Orange made a bold pledge to the future of Europe's "digital economy" yesterday, promising to bring 4G / LTE networks to all EU markets by the year 2015, and reaffirming its commitment to Africa and the Middle East. The France-based carrier outlined its plan during an event in Brussels, where CEO Stéphane Richard and European Commission digital chief Neelie Kroes met to discuss the Commission's "Digital Agenda for Europe." Orange laid out ten commitments in total, including a promise to make FTTH available for 15 million households and 80 percent of all businesses in France by the year 2020. It also vowed to bring 3 million NFC-enabled handsets to the EU this year, and 10 million by the year 2013. Perhaps most salient to Kroes' agenda was Orange's promise to offer customers a privacy "dashboard" by the year 2015, allowing them to more directly control their personal data. In Africa and the Middle East, meanwhile, the company is looking to roll out its 3G network by the year 2015, in the hopes of providing 80 percent of the population with mobile services. For more promises and optimism, check out the full PR after the break.
Since it's launch, there's been talk about the new iPad running hot. Well, here's some proof: these images show the outer case gets 10 degrees warmer than its predecessor. More »
Why getting healthy can seem worse than getting sickPublic release date: 20-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kevin Stacey kstacey@press.uchicago.edu 401-284-3878 University of Chicago Press Journals
A new article in The Quarterly Review of Biology helps explain why the immune system often makes us worse while trying to make us well.
The research offers a new perspective on a component of the immune system known as the acute-phase response, a series of systemic changes in blood protein levels, metabolic function, and physiology that sometimes occurs when bacteria, viruses, or other pathogens invade the body. This response puts healthy cells and tissue under serious stress, and is actually the cause of many of the symptoms we associate with being sick.
"The question is why would these harmful components evolve," asks Edmund LeGrand (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), who wrote the paper titled with Joe Alcock (University of New Mexico). The researchers contend that answer becomes clear when we view the acute-phase response in terms of what they call "immune brinksmanship."
The immune brinksmanship model "is the gamble that systemic stressors will harm the pathogens relatively more than the host," LeGrand said. The concept, he explains, is akin to what happens in international trade disputes. When one country places trade sanctions on another, both countries' economies take a hit, but the sanctioning country is betting that its opponent will be hurt more.
"One of our contributions here is to pull together the reasons why pathogens suffer more from systemic stress," LeGrand said.
The acute-phase response creates stress in several ways. It raises body temperature and causes loss of appetite and mild anemia. At the same time, certain vital nutrients like iron, zinc, and manganese are partially sequestered away from the bloodstream.
Some of these components are quite puzzling. Why reduce food intake just when one would expect more energy would be needed to mount a strong immune response? Zinc is essential for healthy immune function. Why pull it out of the bloodstream when the immune system is active? The benefits of a stressor like fever are fairly well known; heat has been shown to inhibit bacterial growth and cause infected cells to self-destruct. But what hasn't been clear is why pathogens should be more susceptible to this stress than the host.
LeGrand and Alcock offer some answers. For an infection to spread, pathogens need to multiply, whereas host cells can defer replication. Replication makes DNA and newly forming proteins much more susceptible to damage. It also requires energy and nutrientswhich helps explain the benefits of restricting food and sequestering nutrients.
The act of invading a body also requires bacteria to alter their metabolism, which can make them more vulnerable to all kinds of stress, including heat.
Another reason pathogens are more vulnerable to stress is that the immune system is already pummeling them with white blood cells and related stressors at the site of the infection. That means that pathogens are already under local stress when systemic stressors are piled on. "In many ways, the acute-phase response reinforces the stress inflicted on pathogens locally at the infection site," LeGrand said.
As the term "brinksmanship" implies, there's an inherent risk in a strategy that involves harming oneself to hurt the enemy within. This self-harm leaves the body more vulnerable to other dangers, including other infections. Additionally, it is possible for the immune stressors to do more damage than required to control the pathogens.
"But in general, systemic stressors when properly regulated do preferential harm to invaders," LeGrand said. Viewed this way, it's not surprising that natural selection has utilized the stressful parts of the acute-phase response in mammals, reptiles, fish, and even invertebrates.
###
Edmund LeGrand and Joe Alcock, "Turning Up The Heat: Immune Brinksmanship In The Acute-phase Response." The Quarterly Review of Biology 87:1 (March 2012).
The premier review journal in biology since 1926, The Quarterly Review of Biology publishes articles in all areas of biology but with a traditional emphasis on evolution, ecology, and organismal biology. QRB papers do not merely summarize a topic, but offer important new ideas, concepts, and syntheses. They often shape the course of future research within a field. In addition, the book review section of the QRB is the most comprehensive in biology.
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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.
