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Friday, November 1, 2013

Cellular tail length tells disease tale

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

31-Oct-2013

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Contact: Carol Thorbes
cthorbes@sfu.ca
778-782-3035
Simon Fraser University

Simon Fraser University molecular biologist Lynne Quarmby's adventures in pond scum have led her and four student researchers to discover a mutation that can make cilia, the microscopic antennae on our cells, grow too long. When the antennae aren't the right size, the signals captured by them get misinterpreted. The result can be fatal.

In a newly published paper in the science journal Current Biology, the researchers discovered that the regulatory gene CNK2 is present in cilia and controls the length of these hair-like projections.

This discovery is important because cilia, or flagella, dangle from all of our cells. Their ability to propel some cells, such as sperm, and allow molecular communication in others, for example cellular responses to hormones, determines how we develop from embryos and how our bodies function in adulthood.

When cilia are too short or too long they cause various human hereditary diseases and deformities, such as too many fingers or toes, blindness and Polycystic Kidney Disease, which affects one in 600 people.

Quarmby and her doctoral student Laura Hiltonsenior and lead authors, respectively, on this paperare among the few scientists globally who study cilia-disassembly as opposed to -assembly.

A crucial part of all cells' lifecycle is their cilia's disassembly before cell division and assembly after it. The gene LF4 is a known assembly regulator, and, prior to this study, scientists thought that assembly speed controlled cilia's ultimate length or shrinkage. But Quarmby and Hilton have discovered that disassembly speed is also important, and that the regulatory gene CNK2 plays a key role in controlling it.

Similar to how a balance between water pressure and gravity determines the height of a fountain's stream, a balance of assembly and disassembly speed determines cilia's length. When growing and shrinking happen simultaneously cilia length remains constant.

Pond scum's algae make good lab models for analyzing this because they reproduce quickly, and they have cellular structure and cilia that closely parallel ours. Quarmby and Hilton have been mucking about with pond scum for years and recently started studying algae cilia with defective CNK2 and LF4 genes.

After discovering that cilia with either defective gene are abnormally long, they created an algae cell with four cilia, instead of the normal two, with two of the four engineered to glow green.

Along with two SFU undergrad students and a University of Toronto undergrad, Quarmby and Hilton watched as the fluorescent green tag began to appear at the tip of the untagged pair of cilia.

"We were able to deduce how the mutations affected the cilia's assembly and disassembly by measuring how much and how quickly green fluorescence appeared at the tip of the untagged cilia," explains Quarmby.

"We knew that we had something important when we saw that cells bearing mutations in both CNK2 and LF4 had the most extraordinarily long cilia. They were unlike anything anyone had ever seen before.

"My student Laura ran this experiment and oversaw our undergrad researchers. It gave us unique insights into the potentially key role disassembling cilia have in deciding the tails' length. Further investigation will help us understand how ciliary malfunction causes a progression of diseases."

The SFU undergrads working with Quarmby and Hilton were Kavisha Gunawardane and Marianne Schwarz. The UofT student was Joo Wan (James) Kim.

###
Simon Fraser University is Canada's top-ranked comprehensive university and one of the top 50 universities in the world under 50 years old. With campuses in Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey, B.C., SFU engages actively with the community in its research and teaching, delivers almost 150 programs to more than 30,000 students, and has more than 120,000 alumni in 130 countries.

Simon Fraser University: Engaging Students. Engaging Research. Engaging Communities.

Simon Fraser University

Public Affairs/Media Relations (PAMR)

778.782.3210 http://www.sfu.ca/pamr

Contact:

Lynne Quarmby (West Van. resident), 778.782.4474, quarmby@sfu.ca

Laura Hilton (North Van. resident), 778.782.4598, lkh@sfu.ca

Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca

Photos: http://at.sfu.ca/UzEqCZ

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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.

