April 22 (Reuters) - Pep Guardiola is not the only connection between Bayern Munich and Barcelona, who meet in their Champions League semi-final, first leg at the Allianz Arena on Tuesday. Both teams are dominating their leagues to an almost embarrassing extent, have won the Champions League four times apiece, share an acrimonious rivalry with Real Madrid, and owe part of their success to the flamboyant Dutchman Louis van Gaal. Both have also been in two Champions League finals in the last four years, though the Catalans won both of theirs and the Bavarians came out losers on each occasion. ...
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Commercial airline flights moved smoothly throughout most of the country on Sunday, the first day air traffic controllers were subject to furloughs resulting from government spending cuts, though some delays appeared in the late evening in and around New York. And even though the nightmarish flight delays and cancellations that the airline industry predicted would result from the furloughs did not materialize yet, the real test will come Monday, when traffic ramps up.
Information from the FAA and others showed that flying Sunday was largely uneventful, with most flights on time. There were delays in parts of Florida, but those were caused by thunderstorms.
Mark Duell at the flight tracking website FlightAware said that John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in New York indicated delays due to lower staffing starting late Sunday evening. JFK averaged 70-minute delays for inbound flights, but no detectable departure delays. LaGuardia averaged 74-minute delays for inbound flights, and departure delays of 37 minutes.
The FAA website said that flights from Philadelphia and Orlando, Fla., into John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Westchester County airports were delayed due to staffing issues.
The trade group Airlines for America, which represents the airlines and had predicted a big traffic snarl, said Sunday evening that it was "not seeing a significant impact at this point." A spokeswoman said the group would continue to monitor the situation, and urged flyers to stay in contact with their airlines.
The FAA said that "relatively good weather" and light traffic, which is typical of Sundays, helped keep delays in check. The agency said it would be working with airlines "to minimize the delay impacts of lower staffing" as the busy summer travel season approaches.
Government budget cuts that kicked in last month are forcing the FAA and other agencies to cut their spending. FAA officials have said they have no choice but to furlough all 47,000 agency employees, including nearly 15,000 controllers. Each employee will lose one day of work every other week. The FAA has said that planes will have to take off and land less frequently, so as not to overload the remaining controllers on duty.
Friday, airline trade groups and the country's biggest pilots union sued the FAA to try to stop the furloughs. They predicted that the furloughs would delay or cancel flights for as many as one out of every three airline passengers across the country. Airlines have also directed their customers to tell the FAA to find other ways to cut costs.
Republican leaders have descended on California this week to discuss the future of their party and while the goal is unity, some activists are threatening to turn it into the political equivalent of the wild, wild west.
The Republican National Committee is holding a three-day gathering in Los Angeles in part to discuss the recommendations in the party's 2012 "autopsy" report (the Republican National Committee prefers to call it by its official name, the "Growth and Opportunity Project").
According to an RNC official, "the meeting will be focused on our efforts to grow the party and implement a bottom-up grassroots organization in every community."
But even as they assemble for their spring meeting in a city that is a magnet for immigrants, back in Washington, some conservative leaders are balking at the way immigration reform legislation is being drafted in Congress. Former senator and current Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint told reporters this week, that he found it disturbing that the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" group's bill was being "developed behind closed doors," according to a BuzzFeed report.
Nevertheless, members of the Senate group, including prominent Republicans like Marco Rubio of Florida and John McCain of Arizona, are preparing to introduce their preliminary bill. And their efforts are in line with the recommendations of the RNC's post-election report, which counseled greater outreach to the Hispanic community.
"If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay attention to our next sentence," the authors of the "Growth and Opportunity" project wrote in a reference to 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney's support of self-deportation. "It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies."
But internal disagreements over immigration reform are not the only ones party leaders might have to contend with at their meeting, which takes place at a hotel near the Hollywood hills. At least one RNC committeeman plans to introduce a resolution doubling down on the party's platform, which supports traditional marriage.
The move comes just weeks after the GOP's post-election report called for greater outreach to the gay community. The authors wrote: "For the GOP to appeal to younger voters, we do not have to agree on every issue, but we do need to make sure young people do not see the Party as totally intolerant of alternative points of view. Already, there is a generational difference within the conservative movement about issues involving the treatment and the rights of gays - and for many younger voters, these issues are a gateway into whether the Party is a place they want to be."
And even though many Republicans are hoping for a semblance of unity, others within the party are gunning for a fight over a set of controversial rules that were passed at the national convention in Tampa last summer. Detractors, including Virginia RNC Committeeman Morton Blackwell who is leading a charge to roll back those rules, say they amounted to a power grab that gives the committee and national Republicans too much control over picking the party's presidential nominee.
Other committee recommendations contained in the "Growth and Opportunity Project" report, including shortening the primary season and reducing the number of debates, and not all of them were not met with universal approval by GOP activists.
Despite the infighting, the RNC has been seeking to show signs of progress in other areas. Chairman Reince Priebus this week announced the hires of two new staff members to conduct outreach to the Asian and Pacific Islander communities. The committee brought on board a national field director and a national communications director to focus on Asian voters. And recently, Priebus has been meeting with Silicon Valley leaders and GOP technology gurus in an effort to catch up with Democrats on the digital front.
