Alabama has a chance to make history in this year?s national-championship game, and with a victory over Notre Dame, Nick Saban would unquestionably become the greatest coach of the BCS Era.
The first BCS title game was played to cap off the 1998 season, and since then, there have been several great champions and coaches who have achieved remarkable success.
Bobby Bowden led Florida State to three consecutive title games between 1998 and 200. Larry Coker took Miami to two consecutive national-championship games in 2001 and 2002, while Pete Carroll did the same with USC in 2004 and 2005.
Bob Stoops has taken Oklahoma to college football?s marque contest three times, while Mack Brown has led Texas there twice.
But all have these coaches have one thing in common: They all have losses with a national title on the line. Saban does not.?
The only other coach in the BCS era to reach multiple national-championship games without losing is Urban Meyer, who won titles in 2006 and 2008. If there is any coach in nation whose r?sum? could hope to compare to Saban?s, it is Meyer.
After winning two national titles in three years, Meyer took a break from coaching to spend time with his family but returned to football this season with Ohio State. He led to Buckeyes to an undefeated season despite NCAA sanctions placed on the program.
Who is the BCS era's greatest coach?
Who is the BCS era's greatest coach?
Bobby Bowden
Pete Carroll
Urban Meyer
Nick Saban
Bob Stoops
Mack Brown
Other
Meyer is certainly on track to take Ohio State back to being a national contender, but as of now, his accomplishments would not come near Saban?s if Alabama wins on January 7.
The Alabama boss won his first national title with LSU during the 2003 season. After a brief stint in the NFL, he returned to the SEC to turn the Crimson Tide into a national powerhouse.
He has succeeded beyond anyone?s wildest expectations, and a victory would make Alabama the first team in BCS history to win three national titles. To make the feat even more impressive, it will be the school?s third championship in just four years.?
Saban is already the only coach to win a national championship at two different schools and to win three BCS titles. While he may already be the greatest coach in the BCS era, a win over Notre Dame would put his track record completely beyond comparison to any of his peers'.?
MILLINOCKET, Maine ? Firefighters battled thick smoke to rescue two cats and a dog from a fire that damaged the cellar and living room of an Aroostook Avenue house Sunday morning.
Firefighters had to stop homeowner Thomas Jameson from going back into his house at 423 Aroostook Ave. to retrieve his pets after he had rescued a dog and a cat, Fire Chief Andrew Turcotte said.
With flames burning into the cellar ceiling and first-floor living room and smoke thick throughout the rest of the house, Turcotte went inside and found a dog and a cat and Firefighter-EMT Sam Monteith rescued a cat, Turcotte said.
?It was the funniest thing,? Turcotte said. ?The cat I found was just lying there, unresponsive, and I thought it was dead. I shook it a little bit and it came right alive. It hissed and clawed at me. I was thinking, ?Oh my goodness.??
Firefighters have pet-sized breathing masks to help resuscitate pets, but didn?t need to use them on the animals. Jameson, however, was treated for smoke inhalation at Millinocket Regional Hospital after refusing treatment at the scene, Assistant Fire Chief Thomas Malcolm said.
The fire apparently started in an ash box in the basement directly beneath Jameson?s living room fireplace. The ash box is large, approximately 16 inches across and about two feet deep, and embedded in cement, but was piled high with ash because it hadn?t been cleaned in a while, Turcotte said.
?It appears there was quite a bit of hot ash in there,? he said.
Ash that fell to the box from a fireplace fire the family started the night before apparently ignited thick building timbers hanging over the ash box. Turcotte said the timbers might also have ignited because they were badly dried out after decades of exposure to ash box heat.
Turcotte smelled smoke at about 8:55 a.m. and either he or a neighbor called 911. When firefighters arrived about five minutes later, heavy black smoke was pouring from the front door, Turcotte said.
Thick basement smoke and intense heat made finding the seat of the fire difficult, but firefighters doused the flames before they could spread very far into the living room area, Turcotte said.
East Millinocket firefighters were called immediately to the scene because Millinocket is down one engine, and they assisted in fighting the flames, Turcotte said. The flames might have eaten into the first floor and become uncontrollable had the fire burned much longer.
?They did a really good quick stop,? Malcolm said. The fire ?could have gone right up the chimney chase but it didn?t. They saved a lot with the initial knockdown.?
The Jameson family won?t be able to occupy the house until repairs are made. Damage estimates run from $30,000 to $40,000.
The fire is Millinocket?s second in about a month. A malfunctioning space heater sparked a fire that destroyed most of a second-floor apartment on Katahdin Avenue on Nov. 28.
Sunday?s fire, Turcotte said, underlined the importance of keeping fireplaces clear of ash buildup. He encouraged homeowners to have their chimneys and fire boxes cleaned professionally or at least emptied.
Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.
2012, we salute you. All in all, you've been a pretty good year. There's been highs, lows, and lots of inbetweens. Above all else, though, you've been generous in the alternative arena. Whether it's the discovery of certain particles, or activities in space, 2012 had it covered. What better way to finish it off, then, with a disease smelling dog, a plan to catch an asteroid and a growable hangover cure. This is alt-week.
There's nothing like a new Android for the holidays.
Know someone who emerged from this holiday season with a new tablet in hand?and they now want your advice on what to do with it??An Android device is only as good as the apps you install, so we've drawn up a listed of some top Android apps for tablet newbies.