Cellular tail length tells disease tale

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

31-Oct-2013

[

| E-mail

]

Share
Contact: Carol Thorbes
cthorbes@sfu.ca
778-782-3035
Simon Fraser University

Simon Fraser University molecular biologist Lynne Quarmby's adventures in pond scum have led her and four student researchers to discover a mutation that can make cilia, the microscopic antennae on our cells, grow too long. When the antennae aren't the right size, the signals captured by them get misinterpreted. The result can be fatal.

In a newly published paper in the science journal Current Biology, the researchers discovered that the regulatory gene CNK2 is present in cilia and controls the length of these hair-like projections.

This discovery is important because cilia, or flagella, dangle from all of our cells. Their ability to propel some cells, such as sperm, and allow molecular communication in others, for example cellular responses to hormones, determines how we develop from embryos and how our bodies function in adulthood.

When cilia are too short or too long they cause various human hereditary diseases and deformities, such as too many fingers or toes, blindness and Polycystic Kidney Disease, which affects one in 600 people.

Quarmby and her doctoral student Laura Hiltonsenior and lead authors, respectively, on this paperare among the few scientists globally who study cilia-disassembly as opposed to -assembly.

A crucial part of all cells' lifecycle is their cilia's disassembly before cell division and assembly after it. The gene LF4 is a known assembly regulator, and, prior to this study, scientists thought that assembly speed controlled cilia's ultimate length or shrinkage. But Quarmby and Hilton have discovered that disassembly speed is also important, and that the regulatory gene CNK2 plays a key role in controlling it.

Similar to how a balance between water pressure and gravity determines the height of a fountain's stream, a balance of assembly and disassembly speed determines cilia's length. When growing and shrinking happen simultaneously cilia length remains constant.

Pond scum's algae make good lab models for analyzing this because they reproduce quickly, and they have cellular structure and cilia that closely parallel ours. Quarmby and Hilton have been mucking about with pond scum for years and recently started studying algae cilia with defective CNK2 and LF4 genes.

After discovering that cilia with either defective gene are abnormally long, they created an algae cell with four cilia, instead of the normal two, with two of the four engineered to glow green.

Along with two SFU undergrad students and a University of Toronto undergrad, Quarmby and Hilton watched as the fluorescent green tag began to appear at the tip of the untagged pair of cilia.

"We were able to deduce how the mutations affected the cilia's assembly and disassembly by measuring how much and how quickly green fluorescence appeared at the tip of the untagged cilia," explains Quarmby.

"We knew that we had something important when we saw that cells bearing mutations in both CNK2 and LF4 had the most extraordinarily long cilia. They were unlike anything anyone had ever seen before.

"My student Laura ran this experiment and oversaw our undergrad researchers. It gave us unique insights into the potentially key role disassembling cilia have in deciding the tails' length. Further investigation will help us understand how ciliary malfunction causes a progression of diseases."

The SFU undergrads working with Quarmby and Hilton were Kavisha Gunawardane and Marianne Schwarz. The UofT student was Joo Wan (James) Kim.

###
Simon Fraser University is Canada's top-ranked comprehensive university and one of the top 50 universities in the world under 50 years old. With campuses in Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey, B.C., SFU engages actively with the community in its research and teaching, delivers almost 150 programs to more than 30,000 students, and has more than 120,000 alumni in 130 countries.

Simon Fraser University: Engaging Students. Engaging Research. Engaging Communities.

Simon Fraser University

Public Affairs/Media Relations (PAMR)

778.782.3210 http://www.sfu.ca/pamr

Contact:

Lynne Quarmby (West Van. resident), 778.782.4474, quarmby@sfu.ca

Laura Hilton (North Van. resident), 778.782.4598, lkh@sfu.ca

Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca

Photos: http://at.sfu.ca/UzEqCZ

[

| 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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/sfu-ctl102913.php
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Keen On… Social Media: The First 2,000 Years

How old is social media? Maybe we can date it from the birth of Facebook in February 2004. Or perhaps we can go back to 2002, to when Friendster was founded. Or even way, way, way back to digital antiquity – back to 1997, when Reid Hoffman founded the first social media website, SocialNet.

