We've gotta give it to Microsoft... building a YouTube app for Windows Phone 8 that strips out advertising and allows users to download streaming videos was one hell of a way to get Google's attention about the lack of an official app for the platform -- even if it managed to attract ire at the same time. Now, multiple reports are coming in that both companies have reached an agreement of sorts, which will result in an app that's fully compliant with YouTube's Terms of Service in the coming weeks. You might've already guessed it, but unlike Microsoft's most recent conciliatory update to its YouTube app, the next version will serve up ads. You'll find a joint statement from both companies after the break. Now that the pair are learning to cooperate, might we suggest they take a look at Gmail?
May 24, 2013 ? The news about youth and diabetes keeps getting worse. The latest data from the national TODAY diabetes study shows that children who develop Type 2 diabetes are at high risk to develop heart, kidney and eye problems faster and at a higher rate than people who acquire Type 2 diabetes as adults.
"Once these kids have Type 2 diabetes, they seem to be at very high risk for early complications when compared to adults," said Jane Lynch, M.D., professor of pediatric endocrinology in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
The study, led in San Antonio by UT Medicine pediatricians, includes 699 children and young people, with 44 San Antonio participants.
The rise in youth obesity rates has been accompanied by increasing Type 2 diabetes rates in young people. "It's really a public health issue," said Dr. Lynch, who is principal investigator in the San Antonio arm of the study.
There are many unanswered questions and few guidelines for treatment of youth with early onset Type 2 diabetes, she said. Type 2 diabetes should not be confused with Type 1 diabetes, formerly called juvenile diabetes.
Of the TODAY participants, more than a third required medication for hypertension or kidney disease 3.9 years after they had joined the study. In the study, published online Thursday afternoon in Diabetes Care, 699 adolescents were randomized into three groups that received metformin, metformin plus rosiglitazone, or metformin plus intensive lifestyle intervention.
While the children on the combined drugs did the best of the three groups, Dr. Lynch said, all did poorly. The researchers were particularly disappointed that the intensive lifestyle intervention group did not do better.
The rate of deterioration of beta cell function in youth was almost four times higher than in adults, researchers found, noting a 20-35 percent decline in beta cell function per year on average, compared to 7-11 percent for adults. Beta cells store and release insulin.
It does not make things easier that these adolescents with early onset T2 diabetes have a tough time managing complex health problems.
"In puberty, everyone becomes somewhat insulin-resistant ? and when you're insulin-resistant you're hungry, plus when you have diabetes you're thirsty. This becomes a huge issue when there's the tendency to make poor choices."
One sobering aspect of the study results is that the young patients all had to fit certain health parameters, such as not having high blood pressure or having a treatable level of high blood pressure, and they all received the best possible care, education and medical support.
They had to have a parent or guardian who would also participate in the clinic visits and lifestyle education. Their medicine was paid for and they were brought to the clinic by taxi if that's what it took to get them there.
"That's Cadillac treatment for any kids with diabetes -- and we still had these outcomes," Dr. Lynch said.
Despite the interventions in all three treatment arms, the kids kept getting sicker. Boys and girls both developed kidney disease at about the same rates, but obese teenage boys were 81 percent more likely to develop hypertension, Dr. Lynch said. "What's especially challenging for these children is that many also develop fatty liver, which limits our use of the drugs that control hypertension."
The study will continue as researchers monitor the participants' overall outcomes, including cardiac health. "Our goal is to follow them for 10 or 15 years as we figure out better ways to prevent this disease and how to predict complications," Dr. Lynch said.
All the educational handouts used in the study are available free online at https://today.bsc.gwu.edu/web/today/tsdematerials. The study was funded in part by NIDD/NIH, grant no. U01-DK-61230.
Riot gear for Africa? Rhinestone cowboy wear? Yep, and more.