The apps we've chosen below are not necessarily new or edgy, but we've field-tested them all and find them solid choices for a wide variety of users wanting to get started with some basic tablet tasks. (See our iPad version as well.)
Snapseed (free)
Enlarge / Snapseed surged to the forefront of image editors remarkably quickly. The Google Play store is not overflowing with powerful image editing applications?there are many more apps that will let you pop clip-art cats or Eiffel Towers into your pictures in lieu of doing a simple crop. Fortunately, the recent Google acquisition Snapseed takes itself seriously enough to forego the word art and gives you the essentials like cropping and adjusting exposure, saturation, contrast, and brightness, as well as tools for selective adjust and an ?autocorrect button.? There are a handful of modest photo effects that are not too cheesy.
Snapseed allows you to pull in photos to edit from cloud services like Box or Dropbox, which can be handy if you tablet is stuck with only a front-facing single-megapixel camera. Honorable mention goes to Pixlr Express, which Google recommended on its list of must-have Android apps for 2012. Its controls aren?t quite as granular, but it has more creative options that you can?t find in Snapseed, like the ability to add and control color splashes into black-and-white photos.
DroidEdit (free)
Enlarge / DroidEdit looks like a crunchy text editor, but it can manage more than just coding. DroidEdit is by far the most flexible of the the text editors we tried. It's not much to look at, but the options available inside the app make it suitable for both coding and writing. Line wrap can be turned on and off, you can search and replace text, and there's a "writer mode" that turns off autocorrect and turns on a spell-checker. The app has a number of language syntaxes available (C/C++, C#, CSS, LaTex, Perl, Python, and many more). You can change the color scheme of the app to one of the available defaults or set your own and change the font size, but the font style is fixed. Even if you're not a coder, DroidEdit is still a capable and handy little text editor, on the level of Notepad++ for Windows.
When it comes to managing text files, you can have multiple files open at once, and the app allows you to create new folders in the file management system when saving (a feature that's rarer than it should be). The app also provides access to Android's share menu, so you can easily move you file to places including Evernote, Google Drive, Gmail,and Dropbox.
There are two versions of DroidEdit, one of which is free and runs a small text ad in the bottom right corner of the screen, which annoyingly changes every few seconds. We'd get a facial tic, having to sort-of look at that while writing. Fortunately, the paid version of DroidEdit is only $1.99 and has no ads.
Google Drive (free)
Enlarge / Google Drive was, ironically, a latecomer to the personal cloud storage scene, but it's edged out old timers like Dropbox. It's hardly a surprise that Google, what with its cloud-based service proficiency, has come from behind with Drive to unseat older and wiser competitors like Dropbox and Box. The app works particularly well on the tablets, with useful options like the ability to create new Google files (a doc or a spreadsheet) right in the app, or sort contents by date or name.
Because Google Docs is now essentially part and parcel to Drive, the Drive app allows you to both open and edit documents without having to hop over to another app. This isn't a flawless process; for instance, when we uploaded a text file from DroidEdit to Drive, we have let it convert to Docs format to edit in Drive. If we don't, tapping the file in Drive will prompt us to open it in another of the text editing apps we have installed.
Drive comes preinstalled on some tablets, so you don't even have to open the Google Play store to get the best of the cloud storage experiences. If you're looking for a bit more security than Drive can provide, that's SpiderOak's strong suit, though its mobile apps usually leave something to be desired.
Pocket (free)
Enlarge / Pocket looks great on Android and handles non-text media with ease. The duel for our hearts between Pocket and Instapaper is a remarkably close one. Pocket, an evolution of the tool formerly known as Read it Later, just barely edges out Instapaper for its ability to handle images and videos with a little more grace.
If this category were simply for choosing a reading app, this would be a dead heat. Both Instapaper and Pocket allow for resizing and changing fonts, changing color schemes, and have seemingly useless brightness tuners. Pocket's font sizes extend farther down into the smaller sizes; Instapaper offers more font choices, the ability to change line spacing, and more granularity for column width. Both allow users to perform bulk actions on their content; Pocket offers tags for organizing, while Instapaper offers folders.
But Pocket allows users to save videos and images and view them within the app. We don't see ourselves using Pocket for images, but we've saved videos to Instapaper a fair few times, knowing it was little better interface-wise than sending ourselves a link in e-mail. Pocket doesn't cache the video for offline viewing the way both Pocket and Instapaper will create offline versions of articles for reading, but we appreciate not having to redirect the app to its own browser, or relocate to Chrome, just to watch a video.
imo.im (free)
Enlarge / imo is a great chat client, not least for its breadth of service integration. Walk away, AIM app. Go home, Facebook Messenger. Imo.im is able to handle both types of these accounts, in addition to Skype, Google Talk, and Steam. There's also an option for Myspace, in case you just can't let go.
When you provide imo with your account information for the above services, it will display each entry along with an on/off switch to let you log in or out. If you're logged into more than one account at a time, imo displays all contacts in one combined tab, while a second tab holds your past chats. The app offers options to log conversations on imo.im.
With some messaging apps in the past, we've had problems where one or the other will hijack messages exclusively, rather than letting it ring through to any locations where you may be logged in. Thankfully, imo.im doesn't do this. Instead, when you receive an initial message, imo.im will display it on the tablet, but won't continue threading the conversation through itself if you answer somewhere else. Your mileage may vary depending on the service, but we haven't had this problem with AIM, GTalk, or Facebook chat.