No, social media is actually older, 2,000 years older, than Facebook, Friendster or SocialNet. That’s the view at least of Tom Standage, the digital editor of the Economist, whose new book Writing In The Wall: Social Media – The First 2,000 Years makes the intriguing argument that social media has actually been around since the Romans. It’s the industrial top-down media of the last 150 years, Standage told me, that is the historical anomaly. Social media, he explains, “scratches a prehistorical itch” for personalized news, opinion and gossip. So rather than a waste of time or a distraction, he insists, Facebook and Twitter are actually something that satisfies us as human-beings.

Standage is too good a historian to argue that nothing about social media is new. He acknowledges, for example, that the globalized, instantaneous and searchable nature of social networks are truly new. Yet Standage’s comparisons of contemporary social media with Roman papyrus letters or hand-printed tracts of the Reformation really do suggest that social media goes a lot further back than 1997. “The only surprising things about social media,” Standage dryly concludes, “is that we are surprised by it.”

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/gTWh54jWKJk/
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Antonio Rogerio Nogueira injured, out of Alexander Gustafsson fight

Just five days after UFC president Dana White announced a light heavyweight bout between Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and Alexander Gustafsson for the promotion's return to London, England on March 8, the UFC has been forced to change its plans.

"Minotouro" has withdrawn from the fight due to a lingering back injury, sources close to the situation confirmed with MMAFighting.com before White also confirmed the news with Ariel Helwani.

White added that there are no plans for Gustafsson's next fight yet. Gustafsson's team also said it heard the news but didn't know who the Swedish fighter will draw next.

Nogueira, who is expected to be ready to fight again in May, hasn't fought since his unanimous decision victory over Rashad Evans at UFC 156 in February. During his UFC career, the Brazilian light heavyweight has pulled out of multiple bouts due to injury, cancelling matches against Rich Franklin, Mauricio Rua, as well as Gustafsson back in April 2012. The same back injury forced him out of his UFC 161 rematch against Rua.

Gustafsson vs. Nogueira was scheduled to headline the first of six events in Europe next year. The card will take place at the O2 Arena in London.

Source: http://www.mmafighting.com/2013/10/31/5052980/antonio-rogerio-nogueira-injured-out-of-alexander-gustafsson-fight
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Congress announces it will be in session fewer days in 2014

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., with House GOP leaders, speaks with reporters following a Republican strategy session, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013. At left is Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio. House GOP leaders Tuesday floated a plan to fellow Republicans to counter an emerging Senate deal to reopen the government and forestall an economy-rattling default on U.S. obligations. But the plan got mixed reviews from the rank and file and it was not clear whether it could pass the chamber. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Imagine that someone asked you to name the one group of people who've earned the right to spend less time at the office next year. To just relax. Because, darn it, they've really busted their humps in 2013, and everyone is extremely pleased with the job they're doing.

We're guessing "United States Congress" wouldn't be at the top of your list.

Well, guess what? Congress, the group of esteemed lawmakers who brought you the government shutdown of 2013, has announced that they plan to be in session for fewer days next year.

The news came from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., who announced the schedule on Twitter.

Follow the links and you'll get to this handy-dandy schedule (PDF) that lists the days when Congress will be in session. The grand total for 2014: 113 scheduled days. In 2013, the expected total was 126 days.

To be fair, members of Congress spend a considerable amount of time in their districts. As RollCall puts it, "the work doesn't end when lawmakers leave Washington."

Still, the shorter session begs the question: Why? Not to mention that the shorter session has the potential to be more bad PR for a group in the single-digit job-approval ratings and, as of early October, less popular than cockroaches.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/congress-announces-reduced-work-schedule-for-2014-212306623.html
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Congress announces it will be in session fewer days in 2014

We're guessing "United States Congress" wouldn't be at the top of your list.

Well, guess what? Congress, the group of esteemed lawmakers who brought you the government shutdown of 2013, has announced that they plan to be in session for fewer days next year.

The news came from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., who announced the schedule on Twitter.