Although this week's meeting will be focused on the Republican Party of the future, state chairman and committee members will also be paying homage to one of the icons of their past. The capstone event of the three-day meeting will be a dinner and tour of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif.
Apr. 10, 2013 ? The same material that formed the first primitive transistors more than 60 years ago can be modified in a new way to advance future electronics, according to a new study.
Chemists at The Ohio State University have developed the technology for making a one-atom-thick sheet of germanium, and found that it conducts electrons more than ten times faster than silicon and five times faster than conventional germanium.
The material's structure is closely related to that of graphene -- a much-touted two-dimensional material composed of single layers of carbon atoms. As such, graphene shows unique properties compared to its more common multilayered counterpart, graphite. Graphene has yet to be used commercially, but experts have suggested that it could one day form faster computer chips, and maybe even function as a superconductor, so many labs are working to develop it.
Joshua Goldberger, assistant professor of chemistry at Ohio State, decided to take a different direction and focus on more traditional materials.
"Most people think of graphene as the electronic material of the future," Goldberger said. "But silicon and germanium are still the materials of the present. Sixty years' worth of brainpower has gone into developing techniques to make chips out of them. So we've been searching for unique forms of silicon and germanium with advantageous properties, to get the benefits of a new material but with less cost and using existing technology."
In a paper published online in the journal ACS Nano, he and his colleagues describe how they were able to create a stable, single layer of germanium atoms. In this form, the crystalline material is called germanane.
Researchers have tried to create germanane before. This is the first time anyone has succeeded at growing sufficient quantities of it to measure the material's properties in detail, and demonstrate that it is stable when exposed to air and water.
In nature, germanium tends to form multilayered crystals in which each atomic layer is bonded together; the single-atom layer is normally unstable. To get around this problem, Goldberger's team created multi-layered germanium crystals with calcium atoms wedged between the layers. Then they dissolved away the calcium with water, and plugged the empty chemical bonds that were left behind with hydrogen. The result: they were able to peel off individual layers of germanane.
Studded with hydrogen atoms, germanane is even more chemically stable than traditional silicon. It won't oxidize in air and water, as silicon does. That makes germanane easy to work with using conventional chip manufacturing techniques.
The primary thing that makes germanane desirable for optoelectronics is that it has what scientists call a "direct band gap," meaning that light is easily absorbed or emitted. Materials such as conventional silicon and germanium have indirect band gaps, meaning that it is much more difficult for the material to absorb or emit light.
"When you try to use a material with an indirect band gap on a solar cell, you have to make it pretty thick if you want enough energy to pass through it to be useful. A material with a direct band gap can do the same job with a piece of material 100 times thinner," Goldberger said.
The first-ever transistors were crafted from germanium in the late 1940s, and they were about the size of a thumbnail. Though transistors have grown microscopic since then -- with millions of them packed into every computer chip -- germanium still holds potential to advance electronics, the study showed.
According to the researchers' calculations, electrons can move through germanane ten times faster through silicon, and five times faster than through conventional germanium. The speed measurement is called electron mobility.
With its high mobility, germanane could thus carry the increased load in future high-powered computer chips.
"Mobility is important, because faster computer chips can only be made with faster mobility materials," Golberger said. "When you shrink transistors down to small scales, you need to use higher mobility materials or the transistors will just not work," Goldberger explained.
Next, the team is going to explore how to tune the properties of germanane by changing the configuration of the atoms in the single layer.
Lead author of the paper was Ohio State undergraduate chemistry student Elizabeth Bianco, who recently won the first place award for this research at the nationwide nanotechnology competition NDConnect, hosted by the University of Notre Dame. Other co-authors included Sheneve Butler and Shishi Jiang of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Oscar Restrepo and Wolfgang Windl of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
The research was supported in part by an allocation of computing time from the Ohio Supercomputing Center, with instrumentation provided by the Analytical Surface Facility in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Ohio State University Undergraduate Instrumental Analysis Program. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Center for Emergent Materials at Ohio State, and the university's Materials Research Seed Grant Program.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Ohio State University. The original article was written by Pam Frost Gorder.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Elisabeth Bianco, Sheneve Butler, Shishi Jiang, Oscar D. Restrepo, Wolfgang Windl, Joshua E. Goldberger. Stability and Exfoliation of Germanane: A Germanium Graphane Analogue. ACS Nano, 2013; : 130326123449003 DOI: 10.1021/nn4009406
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Based in our Dublin Sales Centre, this Training Specialist role will be responsible for the delivery of on-boarding programs, sales and sales management workshops.?The successful person will require strong facilitation skills, deep sales knowledge and a passion for delivering high impact workshops.?
A background in leading training for technology and service sales, and in particular sales via channel partners, would be a distinct advantage.?
What's in it for the Candidate:
The chance to work in a fast moving innovative environment.
Use your own sales training techniques and explore your creative side.
Work with a developing company in a growing industry in Ireland.
Work hands on with all levels of the company, from the management to the sales reps.
Be an essential part of the sales force and watch your own ideas implemented.?
Demonstating your knowledege of sales and sales training.
The role:
Deliver on-boarding, sales and business programs aimed at providing new employees with the critical skills to drive revenue growth and sales team effectiveness.
Support the delivery of leadership and management training.?
Act as a Sales Expert after training to reinforce concepts and effective application of methodology.
