The first overall pick in the 2013 NFL draft apparently will play right tackle to start his NFL career.
That?s what Chiefs coach Andy Reid said Thursday, given the collapse of talks regarding a possible trade of left tackle Branden Albert.
?Well, yeah, that?s right,? Reid told Bruce Murray and Rich Gannon of SiriusXM NFL Radio in response to whether Albert will play the left side and rookie Eric Fisher the right.? ?I?m gonna play the five best guys.? You saw me do that with Shawn Andrews in Philadelphia.? Shawn Andrews was as good an offensive lineman as I?ve ever seen at the college level and then he came to the pros and he was the same thing.?? He was one of the best I?ve ever coached, now, as far as being athletic and being a football player.? Well, we had two veteran tackles who were two pretty stinking good players and so we put Shawn at guard and he ended up being a Pro Bowler there.?
There?s still a chance Albert won?t be in Kansas City, but it appears that a trade to Miami won?t happen..
?We allowed Albert?s people to talk and look and do that whole thing and it didn?t work out one way or the other,? Reid said.? ?And so, you never know, I mean, in this business you?d love to say that he?d be here or not be here, one of the two, but I know he?s a good kid, I know he?s a hard worker and I know he?s a good left tackle.?? So that gives us a whole lot of flexibility and if he was here today he would be the left tackle.?? And then we go from there and we just see what happens down the road.?
Although Albert is under contract, he has opted to remain away from voluntary offseason workouts until his status is resolved.? He will earn a guaranteed salary of $9.8 million in 2013 as the team?s franchise player.? With that amount providing the starting point for talks on a long-term deal, it could be difficult for the Chiefs to extend Albert?s contract.
LOS ANGELES, May 1, 2013 - As many as 3,000 prison inmates in central California deemed to be at risk from a potentially lethal lung disease may need to be moved to other regions under an order from a court-appointed federal overseer.
The directive, issued on Monday, marks the latest effort to stem cases of valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis, at two prisons where the disease was found to have contributed to the deaths of nearly three dozen inmates from 2006 to 2011.
But it could complicate court-ordered efforts to reduce overcrowding across California's prison system, the nation's largest.
The pneumonia-like illness, contracted by inhaling fungal spores that grow in the dry soils of the American Southwest, is not contagious. But the spores become airborne when soil is disturbed by wind, construction, farming and other activities.
Problems with the disease at two prisons in San Joaquin Valley, the state's agricultural heartland, were documented on Wednesday in court papers filed by J. Clark Kelso, appointed as a federal receiver for medical issues at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Previous attempts to reduce both the number of infections and the severity of cases were ineffective, Kelso's spokeswoman, Joyce Hayhoe, told Reuters.
After a report last year found that problems continued at Pleasant Valley State Prison and Avenal State Prison, Kelso asked correctional officials to stop transferring some inmates there who were considered to be at high risk, Hayhoe said.
Among those deemed to be at higher risk of contracting or dying from the disease were African-Americans, inmates of Filipino heritage, those with compromised immune systems and those who older than 55.
On Monday, Kelso went a step further, directing the state to cease housing inmates who fell into those categories at the two prisons in question, though he stopped short of explicitly ordering those inmates to be transferred out.
On Wednesday, he added diabetics to the list of high-risk inmates, court papers showed. He called the state's response so far "anemic."
'ENORMOUS UNDERTAKING'
Jeffrey Callison, a spokesman for the Corrections Department, acknowledged that the state has not stopped sending at-risk prisoners to the two facilities, nor have any been moved out. Kelso's directive to stop housing vulnerable prisoners in the region came "out of the blue," he said.
Callison said that immediately complying with the receiver's directive "would be an enormous undertaking."
Dr. John Galgiani, a valley fever expert hired by lawyers representing inmates, agreed with the federal receiver and prison officials that no outbreak of the disease had been declared in the San Joaquin Valley.
But in his own court filing, Galgiani said the persistence of the illness in the two prisons amounted to a "medical emergency."
