This week, I am featuring a sweet kitty named Romeo. He was also in one of the front cages when I went to pick up Honey Delite from the Williamson County Animal Shelter, so he's been there for awhile now. I remember a young couple oooh-ing and aaah-ing over him while I was there. The man kept talking about how cool Romeo was, but the lady didn't seem convinced. Don't know what she was thinking! Romeo was a sweetheart! Romeo is a 4 year old boy kitty that is neutered and is up to date on all of his shots. He is located near Austin, TX just outside of Round Rock in a kill shelter. He is also FIV positive so he really needs someone to look after him. FIV positive kitties can still live long and happy lives. Here is what the WCRAS says about Romeo on their website:
"Romeo is a total sweetheart! He is friendly and affectionate and loves everybody. He was found wandering around lost so he is really wishing and hoping for someone nice to come and rescue him. Romeo has FIV (Feline Immunodeficiency Virus), but that is not a death sentence. With proper care and nutrition, he can live a long and healthy life. It is not contagious to dogs or people, and only transmitted to other cats through biting. If you are looking for the love of your life, who will be your only cat, Romeo is the one for you!"
Doesn't he just sound wonderful?! You can learn more about Romeo at his details page here. If you're interested in adopting Romeo, please visit the WCRAS website for more information!
Opt to Adopt! Dogs N Pawz hosts a weekly adoption Blog Hop - visit the links below to find more adoptable pets!?
Posted by karon on Jun 1st, 2013 in Home | Comments Off
True estate law: Not for you?
True estate is certainly 1 of the safest investments and a lot of men and women use actual estate as an investment avenue. Actual estate law is not the forte of real estate attorneys and actual estate agents only. Every real estate investor should recognize at least the basics of actual estate law. In truth, a quick course or a concise book on true estate law can at times be of excellent assist (and is generally adequate for understanding the basics of true estate law).
What you need to have to comprehend is the true estate law with respect to the legal procedures that you need to have to follow for ensuring a smooth transfer of title to the house you obtain/sell and other connected procedures. You need to have to realize the charge structure (e.g. stamp duty, and so on) that you require to take care of as per true estate law. You can also recognize the classification of properties and how the simple real estate law applies to them. How the industrial and residential properties are treated differently by the real estate law. The tax laws with respect to actual estate are one particular of the issues that would be of most interest to you. So, your study on actual estate law ought to also cover all the elements associated to taxes. How mortgages are treated in the viewpoint of actual estate law is one more point that you ought to know about. Then again, the genuine estate law with respect to tenancy ought to also be well understood by people who wish to rent out their property.
However, you need to not overdo that i.e. you need to not begin becoming hysterical about understanding genuine estate law (lest you finish up wasting a lot of time in trying to discover every thing about true estate law and be left with no time to evaluate your real estate investment). Leave the intricacies of genuine estate law with the genuine estate attorneys (and to some extent actual estate brokers who also are taught true estate law as portion of their course for obtaining broker license).
Understanding the various legal terms referred to in true estate laws can help you in not only enhancing your understanding of actual estate but also aid in producing your conversations with genuine estate attorneys/agents genuinely fruitful. You should also note that even though some of the fundamentals remain the exact same, the real estate laws differ across various states. Also, true estate laws (especially the tax related real estate laws) can undergo a alter more than a period of time, so you need to have to hold a tab on such modifications. Any huge changes will anyhow seem prominently in news and you will get to know of them anyhow.
So knowing a tiny bit of genuine estate law can actually be beneficial (and is, in reality, vital).
MOSCOW (AP) ? The Soviet Union disappeared from the map more than two decades ago. But online an 'e-vil empire' is thriving.
Security experts say the .su Internet suffix assigned to the USSR in 1990 has turned into a haven for hackers who've flocked to the defunct superpower's domain space to send spam and steal money.
Capitalist concerns, rather than Communist nostalgia, explain the move.
"I don't think that this is really a political thing," Oren David, a manager at security firm RSA's anti-fraud unit, said in a recent telephone interview. David noted that other obscure areas of the Internet, such as the .tk domain associated with the South Pacific territory of Tokelau, have been used by opportunistic hackers.
"It's all about business," he said.
David and others say scammers began to move to .su after the administrators of Russia's .ru space toughened their rules back in late 2011.