Work with business leaders to prioritize training needs and build impactful learning solutions that solve business issues and drives performance.
The Ideal Candidate:
At least 5 years experience in similar roles.
An expert in sales and sales training.
Degree (or equivalent) level education desirable.
CIPD training qualification/other training qualification desirable.
Proven track record of leading effective sales training.
Demonstrated ability to conduct training needs analysis.
Experience of working with multi-lingual audiences.
Email your CV to Paul McAllister at CPL recruitment in Dublin: paul.mcallister(at)cpl.ie. Or call at 01 6146063.
Carlos Figueroa monoskis in Aspen Snowmass on Thursday as part of a VA sports clinic for disabled veterans.
By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor
An Iraq war veteran who yearns to snowboard next March at the Sochi Paralympics recently told a priest he would give his left leg to compete for his country. And then, he did.
Six weeks ago, retired Army Sgt. Carlos Figueroa allowed a surgeon to amputate below his left knee ? 10 years after an IED blast rendered the limb nearly useless. The decision was surprisingly simple, he said, because it sliced away a decade of mounting pain. Yet he also acknowledged: ?I did give it up because I want to get into the Paralympics.?
?When I went in, my doctor asked me: ?What?s your biggest goal?? I told him: ?Be on my board within three months.? He just said, ?Dude, most people aren?t walking within three months,? ? Figueroa recalled.?
Walking will come. What he can do ? already ? is carve down a mountain, the lone place Figueroa, 34, feels at peace: ?Up there, I?m no different from anybody. No PTSD. I?m at my happiest.? On Thursday, Figueroa beamed while manhandling an Aspen, Colo., slope atop a monoski at a sports clinic for disabled veterans. As a familiar, cool breeze brushed his face, he also dreamed?about racing in Russia.
?My love for snowboarding is about loss, the loss of what I had in the military, where you?re used to being on the move, on patrols, on raids. That?s how I treat my races. The moment that gate drops, it?s like the door opening on a raid. I go full blast. I?m able to get something back that I felt was taken away. That rush. I love it.?
U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs
"Up there, I'm no different from anybody. No PTSD. I'm at my happiest," said Carlos Figueroa of the feeling of carving down slopes.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have borne a bittersweet byproduct: scores of American Paralympic hopefuls. The Sochi Paralympics, to be held just after the 2014 Winter Games in that city, marks the inaugural Paralympic snowboarding event for disabled athletes. The U.S. men?s Paralympic snowboarding squad will consist of five members.
'Slim chance' Figueroa (and those close to him) knows he?s the longest of long shots. His own coach, Mike Shea, estimates he took two years to, literally, make the leap from his own leg amputation to landing jumps. The raw nerve endings in an amputated limb must become desensitized to the harsh pounding. When the board hits the snow, the stump pushes into the prosthetic leg, ?sending chills up your spine,? Shea said. ?It doesn?t feel good.?
Then there?s the calendar. If Figueroa is indeed back on his board by autumn, he?ll have a limited number of sanctioned races ? beginning in January 2014 ? to rack up enough points to rank among the top five American men. And the U.S. Paralympic snowboarders, including Shea, compose the world?s deepest talent pool in that sport. The roster likely will be named in February.
?It?s a slim chance, a super, super small window,? Figueroa said, ?but we?re still going to push.?
He needs only a sliver of possibility to kindle his hope ? or better yet, someone telling him he can?t. He certainly doesn?t need two legs.
The Feb. 15 amputation came 10 years after a bomb detonated beneath his armored vehicle, ejecting him through an open roof hatch. A decade spent lugging a useless left limb (with no heel), suffering increasing back and knee pain, instantly convinced him to say ?Let?s do it,? when an orthopedic surgeon in San Diego suggested, ?Let?s cut.? He was done, he said, wasting another day ?in a bubble? due to his injury, calling the operation ?liberating.?
'Go fast and have fun' Nobody who has heard that account is betting against Figueroa.
?With any military athlete, you can definitely see that sense of pride and determination above and beyond what you see with other athletes. Part of it is just a chance to represent their county again,? said Kevin Jardine, high performance director of Parlaympic alpine skiing and snowboarding for the U.S. Olympic Committee. ?They?re willing to sacrifice a lot.?
Added Shea, who lost his leg in a 2002 wake-boarding accident: ?Anything you tell Carlos, he?ll get it done. He always seems to find a way. He has no fear up there. He has passion. And I?ve learned from him the smiling gets you a long way in life.?
This week at the National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic in Aspen, organized by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Figueroa has been tempted to grab a board and shred. This is his fourth year attending. As a testament to his disregard for other people?s timelines, he couldn?t even stand on a snowboard four years ago due to his injury, yet he competed in a World Cup event for disabled snowboarders not long after that.
Until his prosthetic leg arrives, he?ll stick to monoskiing, during which he sits in a ?bucket? atop one ski, using his arms to hold smaller, balancing skis.
?The first run, I took it slow. After that, I opened it up,? Figueroa said. ?I just want to go fast and have fun.?
When the instructor noticed his raw speed, he warned Figueroa: ?You do realize if you go down, you may peel off half your face.?
Figueroa simply grinned: ?That?s alright.?
