MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ? President Barack Obama said Friday the latest employment report shows that the economy is not creating jobs "as fast as we want," but he pledged that the economy will improve.
"We will come back stronger. We do have better days ahead," Obama said at a Golden Valley, Minn., Honeywell plant where the company has taken steps to hire veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The president was responding to the government's jobs report for May, which showed that only 69,000 jobs were added during the month. That was the fewest in a year, as the unemployment rate increased to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent in April.
Obama, in a tight re-election campaign against Republican Mitt Romney, said the economy still faces a number of challenges, including Europe's debt crisis and higher gas prices, which have hurt families.
"The economy still isn't where it needs to be," Obama said.
Romney told CNBC that Obama's economic policies had not worked and the new report was a "harsh indictment" of how the Democrat incumbent has steered the economy.
Obama later told donors at a Minneapolis fundraiser that the last four years had been "as tough a period in our country's history as anything in our lifetimes, certainly since the 1930s." He said his administration had tried to make "dogged progress" but acknowledged "we're not out of the woods yet."
He said Republicans had been driven in part by a focus to "beat Obama" and he hoped winning a second term would change that mentality.
"My hope, my expectation is that after the election, now that it turns out the goal of beating Obama doesn't make much sense because I'm not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again," Obama said.
Obama told workers at the Honeywell plant that Congress could still take steps to help jump-start the economy. While acknowledging the political realities of an election year, he said the November election was no reason for inaction in Washington.
"There's no excuse for it, not when there are so many people out there looking for work," he said.
He cited providing more money for states and local governments to help avert layoffs of teachers and first responders, saying the dollars could "serve as a buffer in case the situation in Europe gets any worse."
Obama wants Congress to support incentives to hire veterans as police officers and firefighters. He also was taking action to help service members with manufacturing and high-demand skills receive civilian credentials and licenses.
The veterans "job corps" is part of Obama's "to-do list" to spur job creation. It features a number of economic initiatives he has pushed before to help manufacturers, homeowners and veterans.
Obama held three fundraisers at a Minneapolis restaurant owned by the sons of Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton, raising an estimated $1.8 million. He wrapped up the day in his hometown of Chicago, where he was holding three more fundraisers and staying overnight in his own home.
The events were supporting the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee of Obama's campaign, the Democratic National Committee and several state Democratic parties.
Computer-designed proteins programmed to disarm variety of flu viruses Public release date: 1-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Leila Gray leilag@uw.edu 206-685-0381 University of Washington
Similar methods for constructing proteins could prevail against emerging pathogens
Computer-designed proteins are under construction to fight the flu. Researchers are demonstrating that proteins found in nature, but that do not normally bind the flu, can be engineered to act as broad-spectrum antiviral agents against a variety of flu virus strains, including H1N1 pandemic influenza.
"One of these engineered proteins has a flu-fighting potency that rivals that of several human monoclonal antibodies," said Dr. David Baker, professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, in a report in Nature Biotechnology.
Baker's research team is making major inroads in optimizing the function of computer-designed influenza inhibitors. These proteins are constructed via computer modeling to fit exquisitely into a specific nano-sized target on flu viruses. By binding the target region like a key into a lock, they keep the virus from changing shape, a tactic that the virus uses to infect living cells. The research efforts, akin to docking a space station but on a molecular level, are made possible by computers that can describe the landscapes of forces involved on the submicroscopic scale.
Baker heads the new Institute for Protein Design Center at the University of Washington. Biochemists, computer scientists, engineers and medical specialists at the center are engineering novel proteins with new functions for specific purposes in medicine, environmental protection and other fields. Proteins underlie all normal activities and structures of living cells, and also regulate disease actions of pathogens like viruses. Abnormal protein formation and interactions are also implicated in many inherited and later-life chronic disorders.
