Heavy frying pans are designed to conduct heat efficiently when cooking food, and you can also use these same pans to quickly defrost frozen foods. Line a heavy frying pan with aluminum foil, place your food in the pan, and place the pan on your stove top or an oven rack (turned off, of course) to facilitate defrosting.
Bento weblog Lunch in a Box found this tip from a Japanese language book on freezing foods. Using the frying pan method of defrosting works more quickly than letting food defrost in your refrigerator, avoids wasting water with the running water technique, and prevents hot cooked spots from forming when you defrost in your microwave.
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Read CRM software. You?ll soon notice that many of the personal finance software you?ll come across will offer you a free trial period. If you haven?t used the program you are considering this is an advantage you?ll want to use for sure.
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If you want a program you can use anywhere you can get Internet access then you should look into Mvelopes Personal budgeting System. Focus on your budget and help to reduce your expenses when you use this software. Mvelopes is designed to analyze and identify your different financial transactions and thereby helps you save money. For those who need a software that focuses on your budget then you will want to look into this web based software. For those who wish to also track investments though, a better investment for you would be Quicken or Microsoft Money
For a robust budgeting and money management software then Quicken Starter Edition 2011is a simple choice. One of the best known names in financial software, this edition of Quicken is designed for the end user who wishes to gain control over their personal finances. Easily organize your household budget with this software by tracking your bank accounts and credit cards. Never have a late fee again, with the convenient bill reminder. Another fabulous option is you can link up your data with Turbo Tax to file your taxes at the end of the year. Get started quickly with the Quicken Starter Edition?s guided setup feature. For those who need something a little more advanced there is also Quicken Deluxe 2011.
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you will find that some of the software available will in the end suit your needs. You can Choose the software with the right features, if you determine what features you need it to be. The above information will hopefully aid you in discovering the right personal financial software for you. It is key though to get your program up and running so that you can quickly begin to enjoy the ease of keeping track of your finances.. Find cheap rims online.
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Mazda?s Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System
It is called 'i-ELOOP'.Wayne Gerdes - CleanMPG - Nov. 24, 2011
Mazda's 'i-ELOOP' regenerative braking system
Mazda released details on a groundbreaking regenerative braking system that uses a super capacitor in leiu of a battery for quick storage. The system, which Mazda calls 'i-ELOOP', will begin to appear in Mazda's vehicles in 2012. Mazda claims that in real-world driving conditions with frequent acceleration and braking, 'i-ELOOP' improves fuel economy by approximately 10 percent. We know better but there will always be an advantage with regenerative braking rather than throwing it away any time you have to step on the brake.
Mazda's regenerative braking system is unique because it uses a capacitor that temporarily stores large volumes of electricity. Compared to batteries, capacitors can be charged and discharged rapidly and are resistant to deterioration through prolonged use. 'i-ELOOP' efficiently converts the vehicle's kinetic energy into electricity as it decelerates, and uses the electricity to power the climate control, audio system and numerous other electrical components.
Regenerative braking systems are growing in popularity as a fuel saving technology. They use an electric motor or alternator to generate electricity as the vehicle decelerates, thereby recovering a portion of the vehicle's kinetic energy. Regenerative braking systems in hybrid vehicles generally use a large electric motor and dedicated battery.
Mazda developed its regenerative braking system to handle a large influx of current and slowly give it back. And they somehow did it without the use of a dedicated electric motor but instead of a reversing alternator which sounds to me like a dedicated motor generator by a different name?
'i-ELOOP' features a new 12-25V variable voltage alternator, a low-resistance electric double layer capacitor and a DC/DC converter. 'i-ELOOP' starts to recover kinetic energy the moment the driver lifts off the accelerator pedal and the vehicle begins to decelerate. The variable voltage alternator generates electricity at up to 25V for maximum efficiency before sending it to the Electric Double Layer Capacitor (EDLC) for storage. The capacitor, which has been specially developed for use in a vehicle, can be fully charged in seconds. The DC/DC converter steps down the electricity from 25V to 12V before it is distributed directly to the vehicle's electrical components. The system also charges the vehicle battery as necessary. 'i-ELOOP' operates whenever the vehicle decelerates, reducing the need for the engine to burn extra fuel to generate electricity. As a result, in "stop-and-go" driving conditions, fuel economy improves by approximately 10 percent.
There is no way to improve fuel economy by 10% through a 12-25V system but on the Japan Test cycles known to the world as magic pixie dust, maybe 10% is about right?
The name 'i-ELOOP' is an adaptation of "Intelligent Energy Loop" and represents Mazda's intention to efficiently cycle energy in an intelligent way.
'i-ELOOP' also works in conjunction with Mazda's unique 'i-stop' idling stop technology to extend the period that the engine can be shut off.
Mazda is working to maximize the efficiency of internal combustion engine vehicles with its groundbreaking SKYACTIV TECHNOLOGY. By combining this with i-stop, i-ELOOP and other electric devices that enhance fuel economy by eliminating unnecessary fuel consumption, Mazda is striving to deliver vehicles with excellent environmental performance.