On the 10th anniversary of the war in Iraq, a special group of people in Vail, Colo., are also marking the tenth anniversary of their unique program designed to help war amputees regain independence through skiing. NBC's Kevin Tibbles reports.
Engineered T cells kill tumors but spare normal tissue in an animal modelPublic release date: 7-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Karen Kreeger karen.kreeger@uphs.upenn.edu 215-459-0544 University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
PHILADELPHIA The need to distinguish between normal cells and tumor cells is a feature that has been long sought for most types of cancer drugs. Tumor antigens, unique proteins on the surface of a tumor, are potential targets for a normal immune response against cancer. Identifying which antigens a patient's tumor cells express is the cornerstone of designing cancer therapy for that individual. But some of these tumor antigens are also expressed on normal cells, inching personalized therapy back to the original problem.
T cells made to express a protein called CAR, for chimeric antigen receptor, are engineered by grafting a portion of a tumor-specific antibody onto an immune cell, allowing them to recognize antigens on the cell surface. Early first-generation CARs had one signaling domain for T-cell activation. Second-generation CARs are more commonly used and have two signaling domains within the immune cell, one for T-cell activation and another for T- cell costimulation to boost the T cell's function.
Importantly, CARs allow patients' T cells to recognize tumor antigens and kill certain tumor cells. A large number of tumor-specific, cancer-fighting CAR T cells can be generated in a specialized lab using patients' own T cells, which are then infused back into them for therapy. Despite promising clinical results, it is now recognized that some CAR-based therapies may involve toxicity against normal tissues that express low amounts of the targeted tumor-associated antigen.
To address this issue, Daniel J. Powell Jr., PhD, research assistant professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and director of the Cellular Therapy Tissue Facility, developed an innovative dual CAR approach in which the activation signal for T cells is physically dissociated from a second costimulatory signal for immune cells. The two CARs carry different antigen specificity -- mesothelin and a-folate receptor. Mesothelin is primarily associated with mesothelioma and ovarian cancer, and a-folate receptor with ovarian cancer.
Powell likens this dual CAR approach to having two different gas pedals, one for starting the immune system and a second for revving it up. Dual CAR T cells are more selective for tumor cells since their full activity requires interaction with both antigens, which are only co-expressed on tumor cells, not normal tissue.
Dual CAR T cells showed weak cytokine production against target cells expressing only one tumor-associated antigen in lab assays, similar to first-generation CAR T cells bearing the CD3 activation domain only, but demonstrated enhanced cytokine production upon encountering natural or engineered tumor cells expressing both antigens, equivalent to second-generation CAR T cells with dual, but unseparated signaling.
In a mouse model of human ovarian cancer, T cells with the dual-signaling CARs persisted at high numbers in the blood, accumulated in tumors, and showed potent anti-cancer activity against human tumors. Dual CAR T cells were equivalent to second-generation CAR T cells in activity against tumors bearing two antigens. However, the dual-signaling CAR T cells did not react vigorously with normal tissue expressing one antigen while second- generation CAR T cells did.
"This new dual-specificity CAR approach can enhance the therapeutic efficacy of CAR T cells against cancer while minimizing reactivity against normal tissues," says Powell.
Their findings have been published in the inaugural issue of Cancer Immunology Research, the newest journal from the American Association for Cancer Research.
###
This work was supported by grants from the W.W. Smith Charitable Trust, the Sandy Rollman Ovarian Cancer Foundation, the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (PPD-Penn-01.12),
the National Cancer Institute (RO1-CA168900) and the Joint Fox Chase Cancer Center and University of Pennsylvania Ovarian Cancer SPORE (P50 CA083638).
Co-authors include Evripidis Lanitis, Mathilde Poussin, Alex W. Klattenhoff, Degang Song, and Carl H. June, all from Penn.
Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $4.3 billion enterprise.
The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 16 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $398 million awarded in the 2012 fiscal year.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania -- recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report; Penn Presbyterian Medical Center; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Penn Medicine also includes additional patient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region.
Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2012, Penn Medicine provided $827 million to benefit our community.
[ | 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.
Engineered T cells kill tumors but spare normal tissue in an animal modelPublic release date: 7-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Karen Kreeger karen.kreeger@uphs.upenn.edu 215-459-0544 University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
PHILADELPHIA The need to distinguish between normal cells and tumor cells is a feature that has been long sought for most types of cancer drugs. Tumor antigens, unique proteins on the surface of a tumor, are potential targets for a normal immune response against cancer. Identifying which antigens a patient's tumor cells express is the cornerstone of designing cancer therapy for that individual. But some of these tumor antigens are also expressed on normal cells, inching personalized therapy back to the original problem.
T cells made to express a protein called CAR, for chimeric antigen receptor, are engineered by grafting a portion of a tumor-specific antibody onto an immune cell, allowing them to recognize antigens on the cell surface. Early first-generation CARs had one signaling domain for T-cell activation. Second-generation CARs are more commonly used and have two signaling domains within the immune cell, one for T-cell activation and another for T- cell costimulation to boost the T cell's function.
Importantly, CARs allow patients' T cells to recognize tumor antigens and kill certain tumor cells. A large number of tumor-specific, cancer-fighting CAR T cells can be generated in a specialized lab using patients' own T cells, which are then infused back into them for therapy. Despite promising clinical results, it is now recognized that some CAR-based therapies may involve toxicity against normal tissues that express low amounts of the targeted tumor-associated antigen.