Music: Spotify or Rdio (free to try, $9.99 a month subscription required after)
Enlarge / None of the streaming music apps for Android look particularly great on tablets.
Andrew Cunningham
To be entirely honest, none of the apps for the major streaming music services have really been optimized for Android tablets?they're made for phones first, and it shows in their sparse layouts and overabundant whitespace. For this category, then, the content is probably more important than the apps themselves, and both Spotify and Rdio give you plenty to listen to (our recent shootout between the two will give you more insight into each service's social features and tie-ins to their respective desktop clients).
Honorable mention: The downside to both Spotify and Rdio is that, after your trial period has expired, each will want $9.99 a month to grant you access to the service on your phones and tablets. We think that for most people that is a price worth paying, but if you want something a little more free Pandora is still a good choice if you don't mind the advertisements.
Games: MobilityWare's Solitaire (free)
Enlarge / MobilityWare's Solitaire looks good on a tablet.
Andrew Cunningham
There are plenty of touchscreen games we could recommend here, but rather than talking up Fruit Ninja or some other staple we'll be kicking it old school with one of those timeless time-wasters: Solitaire.
Of the many, many versions of this game available in the Google Play store, MobilityWare's Solitaire is the best?it's clean, simple, and optimized for tablet screens in a way that some of the other available versions aren't. The biggest drawback is probably the full-screen ads that run in between games, especially since there's no in-app purchase or separate version of the app that can be used to disable them. They don't ruin the experience, but they are annoying.
If regular old Klondike Solitaire doesn't get your blood pumping, MobilityWare also offers similarly excellent (and free-but-ad-supported) versions of FreeCell and Spider Solitaire.
Honorable mention: It's an unfortunate fact that Android's game library still lags behind the iTunes Store?if a developer can only target one mobile OS they generally choose Apple's, and the games that do appear on multiple platforms often appear on the iPad or iPhone first.
The situation is slowly improving, though. One of the most recent iOS ports to hit Google Play is the $4.99 Eufloria HD, a laid-back take on the real-time strategy game genre, but if you're looking for something quicker to pick up and play there's still nothing better than Halfbrick's Jetpack Joyride.
Browsers: Google Chrome (free)
Enlarge / Google Chrome is the browser to beat if you're running Android 4.0 or better.
Andrew Cunningham
The Nexus tablets include Google Chrome as their default browser, and for good reason: it's a great browser that renders pages accurately, sticks to a vigorous update schedule, and can sync bookmarks, open tabs, and other information with its desktop counterparts. If you've got a non-Nexus tablet, you can easily switch from the stock browser to Chrome by downloading it from Google Play (as long as your tablet is running Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean, anyway).
Honorable mention: Firefox for Android is also solid contender, and if you use Firefox on the desktop it will also sync your data. Mozilla is also running some interesting experiments in the beta versions of the browser, one of which is an HTML5-focused app store.
Weather: Accuweather for Android (free with ads, $2.99 without)
Enlarge / AccuWeather for Android strikes a nice balance between readability and information density.
Andrew Cunningham
Traveling in the winter can make you acutely aware of the weather in a way that you aren't in your day-to-day life, and apps that tell you whether you can weather that weather are of the essence.
The one we like best on a tablet's screen is the free ad-supported app from AccuWeather.com. It's got a nice, big, readable interface, and it's easy to swipe or tap a button to pull up hourly or 15-day forecasts, maps, and videos. The animations aren't as smooth as they might be, but the fact that the app has been updated specifically for 7-inch and 10-inch screens puts it ahead of the rest of the pack. Notifications for severe weather and other configurable alerts are also available, as are a couple of different widget sizes can be set to give you information at a glance.
E-books: Amazon Kindle for Android (free)
Enlarge / Amazon has improved its Android Kindle app quite a bit in recent months, especially for tablet screens.
As in the music app discussion, the content available through an e-book app is a very important part of the discussion. Unlike music apps, however, you're going to spend a lot of time in these apps actually reading books, and a poorly-optimized tablet app is harder to forgive.
In both of these respects, Amazon's Kindle app has the edge. The app itself has improved greatly since we looked at it in our Nexus 7 review, in large part because Amazon added new, smaller font options that make books look much better on 7-inch and 10-inch tablet screens. It goes without saying that the size of Amazon's e-book library remains unmatched, at least if you can stomach the DRM.
The Android app still lacks a couple of features available in iOS and on the Kindle Fire?the X-Ray feature, which allows you to look through a book to see all of the occurrences of certain words and names, is probably the most glaring omission?but reading Kindle books on an Android tablet is a much better experience now than it was even a couple of months ago.
If you?re encountered with biology syllabus assessment in that case he/she really needs to fully grasp the exact objectives to make sure that he/she are able to comprehend the objective. There are 3 well-known objectives concerning learning the field of biology which generally are to have practical knowledge with understanding, ability to actually deal with important information and resolve issues in conjunction with learning experimental skillsets as well as inspections.
The actual Biology Syllabus entails of scientific phenomena specifics hence these particular 3 important objectives are crucial for the main assessment procedure. A few other reasons for assessment are to be capable of making predictions, address issues, manipulate data and locate ideal sources to get knowledge acquisition.
If you like origami – or just Star Wars – you’ll enjoy folding your own Yoda or Millennium Falcon. ?The Star Wars Origami kit is a bit of a cheat, because it uses special paper printed with the details. ?It comes with a book with complete instructions for folding the papers to create 36 different [...]