SuperCap systems used for hybridization in R&D projects from the past found the Super Cap to be prohibitively expensive with the resultant payback smaller than what was hoped. Who knows, maybe Mazda has discovered the holy grail but when I hear of 12-25V systems returning a 10% increase in fuel efficiency, I will be just as skeptical as I am with SKYACTIV which so far has produced 7 more HP and the same highway fuel economy from the much hyped 2.0L in the new Mazda3 as the standard every day 2011/2012 Elantra with its MPFI 1.8L.
Re: Mazda?s Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System
Your skepticism is justified. I doubt even powering the alternator with magic would improve fuel economy by 10% in normal circumstances in a non-hybrid car. It would be possible if we assume unusually heavy electrical demands, and a lot of time idling or moving very slowly.
Last edited by RedylC94 : Yesterday at 02:58 AM.
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Re: Mazda?s Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System
Regen is meaningful in that it recovers kinetic energy that would otherwise be turned into waste heat. But it is a lossy system, due the energy conversions between wheel and battery.
I've read that in the Prius the energy recovery efficiency is ~40%. A smart Prius driver
minimizes the losses by using regen as little as possible by "driving without brakes',"
traffic and topography permitting. If you're really trying to drive efficiently, regen is a
measure of your mistakes in being caught going too fast in changing real world
conditions.
So, different drivers will see different amounts of regen and determing "real savings"
would require removing the human factor somehow.
Stopped in my Prius w/ScanGuage, I do notice a slow reduction in charge in the HV
battery as it feeds the 12V bus via the DC-to-DC converter. So, Madza's regen system
coupled with the i-Stop would provide an alternate energy source for the "housekeeping"
electrical loads when stopped. I wonder though if the small gains are worth the necessary
extra cost and complexity.
I expect to see the old "What's the payback period?" question come up soon.
All that said, Mazda is to be complemented in doing something to recover otherwise lost
energy. I'd guess that driving in the "Zoom-zoom" style would generate a lot of regen,
but very little energy recovered relative to the amount of fuel that propelled the zooming
in the first place.
.
Last edited by Rokeby : Yesterday at 09:15 AM.
Reformed speeder
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Re: Mazda?s Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System
Quote:
The Prius system allows Toyota to gear it really tall-since the electric motor can kick in to prevent lugging.
Great point. The Prius normally uses the electric motor to get going from a dead stop (assuming the ICE is warmed up). I hadn't thought about the savings from higher gearing, but starting on electric also avoids gas-wasting high throttle/low rpm usage of the ICE.
I'm not a big fan of regen. As rokeby says, braking of any kind, regen or not, is often a sign of inefficient driving: you've wasted energy to get more momentum than you need.
Another problem with regen is that most often it's a high current/short time event. For example, braking to a stop sign or red light: 10-20 seconds of regen?? Batteries recapture charge better from longer, lower current events. The SOC in either of my cars rarely budges after a typical stop like this. Maybe a capacitor captures energy from these events better than a battery does.
What DOES show on the SOC is regen during long descents and gradual decels on long freeway offramps, but these opportunities are less frequent.
I sometimes think that the main advantage of regen is that it reduces wear on the friction brakes so less money spent on brake jobs!!
Mazda's iStop autostop technology seems really great. Apparently they haven't used it more because of the demands on the battery during autostop, and this cap storage is a missing piece of the puzzle.
Last edited by lightfoot : Yesterday at 01:19 PM.
Quote:
I'm not a big fan of regen. As rokeby says, braking of any kind, regen or not, is often a sign of inefficient driving: you've wasted energy to get more momentum than you need.
Another problem with regen is that most often it's a high current/short time event. For example, braking to a stop sign or red light: 10-20 seconds of regen?? Batteries recapture charge better from longer, lower current events. The SOC in either of my cars rarely budges after a typical stop like this. Maybe a capacitor captures energy from these events better than a battery does.
Ok, guys. Step down from your hypermile horse for a moment: brakes are there for a reason. You will need to use them, and likely more in the future as traffic density increases. There's not a way for our road system support 380 million hypermilers unless we leave the driving to computers, otherwise you'll have to always maintain 10x extra spacing for the one person out there that doesn't...
As for the technology, one of the more inefficient pieces of regen braking is the charge loss to the battery. Charging to a capacitor is far more efficient, although not as efficient as directly spinning a mechanical flywheel. In any event, Mazda will be able to get more that the 40% recovery number of the Prius's.
Where Mazda's mild hybrid will still lose out is the lack of a good EV only mode, but this will be as effective as Honda's IMA. At the end of the day, that's all it's about, is using less energy to support the inefficiencies of having a human driver that doesn't want to be efficient.
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Re: Mazda?s Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System
I think lightfoot has the key in mentioning i-stop. i-stop works with piston positioning instead of using an auxiliary battery. So, in addition to the gains by use of a smart alternator, and, I presume, higher efficiency in the charge and discharge process, many of the gains with i-eloop may simply be making up for deficiencies in i-stop.