By Donna Bryson / May 24, 2013
Photo illustration by Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
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Everyone staying at the Kinshasa hotel in the spring of 1997 was, like me, a reporter covering the crumbling of Mobutu Sese Seko's reign. Everyone except a chatty but mysterious American who greeted waitresses at breakfast with "Bahn joor, baby." His accent was so bad, I was convinced it masked a Parisian fluency deployed during shady diamond dealings, or when he reported back to Mr. Mobutu's henchmen about what the foreign reporters were saying about the dictator of what was then known as Zaire (now Congo).
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One afternoon, my colleagues and I stood in the lobby, discussing a protest that had gotten out of hand and ended with several journalists being robbed of even their shoes. The suspected diamond dealer glanced at my still-shod feet and pronounced that my black high-tops would be safe to wear to the next riot, because no one would want to steal Chucks.
Let Proust have his madeleines. I have my shoes.
I can be forgiven for trying to make my shoe habit seem intellectual, or at least cool. I take plenty of teasing about it at home. My 9-year-old daughter hides shoe catalogs from me. She feigns fear I'll spend her inheritance at the shoe shop. Hoping to shame me into restraint, she'll tell anyone who will listen: "Mommy has a lot of shoes." Most listeners probably think that means a closet full of Christian Louboutin heels. They'd be disappointed. I own nary a red sole. My tastes tend more to those high-tops, and not just in riot-ready basic black.
I sometimes need to be fast on my feet; I always need to be color coordinated.
You need only peek in my mom's closet to see that I come honestly by my shoe mania. She has a lifetime collection stacked in towers of the original boxes. Her tastes run to classic pumps and high heels. But when a young co-worker once came to her, in near tears because her own mother was insisting she buy a pair of heels ? her first ? for her wedding, my mom counseled her to stick with her favorite tennis shoes, perhaps with lacy ties for the occasion.
After Converse, the most represented brand in my shoe closet is Goodyear. I have several sandals fashioned from old tires, and every time I stretch on a pair I'm reminded of the inventiveness of recyclers in the developing world.
African cobblers find novel ways to loop and weave laces, creating a pattern across the foot. They incise the rubber to generate more interest by revealing black-and-white designs. A Pakistani cobbler caught my interest with a simpler method: pile the color atop soles made from tires. The straps on my Pakistani pair are dyed red and embroidered with curlicues and florets in at least as many colors as I have high-tops. I brought them back from a temporary assignment in Islamabad and proudly showed them to my landlady's daughter in New Delhi, where I was based at the time.
"Very Baluch," she said, referring to Baluchistan in southwest Pakistan. I thought, "Well, that's the point," recognizing that she hadn't meant it as a compliment. It wasn't a political statement rooted in decades of Indo-Pak tension. She just didn't like my shoes. I didn't mind. I've happily worn my wild Baluch sandals for years.
Not all my shoe tales are exotic. Or mine. Or even, perhaps, true.
My husband took me to Santa Fe, N.M., to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Naturally, we ended up at Kowboyz, with its huge selection of used cowboy boots. My husband planted himself near the cash register, chatting with the owner, while I combed shelves full of prizes in my size in the women's department. We must have been in there three hours.
I got a wonderful black-and-white women's pair. The real find for me, though, was in the men's department. A rich oxblood color, they are by Lucchese, the Louboutin of cowboy boots. The dandy who wore 'em and left 'em had tiny feet for a man. He had barely scuffed the soles. Had he spent gambling winnings on them, then sold them the next month to pay the rent? Perhaps he was a dot-com millionaire who bought them on a whim, only to find they pinched. I like to think he was a down-on-his-luck rodeo cowboy, tough and wiry, with fine boots his one indulgence. I hope he got together enough cash for an even finer pair. I wish I could thank him for breaking in mine.
Three hours is a long time to just sit surrounded by boots with stories to tell. My husband did break down and try on a pair with fabulous toes: ostrich skin dyed turquoise. He decided they pinched, and left them on the shelf. If only my particular dandy had had daintier feet.
And my daughter? I've seen her eying my Kowboyz purchases. I got her a pair of red boots at Christmas, and her face lit up when she opened the box. I think she's hooked.