Group-IB, which runs one of Russia's two official Internet watchdogs, says that the number of malicious websites hosted across the Soviet Union's old domain doubled in 2011 and doubled again in 2012, surpassing even the vast number of renegade sites on .ru and its newer Cyrillic-language counterpart.
The Soviet domain has "lots of problems," Group-IB's Andrei Komarov said in a phone interview. "In my opinion more than half of cybercriminals in Russia and former USSR use it."
The most notorious site was Exposed.su, which purportedly published credit records belonging to President Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, Republican presidential challengers Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, and celebrities including Britney Spears, Jay Z, Beyonce and Tiger Woods. The site is now defunct.
Other Soviet sites are used to control botnets ? the name given to the networks of hijacked computers used by criminals to empty bank accounts, crank out spam, or launch attacks against rival websites.
Internet hosting companies generally eliminate such sites as soon as they're identified. But Swiss security researcher Roman Huessy, whose abuse.ch blog tracks botnet control sites, said hackers based in Soviet cyberspace can operate with impunity for months at a time.
Asked for examples, he rattled off a series of sites actively involved in ransacking bank accounts or holding hard drives hostage in return for ransom ? brazenly working in the online equivalent of broad daylight.
"I can continue posting this list for ages," he said via Skype.
The history of .su goes back to the early days of the Internet, when its architects were creating the universe of country code suffixes meant to mark out a website's nationality. Each code ? like .fr for France or .ca for Canada ? was meant to correspond to a country.
Some Cold War-era domain names ? such as .yu for Yugoslavia or .dd for East Germany ? evaporated after the countries behind them disappeared. But the .su domain survived the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the creation of a .ru domain in 1994, resisting repeated attempts to wipe it from the Web because, unlike other defunct domains, those behind .su refused to pull the plug ? on both commercial and patriotic grounds.
With more than 120,000 domains currently registered, mothballing .su now would be a messy operation.
"It's like blocking .com or .org," said Komarov. "Lots of legitimate domains are registered there."
Among them are stalin.su, which eulogizes the Soviet dictator and the English-language chronicle.su, an absurdist parody site.
But experts say many are fraudulent, and even the organization behind .su accepts it has a problem on its hands.
"We realize it's a threat for our image," said Sergei Ovcharenko, whose Moscow-based nonprofit Foundation for Internet Development took responsibility for .su in 2007.
Ovcharenko insisted that only a small number of .su sites are malicious, although he acknowledged that criminal sites can stay online for extremely long periods of time. He said his hands were tied by weak Russian legislation and outdated terms of service. But he promised that stricter rules are on their way after months of legal leg work.
"We are almost there," he said. "This summer, we'll be rolling out our new policy."
Meanwhile .su has become an increasingly notorious corner of the Internet, an online echo of the evil empire moniker assigned to the Soviet Union by U.S. President Ronald Reagan 30 years ago.
David, the RSA manager, said the emergence of a Communist relic as a 21st century security threat was a bizarre blast from the past.
"I thought that the Berlin Wall and my grandma's borscht are the only remnants of the Soviet Union," he said. "I was wrong."
___
Online:
Group-IB: http://www.group-ib.com
Roman Huessy's website: http://www.abuse.ch
RSA: http://uk.emc.com/domains/rsa/index.htm
Foundation for Internet Development: http://www.fid.ru/english
___
Raphael Satter can be reached at: http://raphae.li/twitter
Mainz University obtains new CRC 'Nanodimensional polymer therapeutics for tumor therapy'Public release date: 31-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Professor Rudolf Zentel zentel@uni-mainz.de 49-613-139-20361 Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz
Mainz chemists and physicians develop nanoparticle-based immunotherapy for cancer
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has established a new Collaborative Research Center on "Nanodimensional polymer therapeutics for tumor therapy" (CRC 1066) at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P). Starting in October 2013, the Collaborative Research Center will receive grants totaling approximately EUR 11 million over four years to develop a nanoparticle-based cancer therapy to combat melanoma as an immunogenic tumor model. The Mainz scientists will focus on a form of cancer immunotherapy that is specifically suitable for permanently eliminating minimal residual disease, such as hidden metastases. The new CRC is notable for its interdisciplinary approach: chemists will study the synthetic feasibility and the structure-property relationships of carrier materials, while immunologists and biomedical specialists develop models for the optimal use of such carriers in the form of a new combination therapy for activating the body's immune response against the cancer. The coordinator of the new DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center is Professor Rudolf Zentel from the Institute of Organic Chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Assistant coordinators are Professor Stephan Grabbe from the Department of Dermatology at the Mainz University Medical Center and Professor Katharina Landfester from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz. In addition, the Board of Directors will include Professor Detlef Schuppan from the Department of Internal Medicine I at the Mainz University Medical Center and Dr. Mathias Barz from the JGU Institute of Organic Chemistry as a representative of young researchers.