Retail version of The Walking Dead causing issues on Xbox 360
A number of complains have appeared at the Telltale forum regarding the retail version of The Walking Dead.
With the game arriving in physical form a week later than it was scheduled for release, the game had asked the anxious gamers to wait a bit longer.
That would not have been an issue had the retail version of the game lived up to the expectations.
Users playing the retail version of the critically acclaimed point-and-click adventure role-playing game (RPG) on Xbox 360 have been complaining about encountering a number of issues, which range from freezing and stuttering to being unable to play beyond
the first episode.
According to the complains on Telltale forum, the Xbox 360 version of retail The Walking Dead game freezes and stutters, which renders it unplayable.
With the game featuring plenty of quick-time events, it becomes even more impossible to play the game as some users reported that the button prompts are appearing with a huge delay.
If the performance issues were not bad enough, users have also complained about being stuck on the first episode of the game.
Despite completing the first episode and selecting the second episode, the game restarts the first episode, thus preventing them from making any progress.
An Xbox Live title update was released to fix the issue, but some users claim that the problem is continuing to persist even after the installation of the update.
Telltale Games has acknowledged the issues and stated the it was apparently the users owning the 4GB Xbox 360 Slim model that are experiencing the aforementioned performance issues and unable to access Episode 2 of the Walking Dead.
The users have, however, claimed to be experiencing these problems on models other than Xbox 360 Slim as well, including the Gears of War 3 special edition console.
The company is reportedly looking into the problem and hopes to provide more information regarding the issues and their solution soon.
The Walking Dead game walked away with a number of awards from 2012 Spike TV Video Game Award show earlier this month, including the Game of the Year, Best Downloadable Game and Best Adapted Video Game award.
FILE - This Dec. 12, 2012 file image provided by NASA shows the Mars rover Curiosity at a pit stop, a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay." It took the image on the 125th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Dec. 12, 2012), just after finishing that sol's drive. The Sol 125 drive entered Yellowknife Bay and covered about 86 feet (26.1 meters). The descent into the basin crossed a step about 2 feet (half a meter) high, visible in the upper half of this image. Curiosity will now head for Mount Sharp in mid-February after it drills into its first rock. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech, File)
FILE - This Dec. 12, 2012 file image provided by NASA shows the Mars rover Curiosity at a pit stop, a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay." It took the image on the 125th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Dec. 12, 2012), just after finishing that sol's drive. The Sol 125 drive entered Yellowknife Bay and covered about 86 feet (26.1 meters). The descent into the basin crossed a step about 2 feet (half a meter) high, visible in the upper half of this image. Curiosity will now head for Mount Sharp in mid-February after it drills into its first rock. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech, File)
FILE - This file image provided by NASA shows the base of Mount Sharp on Mars. The Curiosity rover is set to drive toward the mountain in mid-February after drilling into a rock. The image was taken by Curiosity's 100-millimeter Mast Camera on Aug. 23, 2012. Scientists enhanced the color in one version to show the Martian scene under the lighting conditions we have on Earth, which helps in analyzing the terrain. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS, File)
FILE - This file image provided by NASA shows a color self-portrait of the Mars rover Curiosity. It is set to drive toward a Martian mountain in mid-February after drilling into a rock. On the 84th and 85th Martian days of the NASA Mars rover Curiosity's mission on Mars (Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, 2012), NASA's Curiosity rover used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to capture dozens of high-resolution images to be combined into self-portrait images of the rover. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS, File)
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) ? Since captivating the world with its acrobatic landing, the Mars rover Curiosity has fallen into a rhythm: Drive, snap pictures, zap at boulders, scoop up dirt. Repeat.
Topping its to-do list in the new year: Set off toward a Martian mountain ? a trek that will take up a good chunk of the year.
The original itinerary called for starting the drive before the Times Square ball drop, but Curiosity lingered longer than planned at a pit stop, delaying the trip.
Curiosity will now head for Mount Sharp in mid-February after it drills into its first rock.
"We'll probably be ready to hit the pedal to the metal and give the keys back to the rover drivers," mission chief scientist John Grotzinger said in a recent interview at his office on the sprawling NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory campus 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
The road trip comes amid great expectations. After all, it's the reason the $2.5 billion mission targeted Gale Crater near the Martian equator. Soaring from the center of the ancient crater is a 3-mile-high peak with intriguing layers of rocks.
Curiosity's job is to figure out whether the landing site ever had the right environmental conditions to support microbes. Scientists already know water flowed in the past thanks to the rover's discovery of an old streambed. Besides water, life as we know it also needs energy, the sun.
What's missing are the chemical building blocks of life: complex carbon-based molecules. If they're preserved on Mars, scientists figure the best place to hunt for them is at the base of Mount Sharp where images from space reveal hints of interesting geology.
It's a six-month journey if Curiosity drives nonstop. But since scientists will want to command the six-wheel rover to rest and examine rocky outcrops along the way, it'll turn into a nine-month odyssey.
Before Curiosity can tackle a mountain, there's unfinished business to tend to. After spending the holiday taking measurements of the Martian atmosphere, Curiosity gears up for the first task of the new year: Finding the perfect rock to bore into.
The exercise ? from picking a rock to drilling to deciphering its chemical makeup ? is expected to last more than a month.
"We have promised everybody that we're going to go slowly," said Grotzinger, a geologist at the California Institute of Technology.
