Split (1)

train · 2.59M rows

text stringlengths 12 37.3k
Since taking office in January, Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson has intensified the work of the review unit, agreeing to re-examine 90 cases from the 1980s and 1990s to determine if there were wrongful convictions. Most of them stem from concerns about Scarcella's investigative tactics.
Scarcella has been accused of fabricating confessions, manipulating witnesses and intimidating suspects in other cases, charges he denies.
Of 57 Scarcella-related cases, the review board has determined that 11 convictions should stand, prosecutors said.
(WXIA) -- Batter is the best part of a recipe, right?
Krispy Kreme certainly thinks so. The doughnut chain has unveiled two new fresh-from-the-spoon confections inspired by batter.
(WXIA) -- Many businesses chose to close Wednesday because of the icy roads, but not Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q.
All five metro Atlanta locations of the restaurant are open and serving the community, including first responders and community leaders who are working to keep residents safe in the severe weather.
"We are proud to already be serving the hardworking crews from Georgia Power, Snapping Shoals, Jackson EMC and the Forsyth County Sheriff's Department," Jim 'N Nick's local owner Brian Lyman said in a statement.
The gorgeous home has everything you're looking for. Tons of storage space throughout the home. It features a beautifully open and updated kitchen with granite counters, built in microwave, and a spacious walk-in pantry. The sunroom captures the warm afternoon sunlight and offers a lovely space for reading and looking into the large backyard. Mudroom with utility sink are right off the entrance from the three car garage. French doors open to a huge master suite with space for sitting area and his/hers walk in closets. Two bedrooms feature Jack/Jill bathroom and fourth guest bedroom has it's own private bath. Bonus room on second story. Basement finished with tons of space and it's own TV room. Come take a look today!
The February 28th episode of Piers Morgan Tonight, which featured an exclusive interview with Gus Searcy, the mentor of Jodi Arias suffered a yearly low in the key 25-54 demographic with only 87,000 viewers. The show is down 27% in total viewers and 38% in the demo from its debut in Jan. 17th, 2011.
Piers Morgan Tonight also had the lowest demo in its time slot and was even beat by HLN’s Dr. Drew (with 208,000).
Is Mesa Police the new Joe Arpaio?
Montini: Is Mesa Police the new Joe Arpaio?
Instead of 'protect and serve,' former Sheriff Joe Arpaio's mantra became 'us versus them.' That cannot happen in Mesa.
EJ Montini: Instead of 'protect and serve,' former Sheriff Joe Arpaio's mantra became 'us versus them.' That cannot happen in Mesa.
Mesa Police Department has had a series of ugly, unfortunate incidents recently.
That can lead to a reputation for excessive violence that, in turn, creates a atmosphere of distrust within the community.
That distrust, and the accompanying criticism, can lead the department to become more insular, more wary of the very citizens it is charged with protecting.
That distrust can lead to more unfortunate incidents, followed by more public repudiation, followed by lawsuits, followed by a more bad publicity, followed by a deeper, more entrenched bunker mentality.
In other words, you turn into Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s department.
Police Chief Ramon Batista seems determined to not let that happen.
It’s a difficult thing we ask law enforcement officers, to control a potentially dangerous situation while also controlling their adrenaline.
And in order to do their job well the police have to have the confidence of the community, and they must have confidence IN the community. It can’t work any other way.
A change in the department’s use-of-force policy is a start. A change in attitude is even better. It’s important – really important – to be open and transparent about any incident that could erode that confidence. And to not become resentful or defensive.
Openly discussing problems is not undercutting members of your own department. Just the opposite. It is honoring those in the department who do the right thing each day and who don’t deserve to have their reputations impugned by a few rogue officers.
County taxpayers are still paying for it. Literally.
Does taped beating show PD's character?
Six killed. Now can we talk gun laws?
One of the greatest public health fears is an influenza pandemic. Epidemiologists have worried that the avian flu virus, formally known as H5N1, could mutate enough to sicken and pass among humans, who would not have an immunity to it. A universal flu vaccine would prevent such a threat: like some childhood shots, it would confer lifelong protection—and eliminate seasonal flu injections as well. For the Insights story, "Beating the Flu in a Single Shot,"appearing in the June 2008 Scientific American, Alexander Hellemans talked with Walter Fiers of Ghent University in Belgium. Fiers discovered a key protein on the influenza virus that could serve as a target for a universal vaccine; the drug has shown promise in an early clinical trial. Here is an edited excerpt of the interview, translated from Dutch.
Before you started working on the influenza virus, you were actually decoding genomes in the 1960s. Did this then-new technique help you in tackling the influenza virus?