Because influenza is a serious worldwide public health concern due to its genetic shifts and drifts that periodically become more virulent, the flu is one of the key interests of the Institutes for Protein Design and its collaborators in the United States and abroad. Researchers are trying to meet the urgent need for better therapeutics to protect against this very adaptable and extremely infective virus. Vaccines for new strains of influenza take months to develop, test and manufacture, and are not helpful for those already sick. The long response time for vaccine creation and distribution is unnerving when a more deadly strain suddenly emerges and spreads quickly. The speed of transmission is accelerated by the lack of widespread immunity in the general population to the latest form of the virus.
Flu trackers refer to strains by their H and N subtypes. H stands for hemagglutinins, which are the molecules on the flu virus that enable it to invade the cells of respiratory passages. The virus's hemagglutinin molecules attach to the surface of cells lining the respiratory tract. When the cell tries to engulf the virus, it makes the mistake of drawing it into a more acidic location. The drop in pH changes the shape of the viral hemagglutinin, thereby allowing the virus to fuse to the cell and open an entry for the virus' RNA to come in and start making fresh viruses. It is hypothesized that the Baker Lab protein inhibits this shape change by binding the hemagglutinin in a very specific orientation and thus keeps the virus from invading cells.
Baker and his team wanted to create antivirals that could react against a wide variety of H subtypes, as this versatility could lead to a comprehensive therapy for influenza. Specifically, viruses that have hemagglutinins of the H2 subtype are responsible for the deadly pandemic of 1957 and continued to circulate until 1968. People born after that date haven't been exposed to H2 viruses. The recent avian flu has a new version of H1 hemagglutinin. Data suggests that Baker's proteins bind to all types of the Group I Hemagglutinin, a group that includes not just H1 but the pandemic H2 and avian H5 strains.
Recognizing the importance of new flu therapies to national and international security, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency funded this work, along with the National Institutes of Health's National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The researchers also used the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratories in Illinois, with support from the Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences.
The methods developed for the influenza inhibitor protein design, Baker said, could be "a powerful route to inhibitors or binders for any surface patch on any desired target of interest." For example, if a new disease pathogen arises, scientists could figure out how it interacts with human cells or other hosts on a molecular level. Scientists could then use protein interface design to generate a diversity of small proteins that they predict would block the pathogen's interaction surface.
Genes for large numbers of the most promising, computer-designed proteins could be tested using yeast cells. After further molecular chemistry studies to find the best binding among those proteins, those could be re-programmed in the lab to undergo mutations, and all the mutated forms could be stored in a "library" for an in-depth analysis of their amino acids, molecular architecture and energy bonds. Advanced technologies would allow the scientists to quickly thumb through the library to pick out those tiny proteins that clung to the pathogen surface target with pinpoint accuracy. The finalists would be selected from this pool for excelling at stopping the pathogen from attaching to, entering and infecting human or animal cells.
The use of deep sequencing, the same technology now used to sequence human genomes cheaply, was especially crucial in creating detailed maps relating sequencing to function. These maps were used to reprogram the design to achieve a more precise interaction between the inhibitor protein and the virus molecule. It also enabled the scientists, they said, "to leapfrog over bottlenecks" to improve the activity of the binder. They were able to see how small contributions from many tiny changes in the protein, too difficult to spot individually, could together create a binder with better attachment strength.
"We anticipate that our approach combining computational design followed by comprehensive energy landscape mapping," Baker said, "will be widely useful in generating high-affinity and high-specificity binders to a broad range of targets for use in therapeutics and diagnostics."
###
Timothy Whitehead and Aaron Chevalier, both members of the Baker lab, led the flu inhibitor protein project. Whitehead is now at Michigan State University. Other researchers on the project were Yifan Song, Cyrille Dreyfus, Sarel J. Fleishman, Cecilia De Mattos, Chris A. Myers, Hetunandan Kamisetty, Patrick Blair and Ian Wilson.
[ | 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.
Computer-designed proteins programmed to disarm variety of flu viruses Public release date: 1-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Leila Gray leilag@uw.edu 206-685-0381 University of Washington
Similar methods for constructing proteins could prevail against emerging pathogens
Computer-designed proteins are under construction to fight the flu. Researchers are demonstrating that proteins found in nature, but that do not normally bind the flu, can be engineered to act as broad-spectrum antiviral agents against a variety of flu virus strains, including H1N1 pandemic influenza.