Why getting healthy can seem worse than getting sickPublic release date: 20-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kevin Stacey kstacey@press.uchicago.edu 401-284-3878 University of Chicago Press Journals
A new article in The Quarterly Review of Biology helps explain why the immune system often makes us worse while trying to make us well.
The research offers a new perspective on a component of the immune system known as the acute-phase response, a series of systemic changes in blood protein levels, metabolic function, and physiology that sometimes occurs when bacteria, viruses, or other pathogens invade the body. This response puts healthy cells and tissue under serious stress, and is actually the cause of many of the symptoms we associate with being sick.
"The question is why would these harmful components evolve," asks Edmund LeGrand (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), who wrote the paper titled with Joe Alcock (University of New Mexico). The researchers contend that answer becomes clear when we view the acute-phase response in terms of what they call "immune brinksmanship."
The immune brinksmanship model "is the gamble that systemic stressors will harm the pathogens relatively more than the host," LeGrand said. The concept, he explains, is akin to what happens in international trade disputes. When one country places trade sanctions on another, both countries' economies take a hit, but the sanctioning country is betting that its opponent will be hurt more.
"One of our contributions here is to pull together the reasons why pathogens suffer more from systemic stress," LeGrand said.
The acute-phase response creates stress in several ways. It raises body temperature and causes loss of appetite and mild anemia. At the same time, certain vital nutrients like iron, zinc, and manganese are partially sequestered away from the bloodstream.
Some of these components are quite puzzling. Why reduce food intake just when one would expect more energy would be needed to mount a strong immune response? Zinc is essential for healthy immune function. Why pull it out of the bloodstream when the immune system is active? The benefits of a stressor like fever are fairly well known; heat has been shown to inhibit bacterial growth and cause infected cells to self-destruct. But what hasn't been clear is why pathogens should be more susceptible to this stress than the host.
LeGrand and Alcock offer some answers. For an infection to spread, pathogens need to multiply, whereas host cells can defer replication. Replication makes DNA and newly forming proteins much more susceptible to damage. It also requires energy and nutrientswhich helps explain the benefits of restricting food and sequestering nutrients.
The act of invading a body also requires bacteria to alter their metabolism, which can make them more vulnerable to all kinds of stress, including heat.
Another reason pathogens are more vulnerable to stress is that the immune system is already pummeling them with white blood cells and related stressors at the site of the infection. That means that pathogens are already under local stress when systemic stressors are piled on. "In many ways, the acute-phase response reinforces the stress inflicted on pathogens locally at the infection site," LeGrand said.
As the term "brinksmanship" implies, there's an inherent risk in a strategy that involves harming oneself to hurt the enemy within. This self-harm leaves the body more vulnerable to other dangers, including other infections. Additionally, it is possible for the immune stressors to do more damage than required to control the pathogens.
"But in general, systemic stressors when properly regulated do preferential harm to invaders," LeGrand said. Viewed this way, it's not surprising that natural selection has utilized the stressful parts of the acute-phase response in mammals, reptiles, fish, and even invertebrates.
###
Edmund LeGrand and Joe Alcock, "Turning Up The Heat: Immune Brinksmanship In The Acute-phase Response." The Quarterly Review of Biology 87:1 (March 2012).
The premier review journal in biology since 1926, The Quarterly Review of Biology publishes articles in all areas of biology but with a traditional emphasis on evolution, ecology, and organismal biology. QRB papers do not merely summarize a topic, but offer important new ideas, concepts, and syntheses. They often shape the course of future research within a field. In addition, the book review section of the QRB is the most comprehensive in biology.
[ | 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.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with a total population of around 500 million, is witnessing a major growth in telecom penetration and broadband internet access in the past 5 years. From a low base of only 1.51 million broadband connections in the whole region in 2006, the number is estimated to have reached 17 million in 2011. This number is expected to double in the next 4 years and the World Bank and other institutions are actively encouraging the spread of broadband telecom as a major instrument for social advancement in the region.
The internet has become the principal medium for communication
The internet has become the principal medium of communication for people, not just at the workplace but also in their personal lives. It is the medium that people turn to for information, for day to day transactions like banking, travel and public services, for communication with friends and family and increasingly also for entertainment. Governments have also realized that providing public services through the internet is cost effective and insulates people from delays, frustration and low level corruption involved in face-to-face interaction with government agencies.
Access to internet has become a good surrogate indicator of the standard of living. In the US and the European Union, over 78 percent of the population has access to the internet. In China this has grown rapidly to reach 34 percent but in India it is still low at 7.5 percent. The MENA region presents a very diverse picture with the advanced trading nations like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain having internet access percentages similar to the advanced economies. The percentage falls off very quickly in the less developed countries of the region like Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran and internet usage is minuscule in Sudan and Yemen.