To address this issue, Daniel J. Powell Jr., PhD, research assistant professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and director of the Cellular Therapy Tissue Facility, developed an innovative dual CAR approach in which the activation signal for T cells is physically dissociated from a second costimulatory signal for immune cells. The two CARs carry different antigen specificity -- mesothelin and a-folate receptor. Mesothelin is primarily associated with mesothelioma and ovarian cancer, and a-folate receptor with ovarian cancer.
Powell likens this dual CAR approach to having two different gas pedals, one for starting the immune system and a second for revving it up. Dual CAR T cells are more selective for tumor cells since their full activity requires interaction with both antigens, which are only co-expressed on tumor cells, not normal tissue.
Dual CAR T cells showed weak cytokine production against target cells expressing only one tumor-associated antigen in lab assays, similar to first-generation CAR T cells bearing the CD3 activation domain only, but demonstrated enhanced cytokine production upon encountering natural or engineered tumor cells expressing both antigens, equivalent to second-generation CAR T cells with dual, but unseparated signaling.
In a mouse model of human ovarian cancer, T cells with the dual-signaling CARs persisted at high numbers in the blood, accumulated in tumors, and showed potent anti-cancer activity against human tumors. Dual CAR T cells were equivalent to second-generation CAR T cells in activity against tumors bearing two antigens. However, the dual-signaling CAR T cells did not react vigorously with normal tissue expressing one antigen while second- generation CAR T cells did.
"This new dual-specificity CAR approach can enhance the therapeutic efficacy of CAR T cells against cancer while minimizing reactivity against normal tissues," says Powell.
Their findings have been published in the inaugural issue of Cancer Immunology Research, the newest journal from the American Association for Cancer Research.
###
This work was supported by grants from the W.W. Smith Charitable Trust, the Sandy Rollman Ovarian Cancer Foundation, the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (PPD-Penn-01.12),
the National Cancer Institute (RO1-CA168900) and the Joint Fox Chase Cancer Center and University of Pennsylvania Ovarian Cancer SPORE (P50 CA083638).
Co-authors include Evripidis Lanitis, Mathilde Poussin, Alex W. Klattenhoff, Degang Song, and Carl H. June, all from Penn.
Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $4.3 billion enterprise.
The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 16 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $398 million awarded in the 2012 fiscal year.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania -- recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report; Penn Presbyterian Medical Center; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Penn Medicine also includes additional patient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region.
Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2012, Penn Medicine provided $827 million to benefit our community.
[ | 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.
Petitioning to come to the United States as a foreign national is complicated. There?s visa paperwork, quotas in many cases, and lengthy wait times. One misstep could mean a lengthy separation from your loved ones.
And that's just for straight people.?
As pro-reform interest groups prepare to fight for their specific priorities in pending immigration reform legislation, LGBT activists aren?t standing on the sidelines.
?There is a shared struggle among the immigrant and the LGBT communities,? said Steve Ralls of Immigration Equality, an organization that offers legal aid to LGBT immigrants. ?There is a growing recognition that if we can get fair immigration reform through Congress we can work on a lot of issues together moving forward.?
Gay rights activists say there are several fronts in the immigration fight -- from specific provisions for gay Americans and permanent residents seeking to bring a non-citizen partner to the country, to protections for undocumented LGBT individuals, to a broader call for equal rights.
?We?re investing in immigration reform because it is a social justice issue and we have a responsibility to advocate for the kind of world we want to live in,? said Maya Rupert, policy director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights. ?But beyond that, there are LGBT people who are going to be directly impacted by every provision in the ultimate legislation, so we have to make sure that it?s being done in a way that is inclusive and conscious of their needs.?
Border security has become one of the most contentious and difficult issues that lawmakers must resolve for a comprehensive immigration deal to be struck. USA Today's Alan Gomez discusses.
That means both legal and undocumented immigrants, Rupert said.
The number of LGBT immigrants is difficult to count, but researcher Dr. Gary Gates of UCLA?s Williams Institute used existing Census, Gallup and Pew Research Center data to calculate it. Gates estimates that about 900,000 LGBT immigrants live in the United States. About two-thirds of those are documented -- meaning that they are naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents or holders of a temporary visa. One-third -- about 267,000 -- are undocumented according to the estimate.
For documented LGBT immigrants, a key provision that activists have focused on is the inclusion of legislation called the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA) in a final comprehensive reform bill.
Partial victory with DOMA? Currently, a U.S. citizen or permanent legal resident can petition for a visa for a foreign-born spouse -- but only if the spouse is of the opposite sex. That applies even if the same-sex couple is legally married in another country or in a U.S. state that recognizes gay marriage.
UAFA would make same-sex spouses or permanent partners of U.S. citizens eligible to petition for a family-based visa.
(Proponents of UAFA could win a partial victory of this issue if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the Defense of Marriage Act this summer, but, unless UAFA passes, same-sex foreign national spouses would still only be eligible for a visa petition if they get married in a state that recognizes their relationship.)
Activists point to an ally in Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, an original Senate sponsor of the UAFA legislation and the head of the panel that will first review a draft immigration bill. The White House also specifically included the provision for same-sex immigrant permanent partners in a January fact sheet outlining the president?s priorities for reform.