"One of these engineered proteins has a flu-fighting potency that rivals that of several human monoclonal antibodies," said Dr. David Baker, professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, in a report in Nature Biotechnology.
Baker's research team is making major inroads in optimizing the function of computer-designed influenza inhibitors. These proteins are constructed via computer modeling to fit exquisitely into a specific nano-sized target on flu viruses. By binding the target region like a key into a lock, they keep the virus from changing shape, a tactic that the virus uses to infect living cells. The research efforts, akin to docking a space station but on a molecular level, are made possible by computers that can describe the landscapes of forces involved on the submicroscopic scale.
Baker heads the new Institute for Protein Design Center at the University of Washington. Biochemists, computer scientists, engineers and medical specialists at the center are engineering novel proteins with new functions for specific purposes in medicine, environmental protection and other fields. Proteins underlie all normal activities and structures of living cells, and also regulate disease actions of pathogens like viruses. Abnormal protein formation and interactions are also implicated in many inherited and later-life chronic disorders.
Because influenza is a serious worldwide public health concern due to its genetic shifts and drifts that periodically become more virulent, the flu is one of the key interests of the Institutes for Protein Design and its collaborators in the United States and abroad. Researchers are trying to meet the urgent need for better therapeutics to protect against this very adaptable and extremely infective virus. Vaccines for new strains of influenza take months to develop, test and manufacture, and are not helpful for those already sick. The long response time for vaccine creation and distribution is unnerving when a more deadly strain suddenly emerges and spreads quickly. The speed of transmission is accelerated by the lack of widespread immunity in the general population to the latest form of the virus.
Flu trackers refer to strains by their H and N subtypes. H stands for hemagglutinins, which are the molecules on the flu virus that enable it to invade the cells of respiratory passages. The virus's hemagglutinin molecules attach to the surface of cells lining the respiratory tract. When the cell tries to engulf the virus, it makes the mistake of drawing it into a more acidic location. The drop in pH changes the shape of the viral hemagglutinin, thereby allowing the virus to fuse to the cell and open an entry for the virus' RNA to come in and start making fresh viruses. It is hypothesized that the Baker Lab protein inhibits this shape change by binding the hemagglutinin in a very specific orientation and thus keeps the virus from invading cells.
Baker and his team wanted to create antivirals that could react against a wide variety of H subtypes, as this versatility could lead to a comprehensive therapy for influenza. Specifically, viruses that have hemagglutinins of the H2 subtype are responsible for the deadly pandemic of 1957 and continued to circulate until 1968. People born after that date haven't been exposed to H2 viruses. The recent avian flu has a new version of H1 hemagglutinin. Data suggests that Baker's proteins bind to all types of the Group I Hemagglutinin, a group that includes not just H1 but the pandemic H2 and avian H5 strains.
Recognizing the importance of new flu therapies to national and international security, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency funded this work, along with the National Institutes of Health's National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The researchers also used the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratories in Illinois, with support from the Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences.
The methods developed for the influenza inhibitor protein design, Baker said, could be "a powerful route to inhibitors or binders for any surface patch on any desired target of interest." For example, if a new disease pathogen arises, scientists could figure out how it interacts with human cells or other hosts on a molecular level. Scientists could then use protein interface design to generate a diversity of small proteins that they predict would block the pathogen's interaction surface.
Genes for large numbers of the most promising, computer-designed proteins could be tested using yeast cells. After further molecular chemistry studies to find the best binding among those proteins, those could be re-programmed in the lab to undergo mutations, and all the mutated forms could be stored in a "library" for an in-depth analysis of their amino acids, molecular architecture and energy bonds. Advanced technologies would allow the scientists to quickly thumb through the library to pick out those tiny proteins that clung to the pathogen surface target with pinpoint accuracy. The finalists would be selected from this pool for excelling at stopping the pathogen from attaching to, entering and infecting human or animal cells.