The cost of the capacitors is obviously a key issue. However, just as the Prius' HSD saves by displacing multiple conventional parts, i-stop plus i-eloop displaces the auxiliary start/stop battery, and should reduce the draw from the main 12V battery and extends its life. Then, an extremely durable capacitor would have value at end of vehicle life. However, if large capacitor is heavy if could negatively affecting fuel economy. To become a dominant system the capacitor has to be durable and cheap enough to beat the displaced battery-based systems. But for Mazda's purpose, it just has to be cheap and durable enough to be able to make a profit on it: it does have a coolness factor on its side. I hope it at least indicates some price drops in large capacitors.
Reformed speeder
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Re: Mazda?s Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System
Quote:
Ok, guys. Step down from your hypermile horse for a moment: brakes are there for a reason. You will need to use them, and likely more in the future as traffic density increases. There's not a way for our road system support 380 million hypermilers unless we leave the driving to computers, otherwise you'll have to always maintain 10x extra spacing for the one person out there that doesn't...
Umm, this IS the hypermiling site, so why shouldn't we be on that horse??
Other thoughts: - I think all hypermilers DO use brakes, we just try to drive so that we are not forced to use them, which also happens to be a big part of safe defensive driving. - Population of the USA is about 310 million, not all are drivers. About 190 million licensed drivers in 2000. - I'm baffled why hypermiling would put a strain on the road system. Surely lower speeds would allow increased traffic density?? - Between 30,000 and 40,000 people die in traffic accidents on US highways every year, even larger numbers of serious injuries, so what we're doing now isn't working very well. Maybe it's time to change things??
Quote:
At the end of the day, that's all it's about, is using less energy to support the inefficiencies of having a human driver that doesn't want to be efficient.
Using technology to support unsafe driving by people that don't want to change to safer driving behaviors hasn't worked, so why believe that technology will work any better to make them more efficient? The number of people that manage to get a Prius down to 40mpg is a good hint. Humans are remarkably good at circumventing technology.
It would make more sense to put effort into improved driver training and testing*, retesting for relicensing, traffic enforcement, etc. Changing driving behavior can improve both safety and fuel efficiency at the same time. And lower speeds could enable engineers to design cars so that they are just as crash-worthy at the lower speeds as current cars are at high speeds, only much lighter/smaller, which would improve fuel economy.
So I'm stayin' on that horse, thanks!
* - Given the current political climate, it's unlikely that government would do this, but maybe insurance companies would. In the motorcycle arena, insurance companies more or less force you to take motorcycle safety training before they will insure you, and those courses are supported by the manufacturers and are very good.
I'll leave it there, this is way way OT, apologies!!
Last edited by lightfoot : Yesterday at 01:56 PM.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Charles Frazier's novel "Cold Mountain" was a bestselling and critical phenomenon in 1996 and later became an Academy Award-winning movie, which is not bad considering it was the 46-year-old's debut.
Ten years later, the North Carolina native returned to his home state and the 19th century with "Thirteen Moons," another best-seller.
His latest novel, "Nightwoods," takes readers to early 1960s North Carolina, where Luce, a backwoods recluse, takes in her mute, pyromaniac twin niece and nephew after their stepdad murders their mother.
Frazier, who will be 61 on November 4, spoke to Reuters about the book and his career.
Q: How did the idea for this book develop?
A: "I had a different idea -- the place was going to be the same, and Luce would have been one of a group of secondary characters. I worked for maybe six months along those lines and then just got more interested in Luce. And then when the kids came into the book I kind of shifted gears and the book became more Luce's book. The old lodge, the lake, the setting was probably the first thing I had."
Q: You write extensively about nature in your books. How did you attain such knowledge of botany, animals and landforms?
A: "I've always been interested in the woods, even when I was just a little boy. Second or third grade after school on a fall day we would be wanting to get out into the woods, tromp around. So there's that level of observation and experience. Another part of it is sort of construction. I don't know nearly as many plant identification terms as I really should. I have to work that out when I need it. I learn it and then I forget it in a year. But I can re-learn it."
Q: How does Cherokee culture influence your writing and lifestyle?
A: "I grew up with Cherokee land not far away -- not far away as the crow flies; as the roads went, it took a while to get there. I've just always been interested in and aware of the culture. And just in the past five years or so I've been working on a couple little projects to try to help preserve the language."
Q: You were 46 when you published Cold Mountain. Were you ever frustrated that success didn't come sooner?
A: "I don't think I knew enough to write, certainly not to write Cold Mountain earlier. That was my first novel, so it wasn't like I had six sitting around in boxes that had been written and rejected. I just didn't get around to trying to write one till I was nearly 40."
Q: A common theme in your books is that modern entertainment robs us of the freedom nature offers.
A: "Certainly that, and also I think it robs people of idiosyncrasies and oddities. It smoothes out the edges and sort of regularizes. It has this effect of bringing the outliers in, I think."
