Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez has taken a lot of criticism from fans and the media. But he says he has no doubt that within the locker room, he has unconditional support.
Asked at his press conference today if he is confident that everyone in the locker room supports him, Sanchez answered, ?Absolutely, no question.?
Sanchez offered a similar answer when asked if he thinks he has improved during his three-year NFL career.
?No question, absolutely,? Sanchez said. ?Whether it?s defensive recognition or clock management and stuff like that, understanding the offense and the system, I?m light years ahead, so it?s been a great run so far and we?re not done yet. Hopefully, we?ll get a win and see what happens.?
But watching Sanchez, it?s hard to see how he has really improved in terms of his defensive recognition and clock management. He still makes too many mental mistakes, and he wastes timeouts too often to claim he has improved at clock management.
Ball security is also a huge problem for Sanchez, who fumbled 10 times in his rookie year, nine times last year and has fumbled 10 times this year. Those ball security problems were largely overlooked in his first two seasons because the Jets recovered seven of his 10 fumbles his rookie year and eight of his nine fumbles his second year. But this year the Jets have only recovered two of Sanchez?s 10 fumbles, and the problem of a quarterback who puts the ball on the ground too much has become more apparent.
Ultimately, Sanchez probably got too much credit when the Jets got to back-to-back AFC Championship Games in his first two years, and now he?s probably getting too much blame for the Jets likely missing the playoffs.
?We went to the AFC Championship two years in a row, so there is only one more step to make really, win that game and then go win the Super Bowl,? Sanchez said. ?With those expectations, that?s fine. When things don?t go right, people are going to immediately question me.?
No one said playing quarterback for the New York Jets would be easy.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) ? New registered nurses would have to earn bachelor's degrees within 10 years to keep working in New York under a bill lawmakers are considering as part of a national push to raise educational standards for nurses, even as the health care industry faces staffing shortages.
The "BSN in 10" initiative backed by nursing associations and major health policy organizations aims to attack the complex problem of too few nurses trained to care for an aging population that includes hundreds of thousands of nurses expected to retire in the coming years. But some in the health care industry worry that increased education requirements could worsen the problem by discouraging entrants into the field.
Currently, most registered nurses have two-year associate's degrees. No state requires a four-year degree for initial licensing or afterward, though New Jersey and Rhode Island have considered proposals similar to New York's over the past several years. New York's legislation died in committee last session, but it has bipartisan support in both chambers this year and could be debated as early as January.
Demand for more skilled nurses is increasing as the population gets older and has more chronic diseases, and as the new federal health care law promises to help 32 million more Americans gain insurance within a few years.
Federal health officials have recommended upgrading nurse education to BSNs for more than a decade, and the idea got a boost in a 2010 report, "The Future of Nursing," by the National Academy of Sciences nonprofit Institute of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. As of 2008, about a third of RNs had bachelor's degrees or higher, according to federal statistics. The institute recommended increasing that to 80 percent by 2020.
Advocates say that in addition to improving patient care, a key reason for requiring more education is to put more nurses in position to move on to jobs in administration and in-demand specialties like oncology, and to teach at nursing schools, where the average faculty age is 53.
"More and more hospitals are looking to hire BSNs, but the catch is that not that many schools offer the RN-to-BSN program or have the faculty to teach it," said Sharon Shockness, an adjunct teacher at Mercy College in Westchester County.
The New York bill's main sponsors, Democratic Assemblyman Joseph Morelle of Rochester and Republican Sen. James Alesi of Monroe County, said the bill is needed to further professionalize nursing. Both serve on their respective higher education committees and represent districts that include University of Rochester Medical Center and St. John Fisher College, which have BSN programs.
In addition to helping provide future teachers, the lawmakers say the added education and critical thinking skills are needed as patient care has become more sophisticated and studies show staff with higher levels of education serve patients better.
In a memo supporting the bill, the New York State Nurses Association cites a 2003 University of Pennsylvania study that found every 10 percent increase in staffing by nurses with bachelor's degrees results in a 5 percent decrease in surgical deaths.
Current registered nurses would be exempt from the education requirement to prevent driving more nurses from the field.
"This bill shouldn't discourage anyone at this point because it doesn't involve anyone even applying for licensure right now ... and 10 years is a long time to get a degree that will give you better pay," Alesi said.
Alesi contends the measure will "improve the landscape of nursing" by increasing the pool of RNs who can go on to obtain master's degrees and teach.
Researchers say almost 900,000 of the nation's roughly 3 million licensed RNs are older than 50, and while there's been an uptick in new, younger nurses, shortages are still expected as the health care industry continues to add nursing jobs. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated in 2009 that almost 582,000 new RN jobs would be created by 2018.
Federal projections in 2004, the most recent available, forecast a shortfall of 54,000 RN jobs in New York by 2020; the state currently has about 170,000 working nurses. But the state and national shortage estimates have varied greatly as the overall economy and national health policy have changed. A study published this year in the journal Health Affairs reports a surge among younger RNs entering the workforce, pointing to an easing of a national shortage previously forecast to reach 400,000 by 2020.
That shortage concerns New York's health care providers.
