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Egypt plans to start rationing subsidized bread, a government minister said Tuesday, taking a risky step  to curb the budget deficit by restricting the inexpensive loaves that are vital to the poor. David and Bob Schneiderman, who have been together for more than 20 years, said the best thing about the Supreme Court’s decision was sharing the news with family. Low Cut Connie recently returned to their favorite boozy Philadelphia dive Ray's Happy Birthday Bar [...] Eighteen new works by Media Arts and Sciences Assistant Professor Neri Oxman were on exhibit this summer at the Centre Pompidou in Paris as part of Creative Multiversities, an exhibition devoted to forward-looking work in the fields of architecture, design, new technologies and social innovation.Created especially for this exhibit, Oxman’s collection — titled Imaginary Beings: Mythologies of the Not Yet — were inspired by the development and shape of living organisms and reference "The Book of the Imaginary Beings" by Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges, a whimsical compendium of more than 100 "strange creatures" conceived through history  by the human imagination.Read more Every month produces a flood of pictures from the cosmos, but some are much more equal than others. Here are July's 10 best. The MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation announced today that it has released a report, “U.S Re-shoring: A Turning Point,†based on the results of its 2012 U.S. re-shoring survey.In total, 340 participants completed the survey, of which 198 were manufacturing-only companies. Out of those 198 companies, 156 were U.S. companies, defined as having their headquarters in the United States.The top three manufacturing-only industries that responded to the survey were: Computers and Electronics (19.2 percent), Food and Beverage (10.6 percent) and Chemicals (8.1 percent). The category, "Other Manufacturing Companies," includes manufacturers of personal care products, golf equipment and various other companies.For U.S. manufacturing companies, the data indicates a significant disparity between companies that are "considering" versus those that are "definitively" planning  on re-shoring, meaning to bring their manufacturing activities back to the United States. This disparity was independent of company size.Specifically, 33.6 percent of respondents stated that they are "considering" bringing manufacturing back to the United States, while only 15.3 percent of U.S. companies stated that they are "definitively" planning to reshore activities. Time-to-market and controlling costs were two main reasons for re-shoring, according to the survey. Interestingly, one-third of the respondents did not answer this question, possibly indicating a reluctance to discuss the topic due to its sensitive nature.The survey asked the participating U.S. companies to identify government actions that will accelerate the re-shoring process. According to the data, the number one government action that can make a difference is corporate tax reductions, with both providing tax credits and R&D incentives coming in second.MIT Professor David Simchi-Levi, founder of the Forum, says, “Our survey indicates a significant shift in manufacturing footprint. Of course, the fact that 15.3 percent of  the companies are moving manufacturing closer to market demand and others are considering such a move does not mean the end of manufacturing in low cost countries. It suggests that we are in the middle of a transformation from a global manufacturing strategy, where the  focus is on low cost countries, to a more regional strategy, where China is for China and perhaps other emerging markets, U.S. (or Mexico and Latin America) is for the Americas and Eastern Europe is for European markets.â€About the MIT Forum for Supply Chain InnovationThe MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation is a community composed of academics and industry members whose support allows forum researchers to provide customer-focused solutions to design and manage the new supply chain. The Forum has pioneered a  deeper understanding of the supply chain and its relationship to corporate strategy and has broad support from a wide cross-section of industry.Manufacturing Technology Advisory boardIn June 2012, the MIT Forum launched the Manufacturing Technology Advisory Board in response to Forum members’ request for technology transformation guidance. The board consists of MIT academic and research leaders with major forex growth bot and industry leaders to collaborate on key issues around U.S. manufacturing.For more information, please contact:Leslie Sheppard, Chief Strategy OfficerEmail: [email protected]: 617-500-5274 The New Mexico company, Valley Meat, drew complaints over a two-year period from federal inspectors and state regulators over its disposal of remains when it processed cattle for beef. The British-born dancer and ballet master, who performed into his 90s, was known for his stylistic versatility and inexhaustible energy. Payments to thousands who were tortured during 1950s insurgency could open door for other victims of British colonial ruleThe British government is negotiating payments to thousands of Kenyans who were detained and severely mistreated during the 1950s Mau Mau insurgency in what would be the first compensation settlement resulting from official crimes committed under imperial rule.In a development that could pave the way for many other claims from around the world, government lawyers embarked upon the historic talks after suffering a series of defeats in their attempts to prevent elderly survivors of the prison camps from seeking redress through the British courts.Those defeats followed the discovery of a vast archive of colonial-era documents which the Foreign Office (FCO) had kept hidden for decades, and which shed new and stark light on the dying days of British rule, not only in Kenya but around the empire. In the case of the Mau Mau conflict, the secret papers showed that senior colonial officials authorised appalling abuses of inmates held at the prison camps established during the bloody conflict, and that ministers and officials in  London were aware of a brutal detention regime in which men and women were tortured