Q: Are you conflicted, then, about your books being made into movies?
A: "I think if you can't let go of the story and the characters enough to take the attitude that the book is your expression of the material, the movie is somebody else's -- the director, the screenwriter, that whole group of people that have the creative input in a movie -- then you probably shouldn't sell it. Which doesn't mean I wouldn't always try to get a book into the hands of a director or screenwriter that I think sees the material a lot the way I do."
Q: Cold Mountain was critically acclaimed, Thirteen Moons less so. Do you feel any pressure to prove critics wrong with Nightwoods?
A: "If you write books for other people's taste I'm not quite sure what you end up writing. Spending all your time looking backwards for me would be a guaranteed way to run into a writer's block. I don't give that an awful lot of thought. Looking backwards, that's really not going to get me anything I want."
BRUSSELS ? Germany and the European Union's executive arm clashed openly on the need to issue common bonds uniting the 17 euro nations, in another sign that Europe is as divided as ever in dealing with its deepening debt crisis.
As German Chancellor Angela Merkel railed against the proposals from the European Commission in Brussels, her country itself showed a rare moment of weakness when it suffered what many in the jittery markets described as a failed bond auction. And European economic indicators dashed almost any hope that the 17-country eurozone will be able to stave off a recession as confidence continues to sink.
But instead of presenting a united front in the face of adversity, the rift between Berlin and the EU's headquarters only widened.
Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso argued that eurobonds "could bring tremendous benefits" by blending the risk and security of the common currency zone into one pool.
The idea of uniting profligate nations like Greece with fiscally orthodox countries like Germany has not met with much enthusiasm in Berlin, and Merkel, aware that such a proposal was coming, preemptively rejected it in the German Parliament earlier in the day.
"It is extremely troubling, I might say inappropriate, that the Commission is now focusing on proposals on eurobonds in different varieties," she told legislators.
Merkel argued that it was a pretense to suggest that a "collectivization of the debt would allow us to overcome the currency union's structural flaws."
Germany has opposed the use of eurobonds and has long called on fiscally wayward member states to clean up their own houses with as little outside intervention as possible. A big worry for Germany is that its low borrowing costs would get diluted if eurobonds came into issue and it would then be forced to pay higher rates to tap bond markets.
Barroso shot back that it was bad form to kill off a debate before it even started.
"Frankly speaking, I don't think it is appropriate in our EU .... to say from the beginning that the debate should not be held," Barroso told reporters in a blunt retort. "We are trying to have a rational, reasonable, serious ? intellectually and politically serious ? debate."
Key to Barroso's proposals was the need for stricter budgetary discipline to go hand in hand with a united effort to contain the biggest financial challenge in the half-century history of the European Union.
"It is quite clear, as things stand at present, if we want to keep a common currency, we need more integrated governance," Barroso said.
He wants the countries using the euro currency to work more closely together to dovetail their budgetary policies and avoid having one nation endanger all others by not living by its financial commitments. The crisis, which started in Greece nearly two years ago, has now spread to much bigger economies such as Italy and Spain and there was a hint Wednesday that not even Germany is immune.
Despite being touted as the European bedrock of financial stability and rigor, Germany failed to raise as much money as it hoped in its latest bond auction. Germany's Financial Agency said its latest euro6 billion ($8.1 billion) auction of 10-year bonds met with only 60 percent demand. It blamed "the extraordinarily nervous market environment" for the weak demand.
Since Greece pushed the eurozone into its ever-worsening financial mess last year, many member states have seen their cost of government borrowing rise to record levels. Germany's borrowing rates, though, have dropped sharply as investors buy up its bonds as a safe haven.
Barroso conceded that eurobonds, or so-called stability bonds, "will not solve our immediate problems" and could only be effectively deployed once the situation has calmed. Still he said "stability bonds are examples of reinforced governance, of a strong will to live together in the euro area and a good example of discipline."
Merkel appeared to win some support from Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, whose country has taken a euro78 billion ($106 billion) bailout. He said the proposals offer neither a short- nor a medium-term solution to Europe's financial problems.
"The current instability cannot wait for a long, uncertain and unpredictable process to conclude," he told reporters in Lisbon.
The Commission also came forward with proposals it believes can be pushed through without a time-consuming treaty change, including a strengthening of current budget rules and increased monitoring of member states.
_____
Don Melvin in Brussels, Juergen Baetz in Berlin and Barry Hatton in Lisbon contributed to this report.
ALMATY (Reuters) - Three astronauts inside a Russian Soyuz capsule parachuted safely back to Earth Tuesday after nearly six months on the International Space Station (ISS), the first landing since NASA retired its space shuttles this summer.
U.S. astronaut Mike Fossum, Japan's Satoshi Furukawa and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov landed at 0226 GMT, shortly before sunrise on the snowbound steppe of central Kazakhstan, NASA TV showed.