The combination of the expertise of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, one of the leading sites for polymer chemistry in Germany, together with the excellent research structure in the area of tumor immunotherapy at the Mainz University Medical Center, will enable the new CRC to conduct research at the broadest level. "This new Collaborative Research Center will bring together these very strong research areas to create new medical challenges for natural scientists as well as to provide medical research with a stronger natural scientific orientation," said the coordinator of the CRC, Professor Rudolf Zentel. "Researchers from the field of chemistry, alongside immunologists and biomedical specialists, will develop novel, multifunctional, nanodimensional therapeutic agents with the aim of releasing agents and combinations of agents in as cell-specific a way as possible, and to also make it possible to make very sensitive agents, such as RNA, therapeutically usable. In an intensively interdisciplinary process, we will combine innovative therapeutic approaches from immunology and oncology with the synthesis of a broad array of well-characterized, suitably functional polymeric nanoparticles with clear physicochemical characterization in the biological environment."
For the chemists, the challenge is to synthesize well-defined polymeric carrier systems and to modify them, render them functional, and to load them with suitable therapeutic agents. Building on these initial synthetic steps, the scientists will go on to test these carrier systems in cross-sectional projects with respect to their interactions in extracellular media, cellular uptake, and distribution in the body. "Our biomedical specialists will then test these systems in combined tumor immunotherapy based on the targeted induction of inflammation in the tumor, stimulation of the immune response, and neutralization of tumor tolerance," said Professor Stephan Grabbe, Director of the Department of Dermatology at the Mainz University Medical Center.
"This Collaborative Research Center is the fruit of decades of excellent research achievements by Mainz scientists in chemistry and medicine and demonstrates the success of building profiles and specialties in science and research at our university," said the President of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Professor Georg Krausch. Mainz has distinguished itself through its many years of successful activity in the field of polymer research and its current work in CRC 625: From single molecules to nanoscale structured materials, Mainz has become renowned for its great expertise in creating and characterizing the physicochemical nature of nanoparticular systems. This makes it possible to create narrowly distributed functional polymer structures and to investigate their aggregate formation in a biological context. In addition, the new CRC will benefit from extensive expertise in the organic chemistry of natural substances, concentrated in the Center for the Synthesis of Natural Products, which is funded by the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, BASF and Boehringer Ingelheim and which contributes to the knowledge of linkers and identification structures as well as a radiopharmaceutical division with outstanding chemical processing options, for example in the field of labeling chemistry and in vivo imaging using PET at the JGU Institute of Nuclear Chemistry. The Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research is also a competent partner for the synthesis and characterization of polymeric carriers.
The Mainz University Medical Center has established a specialty area in immunology with experience in immunotherapy as well as a Center for Translational Oncology (TRON) in combination with new spin-off firms, such as GANYMED, which can supply anti-tumor antibodies. Overall, there is a longstanding tradition of basic research in tumor immunology at the Mainz University Medical Center with the development of new concepts in tumor immunotherapy, culminating in clinical trials focused on melanoma, for example, in Collaborative Research Center 432, which concentrates on tumor immunology and experimental therapy. In addition, the Center for Natural Sciences and Medicine, headed by Professor Stephan Grabbe, has encouraged similar kinds of collaboration between medicine and the natural sciences at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz for more than 30 years.
"The new Collaborative Research Center shows that it makes sense to encourage the development of strong network structures in Mainz and the region. The concept of the CRC is promising because initial successes, specifically in melanoma treatment, have demonstrated that this treatment concept may contribute to making it possible in the future to successfully treat cancers that are now incurable," emphasized Professor Frstermann, Chief Scientific Officer of the Mainz University Medical Center.