Curiosity's low-key adventures thus far are in contrast to the drama-filled touchdown that entranced the world in August. Since the car-size rover was too heavy to land using a parachute and airbags, engineers invented a daring new way that involved lowering it to the surface by cables. The risky arrival proved so successful and popular that NASA is planning an encore in 2020.
Curiosity joined another NASA rover, Opportunity, which has been exploring the Martian southern hemisphere since 2004. Opportunity's twin, Spirit, stopped communicating in 2010.
After nailing the landing, Curiosity fell into a routine. The first month was dominated by health checkups ? a tedious but essential prerequisite before driving. A chemistry laboratory on wheels, it's the most high-tech spacecraft to land on another planet so extra care was taken to ensure its tools, including its rock-zapping laser and robotic arm, worked.
Once it got the green light, it trundled to a waypoint that's home to three unique types of terrain to perform science experiments. Every time Curiosity roves, it leaves Morse code tracks in the soil, providing a visual signal between drives. The message spells out JPL, short for Jet Propulsion Lab, which built the rover.
So far, its odometer has logged less than a mile. Despite the slow going, scientists have been smitten with the postcards it beamed home, including a stylish self-portrait and tantalizing glimpses of Mount Sharp.
Huge expectations weigh on the mission with NASA balancing the need to feed the public's appetite while pursuing discoveries at its own pace. Last month, the space agency quashed Internet speculation that Curiosity had detected complex carbon compounds in a pinch of Martian soil by issuing a statement ahead of a science meeting where the team was due to present the latest findings.
American University space policy professor Howard McCurdy said Curiosity is currently in a transition, caught between the viral landing and the scientific payoff expected at Mount Sharp.
"It is interesting, but slow," he said in an email. "I expect public interest will rise as the rover gets closer to its destination."
Curiosity's prime mission lasts two years, but NASA expects the plutonium-powered rover to live far longer. A priority for its human handlers is to learn to operate it more efficiently so that it becomes second nature. Before heading to Mount Sharp, engineers plan a software update to Curiosity's computers to fix remaining bugs.
"We'll need to be pretty careful," project manager Richard Cook said of the upcoming drive. "We may find terrain that we're not comfortable driving in and we'll have to spend time driving around stuff."
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Follow Alicia Chang at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia
Psychiatry panelists with ties to drug industry say yes
By Peter Whoriskey, WashPost, Published: December 26
It was a simple experiment in healing the bereaved: Twenty-two patients who had recently lost a spouse were given a widely used antidepressant.
The drug, marketed as Wellbutrin, improved ?major depressive symptoms occurring shortly after the loss of a loved one,? the report in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry concluded.
When, though, should the bereaved be medicated? For years, the official handbook of psychiatry, issued by the American Psychiatric Association, advised against diagnosing major depression when the distress is ?better accounted for by bereavement.? Such grief, experts said, was better left to nature.
But that may be changing.
In what some prominent critics have called a bonanza for the drug companies, the American Psychiatric Association this month voted to drop the old warning against diagnosing depression in the bereaved, opening the way for more of them to be diagnosed with major depression ? and thus, treated with antidepressants.
Despite a recent rise in poverty, homelessness is down. One reason? Providing a residence for the homeless creates enough self-respect for them to deal with underlying issues.
By the Monitor's Editorial Board / December 26, 2012
Al Horne looks up at the rain falling on homeless people waiting in line to receive a Christmas meal by The Extended Aftercare Alumni volunteers on Christmas morning in downtown Houston. Volunteers distributed a holiday meal, clothes, and hygiene gift packages on Christmas morning in a tradition started to give people new to recovery from drug and alcohol addiction an opportunity to be of service.
Mayra Beltran/Houston Chronicle/AP Photo
Enlarge
Two decades ago, a simple idea was floated in the United States: Give homeless people a home rather then temporary shelter and their sense of personal dignity will rise, opening the way for them to solve their problems.?
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The idea finally spread nationwide under President George W. Bush and has been enhanced by President Obama. This has led to an amazing result: Despite the drop in personal income and a rise in poverty caused by the 2007-09 recession, homelessness has dropped in recent years, according to new data.
The reasons now seem obvious. People who aren?t living on the streets or in temporary settings have better stability to deal with mental, drug, or family problems that often go hand in hand with homelessness. They don?t cycle in and out of hospitals, mental-health facilities, jails, courts, or shelters at great expense to taxpayers. They are not socially stigmatized by their living conditions. A home helps center them.
For charities and government, the cost savings of this ?housing first? strategy have been a significant incentive to keep funding it. In 2010, the Obama administration even began to believe it could completely whip homelessness. It set a goal to end ?chronic? homelessness by 2015 (or not have any individuals who have been homeless for a year or more or have had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years). It set the same goal for homeless veterans. But it set a less ambitious date of 2020 to end homelessness for families, youth, and children.
The goals may not be met by those dates but that should not discourage efforts to give those struggling with homelessness the self-respect and stability that helps them keep off the streets. The next nationwide survey of the homeless population will be on the night of Jan. 28-29, offering yet another possible marker on recent progress.
?We know that combining permanent housing with a coordinated pipeline of supportive services is the best way to help people improve their lives and avoid future homelessness,? said Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius in a recent speech.
Despite the nationwide results, many cities with the worst homelessness are worried about the future. A December survey by the US Conference of Mayors showed that homeless families with children were denied shelter this year in more than half of these cities because of inadequate capacity. The cities expect an increase in demand for shelter in 2013.