"The landing was great. Everything's good," said Volkov, flashing a thumbs-up signal after he was extracted from a Soyuz TMA-02 capsule blackened by the extreme temperatures on re-entry to the atmosphere.
The closure of NASA's shuttle program means Russian spaceships are the only way to ferry goods and crews to and from the $100-billion ISS, which is shared by 16 nations, until commercial firms develop the ability to transport crews.
Russia hopes the textbook landing will help to restore confidence in its space program after the August crash of an unmanned Russian cargo flight suspended manned space missions.
The returning crew have been replaced in orbit by NASA's Daniel Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin, whose successful launch last week allayed fears that the station would be left empty for the first time in a decade.
But the troubles have left the space station with half the usual handover time. The new crew had only six days with the outgoing astronauts to get up to speed on the quirks of life in space and the station's operations.
NASA said the Soyuz capsule had landed on its side, not unusual in windy conditions, about 90 km (55 miles) north of the town of Arkalyk. Temperatures at the landing site were 15 degrees Celsius below zero.
The three-man crew had spent 167 days in space and their return to Earth took about three-and-a-half hours.
Volkov, huddled in a thermal blanket, is a second-generation cosmonaut and was following in the footsteps of his father, NASA said. It called him: "a rising star in the cosmonaut corps."
Fossum, second to emerge from the capsule, called his loved ones by satellite phone from the landing site. Furukawa, a 47-year-old professional surgeon, was last to emerge. An assistant mopped sweat from his brow.
After initial medical checks in an inflatable tent on site, the returning crew will be taken be helicopter to the city of Kostanai in northern Kazakhstan.
The ISS will regain full, six-person occupancy with the late December launch of U.S. astronauts Don Pettit, cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Andre Kuipers of the European Space Agency.
(Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Myra MacDonald)
Norman B. Smith was diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer by his doctor at LA's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, who prescribed medical marijuana. Now, Cedars-Sinai has removed Mr Smith from the list of liver-transplant candidates...because he tested positive for marijuana, which their own doctor prescribed.
Hospital officials are insisting that Smith stop using marijuana for at least six months, undergo random drug testing, and participate in weekly substance-abuse counseling before they will consider putting him back on the list.
L.A. Hospital Denies Liver Transplant to Medical Marijuana User Despite Prescription from Its own Doctor
(via Reddit)
Tags: catch 22, cedars-sinai, health, la, reddit, war on some drugs
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CAIRO ? Egypt's stock market took a beating for the third consecutive day and the cost of insuring its sovereign debt soared as protests and violence in the capital raised questions about the country's stability days before pivotal parliamentary election.
The Egyptian Exchange's benchmark EGX30 index fell by almost 3.1 percent within minutes of the start of trade and extended its slide to 3.6 percent by midday, blowing past the 3,800 point level seen by brokers as a key support level.
The declines built on the previous day's 4 percent slide and dragged its year-to-date decline down to over 47 percent.
The losses marked the 10th consecutive trading session in which the market ? one of the worst performing emerging market indices in the world ? suffered a slide as a result of Egypt's tenuous political situation.
Egypt's five-year credit default swaps ? the cost of insuring its sovereign debt against default, climbed 25 basis points to 563 basis points, according to data service provider Markit.
With the first parliamentary elections since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak slated for Nov. 28, the fourth day of clashes between demonstrators and security forces spotlighted the challenges the country faces as it tries to move toward a democratic system.
"We passed the support point, so the only thing that will stop further declines in the market is fixing the political situation in the country," said Khaled Naga, a senior broker with Mega Investments. "We have to wait and see what happens."
While far from presenting a united front, the activists massed in Cairo's Tahrir Square, which served as the epicenter of the Jan. 25 uprising that pushed Mubarak from power, are demanding either the military rulers immediately hand over power to a civilian administration or set a fixed date for a transition to civilian rule.
The days of unrest have proven deadly, with at least 29 killed across the country ? most in Cairo ? and the violence and continuing demonstrations prompted the civilian Cabinet to offer its resignation late Monday. But the move failed to appease the activists who see the civilian government as little more than subservient to the military rulers.
Firmly entrenched in Tahrir, the activists issued a call for a million-man demonstration, a move that had hundreds of people streaming into downtown Cairo and raising the scepter of further clashes and violence even as officials called for restraint from all sides.
But the promise of continued trouble only builds on already building political uncertainty that has battered the country's economy.
Naga said the stock market has lost about 180 billion pounds ($30.25 billion) since the start of the year ? with most of that linked to the unrest in the country versus the overall global financial concerns linked to the Euro-zone debt crisis and broader fears of recession.
"Yesterday, the losses were about seven billion (pounds) and today, I'm expecting the same if not more," he said.
ST. PAUL, Minn. ? GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann lashed out Wednesday at NBC for not apologizing or taking immediate disciplinary action for an off-color song played during her appearance on Jimmy Fallon's "Late Night."