###
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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.
Mainz University obtains new CRC 'Nanodimensional polymer therapeutics for tumor therapy'Public release date: 31-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Professor Rudolf Zentel zentel@uni-mainz.de 49-613-139-20361 Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz
Mainz chemists and physicians develop nanoparticle-based immunotherapy for cancer
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has established a new Collaborative Research Center on "Nanodimensional polymer therapeutics for tumor therapy" (CRC 1066) at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P). Starting in October 2013, the Collaborative Research Center will receive grants totaling approximately EUR 11 million over four years to develop a nanoparticle-based cancer therapy to combat melanoma as an immunogenic tumor model. The Mainz scientists will focus on a form of cancer immunotherapy that is specifically suitable for permanently eliminating minimal residual disease, such as hidden metastases. The new CRC is notable for its interdisciplinary approach: chemists will study the synthetic feasibility and the structure-property relationships of carrier materials, while immunologists and biomedical specialists develop models for the optimal use of such carriers in the form of a new combination therapy for activating the body's immune response against the cancer. The coordinator of the new DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center is Professor Rudolf Zentel from the Institute of Organic Chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Assistant coordinators are Professor Stephan Grabbe from the Department of Dermatology at the Mainz University Medical Center and Professor Katharina Landfester from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz. In addition, the Board of Directors will include Professor Detlef Schuppan from the Department of Internal Medicine I at the Mainz University Medical Center and Dr. Mathias Barz from the JGU Institute of Organic Chemistry as a representative of young researchers.
The combination of the expertise of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, one of the leading sites for polymer chemistry in Germany, together with the excellent research structure in the area of tumor immunotherapy at the Mainz University Medical Center, will enable the new CRC to conduct research at the broadest level. "This new Collaborative Research Center will bring together these very strong research areas to create new medical challenges for natural scientists as well as to provide medical research with a stronger natural scientific orientation," said the coordinator of the CRC, Professor Rudolf Zentel. "Researchers from the field of chemistry, alongside immunologists and biomedical specialists, will develop novel, multifunctional, nanodimensional therapeutic agents with the aim of releasing agents and combinations of agents in as cell-specific a way as possible, and to also make it possible to make very sensitive agents, such as RNA, therapeutically usable. In an intensively interdisciplinary process, we will combine innovative therapeutic approaches from immunology and oncology with the synthesis of a broad array of well-characterized, suitably functional polymeric nanoparticles with clear physicochemical characterization in the biological environment."
For the chemists, the challenge is to synthesize well-defined polymeric carrier systems and to modify them, render them functional, and to load them with suitable therapeutic agents. Building on these initial synthetic steps, the scientists will go on to test these carrier systems in cross-sectional projects with respect to their interactions in extracellular media, cellular uptake, and distribution in the body. "Our biomedical specialists will then test these systems in combined tumor immunotherapy based on the targeted induction of inflammation in the tumor, stimulation of the immune response, and neutralization of tumor tolerance," said Professor Stephan Grabbe, Director of the Department of Dermatology at the Mainz University Medical Center.
"This Collaborative Research Center is the fruit of decades of excellent research achievements by Mainz scientists in chemistry and medicine and demonstrates the success of building profiles and specialties in science and research at our university," said the President of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Professor Georg Krausch. Mainz has distinguished itself through its many years of successful activity in the field of polymer research and its current work in CRC 625: From single molecules to nanoscale structured materials, Mainz has become renowned for its great expertise in creating and characterizing the physicochemical nature of nanoparticular systems. This makes it possible to create narrowly distributed functional polymer structures and to investigate their aggregate formation in a biological context. In addition, the new CRC will benefit from extensive expertise in the organic chemistry of natural substances, concentrated in the Center for the Synthesis of Natural Products, which is funded by the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, BASF and Boehringer Ingelheim and which contributes to the knowledge of linkers and identification structures as well as a radiopharmaceutical division with outstanding chemical processing options, for example in the field of labeling chemistry and in vivo imaging using PET at the JGU Institute of Nuclear Chemistry. The Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research is also a competent partner for the synthesis and characterization of polymeric carriers.