When a good idea works in addressing a social ill, both liberals and conservatives can often rally around it. They did so on welfare reform in 1996 and again on the ?housing first? strategy. Opinions may differ on funding levels or the degree of private versus government contributions, but good reform ideas can find a permanent home in society.
Dec. 27, 2012 ? One approach to understanding components in living organisms is to attempt to create them artificially, using principles of chemistry, engineering and genetics. A suite of powerful techniques -- collectively referred to as synthetic biology -- have been used to produce self-replicating molecules, artificial pathways in living systems and organisms bearing synthetic genomes.
In a new twist, John Chaput, a researcher at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute and colleagues at the Department of Pharmacology, Midwestern University, Glendale, AZ have fabricated an artificial protein in the laboratory and examined the surprising ways living cells respond to it.
"If you take a protein that was created in a test tube and put it inside a cell, does it still function," Chaput asks. "Does the cell recognize it? Does the cell just chew it up and spit it out?" This unexplored area represents a new domain for synthetic biology and may ultimately lead to the development of novel therapeutic agents.
The research results, reported in the advanced online edition of the journal ACS Chemical Biology, describe a peculiar set of adaptations exhibited by Escherichia coli bacterial cells exposed to a synthetic protein, dubbed DX. Inside the cell, DX proteins bind with molecules of ATP, the energy source required by all biological entities.
"ATP is the energy currency of life," Chaput says. The phosphodiester bonds of ATP contain the energy necessary to drive reactions in living systems, giving up their stored energy when these bonds are chemically cleaved. The depletion of available intracellular ATP by DX binding disrupts normal metabolic activity in the cells, preventing them from dividing, (though they continue to grow).
After exposure to DX, the normally spherical E. coli bacteria develop into elongated filaments. Within the filamentous bacteria, dense intracellular lipid structures act to partition the cell at regular intervals along its length. These unusual structures, which the authors call endoliposomes, are an unprecedented phenomenon in such cells.
"Somewhere along the line of this filamentation, other processes begin to happen that we haven't fully understood at the genetic level, but we can see the results phenotypically," Chaput says. "These dense lipid structures are forming at very regular regions along the filamented cell and it looks like it could be a defense mechanism, allowing the cell to compartmentalize itself." This peculiar adaptation has never been observed in bacterial cells and appears unique for a single-celled organism.
Producing a synthetic protein like DX, which can mimic the elaborate folding characteristics of naturally occurring proteins and bind with a key metabolite like ATP is no easy task. As Chaput explains, a clever strategy known as mRNA display was used to produce, fine-tune and amplify synthetic proteins capable of binding ATP with high affinity and specificity, much as a naturally occurring ATP-binding protein would.
First, large libraries of random sequence peptides are formed from the four nucleic acids making up DNA, with each strand measuring around 80 nucleotides in length. These sequences are then transcribed into RNA with the help of an enzyme -- RNA polymerase. If a natural ribosome is then introduced, it attaches to the strand and reads the random sequence RNA as though it was a naturally-occurring RNA, generating a synthetic protein as it migrates along the strand. In this way, synthetic proteins based on random RNA sequences can be generated.
Exposing the batch of synthetic proteins to the target molecule and extracting those that bind can then select for ATP-binding proteins. But as Chaput explains, there's a problem: "The big question is how do you recover that genetic information? You can't reverse transcribe a protein back into DNA. You can't PCR amplify a protein. So we have to do all these molecular biology tricks."
The main trick involves an earlier step in the process. A molecular linker is chemically attached to the RNA templates, such that each RNA strand forms a bond with its newly translated protein. The mRNA-protein hybrids are exposed to selection targets (like ATP) over consecutive rounds of increasing stringency. After each round of selection, those library members that remain bound to the target are reverse-transcribed into cDNA (using their conveniently attached RNA messages), and then PCR amplified.
In the current study, E. coli cells exposed to DX transitioned into a filamentous form, which can occur naturally when such cells are subject to conditions of stress. The cells display low metabolic activity and limited cell division, presumably owing to their ATP-starved condition.
The study also examined the ability of E. coli to recover following DX exposure. The cells were found to enter a quiescent state known as viable but non-culturable (VBNC), meaning that they survived ATP sequestration and returned to their non-filamentous state after 48 hours, but lost their reproductive capacity. Further, this condition was difficult to reverse and seems to involve a fundamental reprogramming of the cell.
In an additional response to DX, the filamentous cells form previously undocumented structures, which the authors refer to as endoliposomes. These dense lipid concentrations, spanning the full width of the filamented E. coli, segment the cells into distinct compartments, giving the cells a stringbean-like appearance under the microscope.
The authors speculate that this adaptation may be an effort to maintain homeostasis in regions of the filamentous cell, which have essentially been walled off from the intrusion of ATP-depleting DX. They liken endoliposomes to the series of water-tight compartments found in submarines which are used to isolate damaged sections of the ship and speculate that DX-exposed cells are partitioning their genetic information into regions where it can be safely quarantined. Such self-compartmentalization is known to occur in some eukaryotic cells, but has not been previously observed in prokaryotes like E. coli.
The research indicates that there is still a great deal to learn about bacterial behavior and the repertoire of responses available when such cells encounter novel situations, such as an unfamiliar, synthetic protein. The study also notes that many infectious agents rely on a dormant state, (similar to the VBNC condition observed in the DX-exposed E. coli), to elude detection by antibiotics. A better understanding of the mechanisms driving this behavior could provide a new approach to targeting such pathogens.