FILE - This Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005 file photo shows a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration infrared satellite image of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico. There are six lists used in rotation for storms in the Atlantic. The 2013 list will be used again in 2019. Names are taken off the list and replaced to avoid confusion if a hurricane causes a lot of damage or deaths. For example, the name of Hurricane Katrina was retired after it devastated New Orleans in 2005. (AP Photo/NOAA)
FILE - This Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005 file photo shows a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration infrared satellite image of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico. There are six lists used in rotation for storms in the Atlantic. The 2013 list will be used again in 2019. Names are taken off the list and replaced to avoid confusion if a hurricane causes a lot of damage or deaths. For example, the name of Hurricane Katrina was retired after it devastated New Orleans in 2005. (AP Photo/NOAA)
Weather forecasters are predicting another busy Atlantic hurricane season. The storms will get their names from an alphabetical list of 21 names:
The National Hurricane Center started using women's names for Atlantic storms in 1953; men's names were added in 1979. The lists are now maintained by the World Meteorological Organization.
ARE NAMES REUSED?
Yes, there are six lists for the Atlantic that are used in rotation. This year's list will be used again in 2019. Names are taken off the list and replaced to avoid confusion if a hurricane causes a lot of damage or deaths. For example, Katrina was retired after it devastated New Orleans in 2005.
WHEN DO STORMS GET A NAME?
Tropical storms are assigned a name when their top winds reach 39 mph. A storm isn't a hurricane until it has maximum winds of at least 74 mph.
WHAT IF WE RUN OUT OF NAMES?
The Greek alphabet is used if there are more than 21 named storms in a season. That last happened in 2005; six storms were named Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta.
WHAT ABOUT STORMS IN THE PACIFIC AND ELSEWHERE?
Yes, they get names, too. The lists are also determined by the World Meteorological Organization; the names are ones that are familiar in each region.
___
Online:
World lists: http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/tcp/Storm-naming.html
Beer is a staple of Americana, so it's only suitable that the buildings where it's brewed are often classic examples of American architecture. Even though some breweries eventually fall into disrepair, either because the brewer shuts down or because it moves, many of those have been given second lives as loft apartments, hotels, restaurants, and shops.
So while you're imbibing this holiday weekend, don't just think about the flavor of the beer you're sipping?contemplate where it came from.
Anheuser-Busch: St. Louis, Missouri
The Budweiser Building is the oldest of the company's U.S. facilities. It still produces beer and is a symbol of the City of St. Louis.
Yuengling Brewery: Pottsville, Pennsylvania
D.G. Yuengling & Sons is the oldest operating brewery in America, making beer since 1829. It even continued during Prohibition, still producing nearly non-alcoholic near beer.
This is the former Milwaukee home for Pabst, which was was, at one point, the largest brewery in America. This building remained in stasis, largely abandoned for many years, but the city is trying to redevelop it as retail, offices, and apartments.
Spoetzl Brewery: Shiner, Texas
Somewhere between San Antonio and Houston, you'll find the home of Shiner Beer in a building that looks like a close cousin of the Alamo. Responsible for the delicious nectar that is Shiner beer, it was founded by a German immigrant brewer in 1909 and remains one of the largest independently owned and operated breweries in the country.
Not far south of Spoetzl is the Pearl Brewery in San Antonio. It was founded in 1883, but this actual facility stopped pumping out brews in 2001. Here's another happy ending?it was turned into a cool, award-winning, LEED-certified spot with places to eat, drink, and shop.
New Belgium Brewery was started in the early 90s by a couple who actually cared about sustainability. The building was made from reclaimed materials, with features like chairs in the tasting room made from old bike rims or desks from used bowling lanes. And everyone that works for the Colorado company gets his or her own bike to ride to and from the beautiful building.
On the outside, it's a turn-of-the-century brick building in a historic district near downtown Kansas City. On the inside, it's a vintage Bavarian brewhouse.
America Brewery: East Baltimore
The Victorian-style American Brewery was built by a family of German immigrants in 1887, and grew to be the largest brewery in Maryland. The central tower was busy as a grain elevator. But the success didn't last?Prohibition forced the brewery to shutter, and it was eventually abandoned and left to decay. But again, someone recognized its beauty and its recently been restored and now serves as the headquarters for Humanim, Inc.