My first research project was the determination of the sequence of nucleotides, a technique which was still in its infancy. The problem we were faced with in 1960-62 was that the determination of the genetic code—and the linking of code words to amino acids was based on synthetic polynucleotides. This did not explain which of the 64 possibilities of combinations occur in nature. This was our first project: the determination of the sequence of a real gene as it occurs in nature, and this was from the genome of the bacteriophage MS2.
Why did you choose this virus?
If you want to resolve a problem, you have to return to the simplest form in which this problem can be solved—this is reductionism. So we looked for a very small virus. We looked for the smallest possible genome: a bacteriophage with RNA. We elucidated the nucleotide sequence of a gene, and this was published in 1972. The bacteriophage MS2 contains four genes, and we published the complete genome in 1976.
So this was the first genome to be sequenced?
This was the first complete genome that we have sequenced. From there, with the technology we developed, at that moment, it was the largest molecule from which the primary structure was determined. Subsequently, researchers have switched to DNA-containing organisms and now have reached humans. But the automation required for this was far beyond our capabilities.
You switched from studies of bacteriophages to the influenza virus in the 1970s. Why?
Because it had an enormous medical relevance and importance. The problem we had then, which we still have today, is the phenomenon of drift and shift. If it were not for drift—the accumulation of point mutations—and shift—the interchange of genes from animal and human strains—we would have had a vaccine based on serological data. Because of drift and shift, the World Health Organization [WHO] makes a prediction every year about the strain that is the most likely to cause an epidemic in the Western world. Based on this information one makes a vaccine the classical way, growing them in eggs, something that was started just after the Second World War, around 1950. And this is still being done the same way.
How do organizations, such as the WHO, predict these mutations?
On the basis of an epidemic that spreads out in other parts of the world. For example, epidemics that happen in the Northern Hemisphere usually mirror what previously happened in the Southern Hemisphere. And if we know against which epidemics our population here has acquired immunity, we can then see whether there are other advancing epidemics that will not be stopped by the local immunity, making it probable that it may cause an epidemic here.
Every year in February, the WHO reports which new strains are the best candidates for an epidemic. Sometimes they don't change, but sometimes they all change.
Do these seasonal vaccines have certain disadvantages?
Yes, the disadvantages are enormous. Currently, the preparation of classical vaccines is very expensive; you need huge numbers of fertilized chicken eggs, a whole infrastructure.
Secondly, we sometimes miss the strain that becomes active. Research has shown that when all the data are taken together, the prediction rate is about 80 to 90 percent. But there are examples where large vaccination programs have taken place where the wrong strain was targeted. And the great disadvantage is that if a pandemic arrives, we will not be prepared.
Why do researchers think that a pandemic could be likely?
All the information that we have seems to indicate that for the 1918 flu—the mother of all the pandemics, which killed 50 million people—could have been caused by a virus strain from birds. Now we know that influenza is common among all kinds of birds, but it could also come from another animal. There is the possibility that the bird flu will adapt itself for human-to-human transmission. This has not happened, but there have been some 250 people killed by the H5 strain in different areas of South Asia. There is a larger than 50 percent mortality if humans are infected. If you have 500 million of these viruses, you have a larger probability that among these viruses there is one or two mutants that have the required combination for spreading among humans. This is justifiably a great danger.
When transmission takes place between birds, they don't have an equivalent immune response like humans. Consequently, the virus doesn't change. With humans you will not have the same conservation of the virus. On the contrary, I'm strongly convinced that if in Hong Kong, or somewhere else, a pandemic started to develop, it will quickly spread throughout the world, but there will be no immune defenses because nobody had been previously exposed.
So your solution is a universal vaccine.
You need a vaccine that is not invalidated by drift and shift. We've researched this via many years and PhDs. At the end of the 1980s and during the early 1990s we started thinking that a new approach that proved successful might lead to a universal vaccine.
If you have a pathogen—a virus—that infects man, most people will survive. The recovered person now has convalescence serum—that is, a serum that contains antibodies against the pathogen. With the antibodies we look for which viral proteins are their targets. If we identify these, we can create a vaccine, which targets these proteins. But in the case of drift, you need another strategy.
We found that besides the large HA (hemagglutinin) and NA (neuraminidase) there is a small protein, M2e, which does occur on the virus in very small quantities. So people didn't view it as important, but for us it was very important because it does not elicit anti-M2e in the majority of recovering people.
In other words, the virus's M2e does not naturally set off an immune response in humans. How do you get the immune system to target that small protein, then?
We have made it highly immunogenic by implanting it on a viruslike particle, so that if we present this in this way to the immune system, it is very immunogenic. M2e is only slightly present on the virus, but in the lung epithelium cells where the virus ends up and starts multiplying, in the invaded cells, M2e becomes abundant. The target is not the virus, but the virus-infected cell. If you, at an early stage, can kill off these cells, than you will counteract the infection.