The relative safety of E. coli as a model organism for study may provide a fruitful tool for more in-depth investigation of VBNC states in pathogenic organisms. Further, given ATP's central importance for living organisms, its suppression may provide another avenue for combating disease. One example would be an engineered bacteriophage capable of delivering DX genes to pathogenic organisms.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Arizona State University. The original article was written by Richard Harth.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Shaleen B. Korch, Joshua M. Stomel, Megan A. Le?n, Matt A. Hamada, Christine R. Stevenson, Brent W. Simpson, Sunil K. Gujulla, John C. Chaput. ATP Sequestration by a Synthetic ATP-Binding Protein Leads to Novel Phenotypic Changes inEscherichia coli. ACS Chemical Biology, 2012; : 121203123002005 DOI: 10.1021/cb3004786
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.
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Washington Redskins' Robert Griffin III passes in the second half of an NFL football game against the Philadelphia Eagles, Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012, in Philadelphia. Washington won 27-20. (AP Photo/Michael Perez)
Washington Redskins' Robert Griffin III passes in the second half of an NFL football game against the Philadelphia Eagles, Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012, in Philadelphia. Washington won 27-20. (AP Photo/Michael Perez)
Washington Redskins coach Mike Shanahan, left, and Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid meet after an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012, in Philadelphia. Washington won 27-20. (AP Photo/Michael Perez)
ASHBURN, Va. (AP) ? Compare what was said Wednesday by Robert Griffin III and Mike Shanahan. One sounds like a stereotypical coach. The other could be mistaken for an overeager player.
A case of role reversal hit the Washington Redskins on Wednesday. The rookie quarterback, on the day of his Pro Bowl selection, downplayed Sunday's winner-take-all game against the Dallas Cowboys with one-game-at-a-time-type answers, while the veteran hard-nosed coach was the one whose words could be featured on a banner to promote a game that will decide the NFC East.
"It's the biggest stage, but none of us are looking at it that way," Griffin said. "It's another game we have to go out and win, and that's the way we look at it. Every moment in your life is the biggest one at that time, so we look forward to having many more of these, but we've got to make sure we take care of this one."
Griffin, elected a team captain at midseason, said he'll give his teammates that same even-keel message.
"Basketball, the big game, track, the finals, whatever it is, whenever you play the moment up too much it can become too big to seize the moment," said Griffin, whose big moments include winning a bowl game and the Heisman Trophy while at Baylor. "So you just want to make sure you don't make something so big that you can't grab ahold of it."
After Griffin left the room, along came Shanahan, who is looking to end a personal playoff drought. The coach won two Super Bowls with John Elway and the Denver Broncos in the 1990s but lost make-or-break games in the final weeks of the 2006 and 2008 seasons. He hasn't been to the postseason since 2005.
"These are the games you'll remember for the rest of your life. Win or go home," Shanahan said. "I don't care what playoff game, when I look back as an assistant or as a head coach, you go back and you think about the great experiences you had or the bad memories you have.
"You want to take advantage of these opportunities when they exist. They don't come around every day. And when they do come around, you want to make sure that you play your best and you prepare yourself the best possible way.
"And you tell that guys that this is not just a normal game. You've got to make sure the attention to detail's there. You can't make mistakes. The concentration level's got to be there."
Stay medium? Or get pumped? Think of it like any other game? Or treat it as special?
Or somehow do both?
With all due respect to Griffin ? who has deservedly won praise all season for having poise beyond his years ? the coach probably comes closer to reflecting the attitude in the locker room.
After all, the Redskins haven't been to the playoffs since 2007, and they haven't won a division title since 1999.
"This has only happened to me once before, where if you win that final game, you've got a playoff spot," left guard Kory Lichtensteiger said.
"It's a special feeling, and when you go a lot of seasons in a row without really playing for anything meaningful in December, it's quite a change. ... We're going to be hyped up. I don't think there's any way around that."
The Cowboys-Redskins game has been moved to Sunday night and will mark the end of the regular season. It's possible that Washington (9-6) could lose and still get a wild card berth, but only if the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings both lose earlier in the day.
There was one point on which Shanahan and Griffin agreed: These are the types of games that can make a career.
"At the end of the day, everybody is compared to winning championships, if you like it or not," Shanahan said. "Is it fair all the time? Probably not. But how you're going to be judged or ranked is how you play in those games. They define you, sometimes."
Griffin has already shown he can handle high-profile games, winning his NFL debut, his Monday night debut and his Thanksgiving debut. He ranks either first or second in the league in passer rating, yards-per-attempt and interception percentage.
He said he'll be able to do more physically against the Cowboys after his sprained right knee prompted coaches to limit the game plan in a 27-20 win over the Philadelphia Eagles.
"Nothing's definite in the league with how you're going to be judged," Griffin said. "But if you play big in the big stages, people tend to write good things about you, so we all want to play well on the big stage."
While Shanahan's words could be used to market the game, Griffin didn't miss a chance to market himself. He was asked about a $10,000 fine, which he is appealing, levied recently by the NFL for wearing attire from his personal sponsor Adidas instead of league sponsor Nike at a postgame news conference.
"I understand the principle of that. And I respect that," Griffin said. "That why I haven't really worn that much Adidas at all."