Noting a recent report by Kelso's office, Galgiani said in a court declaration that the infection rate at Pleasant Valley State Prison was "1,000 times the rate for Californians generally." Valley fever was a contributing cause of death in 34 cases between 2006 and 2011 in the two institutions, he wrote.
Symptoms of valley fever include a cough, fever, chest pains and muscle aches that can last for many weeks or months. But fewer than half of infected individuals become sick, and only a small percentage become severely ill.
The disease can be fatal, but the mortality rate among infected patients is about 0.1 percent, said Galgiani, an infectious disease specialist who directs the University of Arizona Valley Fever Center for Excellence.
A recent study found that Valley fever was identified as an underlying or contributing cause to 3,089 U.S. deaths during an 18-year span, from 1990 to 2008.
Those most at risk for life-threatening complications from the illness include the elderly and people with compromised immune systems, Galgiani said.
An estimated 150,000 infections occur in the Southwest each year, the majority of them in Arizona. California accounts for nearly all the remaining cases.
(This story refiles to remove an extraneous word in the first paragraph)
(Additional reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Philip Barbara)
Shaking things up: NIST researchers propose new old way to purify carbon nanotubesPublic release date: 1-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael Baum michael.baum@nist.gov 301-975-2763 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
An old, somewhat pass, trick used to purify protein samples based on their affinity for water has found new fans at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where materials scientists are using it to divvy up solutions of carbon nanotubes, separating the metallic nanotubes from semiconductors. They say it's a fast, easy and cheap way to produce high-purity samples of carbon nanotubes for use in nanoscale electronics and many other applications.*
Carbon nanotubes are formed from rolled-up sheets of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal pattern resembling chicken wire. One of the amazing features of nanotubes is that, depending on just how the sheet rolls up, a quality called chirality, the resulting tube can behave either like a semiconductor, with various properties, or like a metal, with electrical conductance up to 10 times better than copper. One big issue in creating commercially viable electronics based on nanotubes is being able to efficiently sort out the kind you want.
Thinking about how to do this, says NIST researcher Constantine Khripin, brought up the subject of biochemists and so-called "two-phase liquid extraction." "Biologists used this to separate proteins, even viruses," says Khripin, "It's an old technique, it was popular in the 70s, but then HPLC [high-performance liquid chromatography] replaced a lot of those techniques." People use HPLC to partition carbon nanotubes as well, he says, but it's less successful. HPLC divides things by exploiting differences in the mobility of the desired molecules as they travel small columns loaded with tiny spheres, but carbon nanotubes tend to stick to the spheres, reducing yield and eventually clogging the equipment.
The concept of liquid extraction is relatively straightforward. You make a mixture in water of two polymers that you've selected to be just slightly different in their "hydrophobicity," or tendency to mix with water. Add in your sample of stuff to be separated, stir vigorously and wait. The polymer solutions will gradually separate into two distinct portions or "phases," the lighter one on top. And they'll bring along with them those molecules in your sample that share a similar degree of hydrophobicity.
It turns out that this works pretty well with nanotubes because of differences in their electronic structurethe semiconductor forms, for example, are more hydrophobic than the metallic forms. It's not perfect, of course, but a few sequential separations ends up with a sample where the undesired forms are essentially undetectable.
Be honest. It's not that easy. "No," agrees, Khripin, "People tried this before and it didn't work. The breakthrough was to realize that you need a very subtle difference between the two phases. The difference in hydrophobity between nanotubes is tiny, tiny, tiny." But you can engineer that with careful addition of salts and surfactants.
"This technique uses some vials and a bench-top centrifuge worth a couple hundred dollars, and it takes under a minute," observes team member Jeffrey Fagan. "The other techniques people use require an HPLC on the order of $50,000 and the yields are relatively low, or an ultracentrifuge that takes 12 to 20 hours to separate out the different metals from semiconductors, and it's tricky and cumbersome."