William Van Slyke, spokesman for the Healthcare Association of New York State, said the organization representing health care networks and hospitals supports having a better educated nursing workforce, but opposes a four-year degree mandate.
One problem, he said, is the lack of nursing faculty ? the same issue advocates say the bill would address.
"If you start the clock and you don't have the educational system, we may find ourselves having to turn away staff and have shortages," Van Slyke said.
The association has proposed legislation that would provide incentives like loan forgiveness to encourage people to become nurse educators, he said, but lawmakers haven't taken up the idea.
Morelle, the Assembly sponsor, said the state's community colleges also have expressed concerns that the requirement will cut into the number of people seeking the 2-year degrees they offer.
"Their classes are overflowing," Morelle said, and there is a "whole host of programs" that allow students to progress from a 2-year to a 4-year program.
A spokesman for the New York nurses association said New York City metropolitan area hospitals are increasingly requiring new RNs to have a bachelor's degree or earn one within five years, creating a disparity in standards between downstate and upstate, where fewer candidates have four-year degrees.
"Even without the legislation in place, hospitals and other medical facilities are making hiring decisions that favor those with BSN degrees over those without them," said Dr. Peggy Tallier, program director and associate professor in nursing school health at Mercy College.
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Kim Jong Il's death leaves the Korean peninsula and the rest of East Asia in a period of great uncertainty. But one of Kim Jong Il's most dangerous legacies has security implications well beyond the region: he leaves behind a thriving nuclear weapons export business that must now be stopped.
There has been mounting evidence in recent years that North Korea has set up an illicit nuclear export business to Syria, Iran and potentially elsewhere. Syria's Al-Kibar nuclear reactor, which was bombed by Israeli warplanes in 2007, closely resembled a North Korean facility used to produce plutonium for bombs, and one western diplomat told me that several senior North Korean technicians were killed in the raid. (See photos of Syria's nuclear reactor destroyed in 2007.)
North Korea and Iran's sharing of technology for missiles that could be used to deliver nuclear warheads is so extensive that some analysts say it is only appropriate to view it as operationally a joint missile program. No one knows if North Korea is also helping Iran with nuclear weapons design, and it's possible it has other, yet-to-be-detected clients as well.
North Korea shares little similarity or ideology with Syria or Iran; its dealings are largely profit-driven. For its clients, DPRK provides a black market to purchase sensitive nuclear technology without detection by the international community. The nightmare scenario is that Pyongyang would even sell fissile material -- the key ingredient for nuclear bombs -- to terrorists if the price is right.
Most nonproliferation experts find this scenario unlikely as it would be quickest route imaginable to have your country bombed and possible invaded. However, the Syrian and Iranian cases show that DPRK has been happy to sell the technology needed to produce fissile material, and the missiles needed to deliver it.
What's not clear is how much this network relied on support or at least authorization from Kim Jong Il. But reports from North Korean defectors once involved in the tripartite proliferation network suggest it is highly sophisticated and involves many different layers of officialdom. It may work something like this: North Korean state trading companies working directly for the DPRK regime set up branch offices in mainland China. These companies contract private Chinese firms to send purchase orders to the local subsidiaries of European industrial machinery companies, who have set up shop in China specifically to cash in on China's growing domestic market. (See photos of the busy life of Kim Jong Il.)
These domestic orders, of course, are not subject to export controls, so without knowing it, western subsidiaries sell dual-use technology -- industrial tool and dye equipment, for example -- directly to private Chinese firms, who then use their established routes to transport the goods to North Korea. In terms of sales, North Korea state trading companies are also contracting private Chinese firms to move sensitive goods through Southeast Asia (including Myanmar) and on to clients in the Middle East.
The success of this network is an unintended consequence of China's North Korea strategy, which has placed a high emphasis on a stable regime succession to Kim Jong Il's son, Kim Jong Un. The strategy is understandable: regime collapse in North Korea would send a flood of refugees across the border into some of the poorest provinces in China. Beijing may also believe that economic reform and party-to-party institution building can help reform North Korea and bring it in from the cold. Maybe so, but in the meantime this policy has created more opportunities for North Korea to increase its illicit activity through the mainland.
Unfortunately, enlisting China's help in cracking down on the use of private Chinese firms by North Korean entities -- even now that Kim Jong Il is dead -- is a lost cause for the U.S and its allies. China's port security and trade monitoring resources are woefully unmatched by the volume of trade in China today. Even more importantly, corruption at local levels is still a major problem.
The Proliferation Security Initiative, launched in 2003 as a voluntary organization of nations cooperating to prevent the shipment of proliferation-sensitive technologies, has proven to be an increasingly effective tool for combating North Korean smuggling. It has led to the interdiction of several North Korean shipments of missile and WMD components, most recently the turning around by the U.S. Navy of a Belize-flagged North Korean Vessel in June suspected of transporting missile technology on its way to Myanmar (and then on possibly to the Middle East). In the short term, the PSI should be continued. What's more, we should encourage PSI states -- and China -- to offer monetary rewards that lead to the interdiction of North Korean consignments. Mercenary traders, after all, can often be bought when they cannot be stopped. (Read "China's Stake in a Stable North Korea.")