Eddie Van Halen is regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, and his solo on the 1978 song "Eruption" is second on Guitar World's list of the 50 best. A 14-year-old girl on YouTube named Tina S. is now racking up views with her spot-on cover of the rock classic.
Uploaded on May 20, more than 1.7 million people have watched Tina as she plays seated, almost no emotion on her face, fingers dancing along the neck of her Vigier Excalibur Custom electric guitar.
For a minute and a half, Van Halen fans of the 1970s and '80s can close their eyes and be transported back to the postered walls of their bedrooms -- look, there's you, with the feathered hair!
"Eruption" originated in an interesting fashion for Van Halen. According to Guitar World, Van Halen says the song wasn't even supposed to be on the band's debut, self-titled album. "I showed up at the studio early one day and started to warm up because I had a gig on the weekend and I wanted to practice my solo-guitar spot," Van Halen said. "Our producer, Ted Templeman, happened to walk by and he asked, 'What?s that? Let?s put it on tape!'"
Van Halen says he played the bit twice for the record and they kept one. "I didn?t even play it right --there?s a mistake at the top end of it. Whenever I hear it, I always think, 'Man, I could?ve played it better.'" But he also told Guitar World that he liked the way "Eruption" sounds and had "never heard a guitar sound like that before."
The commenters on YouTube are perfectly happy with the way Tina plays it, with many joking that they're giving up the guitar in the wake of such young talent.
"Everyone else go back to guitar hero," writes 943TheSharkRocks. "You have lost the race."
Van Halen himself, now 58, is obviously all over YouTube in videos that capture his version of "Eruption." A quick scan puts the number of views of the top-surfacing videos somewhere around 30 million. Here's one (note to Tina: lit cigarette in the head of guitar for seasoned rockers only):
Other videos on Tina's page show her playing Van Halen's solo on Michael Jackson's "Beat It"; a cover of AC/DC's "Back in Black"; and the acoustic solo from the Eagles' "Hotel California" in 2008 ... when she was about 9 years old.
Scientists offer first definitive proof of bacteria-feeding behavior in green algaePublic release date: 23-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kendra Snyder ksnyder@amnh.org 212-496-3419 American Museum of Natural History
Study gives look at early evolutionary event that paved way for land plants, animals
A team of researchers has captured images of green alga consuming bacteria, offering a glimpse at how early organisms dating back more than 1 billion years may have acquired free-living photosynthetic cells. This acquisition is thought to have been a critical first step in the evolution of photosynthetic algae and land plants, which, in turn, contributed to the increase in oxygen levels in Earth's atmosphere and ocean and provided one of the conditions necessary for animal evolution.
In a paper that appears in the June 17 issue of Current Biology and is available online today, researchers identify a mechanism by which a green alga that resembles early ancestors of the group engulfs bacteria, providing conclusive evidence for a process that had been proposed but not definitely shown.
"This behavior had previously been suggested but we had not had clear microscopic evidence until this study," said Eunsoo Kim, assistant curator in the Museum's Division of Invertebrate Zoology and corresponding author on the paper. "These results offer important clues to an evolutionary event that fundamentally changed the trajectory of the evolution of not just photosynthetic algae and land plants, but also animals."
In green algae and land plants, photosynthesis, or the conversion of light into food, is carried out by a specialized cell structure known as a chloroplast. The origin of chloroplast is linked to endosymbiosis, a process in which a single-celled eukaryotean organism whose cells contain a nucleuscaptures a free-living photosynthetic cyanobacterium but does not digest it, allowing the photosynthetic cell to eventually evolve into a chloroplast. The specific feeding mechanisms for this process, however, have remained largely unknown until now.
In this study, researchers used transmission electron microscopy and feeding and staining experiments to take conclusive images showing how a basic green alga from the genus Cymbomonas feeds on bacteria. The alga draws bacterial cells into a tubular duct through a mouth-like opening and then transports these food particles into a large, acidic vacuole where digestion takes place. The complexity of this feeding system in photosynthetic modern alga suggests that this bacteria-feeding behavior, and the unique feeding apparatus to support it, descend from colorless ancestors of green algae and land plants and may have played important roles in the evolution of early photosynthetic eukaryotes, the precursors to plants like trees and shrubs that cover the Earth today.
