one of the recipient?s Facebook friends and multiple choice answers, ?Yes,? ?No,? ?I don?t know this person,? and ?I don?t want to answer.?
?Your response is anonymous and won?t affect your friend?s account,? Facebook assured on the poll question, which Facebook representive?Fred Wolens reiterated to NBCNews.com.?
Though Facebook does have a real name policy, Wolens said this particular poll was one of many anonymous surveys Facebook uses to tweak its algorithms. He provided the following company statement:?
This was a limited survey we have already concluded. We are always looking to gauge how people use Facebook and represent themselves to better design our product and systems. We analysed these surveys only using aggregate data and responses had zero impact on any user's account.
According to Wolens, the survey was received by a small amount of users. Exactly how small, he wouldn?t say. News of it?spread when?Twitter user @chapeaudefee tweeted a screenshot and the comment, ?Facebook wants to know if your friends? names are real. Are you going to be the snitch??
Outraged? Probably. You know how you love to be outraged at Facebook. Shocked? Not so much.?
The Internet is currently so unperturbed by this latest turn, YouTube has yet to produce a single ?Hitler reacts to Facebook asking you to snitch on your friends? video ? though a long history of totalitarian regimes asking its citizens to turn on their neighbors is not lost on those who are offended by the poll, despite its reassurances.
?The whole idea of snitching is highly dodgy,? writes privacy blogger Paul Bernal.??It?s creepy ? and it helps build at atmosphere of distrust, breaking down the very things that make social networks good,? he continues. ?The social relationships that are the heart of Facebook are meant to do ?good? things ??not be a route by which bad things are spread.?
--?via Sophos
Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about privacy?and then asks you to join her on?Twitter?and/or?Facebook. Also,?Google+.?Because that's how she rolls.
Genetic sleuthing uncovers deadly new virus in AfricaPublic release date: 27-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jason Socrates Bardi jason.bardi@ucsf.edu 415-502-4608 University of California - San Francisco
Global research effort identifies 'Bas-Congo' virus as the cause of small, isolated outbreak in 2009
An isolated outbreak of a deadly disease known as acute hemorrhagic fever, which killed two people and left one gravely ill in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the summer of 2009, was probably caused by a novel virus scientists have never seen before.
Described this week in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens, the new microbe has been named Bas-Congo virus (BASV) after the province in the southwest corner of the Congo where the three people lived.
It was discovered by an international research consortium that included the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and University of California, Davis (UCD), Global Viral, the Centre International de Recherches Mdicales de Franceville in Gabon, the Institut National de Recherche Biomdicale, Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Metabiota and others.
"Known viruses, such as Ebola, HIV and influenza, represent just the tip of the microbial iceberg," said Joseph Fair, PhD, a co-author and vice president of Metabiota. "Identifying deadly unknown viruses, such as Bas-Congo virus, gives us a leg up in controlling future outbreaks."
"These are the only three cases known to have occurred, although there could be additional outbreaks from this virus in the future," said Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF and director of the UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center, who spearheaded the UCSF effort to identify the virus. Chiu and his team continue to work on new diagnostics to detect the virus so that health officials in Congo and elsewhere can quickly identify it should it emerge again.
One odd characteristic of the Bas-Congo virus, Chiu said, is that while a number of other viruses in Africa also cause deadly outbreaks of acute hemorrhagic feverEbola virus, Lassa virus and Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever virus to name a few the new virus is unlike any of them.
Genetically it is more closely related to the types of viruses that cause rabies, which are known to infect people with a very different sort of diseasea neurological illness that is uniformly fatal if untreated but may take months to develop.
An antibody test developed in this study was applied to the one patient who survived and to others who had come into contact with him. It suggested that the disease may be spread from person to person but likely originated from some other source, such as an insect or rodent.
The identity of this animal "reservoir" and the precise mode of transmission for the virus remain unclear and are currently being investigated by Metabiota and the central African members of the consortium through the PREDICT Project of USAID's Emerging Pandemic Threats Program.
How the New Virus Emerged
In the summer of 2009, a 15-year old boy in a small rural community called Mangala village suddenly fell ill and developed a bleeding nose, bleeding gums and bloody vomit. He rapidly worsened, dying within three days of the first signs of illness.