and killed.As a handful of details began to emerge last week from the confidential talks between lawyers for the government and the Mau Mau veterans, the FCO said it acknowledged the need for debate about Britain's past, and added: "It is an enduring feature of our democracy that we are willing to learn from our history." Up to 10,000 former prisoners may be in line for compensation, if the talks result in a settlement. Although the individual amounts will vary greatly, the total compensation is likely to run into tens of millions of pounds.The Foreign Office knows that compensation payments to Mau Mau veterans are likely to trigger claims from other  former colonies. Any such claims, if successful, would not only cost the British taxpayer many millions of pounds; they could result in testimony and the emergence of documentary evidence that would challenge long-cherished views of the manner in which Britain withdrew from its empire.Former Eoka guerrillas who were imprisoned and allegedly mistreated by the British in 1950s Cyprus are already considering bringing claims against the British government.The archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross show that its inspectors documented widespread use of torture in British prisons during that insurgency, with some individuals being waterboarded, with kerosene mixed into the  water.Historians and personal  injury lawyers believe strong claims could be made on behalf of individuals who were imprisoned during the 1960s insurgency in the colony  of Aden, now part of Yemen. Papers from the time show abuses inflicted upon prisoners were carefully documented by British officers, and that senior colonial officials kept the FCO informed.Documentary evidence could also support compensation claims from Swaziland in southern Africa and British Guiana, now Guyana, in South America. However, as a result of a number of rulings in the House of Lords, no damages claims arising from events before 1954 can be brought in the English courts. During the process of decolonisation, the eight-year insurgency known as the Mau Mau uprising was possibly the most bloody conflict in which the British became embroiled, with up to 30,000 Kenyan deaths, both insurgent and loyalist.Thousands of people – estimates vary from 80,000 to 300,000 – were detained in a network of camps that were described in one Pulitzer-winning history of the conflict as Britain's gulag.Official papers from the time confirm that prisoners suffered appalling abuses. Some died under torture, trademiner officials writing about prisoners being "roasted alive". In one of the few prosecutions brought against the torturers, in December 1954, a Nairobi judge, Arthur Cram, compared the methods employed to those of the Gestapo.One of those abused was Hussein Onyango Obama, the grandfather of Barack Obama. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods. Two of the original five claimants who brought the test case against the British government were castrated.It was not until the Kenyan government lifted the ban on the Mau Mau in 2002 that survivors of the camps began to consider legal action, however, and it was a further six years before they asked the high court in London for permission to sue the British government for damages.Government lawyers argued that the claim  should not be heard, initially arguing that under the legal principle of state succession, the Mau Mau veterans should be  suing the Kenyan government and not the British. A number of historians, called as expert witnesses in the case, realised that the government's disclosure of documentation was incomplete. This in turn led to the disclosure of the existence of the enormous secret archive at Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire, a repository for more than 8,000 files from 37 former colonies.Among them was a damning memo from the colony's attorney general, Eric Griffith-Jones, a man who had described the mistreatment of the detainees as "distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia". Despite his misgivings, Griffith-Jones agreed to draft new legislation that sanctioned beatings, as long as the abuse was kept secret. "If we are going to sin," he wrote, "we must sin quietly."When the claimants gave evidence at the high court in London last year, Wambugu Wa Nyingi told how he was detained on Christmas Eve 1952 and held for nine years, much of the time in manacles. He was beaten unconscious during a particularly notorious massacre at a camp at Hola in which 11 men died."I feel I was robbed of my youth and that I did not get to do the things I should have done as a young man," he said. "There is a saying in Kikuyu that old age lives off the years of youth, but I have nothing to live off because my youth was taken from me."Faced with the secret archive evidence and the expert witnesses, government lawyers conceded that the allegations made by Nyingi and the other claimants were true, but continued to oppose their attempt to bring their case, arguing that too much time had elapsed for there to be  a fair trial.That was rejected by the high court last October, with the judge ruling that a fair trial remained possible. "The documentation is voluminous," he said. "And the governments and military commanders seem to have been meticulous record keepers."The FCO announced that it would appeal against a judgment that had "potentially significant and far-reaching legal implications", and a hearing was due to be held later this month. The government also faced considerable international political pressure, with the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, calling publicly on the government to "provide full redress to the victims, including fair and adequate compensation", and writing privately to David Cameron, along with two former special rapporteurs, to warn that the government's position was undermining its moral authority across the world."In our view the response of the British government to vulnerable and elderly victims of (acknowledged) British torture is shameful," they wrote.Last month the FCO told the claimants' lawyers, Leigh Day, that it wished to adjourn the appeal and start negotiating a settlement.In Nairobi, the Kenya Human Rights Commission compiled a list of around 50,000 people whose claims to  be Mau Mau