North Korea is a backward, broken country with a dysfunctional economy. But its leaders are expert survivors and remarkably apt at getting what they need; we should not assume that this will change with Kim Jong Il's pasing. With two nuclear weapons tests already complete, North Korea has clearly learned how to construct a black market, full-service nuclear weapons program. There is growing evidence that they will now help any country that can pay to do the same.
The death of Kim Jong Il should focus the West's attention on stopping the spread of North Korean technology. Cutting off the supply would buy us time to fight the other half of the battle. In countries and regions where the demand for nuclear weapons remains strong, we must do more to address the underlying issues that cause countries to seek nuclear weapons in the first place.
Harrell is a research associate at the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a Boston-based reporter for TIME.
WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration ramped up its criticism of the Syrian government Wednesday, accusing it of continuing to "mow down" its citizens despite promises to halt a brutal crackdown on reformers. The White House said President Bashar Assad cannot be trusted, does not deserve to rule and must leave power.
The new barrage of criticism came as the State Department issued a new travel warning for Syria repeating earlier calls for Americans to leave the country immediately and advising that it will further reduce its staff at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus.
"The words of the Assad regime have no credibility when they continue to be followed by outrageous and deplorable actions," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement that noted that the violence was getting worse just days after the government agreed to an Arab League initiative aimed at ending the crisis. "They have already flagrantly violated their commitment to end violence and withdraw security forces from residential areas," he said.
"The United States continues to believe that the only way to bring about the change that the Syrian people deserve is for Bashar al-Assad to leave power," Carney said.
He said the administration is deeply disturbed by continued reports of government-backed violence. Witnesses said more than 200 people were killed in two days this week. The violence came after Assad agreed to allow in foreign monitors under the Arab League plan, return troops to barracks and release political prisoners. On Wednesday, a witness and two activist groups said government forces surrounded residents of a Syrian village and killed more than 100 people in a barrage that lasted for hours.
"Time and again, the Assad regime has demonstrated that it does not deserve to rule Syria. It's time for this suffering and killing to stop," Carney said. He called on the international community to unite in warning Assad that Syria will face additional measures, including more punitive sanctions, unless the regime changes course.
At the State Department, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the stepped-up violence signaled that Syria's acceptance of the Arab League is merely a "stalling tactic."
"This is not the behavior of a government that is getting ready to implement the Arab League proposals," she told reporters, adding later that: "We've got lots of promises as the government continues to mow down its own people."
Nuland said the U.S. would continue to press for more action on Syria at the U.N. Security Council, including an endorsement of the Arab League plan. The Security Council has been unable to reach consensus on imposing sanctions on Syria, as the United States and Europe have done on their own, due to opposition from permanent, veto-wielding members Russia and China. However, Russia last week submitted a draft resolution to the council, which Washington sees as a sign Moscow may be ready to support U.N. action.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the proposed resolution by phone earlier this week, the State Department said.
Meanwhile the department, renewed its travel warning for Syria, repeating earlier alerts that urged Americans to leave while there is still commercial air service and limit their travel inside the country due to the violence. The warning also said that already limited services at the embassy in Damascus likely would be curtailed "as staff levels ... are being further reduced."
FORT MEADE, MD (Reuters) ? Attorneys for Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning on Monday challenged evidence linking him to the biggest classified document leak in U.S. history, arguing others had access to the same files and that it cannot be proven Manning sent anything to WikiLeaks from his computer.
The 24-year-old Manning is suspected of downloading thousands of classified or confidential documents from the military's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet. Those files are thought to have later appeared on the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
Manning is currently facing a military hearing to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to court martial him on 22 charges including aiding the enemy and unlawfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet. He faces life imprisonment if convicted of the most serious charge.
Government prosecutors have portrayed Manning as a well-trained soldier adept at using computers who violated his duties. Manning's defense lawyers have underscored evidence that he was an emotionally troubled young man and have questioned why he was not relieved of his intelligence duties sooner.
Witnesses have said Manning sent an email to his sergeant saying confusion over his gender identity was seriously hurting his life, work and ability to think. Manning had created a female alter-ego online, Breanna Manning, according to testimony at the hearing.
A military computer crimes investigator, Special Agent David Shaver, testified on Sunday that he found files on Manning's computer that mirrored those that appeared on WikiLeaks, the first time the government has offered direct links between Manning and the anti-secrecy website.
Shaver said he recreated a path used on Manning's computer to download assessment documents about detainees in the U.S. war against al Qaeda who are being held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Four complete Guantanamo detainee assessments were among files that had been deleted from Manning's user profile, Shaver testified. Similar documents later showed up on the WikiLeaks website.
Shaver also testified he found thousands of U.S. State Department diplomatic cables that had been downloaded to Manning's computer. Some 10,000 were in a corrupted folder, while 100,000 others were in a special format for easy transfer.
Under cross-examination on Monday by Captain Paul Bouchard, a member of Manning's defense team, Shaver said he compared some of the cables in the corrupted folder on Manning's machine with those on WikiLeaks and discovered none of them matched.
Witnesses have also testified that analysts were encouraged to look at diplomatic cables to get a big-picture view of the war in Iraq, where Manning's unit was stationed.