The Mainz University Medical Center has established a specialty area in immunology with experience in immunotherapy as well as a Center for Translational Oncology (TRON) in combination with new spin-off firms, such as GANYMED, which can supply anti-tumor antibodies. Overall, there is a longstanding tradition of basic research in tumor immunology at the Mainz University Medical Center with the development of new concepts in tumor immunotherapy, culminating in clinical trials focused on melanoma, for example, in Collaborative Research Center 432, which concentrates on tumor immunology and experimental therapy. In addition, the Center for Natural Sciences and Medicine, headed by Professor Stephan Grabbe, has encouraged similar kinds of collaboration between medicine and the natural sciences at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz for more than 30 years.
"The new Collaborative Research Center shows that it makes sense to encourage the development of strong network structures in Mainz and the region. The concept of the CRC is promising because initial successes, specifically in melanoma treatment, have demonstrated that this treatment concept may contribute to making it possible in the future to successfully treat cancers that are now incurable," emphasized Professor Frstermann, Chief Scientific Officer of the Mainz University Medical Center.
###
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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.
Lead acts to trigger schizophreniaPublic release date: 31-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Timothy S. Paul tp2111@columbia.edu 212-305-2676 Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health
Behavioral and MRI study in mice points to a synergistic relationship between lead exposure and schizophrenia gene
Mice engineered with a human gene for schizophrenia and exposed to lead during early life exhibited behaviors and structural changes in their brains consistent with schizophrenia. Scientists at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine say their findings suggest a synergistic effect between lead exposure and a genetic risk factor, and open an avenue to better understanding the complex gene-environment interactions that put people at risk for schizophrenia and other mental disorders.
Results appear online in Schizophrenia Bulletin.
Going back to 2004, work by scientists at the Mailman School suggested a connection between prenatal lead exposure in humans and increased risk for schizophrenia later in life. But a big question remained: How could lead trigger the disease? Based on his own research, Tomas R. Guilarte, PhD, senior author of the new study, believed the answer was in the direct inhibitory effect of lead on the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR), a synaptic connection point important to brain development, learning, and memory. His research in rodents found that exposure to lead blunted the function of the NMDAR. The glutamate hypothesis of schizophrenia postulates that a deficit in glutamate neurotransmission and specifically hypoactivity of the NMDAR can explain a significant portion of the dysfunction in schizophrenia.
In the new study, Dr. Guilarte, professor and chair of the department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School, and his co-investigators focused on mice engineered to carry the mutant form of Disrupted-in-Schizophrenia-1 (DISC1), a gene that is a risk factor for the disease in humans. Beginning before birth, half of the mutant DISC1 mice were fed a diet with lead, and half were given a normal diet. A second group of normal mice not expressing the mutant DISC1 gene were also split into the two feeding groups. All mice were put through a battery of behavioral tests and their brains were examined using MRI.
Mutant mice exposed to lead and given a psychostimulant exhibited elevated levels of hyperactivity and were less able to suppress a startle in response to a loud noise after being given an acoustic warning. Their brains also had markedly larger lateral ventriclesempty spaces containing cerebrospinal fluidcompared with other mice. These results mirror what is known about schizophrenia in humans.
While the role of genes in schizophrenia and mental disorders is well established, the effect of toxic chemicals in the environment is only just beginning to emerge. The study's results focus on schizophrenia, but implications could be broader.
"We're just scratching the surface," says Dr. Guilarte. "We used lead in this study, but there are other environmental toxins that disrupt the function of the NMDAR." One of these is a family of chemicals in air pollution called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs. "Similarly, any number of genes could be in play," adds Dr. Guilarte, noting that DISC1 is among many implicated in schizophrenia.
Future research may reveal to what extent schizophrenia is determined by environmental versus genetic factors or their interactions, and what other mental problems might be in the mix. One ongoing study by Dr. Guilarte is looking at whether lead exposure alone can contribute to deficits of one specialized type of neuron called parvalbumin-positive GABAergic interneuron that is known to be affected in the brain of schizophrenia patients. Scientists are also interested to establish the critical window for exposurewhether in utero or postnatal, or both.
"The animal model provides a way forward to answer important questions about the physiological processes underlying schizophrenia," says Dr. Guilarte.