In her first comments on the flap, Bachmann said on the Fox News Channel that the Fallon show band displayed sexism and bias by playing a snippet of a 1985 Fishbone song as she walked onstage for Tuesday's show. The title of the song is "Lyin' Ass B----."
"This is clearly a form of bias on the part of the Hollywood entertainment elite," Bachmann said. She added, "This wouldn't be tolerated if this was Michelle Obama. It shouldn't be tolerated if it's a conservative woman either."
Fallon has tweeted an apology to Bachmann, saying he was "so sorry about the intro mess." Bachmann said she hoped to speak with Fallon later Wednesday and wouldn't mind going on his show again.
But Bachmann expressed surprise that she's heard nothing from the TV network. She suggested that discipline for the show's Roots band was in order.
One of Bachmann's congressional colleagues, New York Democrat Nita Lowey, had called on NBC to apologize for its "insulting and inappropriate" treatment of its guest.
An NBC spokeswoman didn't immediately return a phone message from The Associated Press.
The Roots' bandleader, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, has said the song was a "tongue-in-cheek and spur-of-the-moment decision."
Bachmann, who is lagging in presidential polls, has spent the week promoting her new autobiography in national television interviews.
___
AP Television Writer David Bauder contributed to this report.
A team of University of Missouri researchers have found that targeting a synthetic molecule to a specific gene could help the severity of the disease Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) ? the leading genetic cause of infantile death in the world.
"When we introduced synthetic RNA into mice that carry the genes responsible for SMA, the disease's severity was significantly lowered," said Chris Lorson, researcher at the Bond Life Sciences Center and professor in the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology and the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. "The mice that receive synthetic RNA gain more weight, live longer, and had improvements in motor skills. These results are very exciting."
SMA is a rare genetic disease that is inherited by one in 6,000 children, who often die young because there is no cure. Children who inherit SMA are missing a gene that produces a protein which directs nerves in the spine to give commands to muscles. Lorson's lab focuses on targeting a partially functioning back-up copy of the missing gene, known as SMN-2, into producing the needed protein.
While the results are promising, Lorson notes additional research is needed before synthetic RNA could be used on humans for SMA. Clinical trials for similar synthetic RNAs are currently being performed in other neurodegenerative disease such as Lou Gehrig's or ALS. In SMA, there are clinical trials taking place in many labs across the country that are investigating drug compounds to increase SMN-2 protein production.
"It's been remarkable to watch how quickly SMN-2 knowledge has transformed from basic molecular biology to being modified targets for novel therapeutics," Lorson said. "SMN-2 is like a light that's been dimmed, and we're trying anything to get it brighter. Even turning it up a little bit would help dramatically."
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University of Missouri-Columbia: http://www.missouri.edu
Thanks to University of Missouri-Columbia for this article.
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New strategy could lead to dose reduction in X-ray imagingPublic release date: 21-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: B.C. Wang wang@bcl1.bmb.uga.edu 706-542-1747 University of Georgia
Athens, Ga. For more than a century, the use of X-rays has been a prime diagnostic tool when it comes to human health. As it turns out, X-rays also are a crucial component for studying and understanding molecules, and a new approach -- just published by researchers at the University of Georgia -- may dramatically improve what researchers can learn using the technique.
One of the primary ways scientists can understand molecules is to bombard their crystalline forms with X-ray beams. This allows a crystallographer to discover many things about the molecule, from the arrangement of atoms to the position of chemical bonds. Thus, the techniques of X-ray crystallography have been central to numerous important scientific discoveries in many fields.
Now, a team led by B.C. Wang, Ramsey-Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Structural Biology at UGA, has shown for the first time that by using multiple data sets, each under-exposed simultaneously, one can produce a composite data set that may give three to five times better signal levels than standard techniques for structural analysis. This new technique is particularly better than standard procedures when it comes to studying large molecules, many of which are important in drug development and other important processes.
"When compared to crystals of small molecules, macromolecular crystals diffract X-rays poorly and usually tend to have a much shorter lifetime in the X-ray beam," said Wang. "So a macromolecular crystal can only withstand a certain amount of X-ray dose before it is destroyed as a result of radiation damage. Obtaining accurate and complete diffraction data sets of these crystals is very important."
Strikingly, the new procedure used by the Wang team could be adapted for use with X-ray techniques in studying human health. This could eventually mean that doctors utilizing it could get more information on a patient while using a lower X-ray dose. That, however, is still in the future.
The research, just published in the online edition of the journal Foundations of Crystallography, could lead to a much more rapid acquisition of knowledge about molecules, Wang said. Authors of the paper, in addition to Wang, include from the Wang lab Lirong Chen, Hua Zhang, Weihong Zhou and Zheng-Qing Fu. Collaborators from the Institute of Biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing include Zhi-Jie Liu, Dong Wu and Wei Ding. Wang is a member of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at UGA.