Shaver acknowledged that no forensic evidence could prove any of the information that appeared on WikiLeaks had been sent from Manning's computer, or even that Manning had been using the computer when the files were downloaded.
"I could not put somebody at the keyboard," Shaver said.
Defense lawyers argued that other analysts on Manning's team had access to the cables, which were not password protected and could be easily downloaded, witnesses said.
Shaver testified he found an unauthorized program on Manning's computer that enabled users to swiftly download large numbers of files. But witnesses acknowledged the program was a helpful data-mining tool that may have been used by several of the analysts as part of their work.
Investigators found Manning's computer had two versions of an Apache helicopter gunsight video, one of which appeared to be the one aired by WikiLeaks and another that may have been the source material, Shaver said. The video showed an attack that killed several Iraqis, including two Reuters journalists.
Bouchard pointed out that analysts in Manning's unit had discussed the video in December 2009 and had watched it on several computers.
An elusive bumblebee, which was last seen in 1956, was recently found living in the White Mountains of south-central New Mexico, scientists announced Monday.
Known as "Cockerell's bumblebee," the bee was first described in 1913 using six specimens collected along the Rio Ruidoso, a river located in the Sierra Blanca and Sacramento Mountains, N.M. Over the years, one more sample was found in Ruidoso, and 16 specimens were collected near the town of Cloudcroft, N.M.
The last Cockerell's bumblebee sample was collected in 1956. No other specimens had been recorded until Aug. 31, when a team of scientists from the University of California, Riverside, found three more samples of the bee species in weeds along a highway north of Cloudcroft.
"When an insect species is very rare, or highly localized, it can fairly easily escape detection for very long periods of time," Douglas Yanega, a senior museum scientist at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), said in a statement.
Cockerell's bumblebee has the most limited range of any bumblebee species in the world, having been spotted only in an area of less than 300 square miles (777 square kilometers), according to the researchers. By comparison, the rare "Franklin's bumblebee" species, which was last seen in 2003 and is on the verge of extinction, is known from a distribution covering about 13,000 square miles (33,670 square km).
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Cockerell's bumblebee was able to fly under the radar for so long because the area where the species lives is rarely visited by entomologists, Yanega said. The bee species has also "long been ignored because it was thought that it was not actually a genuine species, but only a regional color variant of another well-known species," Yanega explained.
An assessment of the genetic makeup of the three newly discovered specimens gives fairly conclusive evidence that Cockerell's bumblebee is a genuine species, the researchers said.
It is not unusual for an insect species to be rediscovered after several decades, when people might otherwise have believed it had gone extinct, Yanega said. UCR entomologists rediscover many "lost" insect species like the Cockerell's bumblebee, as well as discover entirely new species, at the rate of several dozen species every year.
"There are many precedents ? some of them very recently in the news, in fact ? of insects that have been unseen for anywhere from 70 to more than 100 years, suddenly turning up again when someone either got lucky enough, or persistent enough, to cross paths with them again," Yanega said. "It is much harder to give conclusive evidence that an insect species has gone extinct than for something like a bird or mammal or plant."
Cockerell's bumblebee does not appear to be facing extinction. The bumblebee dwells in an area that's largely composed of National Forest and Apache tribal land, and it is "unlikely to be under serious threat of habitat loss at the moment," Yanega said.
However, the researcher notes that since the bee species' biology is completely unknown, it may require additional formal assessments in the future.
You can follow LiveScience writer Remy Melina on Twitter @remymelina. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience? and on Facebook.
Defensive measures: Toward a vaccine for Ebola Public release date: 5-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Joseph Caspermeyer Joseph.Caspermeyer@asu.edu Arizona State University
On August 26, 1976, a time bomb exploded in Yambuku, a remote village in Zaire, (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). A threadlike virus known as Ebola had emerged, soon earning a grim distinction as one of the most lethal, naturally occurring pathogens on earth, killing up to 90 percent of its victims, and producing a terrifying constellation of symptoms known as hemorrhagic fever.
Now, Charles Arntzen, a researcher at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, along with colleagues from ASU, the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, MD, have made progress toward a vaccine against the deadly virus.
The group's research results appear in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, along with a companion paper by their collaborators at Mapp Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, CA, led by Larry Zeitlin. Arntzen's group demonstrated that a plant-derived vaccine for Ebola provided strong immunological protection in a mouse model.
If early efforts bear fruit, an Ebola vaccine could be stockpiled for use in the United States, should the country fall victim to a natural outbreak or a bioterrorism event in which a weaponized strain of the virus were unleashed on soldiers or the public.
To date, Ebola outbreaks have been mercifully rare. For researchers like Arntzen however, this presents a challenge: "With other lethal viruses like HIV there is a common pattern of occurrence, allowing for vaccine testing. For example, an AIDS vaccine study is now underway at two locations in Thailand, which were chosen because of a current high incidence of the disease."
By contrast, Ebola events are fleeting, episodic and largely unpredictable. For this reason, Arntzen stresses that an Ebola vaccine would most likely not be used prophylacticallythat is, as a means of protecting large populations, as in the case of common vaccines against diseases like influenza or polio. Instead, the idea is to have a sizeable store of the vaccine on hand in the event of a sudden outbreak, either natural or nefarious.