A week later, a 13-year old girl who attended the same school and lived in the same neighborhood as the boy came down with a similar, serious illness. She declined just as rapidly and also died within three days. One week after that, the male nurse who cared for this girl began showing the same symptoms, and he was transferred to a hospital in Boma, a nearby port city that sits along the Congo River upstream from Africa's Atlantic coast.
Members of the consortium, who had initiated a project to diagnose unusual cases of severe hemorrhagic fever, obtained blood samples collected from the nurse by the Congolese doctors and sent them to the laboratory of Eric Leroy, PhD, doctor of veterinary medicine at the Centre International de Recherches Mdicales de Franceville in Gabon. There the samples were tested for traces of any known virus, but nothing was found. The Metabiota scientists then solicited the expertise of Chiu at UCSF and Eric Delwart at the Blood Systems Research Institute (BSRI) in San Francisco to aid in the diagnosis.
The researchers ultimately identified a completely new virus as the cause of the mysterious illness through a powerful strategy for identifying novel pathogens known as "deep sequencing," in which millions of DNA sequences are generated from a clinical sample and then pieced together using computer algorithms combined with human analysis.
Distinct Attributes of Bas-Congo
The Bas-Congo virus belongs to a family of viruses known as the rhabdoviruses, a large family of viruses that infect plants, insects and mammals, including humans. The most famous member of this family is the virus that causes rabies. But even among the rhabdoviruses, Bas-Congo is something of an outlier, being very genetically distinct from other members of the family.
What's most unusual about this virus, though, said Chiu, is what it does to people.
No other rhabdoviruses are known to cause the acute, rapid and deadly hemorrhagic fever seen in the three cases in the Congo. Rabies, for instance, can be a deadly disease if untreated, but the course of rabies in humans is nothing like the rapid and deadly onset seen with the Bas-Congo virus. There is some precedent, however, for hemorrhagic disease from rhabdoviruses in the animal kingdom: fish rhabdoviruses are known to cause hemorrhagic septicemiaacute bleeding and deathin affected fish.
The third patient had enormous amounts of BASV in his bloodstream just two days after he fell illmore than a million copies in every milliliter of blood.
The BASV sequence was also used to design an antibody test for the virus, an effort led by Graham Simmons at the BSRI, another member of the consortium. Antibodies are blood immune proteins produced in response to an infection. The antibody test allowed the researchers to screen both the third patient with acute hemorrhagic fever and other people who had come into contact with the third patient, including the nurse who cared for him in the Boma hospital. High levels of BASV-specific antibodies were found in the third patient, establishing that he indeed had been infected with Bas-Congo virus. The same antibodies were also found in the second nurse, even though he never actually became sick.
"What this suggests is that the disease may be transmissible from person to personthough it's most likely to have originated from some other source," said Nathan Wolfe, PhD, founder and chairman of Global Viral, and a co-author on the paper. "The fact that it belongs to a family of viruses known to infect a wide variety of mammals, insects and other animals means that it may perpetually exist in insect or other 'host' species and was accidentally passed to humans through insect bites or some other means."
###
The article, "A Novel Rhabdovirus Associated with Acute Hemorrhagic Fever in Central Africa" by Gilda Grard, Joseph N. Fair, Deanna Lee, Elizabeth Slikas, Imke Steffen, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, Taylor Sittler, Narayanan Veeraraghavan, J. Graham Ruby, Chunlin Wang, Maria Makuwa, Prime Mulembakani, Robert B. Tesh, Jonna Mazet, Anne Rimoin, Travis Taylor, Bradley S. Schneider, Graham Simmons, Eric Delwart, Nathan D. Wolfe, Charles Y. Chiu, and Eric M. Leroy appears in the September 27, 2012 issue of the journal PLOS Pathogens. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1002924)
The research consortium includes San Francisco-based Global Viral, Metabiota, UCSF, BSRI, as well as researchers with the Centre International de Recherches Mdicales de Franceville in Gabon; the Institut de Recherche pour le Dveloppement in Montpellier, France; the Institut National de Recherche Biomdicale, Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, TX; the University of California, Davis; the University of California, Los Angeles; Stanford University; and the Howard Hughes Medical Center.