To be fair, members of Congress spend a considerable amount of time in their districts. As RollCall puts it, "the work doesn't end when lawmakers leave Washington."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/congress-announces-reduced-work-schedule-for-2014-212306623.html
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Thursday, October 31, 2013

NSA Caught Siphoning Data from Google, Yahoo Servers

There is "no way" the NSA's newly revealed surveillance activities could have been legal, asserted Fred Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University. "There is obviously a big security issue here," Cate explained. "It puts us in an almost surreal position, especially as there is no way that the NSA could truly differentiate between U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens."

The National Security Agency has tapped fiber-optic cables that connect Google's and Yahoo's overseas servers and accessed vast amounts of data including email and other personal information, according to a Wednesday report in The Washington Post.

Included in the data culled by the NSA is information on hundreds of millions of users, many of whom are American, the Post reported, citing documents obtained by NSA contractor Edward Snowden along with interviews with other officials.

The NSA's acquisition directorate reportedly sent millions of records daily from internal Yahoo and Google networks to a data warehouse at the agency's Fort Meade, Md., headquarters.

'Not True'

The NSA balked at the idea that it was looking into the personal information of American citizens.

"NSA has multiple authorities that it uses to accomplish its mission, which is centered on defending the nation," NSA spokesperson Vanee Vines told TechNewsWorld. "The Washington Post's assertion that we use Executive Order 12333 collection to get around the limitations imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and FAA 702 is not true.

"The assertion that we collect vast quantities of U.S. persons' data from this type of collection is also not true," Vines added. "NSA applies Attorney General-approved processes to protect the privacy of U.S. persons, minimizing the likelihood of their information in our targeting, collection, processing, exploitation, retention and dissemination."

NSA is "a foreign intelligence agency," Vines concluded, "and we're focused on discovering and developing intelligence about valid foreign intelligence targets only."

'We Are Outraged'

Both Google and Yahoo stressed that they did not participate in the NSA's data collection.

"We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping, which is why we have continued to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links," said David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer. "We do not provide any government, including the U.S. government, with access to our systems.

"We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks," Drummond added. "It underscores the need for urgent reform."

Similarly, "we have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers," Yahoo spokesperson Lauren Armstrong told TechNewsWorld. "We have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency."

'A Gross Violation'

It's unclear exactly how the NSA achieved this tap, but the Post report suggests that "anything flowing between Google's data servers would be vulnerable, which means both metadata and content of millions of emails, among other things," Trevor Timm, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, pointed out.

Was the surveillance legal?

"The U.S. government thinks it is," Timm told TechNewsWorld. "We think it's a gross violation of the privacy rights of Americans and those abroad.

"Congress will act to make sure this will never happen again, and tech companies will implement changes to make sure the NSA can't do it again even if they tried," he added.

"There is no way it could have been legal," Fred Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, told TechNewsWorld.

"There is obviously a big security issue here," Cate explained. "It puts us in an almost surreal position, especially as there is no way that the NSA could truly differentiate between U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens, as they claim."

A Fine Line

Of course, these revelations are just the latest in what's becoming a long stream of leaks about government surveillance.

"The truth is, even with all the public leaks and media reporting to date, presumably there's still much we neither know nor have the ability to accurately/fairly understand in full context," Jeffrey Silva, senior policy director for telecommunications, media and technology at Medley Global Advisors, told TechNewsWorld.

"Questions about the legality and appropriateness of certain government surveillance -- especially in the post-9/11 world -- are apt to persist on an ongoing basis with every new revelation," Silva added.

"The government may need to make a stronger case, and repeat it often, that expanded surveillance is a price that must be paid in the post-9/11era if U.S. citizens want to be safe," he concluded. "At the same, there's the question of whether current level of government surveillance, that even if legal, amounts to overkill and an unnecessary intrusion on American privacy."

A Chill Down the Spine

In the bigger picture, the revelations are "like layers of an onion," suggested Tim Erlin, director of IT risk and security strategy at Tripwire. "This period of information security history will do more to spur a renewed interest in verifiable security, including end-to-end encryption and distributed systems for validation, than anything we've seen in a long time."