"Three stripes," he added with a smile, a reference to the Adidas logo. "That's all I can say about that. Name-dropping all up in here."
Griffin got a mention by the NFL later in the day when he, left tackle Trent Williams and linebacker Lorenzo Alexander were the Redskins players selected to the Pro Bowl. All three are first-time selections with distinct stories: the rookie phenom, the athletic lineman who rededicated himself after last year's drug suspension, and the special teams standout finally getting his due.
"You can't play down those kind of things," Griffin said. "I've always said my whole football career that you don't play for awards. They just come. You don't say you're going to win the Heisman. You don't say you're going to win MVP. You go out and you prove it on the field, and if everyone feels that way then they'll give you that award."
Notes: WR Dezmon Briscoe did not practice Wednesday after missing his flight back from the Christmas break. "That'll cost a little cash," Shanahan said. ... RT Tyler Polumbus (concussion) and LB London Fletcher (sprained left ankle) did not practice, while CB DeJon Gomes (sprained left knee) was limited. ... The Redskins' new bubble paid off Wednesday when a winter storm forced the team inside for practice. A year ago, the players would have piled into cars to drive to a gym or an airport hangar.
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Follow Joseph White on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JGWhiteAP
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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? Nasty weather, including a chance of strong tornadoes and howling thunderstorms, could be on the way for Christmas Day along the Gulf Coast from east Texas to north Florida.
The storms will hold off long enough to let Christmas Eve bonfires light the way for Pere Noel along the Mississippi River, officials said.
Farther north, much of Oklahoma and Arkansas were under a winter storm warning, with freezing rain, sleet and snow expected on Christmas. A blizzard watch is out for western Kentucky. No matter what form it takes, travel Tuesday could be dangerous, meteorologists said.
The storms could bring strong tornadoes or winds of more than 75 mph, heavy rain, quarter-sized hail and dangerous lightning in Louisiana and Mississippi, the National Weather Service said. The greatest risk is in areas north of Interstates 10 and 12, with the worst storms likely along and southeast of a line from Winnsboro, La., to Jackson and DeKalb, Miss., according to the weather service's Jackson office.
"We understand that most people will be focusing on the holiday," said Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant. "Please plan now for how you will receive a severe weather warning, and know where you will go when it is issued. It only takes a few minutes, and it will help everyone have a safe Christmas."
In Alabama, the director of the Emergency Management Agency, Art Faulkner, said he was briefing both local officials and Gov. Robert Bentley on plans for dealing with a possible outbreak.
Forecasters said storms would begin near the coast and spread north through the day, bringing with them the chances of storms, particularly in central and southwest Alabama. No day is good for severe weather, but Faulkner said Christmas adds extra challenges because people are visiting unfamiliar areas. Also, people are more tuned in to holiday festivities than their weather radio on a day when thoughts typically turn more toward the possibility of snow than twisters, he said.
"We are trying to get the word out through our media partners and through social media that people need to be prepared," Faulkner said
Meteorologists also recommended getting yards ready Monday, bringing indoors or securing Christmas decorations, lawn furniture and anything else that high winds might rip away or slam into a building or car.
"Make sure they're all stable and secure ? that there's not going to be any loose wires blowing around and stuff like that," or bring them inside, said Joe Rua, with the National Weather Service in Lake Charles, where storms were expected to roar in from Texas after midnight.
On Christmas Eve, more than 100 log teepees for annual bonfires are set up along the Mississippi River in St. James Parish, which is a bit more than halfway from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, and about 20 in St. John the Baptist Parish, its downriver neighbor, parish officials said. Most are 20 feet tall, the legal limit.
Fire chiefs and other officials in both parishes decided to go ahead with the bonfires after an afternoon conference call with the National Weather Service.
The bad weather was expected from a storm front moving from the West Coast crashing into a cold front, said weather service meteorologist Bob Wagner of Slidell.
"There's going to be a lot of turning in the atmosphere," he said.
Ten storm systems in the last 50 years have spawned at least one Christmastime tornado with winds of 113 mph or more (F-2) in the South, Chris Vaccaro, a National Weather Service spokesman in Washington, said in an email. The most lethal were the storms of Dec. 24-26, 1982, when 29 tornadoes in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi killed three people and injured 32; and those of Dec. 24-25, 1964, when two people were killed and about 30 people injured by 14 tornadoes in seven states.
A National Weather Service statement from Jackson, Miss., said the main questions are how far north and west the threat will spread ? and whether the storms will be more scattered, resulting in a greater tornado risk, or more in the form of a squall line, resulting in a higher risk of damaging straight-line winds along with embedded tornadoes.
In the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Timothy J. Babin said the 10 or so wire Christmas sculptures in his yard and more than 180 plastic figures in his mother's yard are ready for just about any storm. Each one is staked down when it's set out, he said.
Dozens of toy soldiers, a nativity scene, Santa and nine reindeer (don't forget Rudolph), angels, snowmen and Santa Clauses fill the yard of his mother, Joy Babin.
"From a wind standpoint, we should be fine unless we're talking 70, 80, 90 miles an hour," Timothy Babin said.
Out shopping with her family at a Target store in Montgomery, Ala., on Christmas Eve, veterinary assistant Johnina Black said she wasn't worried about the possibility of storms on the holiday.
"If the good Lord wants to take you, he's going to take you," she said.
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Associated Press writer Bob Johnson in Montgomery, Ala., contributed to this report.