X-ray diffraction data on crystals have been steadily improving over the past few decades, but the study of large molecules has continued to present sometimes-intractable problems. One always present issue is that while X-rays can reveal much about molecule, the technique also destroys the molecules, just as too much radiation can be lethal in humans. So the question has persisted: How can we get the same quality of data using a lower amount of total X-ray radiation than what we use now to study molecules?
Wang and his team had the idea of taking what might be called "slices" of radiation dosage to produce multiple scans. The total information from these combined multiple "weaker" scans might then actually surpass what could be found with normal X-ray crystallography with a single stronger scan. In order to see if this actually worked, Wang and his collaborators came up with a theoretical prediction for the strategy and then tested it using six bovine insulin crystals.
"The calculations from the diffraction data of these six insulin crystals collected using two different data-collection systems showed that the data is much better with the MDS strategy than with the regular single-path strategy," said Wang.
While the new technique could one day be important in breakthroughs in medicine and human health, the immediate impact is that it will allow researchers to study large molecules with greater depth and understanding by avoiding the use of too much X-ray radiation that would destroy the sample.
###
The work was supported by grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the Georgia Research Alliance and the University of Georgia Research Foundation. The study was carried out at the Southeast Regional Collaborative Access Team beamline at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
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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.
New strategy could lead to dose reduction in X-ray imagingPublic release date: 21-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: B.C. Wang wang@bcl1.bmb.uga.edu 706-542-1747 University of Georgia
Athens, Ga. For more than a century, the use of X-rays has been a prime diagnostic tool when it comes to human health. As it turns out, X-rays also are a crucial component for studying and understanding molecules, and a new approach -- just published by researchers at the University of Georgia -- may dramatically improve what researchers can learn using the technique.
One of the primary ways scientists can understand molecules is to bombard their crystalline forms with X-ray beams. This allows a crystallographer to discover many things about the molecule, from the arrangement of atoms to the position of chemical bonds. Thus, the techniques of X-ray crystallography have been central to numerous important scientific discoveries in many fields.
Now, a team led by B.C. Wang, Ramsey-Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Structural Biology at UGA, has shown for the first time that by using multiple data sets, each under-exposed simultaneously, one can produce a composite data set that may give three to five times better signal levels than standard techniques for structural analysis. This new technique is particularly better than standard procedures when it comes to studying large molecules, many of which are important in drug development and other important processes.
"When compared to crystals of small molecules, macromolecular crystals diffract X-rays poorly and usually tend to have a much shorter lifetime in the X-ray beam," said Wang. "So a macromolecular crystal can only withstand a certain amount of X-ray dose before it is destroyed as a result of radiation damage. Obtaining accurate and complete diffraction data sets of these crystals is very important."
Strikingly, the new procedure used by the Wang team could be adapted for use with X-ray techniques in studying human health. This could eventually mean that doctors utilizing it could get more information on a patient while using a lower X-ray dose. That, however, is still in the future.
The research, just published in the online edition of the journal Foundations of Crystallography, could lead to a much more rapid acquisition of knowledge about molecules, Wang said. Authors of the paper, in addition to Wang, include from the Wang lab Lirong Chen, Hua Zhang, Weihong Zhou and Zheng-Qing Fu. Collaborators from the Institute of Biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing include Zhi-Jie Liu, Dong Wu and Wei Ding. Wang is a member of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at UGA.
X-ray diffraction data on crystals have been steadily improving over the past few decades, but the study of large molecules has continued to present sometimes-intractable problems. One always present issue is that while X-rays can reveal much about molecule, the technique also destroys the molecules, just as too much radiation can be lethal in humans. So the question has persisted: How can we get the same quality of data using a lower amount of total X-ray radiation than what we use now to study molecules?
Wang and his team had the idea of taking what might be called "slices" of radiation dosage to produce multiple scans. The total information from these combined multiple "weaker" scans might then actually surpass what could be found with normal X-ray crystallography with a single stronger scan. In order to see if this actually worked, Wang and his collaborators came up with a theoretical prediction for the strategy and then tested it using six bovine insulin crystals.
"The calculations from the diffraction data of these six insulin crystals collected using two different data-collection systems showed that the data is much better with the MDS strategy than with the regular single-path strategy," said Wang.
While the new technique could one day be important in breakthroughs in medicine and human health, the immediate impact is that it will allow researchers to study large molecules with greater depth and understanding by avoiding the use of too much X-ray radiation that would destroy the sample.
###
The work was supported by grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the Georgia Research Alliance and the University of Georgia Research Foundation. The study was carried out at the Southeast Regional Collaborative Access Team beamline at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
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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.
CAIRO (Reuters) ? Protesters demanding an end to army rule and angered by rough police tactics battled with police on Sunday, presenting Egypt's ruling generals with their biggest security challenge yet, a week before parliamentary elections.
Two people were killed and hundreds wounded in clashes on Saturday night reminiscent of some of the worst violence during the 18-day uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in February.
Youths in Cairo chanted "The people want to topple the regime" as they rushed at police, who fired rubber bullets and teargas. Protesters clashed with police in two other cities.