A path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is also getting heavy support from LGBT groups, who note that a significant portion of undocumented LGBT people in the United States may be here because they faced discrimination in their country of origin.
?You can imagine the fear that an undocumented person faces with the uncertainty in current law if their deportation would mean the return to a home country where they cannot be out, where they cannot have a relationship or they would be subject to intense persecution,? says Ralls. ?So a path to citizenship is critical for all undocumented people, and ?for undocumented LGBT people it is in many cases a critical safety issue for them.?
Public opinion shifting Since 1994, the U.S. has classified persecution on the basis of sexual orientation as grounds to seek asylum. But the process can be arduous and confusing, and asylum-seekers have to offer rigorous documentation of hardship. Those whose claims are denied risk deportation.
Although many Latino groups heavily involved in the immigration reform movement -- including the League of United Latin American Citizens,?the?National Council de la Raza and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus -- have offered support for the inclusion of LGBT protections in any final legislation, there?s opposition within the Latino community as well as from outside groups.
Susan Walsh / AP
In this March 12, 2013 file photo, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington.
In February, Sen. Marco Rubio -- a key player in the Senate Gang of Eight -- said that the inclusion of LGBT protections could hamper passage of the legislation. (Arizona?s Sen. John McCain has echoed that concern as well.)
"I think if that issue becomes a central issue in the debate it's going to become harder to get it done because there will be strong feelings on both sides,? Rubio said at an event sponsored by Buzzfeed.?
As recently as a decade ago, the Hispanic and LGBT communities could have been considered quite the opposite of allies.
In 2006, a Pew Research Center study found that just 31 percent of Hispanics favored allowing gay marriage, compared to 56 percent who opposed it.
But in 2012, those numbers were almost a mirror image, with 52 percent of Hispanics backing gay marriage and about a third saying they are not in favor of legal marriage for gays and lesbians.
Amid the legal complications and the data, and regardless of how any final legislation reads, those involved in the issue say that the debate is raising awareness about a long-ignored population.
?Having a number that indicates that this is a sizable group -- more than 250,000 LGBT undocumented, nearly a million LGBT immigrants -- it?s not so much the overall number that?s important, it?s the fact that there is an estimate,? says Dr. Gates of the Williams Institute. ?Unless you?re counted, you tend not to count.?
Related:?
Religious groups, pro-reform organizations brace for family-based visa fight
This story was originally published on Sun Apr 7, 2013 4:24 AM EDT
Josh Groban sings at Lincoln Center, Beat Making Lab follows musicians and educators as they teach music to students around the world, and more top picks.
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PBS Digital Studios is now hosting an ongoing series, Beat Making Lab, focused on world music. The online series follows two musicians and educators as they travel the world, providing tips and tools to underserved communities, helping them make music of their own. The newest episode debuts ?Cho Cho Cho,? a song created during a visit to Goma, Congo. Watch online at http://youtu.be/yGlD41XvJvU.
Art on the silver screen
If you?d rather sit and munch popcorn instead of walking through a gallery to view art, then head on over to your local movie theater for three art events this year. Exhibition: Great Art on Screen begins April 11 with a behind-the-scenes tour of the ?douard Manet show now at London?s Royal Academy of Arts. Hosted by art historian Tim Marlow, ?Manet: Portraying Life? includes interviews and background information that bring this French artist and his work to life. The next two showings will focus on Edvard Munch (June 27) and Johannes Vermeer (Oct. 10). Find a participating theater at fathomevents.com.
Flying machines
A German chocolate company created futuristic postcards in 1900 of what it imagined the world would look like in 2000. The images are amusing and oddly prescient, showing innovations that are fairly true to life today, such as moving walkways, snow-creating machines, and commonplace air travel. Check them out at http://bit.ly/futurepostcards.
Josh Groban Live
Multitalented singer-songwriter-actor Josh Groban takes to the stage in a ?Live From Lincoln Center? broadcast, Josh Groban: All That Echoes, hosted by Audra McDonald on April 12 at 9 p.m. (check local listings). Groban, famous for his pop-favorite golden voice, performs music from his most recent album, ?All That Echoes,? his third to debut at No. 1 on Billboard?s top album charts.
Inside Syria
On April 9, ?Frontline? (PBS) airs Syria Behind the Lines, a raw and immediate look at life as it is unfolding in the Syrian civil war. Correspondent Olly Lambert is one of few Western journalists to spend extended time in the midst of the conflict, documenting the harsh conditions on both the regime and rebel sides of the war. He looks at life in the Orontes Valley, which reveals the desperation and determination of both sides, divided by a river. This program is a must see for anyone wanting to understand the stakes and struggles of strife that is reshaping the Middle East. Airs at 10 p.m.
Classic Carol
If classic comediennes make you laugh, then you need to tune in to PBS April 9 when it devotes two hours to the great Carol Burnett. First, watch a reprise of the 90-minute ?American Masters? special Carol Burnett: A Woman of Character. Then, wrap up with the 30-minute Carol Burnett and the Funny Ladies of Television. The laugh-athon evening is all in honor of the iconic host and actress as she releases a new memoir about her relationship with her daughter, ?Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story.?