veterans were confirmed by a government committee. This list has since been divided into five categories. George Morare, senior programme officer with the commission, said that any compensation agreed would be paid only to members cure tinnitus category: "Those who can show they suffered personal injury and grievous bodily harm, such as castration or rape."Tom Mboya, a former political adviser to the British high commission in Nairobi who now runs the Kenyan civil rights group Inuka, said: "Symbolically, a payout by the British government might provide further validation for the younger generation of the role the Mau Mau played in the struggle for independence in this country. Recent struggles often obstruct our ability to look at how far we have come as a country, and indeed, where we have come from. It is critically important that younger Kenyans understand this history."Dan Leader, a partner with Leigh Day, said: "The parties are currently exploring the possibility of settling  the claims brought by our clients. Clearly, given the ongoing negotiations, we can't comment further."The Foreign Office also said that it would be "inappropriate" to discuss the talks. In a prepared statement, however, it added: "We believe there should be a debate about the past. It is an enduring feature of our democracy that we are willing to learn from our history."We understand the pain and grievance felt by those, on all sides, who were involved in the divisive and bloody events of the Emergency period in Kenya. It is right that those who feel they have a case are free to take it to the courts."Our relationship with Kenya and its people has moved on and is characterised by close co-operation and partnership, building on the many positives  from our shared history."Mau MauKenyaAfricaTortureHuman rightsIan CobainJessica Hatcherguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Mr. Portman, a leading Republican senator, switched his views after his son informed him of his sexual orientation. There's a maxim in the data centre business that you can't manage what you can't measure, and eBay has  come up with the mother of all measurement systems for calculating data centre efficiency. The wireless provider said its customer growth suffered as it shut down its Nextel network. SEOUL - One year after being released from North Korea, Robert Park still cannot pull his mind away from the country where he spent 43 days. DfE announces that early years teachers will need to have same level of qualifications as those working in primary schoolsEarly years teachers will need to have the same level of qualifications as those working in primary schools in the future under plans to reform pre-school education, it has been announced.Teachers working with young children will be expected to meet new standards similar to those that classroom staff are expected to meet, the Department for Education (DfE) said. They will also be expected to pass the same literacy and numeracy tests taken by  trainee teachers. The move is part an overhaul of childcare qualifications that ministers say will help raise standards for young children. Under the reforms, pre-school staff will either be early years teachers or early years educators.From next September, early years teachers will be expected to be educated to the same level as a primary school teacher, while educators will be asked to hold a qualification equivalent to an A-level.Charlie Taylor, chief executive of  the National College of Teaching and Leadership, said: "There is nothing more important in early education and childcare than the quality of the staff who are delivering it. The workforce supporting our babies, young children and their parents should be well qualified, well respected and well led."Education minister Elizabeth Truss said: "Good quality early years education, which is teacher-led, has been shown to be beneficial for children, especially those from low-income backgrounds. It makes a difference to young children's lives and enables them to learn and grow."Early years educationEducation policyguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated  companies. All  rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More aquaponics 4 you see horseback riding as a leisure -- not fitness -- activity. So when we heard about an electronic equine by the name of Joba, purported to boost core strength via regular "riding," we thought the claims must be a load of, well, equine output. But obligated to patrol the barbed wire of the fitness frontier for you, our valued exercise pardners, we saddled up for a test ride. To coincide with its 100th anniversary, the manufacturer of luxurious leather furniture has officially inaugurated its museum in central Italy. LONDON -- British-based defense contractor BAE Systems PLC bribed Saudi officials in return for lucrative arms deals in Saudi Arabia, according to a newly released secret U.S. diplomatic cable. President Obama's story - the humble beginnings and the rise to prominence and power - is familiar to Brazilians. And so is his race, which has struck a chord in a country with the world's second-largest black population, after Nigeria. If you’ve ever stood on a hill during a rainstorm, you’ve probably witnessed landscape evolution, at least on a small scale: rivulets of water streaming down a slope, cutting deeper trenches in the earth when the rain turns heavier. It’s a simple phenomenon that scientists have long believed applies to large-scale landforms as well — that is, rivers cut faster into mountains that receive heavier precipitation. It’s thought that if rainfall patterns influence how rivers cut into rock, over time, the cumulative erosion and its effects on rock deformation can ultimately control how entire mountain ranges take shape. However, this seemingly intuitive theory — that precipitation influences how quickly landscapes erode — has been difficult to verify, because many other factors, such as rock strength and tectonic-plate motions, can also influence erosion rates. Venezuelans who fled to the United States under President Hugo Chavez's rule celebrated and expressed cautious optimism on Tuesday that the death of the firebrand populist leader may lead to political change in their homeland. Just as many Easterners resist stepping back from their