The use of deep sequencing, the same technology now used to sequence human genomes cheaply, was especially crucial in creating detailed maps relating sequencing to function. These maps were used to reprogram the design to achieve a more precise interaction between the inhibitor protein and the virus molecule. It also enabled the scientists, they said, "to leapfrog over bottlenecks" to improve the activity of the binder. They were able to see how small contributions from many tiny changes in the protein, too difficult to spot individually, could together create a binder with better attachment strength.
"We anticipate that our approach combining computational design followed by comprehensive energy landscape mapping," Baker said, "will be widely useful in generating high-affinity and high-specificity binders to a broad range of targets for use in therapeutics and diagnostics."
###
Timothy Whitehead and Aaron Chevalier, both members of the Baker lab, led the flu inhibitor protein project. Whitehead is now at Michigan State University. Other researchers on the project were Yifan Song, Cyrille Dreyfus, Sarel J. Fleishman, Cecilia De Mattos, Chris A. Myers, Hetunandan Kamisetty, Patrick Blair and Ian Wilson.
[ | 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.
Meditation is practiced by people to learn to disengage from the materialistic world and from the mind to experience themselves. With just fifteen to twenty minutes of meditation session, one can enter into a peaceful inner space to understands one strengths and limitations as human beings. Meditation also help in diminishing the limitations and increasing capacities, beside helping one to discover the hidden capacities that one haven't realized yet. People who feel that happiness and fulfillment are like elusive dream for them then it is the time for them to join effective and result oriented meditation classes in Melbourne that are organized at different meditation centers across Melbourne to help people fight with their stress and anxiety.
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The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR) is now in the final stages of creating an area in Wells Bottom that will allow bank access to the Cumberland River for fishing purposes.
The project first came to the Clinton County Fiscal Court more than a year ago and Thursday, May 24, the path to the river was cut out and is ready for use.
?I?m going to tell people it?s ready to be used,? Fourth District Magistrate Ricky Craig said. ?I think it will get a lot of use.?
Although the project had been presented more than a year ago to the fiscal court, the KDFWR has spent three or more years on the project alone.
It became a ?go? for Clinton County when the fiscal court voted to accept a road into the county system to give access from the Wells Bottom area to the lower Cumberland River.
?It?s getting in the final stages. I talked to Scott (Merryfield), our contractor, and he has done a pretty nice improvement to your little community,? Lee Kemper, of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wilflife said. ?I?m sure it will be greatly appreciated.?
Kemper said the project was contructed to provide a 15-20 vehicle parking lot for bank fishing access.
?We are going to work with the landowner and we will have access to this resource right here,? Kemper said.
Last July, Tony Wheatley, staff assistant/land acquisition, and Eric Brooker of the engineering division with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, addressed the fiscal court about the local project they said had been in the works since 2008.
Brooker is currently overseeing the local venture, which was estimated to be at least a $140,000 project.
Wheatley said the department?s strategic plan called for increasing angler/fishermen access to the upper Cumberland River, and that was possible at an area at Wells Bottom in northern Clinton County. He added that a property owner in the area had agreed to sell land for the project and funds were in place in the form of a 75/25 matching Sport Fish Recreation grant.
The land the project is taking place on was purchased from Sam Hadley.
Craig is optimistic that in the future, there will be access to the island. He said funding will have to come through donations and fundraising in order for that to happen.
?I?m hoping a swinging bridge can be constructed at some point to give people access to the island,? Craig said.
The island is called Snow Island and is located just east of Rockhouse on the Cumberland River.
?This is going to be nice,? Craig said. ?People who want to fish can come down here at no extra charge. It?s going to be a good thing. People can bring their kids down here and things like that.?
The project, when completed, is expected to be a major tourism and economic boost to the Cumberland River area, including Clinton County.
?It will be a good thing ? it will be good for anybody who wants to fish,? Craig said. ?People could come down and just sit on the bank. We?ve got the potential right now to grow.?
Once the project is complete, Craig is hoping the county will host events at the fishing location like fishing derbys and other events.