"The nanotube metrology project at NIST has been around for a quite a number of years," says senior team member Ming Zheng. "It has been a constant interest of ours to develop new ways to separate nanotubes, cheaper ways, that industry can use in the development of nanoelectronics and other applications. We really think we have a method here that fits all the criteria that people are looking for. It's easy, it's scalable, it's high resolutionall the good attributes put together."
###
* C.Y. Khripin , J.A. Fagan and M. Zheng. Spontaneous partition of carbon nanotubes in polymer-modified aqueous phases. J. Am. Chem. Soc., Article ASAP April 22, 2013 (web publication). DOI: 10.1021/ja402762e
[ | 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.
Shaking things up: NIST researchers propose new old way to purify carbon nanotubesPublic release date: 1-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael Baum michael.baum@nist.gov 301-975-2763 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
An old, somewhat pass, trick used to purify protein samples based on their affinity for water has found new fans at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where materials scientists are using it to divvy up solutions of carbon nanotubes, separating the metallic nanotubes from semiconductors. They say it's a fast, easy and cheap way to produce high-purity samples of carbon nanotubes for use in nanoscale electronics and many other applications.*
Carbon nanotubes are formed from rolled-up sheets of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal pattern resembling chicken wire. One of the amazing features of nanotubes is that, depending on just how the sheet rolls up, a quality called chirality, the resulting tube can behave either like a semiconductor, with various properties, or like a metal, with electrical conductance up to 10 times better than copper. One big issue in creating commercially viable electronics based on nanotubes is being able to efficiently sort out the kind you want.
Thinking about how to do this, says NIST researcher Constantine Khripin, brought up the subject of biochemists and so-called "two-phase liquid extraction." "Biologists used this to separate proteins, even viruses," says Khripin, "It's an old technique, it was popular in the 70s, but then HPLC [high-performance liquid chromatography] replaced a lot of those techniques." People use HPLC to partition carbon nanotubes as well, he says, but it's less successful. HPLC divides things by exploiting differences in the mobility of the desired molecules as they travel small columns loaded with tiny spheres, but carbon nanotubes tend to stick to the spheres, reducing yield and eventually clogging the equipment.
The concept of liquid extraction is relatively straightforward. You make a mixture in water of two polymers that you've selected to be just slightly different in their "hydrophobicity," or tendency to mix with water. Add in your sample of stuff to be separated, stir vigorously and wait. The polymer solutions will gradually separate into two distinct portions or "phases," the lighter one on top. And they'll bring along with them those molecules in your sample that share a similar degree of hydrophobicity.
It turns out that this works pretty well with nanotubes because of differences in their electronic structurethe semiconductor forms, for example, are more hydrophobic than the metallic forms. It's not perfect, of course, but a few sequential separations ends up with a sample where the undesired forms are essentially undetectable.
Be honest. It's not that easy. "No," agrees, Khripin, "People tried this before and it didn't work. The breakthrough was to realize that you need a very subtle difference between the two phases. The difference in hydrophobity between nanotubes is tiny, tiny, tiny." But you can engineer that with careful addition of salts and surfactants.
"This technique uses some vials and a bench-top centrifuge worth a couple hundred dollars, and it takes under a minute," observes team member Jeffrey Fagan. "The other techniques people use require an HPLC on the order of $50,000 and the yields are relatively low, or an ultracentrifuge that takes 12 to 20 hours to separate out the different metals from semiconductors, and it's tricky and cumbersome."
"The nanotube metrology project at NIST has been around for a quite a number of years," says senior team member Ming Zheng. "It has been a constant interest of ours to develop new ways to separate nanotubes, cheaper ways, that industry can use in the development of nanoelectronics and other applications. We really think we have a method here that fits all the criteria that people are looking for. It's easy, it's scalable, it's high resolutionall the good attributes put together."