The internet, which was previously accessed only from desktop computers, is now being accessed from portable computers and mobile phones. The bandwidth requirements are increasing as the internet now delivers graphics, streaming videos, high fidelity music and gaming content. This is the driver for the worldwide growth of broadband connections at over 21 percent a year in the last 5 years to reach a total of 545 million connections in 2011.
The additional spur for growth in the MENA region
Over 33 percent of the population in the MENA region is under the age of 12. This young population is quicker to adopt new technology than their parents? generation. In much of this region, television and radio stations are state controlled and do not provide the standard of entertainment that is available through the internet.
The monopoly state run land-line telecom services are facing competition from the newly emerging mobile telecom players who are able to extend services far quicker than the ?dig and bury cable? process used for land-lines. These mobile phone companies induce new consumers to internet access by simple promotional activities such as the downloading of ring tones and wallpapers, access to on-line music and videos and connection to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. These customers become regular mobile internet users and quickly upgrade to higher bandwidth applications which helps the mobile phone companies realize better revenues. The present broadband usage costs in the region are amongst the highest in the world with an unlimited usage plan in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain costing as much as $140 a month. These are bound to come down very quickly to the international norm of around $20.
The Arab Spring movement in the region was fueled mainly through internet communication. The penetration of mobile broadband in the region could bring out other such changes.
ScienceDaily (Mar. 18, 2012) ? Combining known factors in a new way, theoretical physicists Boris Svistunov and Nikolai Prokof'ev at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with three alumni of their group, have solved an intractable 50-year-old problem: How to simulate strongly interacting quantum systems to allow accurate predictions of their properties.
It could open the door to practical superconductor applications, as well as to solving difficult "many-body" problems in high-energy physics, condensed matter and ultra-cold atoms.
The theoretical breakthrough by Prokof'ev and Svistunov at UMass Amherst, with their alumni Kris Van Houcke now at Ghent University, Felix Werner at Ecole Normale Sup?rieure Paris and Evgeny Kozik at Ecole Polytechnique, is reported in the current issue of Nature Physics. The paper also includes crucial results of an experimental validation conducted by Martin Zwierlein and colleagues at MIT.
Svistunov says, "The accompanying experiment is a breakthrough on its own because achieving a few percent accuracy has long been a dream in the field of ultra-cold atoms. We needed this confirmation from Mother Nature."
Van Houcke adds, "Our answers and the experimental results perfectly agree. This is important because in physics you can always make a prediction, but unless it is controlled, with narrow error bars, you're basically just gambling. Our new method makes accurate predictions."
Physicists have long been able to numerically simulate statistical behavior of bosonic systems by mapping them onto polymers in four dimensions, as Richard Feynman proposed in the 1950s. "In a bosonic liquid one typically wants to know at what temperature the superfluid phase transition occurs," Prokof'ev explains, "and mapping onto the polymers yields an essentially exact answer."
But simulating particle behavior in strongly interacting fermionic liquids, like strongly interacting electrons in high-temperature superconducting compounds, has been devilishly elusive, he adds. "The polymer trick does not work here because of the notorious negative-sign problem, a hallmark of fermionic statistics."
Apart from mapping onto the polymers, Feynman proposed yet another solution, in terms of "diagrams" now named after him. These Feynman diagrams are graphical expressions for serial expansion of Green's functions, a mathematical tool that describes statistical properties of each unique system. Feynman diagrams were never used for making quantitatively accurate predictions for strongly interacting systems because people believed that evaluating and summing all of them was simply impossible, Svistunov points out. But the UMass Amherst team now has found a way to do this.
What they discovered is a trick -- called Diagrammatic Monte Carlo -- of sampling the Feynman series instead of calculating diagrams one by one. Especially powerful is the Bold Diagrammatic Monte Carlo (BDMC) scheme. This deals with a partially summed Feynman series (Dyson's development) in which the diagrams are constructed not from the bare Green's functions of non-interacting system (usually represented by thin lines), but from the genuine Green's functions of the strongly interacting system being looked for (usually represented by bold lines).
"We poll a series of integrals, and the result is fed back to the series to keep improving our knowledge of the Green's function," says Van Houcke, who developed the BDMC code over the past three years.
The BDMC protocol works a bit like sampling to predict the outcome of an election but with the difference that results of polling are being constantly fed back to the "electorate," Prokof'ev and Svistunov add. "We repeat this with several hundred processors over several days until the solution converges. That is, the Green's function doesn't change anymore. And once you know the Green's function, you know all the basic thermodynamic properties of the system. This has never been done before."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Massachusetts Amherst, via Newswise.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
K. Van Houcke, F. Werner, E. Kozik, N. Prokof?ev, B. Svistunov, M. J. H. Ku, A. T. Sommer, L. W. Cheuk, A. Schirotzek, M. W. Zwierlein. Feynman diagrams versus Fermi-gas Feynman?emulator. Nature Physics, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nphys2273
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
One particular evolution in marketing to the IM niche is so many people want absolutely everything spoon fed to them, and that can really present problems at times. You can think of that in terms of background information that has been learned elsewhere about legal loan or through experience.