This work was funded by support from Google.org, the Skoll Foundation, the government of Gabon, Total-Fina-Elf Gabon, and the Ministre des Affaires Etrangres et Europennes de la France, the U.S. Department of Defense Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, Division of Global Emerging Infections, Surveillance Operations (AFHSC GEIS) and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (DTRA-CBEP), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats Program, PREDICT project. Additional funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health provided via grant numbers R01-HL083254, R01-HL105770, R56-AI089532, and R01-HL105704 and by an Abbott Viral Discovery Award.
* Global Viral was previously known as Global Viral Forecasting Initiative.
**Metabiota was previously known as Global Viral Forecasting Inc.
The contents of this release are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government and its agencies.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
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.
Genetic sleuthing uncovers deadly new virus in AfricaPublic release date: 27-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jason Socrates Bardi jason.bardi@ucsf.edu 415-502-4608 University of California - San Francisco
Global research effort identifies 'Bas-Congo' virus as the cause of small, isolated outbreak in 2009
An isolated outbreak of a deadly disease known as acute hemorrhagic fever, which killed two people and left one gravely ill in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the summer of 2009, was probably caused by a novel virus scientists have never seen before.
Described this week in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens, the new microbe has been named Bas-Congo virus (BASV) after the province in the southwest corner of the Congo where the three people lived.
It was discovered by an international research consortium that included the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and University of California, Davis (UCD), Global Viral, the Centre International de Recherches Mdicales de Franceville in Gabon, the Institut National de Recherche Biomdicale, Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Metabiota and others.
"Known viruses, such as Ebola, HIV and influenza, represent just the tip of the microbial iceberg," said Joseph Fair, PhD, a co-author and vice president of Metabiota. "Identifying deadly unknown viruses, such as Bas-Congo virus, gives us a leg up in controlling future outbreaks."
"These are the only three cases known to have occurred, although there could be additional outbreaks from this virus in the future," said Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF and director of the UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center, who spearheaded the UCSF effort to identify the virus. Chiu and his team continue to work on new diagnostics to detect the virus so that health officials in Congo and elsewhere can quickly identify it should it emerge again.
One odd characteristic of the Bas-Congo virus, Chiu said, is that while a number of other viruses in Africa also cause deadly outbreaks of acute hemorrhagic feverEbola virus, Lassa virus and Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever virus to name a few the new virus is unlike any of them.
Genetically it is more closely related to the types of viruses that cause rabies, which are known to infect people with a very different sort of diseasea neurological illness that is uniformly fatal if untreated but may take months to develop.
An antibody test developed in this study was applied to the one patient who survived and to others who had come into contact with him. It suggested that the disease may be spread from person to person but likely originated from some other source, such as an insect or rodent.
The identity of this animal "reservoir" and the precise mode of transmission for the virus remain unclear and are currently being investigated by Metabiota and the central African members of the consortium through the PREDICT Project of USAID's Emerging Pandemic Threats Program.
How the New Virus Emerged
In the summer of 2009, a 15-year old boy in a small rural community called Mangala village suddenly fell ill and developed a bleeding nose, bleeding gums and bloody vomit. He rapidly worsened, dying within three days of the first signs of illness.
A week later, a 13-year old girl who attended the same school and lived in the same neighborhood as the boy came down with a similar, serious illness. She declined just as rapidly and also died within three days. One week after that, the male nurse who cared for this girl began showing the same symptoms, and he was transferred to a hospital in Boma, a nearby port city that sits along the Congo River upstream from Africa's Atlantic coast.
Members of the consortium, who had initiated a project to diagnose unusual cases of severe hemorrhagic fever, obtained blood samples collected from the nurse by the Congolese doctors and sent them to the laboratory of Eric Leroy, PhD, doctor of veterinary medicine at the Centre International de Recherches Mdicales de Franceville in Gabon. There the samples were tested for traces of any known virus, but nothing was found. The Metabiota scientists then solicited the expertise of Chiu at UCSF and Eric Delwart at the Blood Systems Research Institute (BSRI) in San Francisco to aid in the diagnosis.