###
* C.Y. Khripin , J.A. Fagan and M. Zheng. Spontaneous partition of carbon nanotubes in polymer-modified aqueous phases. J. Am. Chem. Soc., Article ASAP April 22, 2013 (web publication). DOI: 10.1021/ja402762e
[ | 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.
May 1, 2013 ? Harsh Bais and Janine Sherrier of the University of Delaware's Department of Plant and Soil Sciences are studying whether a naturally occurring soil bacterium, referred to as UD1023 because it was first characterized at the University, can create an iron barrier in rice roots that reduces arsenic uptake.
Rice, grown as a staple food for a large portion of the world's population, absorbs arsenic from the environment and transfers it to the grain. Arsenic is classified as a poison by the National Institutes of Health and is considered a carcinogen by the National Toxicology Program.
Long-term exposure to arsenic has been associated with skin, lung, bladder, liver, kidney and prostate cancers, and low levels can cause skin lesions, diarrhea and other symptoms.
The risks of arsenic in rice were recently highlighted in the national press, when arsenic was detected in baby foods made from rice. In regions of the world where rice is the major component of the human diet, the health of entire communities of people can be negatively impacted by arsenic contamination of rice.
Arsenic may occur naturally in the soil, as it does in many parts of Southeast Asia, or it may be a result of environmental contamination. Despite the health risks arsenic in rice poses to millions of people around the world, there are currently no effective agricultural methods in use to reduce arsenic levels.
Sherrier, professor, and Bais, associate professor, are investigating whether UD1023 -- which is naturally found in the rhizosphere, the layer of soil and microbes adjacent to rice roots -- can be used to block the arsenic uptake. Bais first identified the bacterial species in soil samples taken from rice fields in California.
The pair's preliminary research has shown that UD1023 can mobilize iron from the soil and slow arsenic uptake in rice roots, but the researchers have not yet determined exactly how this process works and whether it will lead to reduced levels of arsenic in rice grains.
"We have a bacterium that moves iron, and we want to see if creating an iron shield around the rice roots will slow arsenic movement into other parts of the plant," Bais said.
Sherrier and Bais, who received a 2012 seed grant for the project from Delaware's National Science Foundation Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), ultimately want to determine how UD1023 slows arsenic movement into rice roots and whether it will lead to reduced levels of arsenic in the rice grains, the edible portion of the plant.
"That is the most important part," Bais said. "We don't know yet whether we can reduce arsenic in the grains or reduce the upward movement of arsenic towards the grain, but we're optimistic."
Bais says that, if successful, the project could lead to practical applications in agriculture.
"The implications could be tremendous," he said. "Coating seeds with bacteria is very easy. With this bacteria, you could implement easy, low-cost strategies that farmers could use that would reduce arsenic in the human food chain."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Delaware. The original article was written by Juan C. Guerrero.
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TUPELO, Miss. (AP) ? Authorities say a search turned up the deadly substance ricin (RY'-sin) in a former martial arts studio run by a man charged in sending poisonous letters to President Barack Obama and two other officials.
An FBI affidavit made public Tuesday says agents also found ricin on items James Everett Dutschke (DUHS'-kee) threw in the trash. The document says law enforcement watched him remove the items from his studio in Tupelo, Miss.
The affidavit says the items included a dust mask. The affidavit also says trace amounts of ricin were found in the studio, and that Dutschke bought castor beans on the Internet. Castor beans are used to make ricin.
FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden says the business was sealed off after evidence collected tested positive for "trace levels of ricin."
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's prime minister survived a bomb attack on his convoy in Damascus on Monday, as rebels struck in the heart of President Bashar al-Assad's capital.
Six people were killed in the blast, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Previous rebel attacks on government targets included a December bombing which wounded Assad's interior minister.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the bombing, which he described as a "terrorist attack."
As prime minister, Wael al-Halki wields little power but the attack highlighted the rebels' growing ability to target symbols of Assad's authority in a civil war that, according to the U.N., has cost more than 70,000 lives.
Assad picked Halki in August to replace Riyadh Hijab, who defected and escaped to neighboring Jordan just weeks after a bombing killed four of the president's top security advisers.