###
The study's first author is Bagrat Abazyan, MD, a post-doctoral fellow in the Behavioral Neurobiology and Neuroimmunology Lab, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, which is led by Mikhail Pletnikov, MD, PhD, senior co-author of the paper and principal developer of the DISC1 mouse model. Neuroimaging studies were led by Susumu Mori, PhD, Department of Radiology, also of Johns Hopkins.
Funding for the study was provided by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health to Dr. Guilarte, principal investigator of grant #ES006189 and a Virtual Consortium for Translational/Transdisciplinary Environmental Research (ViCTER) supplement to #ES006189.
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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.
Lead acts to trigger schizophreniaPublic release date: 31-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Timothy S. Paul tp2111@columbia.edu 212-305-2676 Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health
Behavioral and MRI study in mice points to a synergistic relationship between lead exposure and schizophrenia gene
Mice engineered with a human gene for schizophrenia and exposed to lead during early life exhibited behaviors and structural changes in their brains consistent with schizophrenia. Scientists at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine say their findings suggest a synergistic effect between lead exposure and a genetic risk factor, and open an avenue to better understanding the complex gene-environment interactions that put people at risk for schizophrenia and other mental disorders.
Results appear online in Schizophrenia Bulletin.
Going back to 2004, work by scientists at the Mailman School suggested a connection between prenatal lead exposure in humans and increased risk for schizophrenia later in life. But a big question remained: How could lead trigger the disease? Based on his own research, Tomas R. Guilarte, PhD, senior author of the new study, believed the answer was in the direct inhibitory effect of lead on the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR), a synaptic connection point important to brain development, learning, and memory. His research in rodents found that exposure to lead blunted the function of the NMDAR. The glutamate hypothesis of schizophrenia postulates that a deficit in glutamate neurotransmission and specifically hypoactivity of the NMDAR can explain a significant portion of the dysfunction in schizophrenia.
In the new study, Dr. Guilarte, professor and chair of the department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School, and his co-investigators focused on mice engineered to carry the mutant form of Disrupted-in-Schizophrenia-1 (DISC1), a gene that is a risk factor for the disease in humans. Beginning before birth, half of the mutant DISC1 mice were fed a diet with lead, and half were given a normal diet. A second group of normal mice not expressing the mutant DISC1 gene were also split into the two feeding groups. All mice were put through a battery of behavioral tests and their brains were examined using MRI.
Mutant mice exposed to lead and given a psychostimulant exhibited elevated levels of hyperactivity and were less able to suppress a startle in response to a loud noise after being given an acoustic warning. Their brains also had markedly larger lateral ventriclesempty spaces containing cerebrospinal fluidcompared with other mice. These results mirror what is known about schizophrenia in humans.
While the role of genes in schizophrenia and mental disorders is well established, the effect of toxic chemicals in the environment is only just beginning to emerge. The study's results focus on schizophrenia, but implications could be broader.
"We're just scratching the surface," says Dr. Guilarte. "We used lead in this study, but there are other environmental toxins that disrupt the function of the NMDAR." One of these is a family of chemicals in air pollution called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs. "Similarly, any number of genes could be in play," adds Dr. Guilarte, noting that DISC1 is among many implicated in schizophrenia.
Future research may reveal to what extent schizophrenia is determined by environmental versus genetic factors or their interactions, and what other mental problems might be in the mix. One ongoing study by Dr. Guilarte is looking at whether lead exposure alone can contribute to deficits of one specialized type of neuron called parvalbumin-positive GABAergic interneuron that is known to be affected in the brain of schizophrenia patients. Scientists are also interested to establish the critical window for exposurewhether in utero or postnatal, or both.
"The animal model provides a way forward to answer important questions about the physiological processes underlying schizophrenia," says Dr. Guilarte.
###
The study's first author is Bagrat Abazyan, MD, a post-doctoral fellow in the Behavioral Neurobiology and Neuroimmunology Lab, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, which is led by Mikhail Pletnikov, MD, PhD, senior co-author of the paper and principal developer of the DISC1 mouse model. Neuroimaging studies were led by Susumu Mori, PhD, Department of Radiology, also of Johns Hopkins.
Funding for the study was provided by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health to Dr. Guilarte, principal investigator of grant #ES006189 and a Virtual Consortium for Translational/Transdisciplinary Environmental Research (ViCTER) supplement to #ES006189.