Eunsoo Kim joined the Museum in 2012 as curator of the protist collection, which includes algae, protozoa, and fungus-like protists. A native of South Korea, Kim received her Ph.D. in botany from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and conducted postdoctoral research at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She works closely with associate curator Susan Perkins and curator Rob DeSalle as part of one of the first natural history museum microbial research programs.
Shinichiro Mauyama, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Division of Environmental Photobiology at the National Institute for Basic Biology in Okazaki, Japan, is a co-author on this paper. In addition to Kim's laboratory at the Museum, this work was conducted in John Archibald's laboratory at Dalhousie University. Funding was provided by the American Museum of Natural History and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
###
Watch Kim talk about the new finding and see green algae in action in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lafL_mmv3EA
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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.
Scientists offer first definitive proof of bacteria-feeding behavior in green algaePublic release date: 23-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kendra Snyder ksnyder@amnh.org 212-496-3419 American Museum of Natural History
Study gives look at early evolutionary event that paved way for land plants, animals
A team of researchers has captured images of green alga consuming bacteria, offering a glimpse at how early organisms dating back more than 1 billion years may have acquired free-living photosynthetic cells. This acquisition is thought to have been a critical first step in the evolution of photosynthetic algae and land plants, which, in turn, contributed to the increase in oxygen levels in Earth's atmosphere and ocean and provided one of the conditions necessary for animal evolution.
In a paper that appears in the June 17 issue of Current Biology and is available online today, researchers identify a mechanism by which a green alga that resembles early ancestors of the group engulfs bacteria, providing conclusive evidence for a process that had been proposed but not definitely shown.
"This behavior had previously been suggested but we had not had clear microscopic evidence until this study," said Eunsoo Kim, assistant curator in the Museum's Division of Invertebrate Zoology and corresponding author on the paper. "These results offer important clues to an evolutionary event that fundamentally changed the trajectory of the evolution of not just photosynthetic algae and land plants, but also animals."
In green algae and land plants, photosynthesis, or the conversion of light into food, is carried out by a specialized cell structure known as a chloroplast. The origin of chloroplast is linked to endosymbiosis, a process in which a single-celled eukaryotean organism whose cells contain a nucleuscaptures a free-living photosynthetic cyanobacterium but does not digest it, allowing the photosynthetic cell to eventually evolve into a chloroplast. The specific feeding mechanisms for this process, however, have remained largely unknown until now.
In this study, researchers used transmission electron microscopy and feeding and staining experiments to take conclusive images showing how a basic green alga from the genus Cymbomonas feeds on bacteria. The alga draws bacterial cells into a tubular duct through a mouth-like opening and then transports these food particles into a large, acidic vacuole where digestion takes place. The complexity of this feeding system in photosynthetic modern alga suggests that this bacteria-feeding behavior, and the unique feeding apparatus to support it, descend from colorless ancestors of green algae and land plants and may have played important roles in the evolution of early photosynthetic eukaryotes, the precursors to plants like trees and shrubs that cover the Earth today.
Eunsoo Kim joined the Museum in 2012 as curator of the protist collection, which includes algae, protozoa, and fungus-like protists. A native of South Korea, Kim received her Ph.D. in botany from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and conducted postdoctoral research at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She works closely with associate curator Susan Perkins and curator Rob DeSalle as part of one of the first natural history museum microbial research programs.
Shinichiro Mauyama, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Division of Environmental Photobiology at the National Institute for Basic Biology in Okazaki, Japan, is a co-author on this paper. In addition to Kim's laboratory at the Museum, this work was conducted in John Archibald's laboratory at Dalhousie University. Funding was provided by the American Museum of Natural History and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
###
Watch Kim talk about the new finding and see green algae in action in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lafL_mmv3EA
[ | 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.
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Public release date: 23-May-2013
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