Monday's blast shook the Mezze district soon after 9 a.m. (2.00 a.m. EDT), sending thick black smoke into the sky. The Observatory said one man accompanying Halki was killed as well as five passers-by.
State television showed firemen hosing down the charred and mangled remains of a car. Close by was a large white bus, its windows blown out and its seats gutted by fire. Glass and debris were scattered across several lanes of a main road.
"Dr. Wael al-Halki is well and not hurt at all," state television said.
It later broadcast footage of Halki, who appeared composed and unruffled, chairing what it said was an economic committee.
In comments released by the state news agency SANA but not shown on television, Halki was quoted as condemning the attack as a sign of "bankruptcy and failure of the terrorist groups", a reference to the rebels battling to overthrow Assad.
Mezze is part of a shrinking "Square of Security" in central Damascus, where many government and military institutions are based and where senior officials live.
Sheltered for nearly two years from the destruction ravaging much of the rest of Syria, it has been sucked into violence as rebel forces based to the east of the capital launch mortar attacks and carry out bombings in the center.
CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Assad has lost control of large areas of northern and eastern Syria, faces a growing challenge in the southern province of Deraa, and is battling rebels in many cities.
But his forces have been waging powerful ground offensives, backed by artillery and air strikes, against rebel-held territory around the capital and near the central city of Homs which links Damascus to the heartland of Assad's minority Alawite sect in the mountains overlooking the Mediterranean.
As part of that counter-offensive, Assad's forces probably used chemical weapons, the United States and Britain have said.
However, the trans-Atlantic allies, whose 2003 invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein was based in part on flawed intelligence about an Iraqi program of weapons of mass destruction, have been cautious in their accusations.
Ban said on Monday that investigators have been gathering and analyzing available information on alleged chemical attacks in Syria, but full access to the war-torn country is essential for a "credible and comprehensive inquiry.
Assad's government has refused to give the U.N. inspection team the kind of unfettered access inside Syria that Ban is demanding. As a result, the team has yet to deploy to Syria.
A Western diplomat said British officials had shown the head of the U.N. inspection team, Ake Sellstrom of Sweden, evidence on which London based its assertion that there was "limited but growing" evidence of chemical weapons use - possibly the nerve agent sarin - by Syrian troops.
But Sellstrom found the evidence inconclusive, said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
President Barack Obama repeated U.S. concerns about Syrian chemical weapons in a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, the White House said, adding that the two leaders agreed to stay in contact.
The United States is trying to determine the facts around alleged Syrian use of chemical weapons. Last week U.S. officials said they had "varying degrees of confidence" that such weapons were used in Syria, which if proven with certainty could trigger unspecified U.S. action against the Syrian government.
Despite congressional pressure to do more to help the rebels, the U.S. president has made clear he is in no rush to intervene on the basis of preliminary evidence.
A U.N. team of experts has been waiting to travel to Syria to gather field evidence, but has yet to win agreement from Syrian authorities who want it to investigate only government accusations of chemical weapon use by rebels in Aleppo province.
Russia, which has criticized Western and Gulf Arab support for the anti-Assad fighters, said that attempts by Western countries to expand the U.N. inquiry to cover rebel accusations of Syrian government use of chemicals in Homs and Damascus mounted to a pretext to intervene in the civil war.
The U.N. said in February that around 70,000 people had been killed in Syria's conflict. Since then activists have reported daily death tolls of between 100 and 200.
Five million people have fled their homes, including 1.4 million refugees in nearby countries, and financial losses are estimated at many tens of billions of dollars.
The Beirut-based U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia estimates that 400,000 houses have been completely destroyed, 300,000 partially destroyed and a further half million have suffered some kind of structural damage.
(Additional reporting by Thomas Grove in Moscow and Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau in New York; Editing by Alistair Lyon, Robin Pomeroy and Paul Simao)
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Public release date: 1-May-2013
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