Even something as simple as setting up an autoresponder and doing email marketing requires some detailed knowledge to do it with good effect.
As we proceed with our talk about these strategies, bear in mind they are just the tip of the iceberg. Those who are new to online business need to remember there is always a lot more to the story in any article. If you are about to get started with your marketing, then look hard at what you have done and need to do and be sure you have all you need.
Remodeling or renovating your home is quite difficult, unless of course you have a right program of action. You could have a wise decision of what you need to accomplish, how much it?s going with cost and how much time it takes. People that are not planning on doing the function themselves should consider selecting the appropriate person for the job. We will discuss a limited significant aspects of doing a house improvement project in a means that will help you in the extended run.
You should ensure that you have enough income with do your home improvement project before you start 1. It is absolutely necessary that you understand how much the work is going to cost before hiring anyone with do the job for you. This involves tools, supplies, work and any different relevant costs. It?s always a good idea to assume that a project is going to expense more than you initially estimate, as this might be normally the case. Be sure with look over any contract that you are provided by somebody that will work for you so that you understand what you may be getting into. Being aware of more charges is anything you should keep on top of every step of the renovation.
One of the best ways with cut costs on any home improvement project is with renovate existing rooms instead of building new ones from the ground up (e.g. ? your kitchen or bathroom) The total appearance of the space will be greatly improved by simply doing simple repairs here and there. Instead of gutting an whole room, you may like to consider painting it with change its overall appeal. It just is not necessary with substitute everything in a space to make it look better; easy changes are less costly and are occasionally more efficient. So before you commit with an expensive renovation with your kitchen or bathroom, consider if you might get by with some piecemeal improvements.
Priorities, the points you require to receive fixed or renovated at your house, ought to be organized for right execution. Taking care of significant issues initially is what prioritizing is all about.
Cosmetic improvements must constantly be completed last and important elements like electric rewiring ought to be done at initially. Nonessential repairs like installing a brand-new countertop should be performed perfectly in the end of the priority-based repairs or renovations are accomplished. By taking care of these renovations in this purchase, issues are easy to avoid. Contractors and building inspectors are persons that you need to ask for help, specifically should you are having problems selecting what should be completed at your house. Everybody wants more from their business such as profits, and testing and tracking is one of the surest ways to get more. That is most crucial when trying new techniques much like what you are reading today about lawsuit settlement loans. There are some testing methods that are truly advanced, but even still the most basic type most newbies would have no clue about.
Once you have started enough online ventures, you just sort of get it done without being careless. You can set things up any way you want, and then just monitor what is happening and be prepared for what ever feedback occurs. Even if you have never done testing before in your business, just going through the process several times will make you much more confident.
You will obviously need traffic for testing anything, and so with a site-based test just choose those pages that receive the greatest amount of traffic. Metrics are your best friend in so many ways, and the type of information you need to glean from your testing efforts will be conveyed to you through tracking metrics/data. For the best results, it happens to be significant that you plan ahead, specifically before making any home improvements with your house. A professional opinion is occasionally an effortless means to saving a great deal of funds on your upcoming house improvement project or renovation. Always find out what must be renovated and never guess during this task. So by doing the appropriate kind of planning, you are able to avoid unpleasant problems along the way by carrying this out in a step-by-step manner each and every day.
We realize that sometimes it feels like you are treading water and all you can do is keep your nose above it. One thing we want to say about lawsuit financing, and that is you should look beyond what has been discussed here today because there is so much more. If you are new to IM, then you need to exercise caution anytime you read about a marketing method in a short article, and the reason is you should never assume that is all there is to it.
Sure, there is a learning curve that you have to tackle, but do not lose momentum out of fear that you do not know enough to get started.
Working on your business means making sites, creating content, starting marketing and advertising campaigns but not spending all your time learning. Work on your sense of self-discipline, and that could mean dragging your self to your computer in the evening after your regular job and just working for half an hour or an hour.
Welcome to IRL, an ongoing feature where we talk about the gadgets, apps and toys we're using in real life and take a second look at products that already got the formal review treatment.
This week's edition of IRL is geekier than usual because really, only the nerdiest of you would be reading a tech site when you could be pretending to be Irish. On tap (har!) we have James and Andy talking about their favorite ways to charge gadgets on the go, while Darren, a man after serious photographers' hearts, tells what happened when he took his beloved D3S in to have the sensor cleaned.
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Public release date: 20-Mar-2012
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