Position Type: Volunteer-Intern 4, 8 and 12 month positions available Date Ad Posted: April 4, 2013 Application Deadline: May 3, 2013 Location: 601 Burlington St E, Unit A, Hamilton, ON? L8L 4J5
Looking to expand your skills, gain valuable experience, work in an awesome team environment, and make a positive impact on at-risk kids?? Then we?ve got the perfect opportunity for you!
City Kidz is a dynamic faith-based organization dedicated to improving the lives of at-risk children. ?We exist to increase resiliency and inspire big dreams for Canadian children living in low-income communities by providing inspirational experiences and nurturing personal relationships, one child at a time. Through our programs we instill positive values and morals into the lives of children, help build a solid foundation for their future and inspire each child to make positive life choices and to choose to ?do what?s right.? Everything we do is guided by our Faith, Hope and Love.
Every Saturday over 1100 children are bused in from across Hamilton to experience a dynamic and interactive 70 minute show and each week over 2400 children receive home visits by a member of our volunteer visitation staff.
As the Writing & Production Intern you will use your creative writing skills to make a difference in the lives of children from the inner city, work in a collaborative environment and work on diverse projects including, but not limited to: curriculum, stage production, skits, lessons, videos, articles and blogging. Through it all you will gain valuable experience, meet some awesome people, and use your talents and skills to improve the lives of deserving kids!
Responsibilities:
Work in coordination with the Coordinator of Creative & Design as well as program staff to develop programming themes and curriculum, and to write accompanying materials
Work in coordination with the Coordinator of Creative & Design to gather, edit and write stories for the City Kidz newsletter and website
Qualifications:
Ability to work both collaboratively as well as independently with little supervision when necessary
Curiosity and desire to learn and expand creative writing skills and experience
Must be able to write compelling stories with samples of work.
Previous experience in stage production, and writing for theatre and/or video skits a definite advantage.
If you are an enthusiastic person who has a passion for writing and a desire to make a difference in the lives of children, please submit your resume and a sample of your writing, along with references by May 3, 2013. Please submit only by email or fax.
We appreciate all applicants, however, only those selected for interviews will be contacted.
Compensation:Currently this is a Volunteer Position
Contact: Jeremy Curry, Coordinator of Creative and Design Email: jeremy@citykidz.ca Fax: 905 544-4077 Phone: 905 544-3996 ext 224 Address: 601 Burlington St E, Unit A, Hamilton, ON? L8L 4J5 For more information about City Kidz please visit us on the web at www.citykidz.ca
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 4th, 2013 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Employment and Internship News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
If a vehicle outfitted with Audi Connect has found its way into your garage, T-Mobile has a pair of new data plans for you to consider. Dropping $450 nets car owners 30 months of "full data services" to power the infotainment system, which packs features including Google Earth, real-time Sirius XM Traffic info and even WiFi for up to eight devices. Drivers who aren't in the market for such a long term commitment can pony up $30 every month instead. Hit the jump for the full press release from Audi and the UnCarrier.
It's your inalienable right, as a citizen of the internet, to curse and swear as creatively as possible at all times. That's 80-percent of why anyone fires up a browser to begin with. Which is why AT&T's move to ban naughty language in passwords created no small amount of ire. More »
Small businesses from all over the world are experiencing problems that are hard to overcome because of the global recession. It?s hard to compete with the large firms most especially when you are giving the same services or products. They have better marketing strategies and can afford to employ agents to help with their endeavors. They are also capable of making use of high-priced promotional campaigns which drags small businesses like yours, further down into the abyss. Because of this, small firms are forced to close which is why more and more people today are getting unemployed. This shouldn?t be the case for you. Thanks to the internet, you now have the chance to compete against the large firms with the help of online marketing strategies. Of course, this wouldn?t be possible without the help of companies that offer SEO services.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It?s a marketing method that helps make your website become more visible in the popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, MSN, and many others. If you can successfully employ the services of the professionals, then you can surely reach and entice potential clients from faraway places giving you the chance to compete on the same ground with the large firms.
Today, a lot of people are making use of the internet trough desktop computers and hand-held devices. It can be used anytime and anywhere. People in all age group are well-informed thanks to the World Wide Web. Things are done faster and easier because of it. It has the capability to provide the much needed information regarding the latest news and gossips. Because of this, you can build your business little by little and reach countless potential clients from all over the country. The best thing about this is that it?s not expensive to use. The reason why many businesses today are becoming successful is because they are making use of the net to their advantage.
Experts are able to make an appealing website and connect in to the internet in which gives chances to people to see it. Incorporating the SEO or commonly known as the Search Engine Optimization further enhances that chances of people stumbling upon it as they surf the net. The more people seeing your webpage, the more chances you?ll get prospect customers.
Hire an SEO firm that can help you with your advertising problems. Reaching out to people is now very easy thanks to the World Wide Web.
The author writes for http://www.MDesignMedia.com which provides information regarding tampa seo services. MDesign Media offers full-service, design-driven marketing creations ala carte, bundled as a complete campaign or anything in between.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Sweeping immigration legislation taking shape in the Senate will aim to overhaul the nation's agriculture worker program to create a steady supply of labor for farmers and growers, who rely more than any other industry on workers who have come to the country illegally.
Farm workers already here would get a speedier path to legal status than other immigrants in the country illegally, and a likely new visa program would make it easier for foreign workers to come to the U.S. Policymakers aim to install such workers in place of the half or more of the nation's farm labor workforce estimated to be in the country illegally.