Egypt holds its first parliamentary election since Mubarak's overthrow in a staggered vote that starts on November 28. Many Egyptians are worried that police will not be able to secure the polls, although the army insists that it can.
Presidential powers remain with the army after the vote. A row has erupted between political groups and the army-picked cabinet over ground rules for drafting the constitution that could leave the military free of civilian control. Parliament is to pick the assembly to draw up the constitution.
There was sporadic violence on Sunday after the worst overnight clashes subsided. More than 5,000 protesters were still gathered in Tahrir on Sunday afternoon, many saying they would not to leave until their demands were met.
Demonstrators wore masks to protect against teargas and showed off spent gas canisters and bullet casings. Metal barricades had been set up on approach roads to Tahrir Square, where Egyptians gathered to bring down Mubarak.
Many Egyptians are angry that nine-months after ousting Mubarak, the army remains in charge and police are still using the same heavy-handed tactics against demonstrators.
"DO NOT LEAVE THE SQUARE"
"We are on the brink of danger. Those asking for the government to fall are asking for the state to fall," Egyptian army General Mohsen Fangary told a television channel.
He said the election would go ahead on time and the army and Interior Ministry would maintain security. He also said the army, in line with a timetable previously announced, aimed to return to barracks by the end of 2012. Presidential elections could be held by then.
The army-backed cabinet had outraged many Egyptians by presenting proposals for the new constitution that would have shielded the army's budget from civilian oversight and given it a broad national security remit.
It had amended the proposals to give civilian powers more say but not enough to prevent Friday's protest.
After a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Ali al-Silmi said: "We will not back down from the last proposed amendments to the constitutional document."
As police fired round after round of teargas at protesters near the Interior Ministry, closer to Tahrir the demonstrators laid sheets of metal to block roads into the square.
"I tell you, do not leave the square. This square will lead the way from now on," presidential candidate Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, a hardline Islamist, told a group of protesters early on Sunday. "Tomorrow the whole of Egypt will follow your lead."
During Saturday's clashes, protesters broke chunks of cement from pavements and hurled them at police.
"We don't expect anything from the military council, they will ignore us like what used to happen during Mubarak's days," said Abdallah Belal, a 21-year-old student in Tahrir.
The state news agency quoted the Health Ministry as saying 942 people had been wounded and two people were killed. It said a man, 23, was killed in Cairo by a gunshot to the chest and a man in the second city Alexandria had a gunshot to the head.
A security official said police had not used live rounds and had used lawful methods to deal with "troublemakers." The army stayed away from fighting.
The army won popular backing during Mubarak's overthrow for maintaining order and pledging to hand power to an elected government, but support has ebbed over its use of military trials for civilians and suspicion that it wants to continue to wield the levers of power after a new government is sworn in.
PROTEST AT POLICE
About 5,000 protesters had converged on Tahrir on Saturday afternoon when police tried to evict the remnants of a 50,000-strong demonstration a day earlier, mostly by Islamists demanding the departure of the military.
Police beat the protesters, most of them not Islamists, with batons and fired teargas to regain control of the square, only to retreat after night fell.
Protests erupted in other cities. About 800 people gathered in front of the security directorate in Alexandria, chanting: "Interior Ministry officials are thugs."
About 1,000 gathered outside a police station in the eastern city of Suez, site of some of the worst violence in the uprising. They threw stones at it and tried to force their way in. Police fired teargas and shot in the air.
Liberal groups are dismayed by the military trials of thousands of civilians and the army's failure to scrap a hated emergency law. Islamists eyeing a strong showing in the next parliament suspect the army wants to curtail their influence.
Analysts say Islamists could win 40 percent of parliamentary seats, with a big portion going to the Muslim Brotherhood.
"We are not political parties and we hate the Brotherhood who gave up on the revolution and the people," Medhat Fawzy said. "We are Egyptian youth," he said, flashing a victory sign.
The liberal April 6 Youth movement said the interior minister should quit for ordering the use of force against a peaceful protest.
Friday's rally appeared to be the biggest Islamist challenge to military rule since the largely secular uprising that toppled Mubarak. The demonstrators were mainly Brotherhood members and their harder-line Salafi rivals.
(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy, Patrick Werr, Marwa Awad, Abdel Rahman Youssef, Dina Zayed, Tom Pfeiffer and Yousri Mohamed; Writing by Edmund Blair and Patrick Werr)
Heavy frying pans are designed to conduct heat efficiently when cooking food, and you can also use these same pans to quickly defrost frozen foods. Line a heavy frying pan with aluminum foil, place your food in the pan, and place the pan on your stove top or an oven rack (turned off, of course) to facilitate defrosting. 
It is called 'i-ELOOP'.Wayne Gerdes - CleanMPG - Nov. 24, 2011
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Hospital officials are insisting that Smith stop using marijuana for at least six months, undergo random drug testing, and participate in weekly substance-abuse counseling before they will consider putting him back on the list.
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Public release date: 21-Nov-2011
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