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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.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Syrian rebels battling the forces of President Bashar Assad must receive ammunition and heavy weapons to counter the regime's tanks and aircraft or it will be impossible for them to prevail, Sen. John McCain said days after he quietly slipped into Syria to meet with the opposition.
"They just can't fight tanks with AK-47s," McCain said Friday in a telephone interview.
The Republican lawmaker and 2008 presidential candidate made an unannounced visit to Syria on Monday, traveling across the border near Kilis, Turkey, and spending about two hours meeting with rebel leaders. McCain has been one of the most vocal lawmakers demanding aggressive U.S. military action in the 2-year-old Syrian civil war, calling for establishment of a no-fly zone and arming the rebels.
The Obama administration has been reluctant to provide weapons to the disparate opposition, fearing that they will fall into the wrong hands in a volatile region. McCain said he discussed what types of weapons the rebels need and whether they could ensure their control.
"I'm confident that they could get the weapons into the right hands and there's no doubt that they need some kind of capability to reverse the battlefield situation, which right now is in favor of Assad," McCain said.
McCain, a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, was the first U.S. senator to travel to Syria since the civil war began more than two years ago. He said he worked with Deputy Secretary of State William Burns in arranging the trip.
McCain said he spoke with Secretary of State John Kerry "a couple of times. It wasn't that I was hiding it from him; it just didn't seem to come up. I thought Burns was the right guy to go through. They were very important in the trip. We couldn't have done it without their cooperation."
Gen. Salim Idris, chief of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, accompanied McCain and they met with 19 battalion commanders.
Citing the photo of McCain's meeting, a Lebanese newspaper has reported that McCain unwittingly crossed paths with two men connected to a rebel group responsible for the kidnapping of 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims in 2012. McCain said one of the men he reportedly met with is dead and no one in his meeting was identified as the other.
"The people I met with and talked to directly were well-vetted. Their names and their duties were outlined to me. They came from all over Syria," he said.
Two years of violence in Syria have killed more than 70,000 people, according to the United Nations. President Barack Obama has demanded that Assad give up power, while Russia has stood by Syria, its closest ally in the Arab world. Russian officials have said they will support anti-aircraft systems to Syria, and Assad suggested on Thursday that he had received the first shipment.
The United States and Russia are trying to get the Syrian government and opposition forces into peace negotiations. Those talks, initially planned for Geneva next month, have been delayed until July at the earliest.
"It's hard to imagine Bashar Assad negotiating his departure when he has the upper hand on the battlefield," McCain said. "I'm all for a conference, but I think that conference should take place when Bashar Assad knows that he is doomed to defeat if he doesn't negotiate."
Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to provide weapons to rebels in Syria, as well as military training to vetted rebel groups and sanctions against anyone who sells oil or transfers arms to the Assad regime.
The European Union decided late Monday to lift the arms embargo on the Syrian opposition while maintaining all other sanctions against Assad's regime after June 1, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said.
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Having an internet based business, your potential listing of clients is almost limitless. New individuals are connecting to the internet every day, and with the correct advertising and business method, an internet based business should really be able to attract a serious large amount of customers or clients.
Additionally, money can be created for a web company by putting ppc advertising on your website. This tends to work nicely because advertisements are inclined to the specific kinds of interests that the customers or clients of one?s web company have. Each time one of these simple ads is clicked, revenue is generated for you. This really is an easy way to increase the quantity of money your web company provides.
Yet another benefit that an internet based business gives is the power to provide all of your products and services on a site. Many clients recognize the actual fact that an online business allows them to look at anything that?s available, where often, traditional brick and mortar stores are merely able to keep a quantity of products in stock. The website of an internet based company also provides for the latest, current information regarding each specific item. Also, an online company is helpful to the client who?s trying to come to a decision, because he or she will come back to see the solution multiple times without leaving the comfort of home. Comparing costs and features of individual products and services can also be made easy for the customer who is buying from an internet based business.
The speed and ease of online monetary transactions can be a fantastic advantage for both customers and those that own their own web company. As well, a lot of the average cost of buying is slashed through the effectiveness of an online company.
While an internet based business does have more competition due to the simple establishing on the web commerce, if an based business is in a position to make its services and products stand out in a unique way, there?s virtually unlimited potential for income.
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Public release date: 31-May-2013
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