The researchers ultimately identified a completely new virus as the cause of the mysterious illness through a powerful strategy for identifying novel pathogens known as "deep sequencing," in which millions of DNA sequences are generated from a clinical sample and then pieced together using computer algorithms combined with human analysis.
Distinct Attributes of Bas-Congo
The Bas-Congo virus belongs to a family of viruses known as the rhabdoviruses, a large family of viruses that infect plants, insects and mammals, including humans. The most famous member of this family is the virus that causes rabies. But even among the rhabdoviruses, Bas-Congo is something of an outlier, being very genetically distinct from other members of the family.
What's most unusual about this virus, though, said Chiu, is what it does to people.
No other rhabdoviruses are known to cause the acute, rapid and deadly hemorrhagic fever seen in the three cases in the Congo. Rabies, for instance, can be a deadly disease if untreated, but the course of rabies in humans is nothing like the rapid and deadly onset seen with the Bas-Congo virus. There is some precedent, however, for hemorrhagic disease from rhabdoviruses in the animal kingdom: fish rhabdoviruses are known to cause hemorrhagic septicemiaacute bleeding and deathin affected fish.
The third patient had enormous amounts of BASV in his bloodstream just two days after he fell illmore than a million copies in every milliliter of blood.
The BASV sequence was also used to design an antibody test for the virus, an effort led by Graham Simmons at the BSRI, another member of the consortium. Antibodies are blood immune proteins produced in response to an infection. The antibody test allowed the researchers to screen both the third patient with acute hemorrhagic fever and other people who had come into contact with the third patient, including the nurse who cared for him in the Boma hospital. High levels of BASV-specific antibodies were found in the third patient, establishing that he indeed had been infected with Bas-Congo virus. The same antibodies were also found in the second nurse, even though he never actually became sick.
"What this suggests is that the disease may be transmissible from person to personthough it's most likely to have originated from some other source," said Nathan Wolfe, PhD, founder and chairman of Global Viral, and a co-author on the paper. "The fact that it belongs to a family of viruses known to infect a wide variety of mammals, insects and other animals means that it may perpetually exist in insect or other 'host' species and was accidentally passed to humans through insect bites or some other means."
###
The article, "A Novel Rhabdovirus Associated with Acute Hemorrhagic Fever in Central Africa" by Gilda Grard, Joseph N. Fair, Deanna Lee, Elizabeth Slikas, Imke Steffen, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, Taylor Sittler, Narayanan Veeraraghavan, J. Graham Ruby, Chunlin Wang, Maria Makuwa, Prime Mulembakani, Robert B. Tesh, Jonna Mazet, Anne Rimoin, Travis Taylor, Bradley S. Schneider, Graham Simmons, Eric Delwart, Nathan D. Wolfe, Charles Y. Chiu, and Eric M. Leroy appears in the September 27, 2012 issue of the journal PLOS Pathogens. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1002924)
The research consortium includes San Francisco-based Global Viral, Metabiota, UCSF, BSRI, as well as researchers with the Centre International de Recherches Mdicales de Franceville in Gabon; the Institut de Recherche pour le Dveloppement in Montpellier, France; the Institut National de Recherche Biomdicale, Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, TX; the University of California, Davis; the University of California, Los Angeles; Stanford University; and the Howard Hughes Medical Center.
This work was funded by support from Google.org, the Skoll Foundation, the government of Gabon, Total-Fina-Elf Gabon, and the Ministre des Affaires Etrangres et Europennes de la France, the U.S. Department of Defense Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, Division of Global Emerging Infections, Surveillance Operations (AFHSC GEIS) and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (DTRA-CBEP), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats Program, PREDICT project. Additional funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health provided via grant numbers R01-HL083254, R01-HL105770, R56-AI089532, and R01-HL105704 and by an Abbott Viral Discovery Award.
* Global Viral was previously known as Global Viral Forecasting Initiative.
**Metabiota was previously known as Global Viral Forecasting Inc.
The contents of this release are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government and its agencies.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
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.
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Public release date: 27-Sep-2012
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