Why doesn't the virus's M2e gene vary the way the HA and NA genes do?
In part, because of the absence of immune selection, which plays a role in the introduction of drift, so there are not many antibodies. But there is also the fact that M1 and M2 [to which M2e is attached] are coded by two overlapping genes. M1 has very important functions at several levels, which strongly restricts the variability of both M1 and M2. Any mutations in them will impede the virus from reproducing.
So the universal vaccine acts on the M2e protein segment, which cannot undergo changes. What are the other advantages of a universal vaccine?
With the universal vaccine we can, just like for polio, give an immunization—and then again, a month later, another immunization, and perhaps a year later another one. You have more possibilities to induce a full-blown immunity.
Would you say that the phase I trial done by Acambis, based in Cambridge, U.K., and Cambridge, Mass., has been successful?
Yes, our technology has been licensed to Acambis, which has done the trial and has published the results in a press release. The results are promising: 90 percent of the vaccinated people were found to be seropositive. But we don't know whether the antibodies that are induced are antibodies that protect. We have done the equivalent trial with ferrets. We can give them a "challenge"—that is, infect them with H5N1, and we found that they were well-protected.
Ferrets are known to mirror what happens to humans. If you give a flu virus to ferrets, they develop an analogous pathology to humans.
What are the plans for a phase II trial?
First, you will have to do the trial with a large number of people. Second, you will have to find an area where there is a large probability that an influenza epidemic will take place. We are thinking of countries from the Southern Hemisphere. We have to be lucky in pinpointing such an area, and it will require the inoculation of thousands of people.
Another possibility, but we are less attracted to this, is giving people a challenge, where one infects people with a virus. Often one can recover from a virus infection. But an induced infection is less convincing than if we would do a real field trial.
In your view, another requirement for a vaccine to stave off a pandemic is that it should be administered via nasal drops?
For me it is clear that if there will be a pandemic, the chance that this happens is not in the rich West, but in the developing world. The first victims will be found in the enormous cities, in the poverty around these cities. We will have to vaccinate these people quickly, and medical workers injecting people is too slow.
The solution is to administer the vaccine nasally; nose drops can be administered by anyone. We have noticed that with intranasal administration with mice we obtain titers [antibody concentration] as high as with intramuscular injection. We expect that this will also work when applied to humans. But we still have a lot of work ahead of us.
This story was originally printed with the title, "Beating the Flu".
Archives\|OPPOSE GOLD PROPOSAL.; Snowden Will Move In Commons Monday to Reject Churchill Plan.
OPPOSE GOLD PROPOSAL.; Snowden Will Move In Commons Monday to Reject Churchill Plan.
Essential information for visitors heading to one of Europe's popular Christmas markets.
The beauty of many Christmas markets is that they are close enough to make catching the train a viable alternative to flying. The following are easily reach by train (www.eurostar.com) or ferry (www.stenaline.com; www.seafrance.com, www.poferries.com).
Festivities start early in Holland with the arrival of Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) and his helpers, Zwarte Pieten, on November 14. Saint Nicholas traditionally leaves town on December 5, the eve of Saint Nicholas Day, but these days the Christmas fun continues with markets, concerts and a boat parade on December 23.
The Dylan Hotel (0031 20 530 2010; www.dylanamsterdam.com) is offering Telegraph Travel readers a Winter High Wine Special in December – a six-course dinner, with wines for each course, room, breakfast and a gift from £182.
From November 26 to January 2, the heart of Brussels is transformed by 240 wooden stalls selling an array of traditional and seasonal products.
Kirker Holidays (020 7593 2288; www.kirkerholidays.com) offers two nights’ b&b in the four-star Metropole hotel from £419, including Eurostar from London to Brussels.
Enjoy the Christmas traditions and markets of three different countries in one trip. Travelling by train from London, this tour will take you to Liège’s Christmas market, the traditional German market of Aachen and the pretty Dutch town of Valkenburg.
Ffestiniog Travel (01766 772957; www.ffestiniogtravel.com) offers a four-night escorted European Christmas tour from £465, including all rail travel and b&b, departing on December 6.
If you prefer your wine chilled and bubbly rather than hot and spicy, then the Christmas market in Reims might be more up your street. There are more than 125 stalls plus parades, carols, concerts and a resident Father Christmas.
Grape Escapes (08456 430860; www.champagneescapes.com) has a wine-tasting weekend to coincide with the Reims Christmas market (December 10-12). Prices are from £295, with return Dover-Calais ferry, two nights’ b&b, a full-day champagne tasting tour and four-course gourmet lunch with accompanying wines and champagnes.
FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Optovue, the global leader in the development of optical coherence tomography (OCT) and OCT angiography (OCTA), today announced an expanded FDA 510(k) clearance for non-contact, quantitative measurements of the epithelial and stromal layers of the cornea, termed epithelial thickness mapping or ETM. The expanded clearance adds a nine-millimeter ETM scan to the previously available six-millimeter map, allowing for detection of epithelial irregularities in an area that is about two-and-a-quarter times that of the area covered by the six-millimeter scan.
Optovue’s ETM, now available on the Avanti® Widefield OCT system, is the first and only FDA-cleared product indicated to provide corneal epithelial and stromal measurements that aid in the diagnosis, documentation and management of ocular health and diseases in the adult population. The measurement of corneal epithelial thickness is recognized by medical professionals as a vital part of assessing patients for refractive surgery and following post-operative recovery, as well as managing patients with progressive eye diseases and ocular surface disorders.
Optovue’s new mapping software provides epithelial thickness information in an efficient and simple exam. Traditional epithelial measurements require high-frequency digital ultrasound and saline. In addition, ETM software complements other diagnostic tests by providing unique information about ocular health that may be clinically valuable prior to topography-guided procedures including LASIK and PRK. ETM was previously cleared on the company’s iVue system in 2017.
In clinical studies that evaluated ETM, disruptions of the epithelial layer were found in patients with all stages of keratoconus, a progressive eye disease in which the normally round cornea thins and begins to bulge into a cone-like shape. An irregular epithelial layer was also observed in dry eye disease, which affects nearly 20 million people in the U.S.1 If left undetected, these conditions could adversely impact refractive surgery outcomes. Pre-surgical assessment with ETM could help determine whether patients are suitable for refractive procedures. ETM also provides important information about how the eye is healing after refractive and corneal surgery.
Optovue, Inc. is a privately held medical device company founded in 2003. Headquartered in Fremont, Calif., the company is dedicated to the advancement and commercialization of high-speed OCT and OCTA technology used to facilitate the diagnosis and management of eye diseases, many of which may lead to permanent blindness. Optovue is the first company to develop and commercialize the pioneering OCTA technology. To date, there are over 400 peer-reviewed publications detailing the AngioVue® OCTA imaging technology and clinical applications. The company has installed over 11,000 products worldwide. For more information, visit www.optovue.com.
"It is a disaster off the Somali coast, a disaster (for) the Somali environment, the Somali population," the UN special envoy for Somalia said.
The UN special envoy for Somalia on Friday sounded the alarm about rampant illegal fishing and the dumping of toxic waste off the coast of the lawless African nation.
"Because there is no (effective) government, there is so much irregular fishing from European and Asian countries," Ahmedou Ould Abdallah told reporters.
He said he had asked several international non-governmental organizations, including Global Witness, which works to break the links between natural resource exploitation, conflict, corruption, and human rights abuses worldwide, "to trace this illegal fishing, illegal dumping of waste."
"It is a disaster off the Somali coast, a disaster (for) the Somali environment, the Somali population," he added.
East African waters, particularly off Somalia, have huge numbers of commercial fish species, including the prized yellowfin tuna.
"I am convinced there is dumping of solid waste, chemicals and probably nuclear (waste).... There is no government (control) and there are few people with high moral ground," Ould Abdallah added.
Allegations of waste dumping off Somalia by European companies have been heard for years, according to Somalia watchers. The problem was highlighted in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami when broken hazardous waste containers washed up on Somali shores.
On Sunday pirates seized a 52,000-tonne Japanese vessel and its 21 crew members off the Somali coast.
Battling the widespread perception that U.S. border cities have become more dangerous, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Monday called on public officials to stop exaggerating the violence on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico and "be honest with the people we serve."
In a speech in El Paso, Napolitano cited FBI statistics showing that violent crime rates in Southwest border counties are down 30% over the last two decades and are "among the lowest in the nation."
Napolitano's effort to change the public perception of danger follows a heated campaign season last fall that saw candidates in border states frequently emphasizing the effects of illegal immigration on their communities.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, was criticized during the campaign for saying that headless bodies were being found in the Arizona desert, a statement she retracted after local coroners could not confirm her claim.
A few mayors in the region recently have said that the portrayal of their towns as dangerous has hurt them economically.
"Let's stick with the facts," Napolitano said. "We need to be up front and clear about what's really happening along our borders."
Even as the drug war has escalated just south of the border, crime rates in Arizona border towns have remained essentially flat, said Napolitano, citing the addition of personnel and technology in the region.
She added that the number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the border — an indication of illegal cross-border traffic — has decreased 36% over the last two years.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.