A killer up close
Ebola belongs to a family of viruses known as filoviridae, which take their name from their serpentine, filamentous structure (see Figure 1). Filoviridae fall into two broad categories known as Ebola-like and Marburg-like viruses. In the original Ebola outbreak in Yambuku, situated along the Ebola River, 280 of the 318 identified cases died. Soon thereafter, an additional 284 cases and 151 deaths occurred in nearby Sudan. In Yambuku, the small local hospital was shut down, after 11 of its 17 staff members died.
The likely reservoir for the disease is bats. Primates including monkeys can become infected from eating bats or from fruit the bats may have dropped. Infected animals can then spread the disease to humans through bites, or when the primates are consumed for fooda practice prevalent in some regions of Africa.
The course of the disease is pitiless, sometimes producing hemorrhagic fever, which causes severe bleeding from mucous membranes, including the gastroinestinal tract, eyes, nose, vagina and gingiva. The very high mortality and gruesome symptoms of the disease have riveted public attention and have been the focus of numerous films and books, notably Richard Preston's The Hot Zone.
Arntzen notes that while no human vaccine against Ebola currently exists, a number of strong candidates have emerged. While some have yielded good results in animal models, in terms of protection against the virus, they have practical shortcomings. "All of these existing vaccine candidates are genetically modified live viruses," he says. Vaccines of this sort require very careful conditions of storage and have a tendency to lose potency over a period of months. "If you've got something that you're going to have to keep at liquid nitrogen temperatures for years at a time, in hopes that there will never be an outbreak, it makes it impractical. "
Fighting pathogens with plants
Of the vaccines available to doctors today, some (like influenza) are produced in eggs, some in cultured animal cells, and others in yeast. Arntzen's team has taken a different approach to vaccine production by converting tobacco plants into living pharmaceutical factories. They created a DNA blueprint for their Ebola vaccine, and used a specialized bacterium to infuse it into the leaves of tobacco. "The blueprint converts each leaf cell into a miniature manufacturing unit," Arntzen says.
In the current study, the vaccine blueprint was designed by fusing a key surface protein (known as GP1) from the Ebola virus with a monoclonal antibody customized to bind to GP1. The resulting molecules' opposite ends attract each other, like a group of rod-shaped magnets. When the vaccine molecules bind to each other, they form an aggregate called an Ebola Immune Complex (EIC). "In immunology, that means you've got something that is much easier for our immune system to recognize," Arntzen says. "Because it has many copies of an identical molecule, it's called a repeating array." (See Figure 2)
Within two weeks after the vaccine "blueprint" is delivered to tobacco leaves, enough of the EIC accumulates to allow its purification from other leaf cell components. The researchers then vaccinated mice with the purified sample, and showed that their immune system gave a strong response.
For the ultimate validation of the vaccine however, it was necessary to show that the vaccinated mice could withstand an Ebola virus infection. Because of the dangers in handling the virus, these experiments were conducted by skilled researchers at a high containment facility operated by the US Army Medical Research Institute in Maryland. It was found that the level of protection of the vaccinated mice was equivalent to that seen in prior experiments with the best, previously available experimental vaccine.
The advantages of using tobacco to manufacture a vaccine are significant. The initial costs for plant growth are much cheaper than design of traditional pharmaceutical facilities. In addition, the material extracted from tobacco leaves can be easily purified, and then might be spray dried or freeze-dried, yielding a highly stable compound, storable at ambient temperatures for extended periods. This will be essential for an Ebola vaccine, since it will primarily be stockpiled to use only if there is a disease outbreak.
Vaccines typically contain adjuvantsimmune modulating factors that improve a vaccine's protective qualities. Most vaccines contain alum (or aluminum hydroxide), which is an FDA approved adjuvant. In the case of the plant-derived Ebola vaccine, alum did not improve the survival rates in mice when it was co-administered with EIC. Instead, the group found that a Toll-like receptor (TLR) agonist known as PIC, when delivered in tandem with EIC, dramatically improved survival.
Toll-like receptors are part of the body's innate immune systeminvolved in processes of inflammation, where defensive cells like macrophages and dendritic cells are attracted to the site of infection. Arntzen explains that the TLR agonist PIC acts to mimic a site of inflammation, amplifying the immune response, without causing tissue damage. In experiments using a combination of PIC and EIC, mice achieved an 80 percent survival rate against a lethal challenge of Ebolacommensurate with the best existing vaccine candidates.
The road ahead
In their companion PNAS paper, Arnzen's collaborators at Mapp Biopharmaceuticals outline the process for creating the monoclonal antibodies used for this research. Treatment for an Ebola infection, Arntzen says, would likely involve the injection of fast acting antibodies to attack the virus directlya process known as passive immunization, combined with a vaccine to stimulate the protective immune response (active immunization). This approach is commonly used in the case of other viral infections, particularly rabies. "Our two papers offer a nice back to back picture," Arntzen says. "We can manufacture both of these post-Ebola exposure reagents for a defensive stockpile, using tobacco."