increasingly flooded coast, Westerners build where they want to build and balk at controls. The actor will portray the “maverick, playboy brother†to Elizabeth McGovern’s character Cora. The  struggling Los Angeles Lakers suffered yet another morale-sapping injury setback on Thursday with the news that backup guard Steve Blake will miss Friday's Game Three against the visiting San Antonio Spurs. Researchers at MIT, the Broad Institute and Rockefeller University have developed a new technique for precisely altering the genomes of living cells by adding or deleting genes. The researchers say the technology could offer an easy-to-use, less-expensive way to engineer organisms that produce  biofuels; to design animal models to study human disease; and to develop new therapies, among other potential applications.To create their new genome-editing technique, the researchers modified a set of bacterial proteins that normally defend against viral invaders. Using this system, scientists can alter several genome sites simultaneously and can achieve much greater control over where  new genes are inserted, says Feng Zhang, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and leader of the research team. “Anything that requires engineering of an organism to put in new genes or to modify what’s in the genome will be able to benefit from this,†says Zhang, who is a core member of the Broad Institute and MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research.Zhang and his colleagues describe the new technique in the Jan. 3 online edition of Science. Lead authors of the paper are graduate students Le Cong and Ann Ran.Early effortsThe first genetically altered mice were created in the 1980s by adding small pieces of DNA to mouse embryonic cells. This method is now widely used to create transgenic mice for the study of human disease, but, because it inserts DNA randomly in the genome, researchers can’t target the newly delivered genes to replace existing ones. In recent years, scientists have sought more precise ways to edit the genome. One such method, known as homologous recombination, natural vitiligo treatment download a piece of DNA that includes the gene of interest flanked by sequences that match the genome region where the gene is to be inserted. However, this technique’s success rate is very low because the natural recombination process is rare in normal cells.More recently, biologists discovered that they could improve the efficiency of this process by adding enzymes called nucleases, which can cut DNA. Zinc fingers are commonly used to deliver the nuclease to a specific location, but zinc finger arrays can’t target every possible sequence of DNA, limiting their usefulness. Furthermore, assembling the proteins is a labor-intensive and expensive process.Complexes known as transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) can also cut the genome in specific locations, but these complexes can also be expensive and difficult to assemble. Precise targetingThe new system is much more user-friendly, Zhang says. Making use of naturally occurring bacterial protein-RNA systems that recognize and snip viral DNA, the researchers can create DNA-editing complexes that include a nuclease called Cas9 bound to short RNA sequences. These sequences are designed to target specific locations in the genome; when they encounter a match, Cas9 cuts the DNA. This approach can be used either to disrupt the function of a gene or to replace it with a new one. To replace the gene, the researchers must also add a DNA template for the new gene, which would be copied into the genome after the DNA is cut. Each of the RNA segments can target a different sequence. “That’s the beauty of this — you can easily program a nuclease to target one or more positions in the genome,†Zhang says. The method is also very precise — if there is a single base-pair difference between the RNA targeting sequence and the genome sequence, Cas9 is not activated. This is not the case for zinc fingers or TALEN. The new system also appears to be more efficient than TALEN, and much less expensive. The new system “is a significant advancement in the field of genome editing and, in its first iteration, already appears comparable in efficiency to what zinc finger nucleases and TALENs have to offer,†says Aron Geurts, an associate professor of physiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. “Deciphering the ever-increasing data emerging on genetic variation as it relates to human health and disease will require this type of scalable and precise genome editing in model systems.â€The research team has deposited the necessary genetic components with a nonprofit called Addgene, making the components widely available to other researchers who want to use the system. The researchers have also created a website with tips and tools for using this new technique.Engineering new therapiesAmong other possible applications, this system could be used to design new therapies for diseases such as Huntington’s disease, which appears to be caused by a single abnormal gene. Clinical trials that use zinc finger nucleases to disable genes are now under way, and the new technology could offer a more efficient alternative.The system might also be useful for treating HIV by removing patients’ lymphocytes and mutating the CCR5 receptor, through which the virus enters cells. After being put back in the patient, such cells would resist infection.This approach could also make it easier to study human disease by inducing specific mutations in human stem cells. “Using this genome editing system, you can very systematically put in individual mutations and differentiate the stem cells into neurons or cardiomyocytes and see how the mutations alter the biology of the cells,†Zhang says. In the Science study, the researchers tested the system in cells grown in the lab, but  they plan to apply the new technology to study brain function and diseases. The research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health; the W.M. Keck Foundation; the McKnight Foundation; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation; the Searle Scholars Program; and philanthropic support from MIT alumni Mike Boylan and Bob Metcalfe, as well as the newscaster Jane |
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