The fact is, however, "we've tacitly agreed to allow our personal data be aggregated in large organizations like Google, Yahoo and Facebook," Erlin told TechNewsWorld. "These companies have so much intelligence that they have become too attractive as intelligence targets."

Indeed, "the companies involved should be the ones with most concerns," said Cate. "This is not good for their business."

Moreover, "when you look at it with the tapestry of all the programs that we've seen come to light," he added, "that is when the cold chill goes down your spine."

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/79324.html
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Court blocks ruling on NY police stop-frisk policy

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked a judge's ruling that found the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy was discriminatory and took the unusual step of removing her from the case, saying interviews she gave during the trial called her impartiality into question.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the rulings by U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin will be stayed pending the outcome of an appeal by the city.

The judge ruled in August the city violated the Constitution in how it carried out its program of stopping and questioning people. The city appealed her findings and her remedial orders, including a decision to assign a monitor to help the police department change its policy and the training program associated with it.

During arguments, lawyers in the case said the police department hasn't had to do anything except meet with a monitor since the judge's decision. But the city said police officers are afraid to stop and frisk people now and the number of stop-and-frisks has dropped dramatically.

The three-judge appeals panel, which heard arguments on the requested stay on Tuesday, noted that the case might be affected in a major way by next week's mayoral election.

Democratic candidate Bill de Blasio, who's leading in polls, has sharply criticized and promised to reform the NYPD's stop-and-frisk technique, saying it unfairly targets minorities. He said he was "extremely disappointed" in Thursday's decision.

The appeals court said the judge needed to be removed because she ran afoul of the code of conduct for U.S. judges in part by compromising the necessity for a judge to avoid the appearance of partiality. It noted she had given a series of media interviews and public statements responding to criticism of the court. In a footnote, it cited interviews with the New York Law Journal, The Associated Press and The New Yorker magazine.

The judge said Thursday that quotes from her written opinions gave the appearance she had commented on the case in interviews. But she said a careful reading of each interview will reveal no such comments were made.

The 2nd Circuit said cases challenging stop-and-frisk policies will be assigned to a different judge chosen randomly. It said the new presiding judge shall stay all proceedings pending further rulings by it.

After a 10-week civil trial that ended in the spring, Scheindlin ruled that police officers violated the civil rights of tens of thousands of people by wrongly targeting black and Hispanic men with the stop-and-frisk program. She appointed an outside monitor to oversee major changes, including reforms in policies, training and supervision, and she ordered a pilot program to test body-worn cameras.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented plaintiffs in the case, said it was dismayed that the appeals court delayed "the long-overdue process to remedy the NYPD's unconstitutional stop-and-frisk practices" and was shocked that it "cast aspersions" on the judge's professional conduct and reassigned the case.

The city said it was pleased with the federal appeals court ruling. City lawyer Michael Cardozo said it allows for a fresh and independent look at the issue.

Stop-and-frisk, which has been criticized by civil rights advocates, has been around for decades, but recorded stops increased dramatically under Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration to an all-time high in 2011 of 684,330, mostly of black and Hispanic men. A lawsuit was filed in 2004 by four men, all minorities, and became a class action case.

About 5 million stops have been made in New York in the past decade, with frisks occurring about half the time. To make a stop, police must have reasonable suspicion that a crime is about to occur or has occurred, a standard lower than the probable cause needed to justify an arrest. Only about 10 percent of the stops result in arrests or summonses, and weapons are found about 2 percent of the time.

Supporters of changes to the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program say the changes will end unfair practices, will mold a more trusted police force and can affect how other police departments use the policy. Opponents say the changes will lower police morale but not crime.

The judge noted she wasn't putting an end to the stop-and-frisk practice, which is constitutional, but was reforming the way the NYPD implemented its stops.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-31-US-Stop-and-Frisk/id-e824f3d755fa42c2bd3214cc0883e51f
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