The next steps for a plant-derived filovirus vaccine will involve using the EIC platform to design protection against the full range of these threadlike viruses. The method, with its straightforward purification protocol might also be used in the case of other pathogens including hepatitis C or dengue fever, where the extraction of glycoproteins has thus far been difficult.
Should efforts succeed in producing a post-exposure therapeutic that could be stockpiled by the U.S. military, the vaccine could also be made available to the Center for Disease Control for immediate use in the event of a remote outbreak.
###
A nonreplicating subunit vaccine protects mice against lethal Ebola virus challenge
Waranyoo Phoolcharoen, John M. Dye, Jacquelyn Kilbourne, Khanrat Piensook, William D. Pratt, Charles J. Arntzen, Qiang Chen, Hugh S. Mason, and Melissa M. Herbst-Kralovetz.
Design and testing of an Ebola virus post-exposure immunoprotectant: enhanced potency of a fucose free monoclonal antibody
Larry Zeitlin, James Pettitt, Corinne Scully, Natasha Bohorova, Do Kim, MichaelyPauly, Andrew Hiatt, Long Ngo, Herta Steinkellner, Kevin Whaley, Gene Olinger
Arizona State University Regents Professor Charles Arntzen holds the Florence Ely Nelson Presidential Endowed Chair and has appointments at The Biodesign Institute's Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Life Sciences.
Written by: Richard Harth
Science Writer: The Biodesign Institute
richard.harth@asu.edu
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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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.
Defensive measures: Toward a vaccine for Ebola Public release date: 5-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Joseph Caspermeyer Joseph.Caspermeyer@asu.edu Arizona State University
On August 26, 1976, a time bomb exploded in Yambuku, a remote village in Zaire, (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). A threadlike virus known as Ebola had emerged, soon earning a grim distinction as one of the most lethal, naturally occurring pathogens on earth, killing up to 90 percent of its victims, and producing a terrifying constellation of symptoms known as hemorrhagic fever.
Now, Charles Arntzen, a researcher at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, along with colleagues from ASU, the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, MD, have made progress toward a vaccine against the deadly virus.
The group's research results appear in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, along with a companion paper by their collaborators at Mapp Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, CA, led by Larry Zeitlin. Arntzen's group demonstrated that a plant-derived vaccine for Ebola provided strong immunological protection in a mouse model.
If early efforts bear fruit, an Ebola vaccine could be stockpiled for use in the United States, should the country fall victim to a natural outbreak or a bioterrorism event in which a weaponized strain of the virus were unleashed on soldiers or the public.
To date, Ebola outbreaks have been mercifully rare. For researchers like Arntzen however, this presents a challenge: "With other lethal viruses like HIV there is a common pattern of occurrence, allowing for vaccine testing. For example, an AIDS vaccine study is now underway at two locations in Thailand, which were chosen because of a current high incidence of the disease."
By contrast, Ebola events are fleeting, episodic and largely unpredictable. For this reason, Arntzen stresses that an Ebola vaccine would most likely not be used prophylacticallythat is, as a means of protecting large populations, as in the case of common vaccines against diseases like influenza or polio. Instead, the idea is to have a sizeable store of the vaccine on hand in the event of a sudden outbreak, either natural or nefarious.
A killer up close
Ebola belongs to a family of viruses known as filoviridae, which take their name from their serpentine, filamentous structure (see Figure 1). Filoviridae fall into two broad categories known as Ebola-like and Marburg-like viruses. In the original Ebola outbreak in Yambuku, situated along the Ebola River, 280 of the 318 identified cases died. Soon thereafter, an additional 284 cases and 151 deaths occurred in nearby Sudan. In Yambuku, the small local hospital was shut down, after 11 of its 17 staff members died.
The likely reservoir for the disease is bats. Primates including monkeys can become infected from eating bats or from fruit the bats may have dropped. Infected animals can then spread the disease to humans through bites, or when the primates are consumed for fooda practice prevalent in some regions of Africa.
The course of the disease is pitiless, sometimes producing hemorrhagic fever, which causes severe bleeding from mucous membranes, including the gastroinestinal tract, eyes, nose, vagina and gingiva. The very high mortality and gruesome symptoms of the disease have riveted public attention and have been the focus of numerous films and books, notably Richard Preston's The Hot Zone.
Arntzen notes that while no human vaccine against Ebola currently exists, a number of strong candidates have emerged. While some have yielded good results in animal models, in terms of protection against the virus, they have practical shortcomings. "All of these existing vaccine candidates are genetically modified live viruses," he says. Vaccines of this sort require very careful conditions of storage and have a tendency to lose potency over a period of months. "If you've got something that you're going to have to keep at liquid nitrogen temperatures for years at a time, in hopes that there will never be an outbreak, it makes it impractical. "
Fighting pathogens with plants
Of the vaccines available to doctors today, some (like influenza) are produced in eggs, some in cultured animal cells, and others in yeast. Arntzen's team has taken a different approach to vaccine production by converting tobacco plants into living pharmaceutical factories. They created a DNA blueprint for their Ebola vaccine, and used a specialized bacterium to infuse it into the leaves of tobacco. "The blueprint converts each leaf cell into a miniature manufacturing unit," Arntzen says.