Negotiators have been working to finalize an agreement in time for the measure to be included in bipartisan legislation expected to be released next week, but disagreements on wages and numbers of visas are proving tough to solve.
Labor groups are accusing growers of pushing to lower farmworkers' wages, while growers dispute that and say they want to pay a fair wage. Meanwhile, labor is resisting growers' attempts to increase the potential numbers of new workers who would come in, as growers argue their industry's viability depends on a strong new labor supply.
"It comes down to either we're importing our labor or we're importing our food, and if we don't have access to a legal supply of labor we will start going offshore," said Kristi Boswell, director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation.
The issue has gotten little public attention in an immigration debate focused on securing the border, creating a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally, and designing a new visa program for low-skilled workers outside of agriculture. But for states from California to Georgia to Florida with booming agriculture industries, it's a critical part of the puzzle.
At least 50 percent and as much as 70 or 80 percent of the nation's farm workers arrived illegally, according to labor and industry estimates. Growers say they need a better way to hire labor legally, and advocates say workers can be exploited and need better protections and a way to earn permanent residence.
"One thing that we know is that there's not an industry that will benefit more from a new immigration program than agriculture," said Giev Kashkooli, United Farm Workers vice president. "The problem is industry needs people who are both willing and able to do the work. And it's difficult work."
The reason agriculture uses so much illegal labor has to do with the need for workers, but also the inadequacy of current immigration programs. There is a 10-month visa program for farm workers, called the H2A visa, but growers argue it's so hard to use that once they've completed the paperwork whatever crop they needed picked may well have withered.
There were about 55,000 H2A visas issued in 2011, representing a small percentage of the nation's approximately 2 million farm workers.
Part of the solution, growers and unions say, is to create a more permanent agricultural workforce. Senators would likely accomplish this by giving a new "blue card" visa granting legal status to farm workers who've worked in the industry for at least two years and intend to remain in it for at least five years more.
At that point, potentially, these workers could become eligible for green cards, which allow permanent residency and eventual citizenship ? faster than the 10-year path to a green card that other immigrants in the country illegally are expected to face under the Senate immigration bill.
Separately, growers are pushing to replace the H2A visa program with an entirely new program with visas offering multiyear stays. But there is disagreement over how many such visas would be offered and how much money workers would make ? the same issues that hung up a deal between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO over nonagricultural low-skilled workers before a resolution was reached over the weekend.
The UFW contends that growers are trying to push farm workers below their current average wage of $10.80 an hour, but growers say that wage is skewed by a small number of high earners and that most farm workers make less. In light of the dispute, the UFW has begun to argue that a new visa program may not be necessary at all.
The two-pronged structure of the emerging deal is similar to legislation called AgJobs negotiated in years past that never became law. Because of that history, the agriculture issue is being handled differently from other parts of the Senate immigration bill. It's being negotiated by four senators ? Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Michael Bennet, D-Colo. ? only two of whom, Rubio and Bennet, are part of the so-called Gang of Eight senators writing the overall bill.
All involved hope for a resolution of an issue that has been in need of one for years, ever since the last major immigration overhaul, in 1986, failed to establish a workable visa program for farmworkers and others.
"We made our bed and have been lying in it ever since so this is a chance to get it right and not repeat those failures," said Craig J. Regelbrugge, co-chair of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform.
___
Follow Erica Werner on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericawerner
NEW YORK - America's most common jobs come with lousy pay.
Workers in seven of the 10 largest occupations typically earn less than $30,000 a year, according to new data published Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a far cry from the nation's average annual pay of $45,790.
Food prep workers are the third most-common job in the U.S., but have the lowest pay, at a mere $18,720 a year for 2012. Cashiers and waiters are also popular professions, but the average pay at these jobs tallies up to less than $21,000 annually. There are 4.3 million retail sales workers out there, making them the most common job, but the position pays only $25,310 for the year.
Among the 10 most popular professions, only the nation's 2.6 million registered nurses earn a good living, bringing home nearly $68,000 a year on average. Another two of the most common jobs -- secretaries and customer service representatives -- have an average annual wage of about $33,000.
Wages have been in the spotlight this year as the debate over income inequality intensified. Middle-class Americans have been losing ground, as median household income dropped by more than $4,000 since 2000.
Part of this decline stems from a disappearance of middle-class jobs and an explosion of lower-paying ones. Some 58% of the jobs created during the recovery have been low-wage positions, according to a 2012 report by the National Employment Law Project. These low-wage jobs had a median hourly wage of $13.83 or less.
President Obama has been pushing to raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour, and several states are considering increasing their minimum wages.
Employment & wages for largest U.S. occupations
Retail salesperson
4,340,000
$25,310
Cashier
3,314,010
$20,370
Food prep worker
2,943,810
$18,720
Office clerk
2,808,100
$29,270
Registered nurse
2,633,980
$67,930
Waiter
2,332,020
$20,710
Customer service representative
2,299,750
$33,110
Laborer
2,143,940
$26,410
Janitor/cleaner
2,097,380
$24,850
Secretary/administrative assistant
2,085,680
$33,560
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Public release date: 7-Apr-2013
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By Tami Luhby