?We need to promote it anyway we can,? Craig said. ?We need to get these kids out and take them fishing. If you get the kids, you will have the parents.?
Although funding through the county is tight and with the budget recently being approved, Craig is hopeful more funding will come from the KDFWR once the area has been utilized by the public.
?We are hoping with this project we can get some funding,? Craig said. ?The contractor said they were hoping to get it fenced and gated today (Thursday, May 24). They are moving right along with it. It?s going to be an added benefit for the county. I honestly believe that they will come up with some more funding for this project. It?s going to be too good of a thing and with the fish and wildlife behind it, it will be more interesting for people.?
The main reason for the public access to the Cumberland River is the lack of access in the area to the river. The KDFWR wanted to create more access to this fishing and recreational resource.
During that fiscal court meeting last year, Wheatley explained there were only two current access points to the Cumberland River at this time, those being below the dam and at Helm?s Bottom.
He went on to estimate that opening the third access point would create up to a $300,000 to $400,000 economic impact to this area, and noted even that was a conservative estimate.
?Most of the area around the upper Cumberland is private ownership, so there are limited access areas,? Wheatley said. He said the extra access point from Clinton County, the already estimated 36,000 number of anglers who use the river for fishing and tourism each year would likely only increase. He added that the shoal of the island at Wells Bottom would be one of the better fishing points on the Cumberland River.
In late July of 2011, the court, with assistance from County Attorney Michael Rains and advice from the Department of Local Government, voted to amend its road ordinance to help clear the way for the access road.
The project will be beneficial to our youth, local fishermen, and families, Judge Lyle Huff said at a fiscal court meeting earlier in the year, adding he felt there would be family functions such as picnics and other activities that would take place at the site in the future.
?I?m pleased with the cooperation shown by the fiscal court, my office and the Department of Fish and Wildlife in making this project possible,? he added.
Craig said that added tax revenues, plus the possibility of additional homes being built in the area as an indirect result of the project will be a positive one for the county even in years to come.
?If we (fiscal court) hadn?t of acted on it (project), another county would have,? Craig continued, in noting the department was looking for another access area from some point when they decided the area in Clinton County would be the best.
Earth moving equipment was being used last week to prepare a parking lot near the new fishing access point in Clinton County, located on the Cumberland River.
The term ?web development? has expanded and advanced a great deal in the last decade. It used to be that having an internet existence was a novelty, something to throw on a business card or in a commercial. Websites were reserved for the businesses with the means to spread them widely, or for individuals that didn?t care who observed what they posted.
Web development is noticeably different these days. The end objective is the same? a site on the Internet designed to market an organization, service or firm. These days you could also sell products and services, correspond directly with the business and do so much more. What is web development these days?
Web development has actually come to be a mixture of discipline and also art, just the same as marketing. To succeed online, one needs to understand exactly what to do as well as just what not to do so that a search engine picks them up. On top of that, a website has to be produced for the ultimate utility and usability. We?ve come a long way from the days of frames, embedded music and animated backgrounds. A web page is a major tool for serious enterprises.
Another major distinction is the procedure. Web composition is no longer about setting up a descriptive page and letting it sit. Sites have to be consistently updated, with material suitable for the business and their intentions. Going too long without an update loses visitors and also loses trust. Social media websites have a substantial influence in this too. A firm that ties their internet existence into sociable media is a lot more in touch with their readers and can benefit directly from that contact.
Once again, what is web development? It?s all relating to the online presence. Holding a presence on the internet is just as essential as having a physical storefront, and takes just as much work. Designing an internet site concerns style and substance, the balance amidst a fancy site and a site that can be utilized by all. All of this needs to be carefully planned and implemented by talented designers and online developers that know the markets and know exactly what they?re doing.
Thankfully, there are a lot of proficient designers out on the market, all set to create the perfect website for any type of business, local or otherwise. As complex as it is creating an internet site, there are individuals who make it their life?s work. Virtually every great website these days has a proficient developer behind it, and it shows. That?s web development.
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Public release date: 1-Jun-2012
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