In the current study, the vaccine blueprint was designed by fusing a key surface protein (known as GP1) from the Ebola virus with a monoclonal antibody customized to bind to GP1. The resulting molecules' opposite ends attract each other, like a group of rod-shaped magnets. When the vaccine molecules bind to each other, they form an aggregate called an Ebola Immune Complex (EIC). "In immunology, that means you've got something that is much easier for our immune system to recognize," Arntzen says. "Because it has many copies of an identical molecule, it's called a repeating array." (See Figure 2)
Within two weeks after the vaccine "blueprint" is delivered to tobacco leaves, enough of the EIC accumulates to allow its purification from other leaf cell components. The researchers then vaccinated mice with the purified sample, and showed that their immune system gave a strong response.
For the ultimate validation of the vaccine however, it was necessary to show that the vaccinated mice could withstand an Ebola virus infection. Because of the dangers in handling the virus, these experiments were conducted by skilled researchers at a high containment facility operated by the US Army Medical Research Institute in Maryland. It was found that the level of protection of the vaccinated mice was equivalent to that seen in prior experiments with the best, previously available experimental vaccine.
The advantages of using tobacco to manufacture a vaccine are significant. The initial costs for plant growth are much cheaper than design of traditional pharmaceutical facilities. In addition, the material extracted from tobacco leaves can be easily purified, and then might be spray dried or freeze-dried, yielding a highly stable compound, storable at ambient temperatures for extended periods. This will be essential for an Ebola vaccine, since it will primarily be stockpiled to use only if there is a disease outbreak.
Vaccines typically contain adjuvantsimmune modulating factors that improve a vaccine's protective qualities. Most vaccines contain alum (or aluminum hydroxide), which is an FDA approved adjuvant. In the case of the plant-derived Ebola vaccine, alum did not improve the survival rates in mice when it was co-administered with EIC. Instead, the group found that a Toll-like receptor (TLR) agonist known as PIC, when delivered in tandem with EIC, dramatically improved survival.
Toll-like receptors are part of the body's innate immune systeminvolved in processes of inflammation, where defensive cells like macrophages and dendritic cells are attracted to the site of infection. Arntzen explains that the TLR agonist PIC acts to mimic a site of inflammation, amplifying the immune response, without causing tissue damage. In experiments using a combination of PIC and EIC, mice achieved an 80 percent survival rate against a lethal challenge of Ebolacommensurate with the best existing vaccine candidates.
The road ahead
In their companion PNAS paper, Arnzen's collaborators at Mapp Biopharmaceuticals outline the process for creating the monoclonal antibodies used for this research. Treatment for an Ebola infection, Arntzen says, would likely involve the injection of fast acting antibodies to attack the virus directlya process known as passive immunization, combined with a vaccine to stimulate the protective immune response (active immunization). This approach is commonly used in the case of other viral infections, particularly rabies. "Our two papers offer a nice back to back picture," Arntzen says. "We can manufacture both of these post-Ebola exposure reagents for a defensive stockpile, using tobacco."
The next steps for a plant-derived filovirus vaccine will involve using the EIC platform to design protection against the full range of these threadlike viruses. The method, with its straightforward purification protocol might also be used in the case of other pathogens including hepatitis C or dengue fever, where the extraction of glycoproteins has thus far been difficult.
Should efforts succeed in producing a post-exposure therapeutic that could be stockpiled by the U.S. military, the vaccine could also be made available to the Center for Disease Control for immediate use in the event of a remote outbreak.
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A nonreplicating subunit vaccine protects mice against lethal Ebola virus challenge
Waranyoo Phoolcharoen, John M. Dye, Jacquelyn Kilbourne, Khanrat Piensook, William D. Pratt, Charles J. Arntzen, Qiang Chen, Hugh S. Mason, and Melissa M. Herbst-Kralovetz.
Design and testing of an Ebola virus post-exposure immunoprotectant: enhanced potency of a fucose free monoclonal antibody
Larry Zeitlin, James Pettitt, Corinne Scully, Natasha Bohorova, Do Kim, MichaelyPauly, Andrew Hiatt, Long Ngo, Herta Steinkellner, Kevin Whaley, Gene Olinger
Arizona State University Regents Professor Charles Arntzen holds the Florence Ely Nelson Presidential Endowed Chair and has appointments at The Biodesign Institute's Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Life Sciences.
Written by: Richard Harth
Science Writer: The Biodesign Institute
richard.harth@asu.edu
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BONN (Reuters) ? The West used an Afghanistan meeting on Monday to signal enduring support for Kabul as allied troops go home, but economic turbulence in Europe and crises with Pakistan and Iran could stir doubts about Western resolve.
The goal is to leave behind an Afghan government strong enough to escape the fate of its Soviet-era predecessor, which collapsed in 1992 in a civil war. The country's allies are preparing increasingly for a scenario in which there is no peace settlement with the Taliban before most foreign combat troops leave in 2014.
"The United States intends to stay the course with our friends in Afghanistan," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the conference. "We will be there with you as you make the hard decisions that are necessary for your future."
She said the entire region had "much to lose if the country again becomes a source of terrorism and instability."
Hosts Germany sought to signal Western staying power in the country, a haven for al Qaeda's leadership in the years before the September 11 attacks, at the gathering of dozens of foreign ministers in the German city of Bonn.
"We send a clear message to the people of Afghanistan: We will not leave you on your own. We will not leave you in the lurch," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.
Ten years after a similar conference held to rebuild Afghanistan following the attacks of 2001, Western countries are under pressure to spend money reviving flagging economies at home rather than propping up a government in Kabul widely criticized for being corrupt and ineffective.
Brewing confrontations pitting Washington against Pakistan and Iran, two of Afghanistan's most influential neighbors, have added to despondency over the outlook for the war.
Pakistan boycotted the meeting after NATO aircraft killed 24 of its soldiers on the border with Afghanistan in a November 26 attack the alliance called a "tragic" accident.
FEARS OF CIVIL WAR
Some in the West are still hoping Pakistan will use its influence to deliver the Afghan Taliban, whose leadership Washington says is based in Pakistan, to peace talks.
Clinton said she expected Pakistan to play a constructive role in Afghanistan, even as she voiced disappointment that Islamabad chose not to attend the conference.
But foreign governments made clear they would press ahead in building up the Kabul government's ability to survive after 2014 even if Islamabad fails to bring insurgents into a settlement.
Embryonic contacts with the Taliban have so far yielded little, and with the government in Kabul unable to provide security and economic development, the risk is that the withdrawal of foreign troops will plunge Afghanistan back into civil war. Renewed strife might also stir more violence over the border in Pakistan, fighting its own Islamist insurgency.
Iran's growing confrontation with the West over its nuclear program could also bleed into the war in Afghanistan.
Tehran said on Sunday it shot down a U.S. spy drone in its airspace and threatened to respond. International forces in Kabul said the drone may have been one lost last week while flying over western Afghanistan.
Iran has been accused in the past of providing low-level backing to the Taliban insurgency, and diplomats and analysts have suggested Tehran could ratchet up this support if it wanted to put serious pressure on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on Monday reiterated Iran's opposition to the United States keeping some forces in Afghanistan after 2014.
"Certain Western countries seek to extend their military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014 by maintaining their military bases there. We deem such an approach to be contradictory to efforts to sustain stability and security in Afghanistan," he told the conference.
"LAND OF OPPORTUNITY"
The foreign military presence in Afghanistan over the past 10 years had failed to uproot terrorism and had actually made the problem worse, Salehi said.
Foreign governments however were determined to try to dispel at least some of the pessimism seeping into the Afghan project.
Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna, whose country became the first to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan - much to the irritation of Pakistan - pledged India would keep up its heavy investment in a country whose mineral wealth and trade routes made it "a land of opportunity."
In a rare positive development, Clinton said the United States would resume paying into a World Bank-administered Reconstruction Trust Fund for Afghanistan, a decision that U.S. officials said would allow for the disbursement of roughly $650 million to $700 million in suspended U.S. aid.
The United States and other big donors stopped paying into the fund in June, when the International Monetary Fund suspended its program with Afghanistan because of concerns about Afghanistan's troubled Kabul Bank.
The conference is not expected to produce new aid pledges; instead, U.S. officials say they hope it will mark a start to a process outlining future support to be pledged by mid-2012.
A European diplomat said his best estimate was that Afghanistan would need about $4 billion a year to fund its army and police "but it could be anywhere between 3 and 6 billion of which 1/3 would come from the Americans and the rest -- 2/3 -- would have to be pooled."
"But the bottom line is at the moment we don't have a reliable answer of exactly how much will be required."
"ONLY THE AFGHANS" CAN SOLVE THE POLITICS
The Taliban condemned the conference in a November 30 statement which reiterated a call for foreign occupation of the country.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the conference that reconciliation -- a term used to refer to talks among different Afghan groups as well as with insurgents -- remained an important part of efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.
"The political process will have great importance in future, this is the place where the questions of reconciliation and power sharing must be solved in a way that includes all parts and ethnic groups of the society," she said.
"We can help Afghanistan in this process, we can provide our experience, but we can't solve the problem, it is only the Afghans who can do this."
British Foreign Secretary William Hague reiterated that any settlement with insurgents would require them to renounce violence, sever ties with al Qaeda and respect the Afghan constitution -- "end conditions" which some argue effectively close the door to talks by determining the outcome in advance.
Afghanistan has blamed Pakistan for hindering peace talks. Pakistan says it is being used as a scapegoat for the failure of the United States and its allies to bring Afghan stability.
(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom, Hamid Shalizi, Arshad Mohammed, Sabine Siebold, Myra MacDonald, Missy Ryan and Hamid Khalizi; Writing by Myra MacDonald; Editing by William Maclean)
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria?? Gunmen from a radical Muslim sect raided a town in northern Nigeria early Sunday morning, bombing police stations and robbing banks in an attack that killed at least six people, authorities said.
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The attack in Azare in Bauchi state mirrored other recent attacks by the sect known as Boko Haram, showing their ability to strike at will in Nigeria's Muslim north. The attack also shows the group remains focused on raising cash for future attacks in the oil-rich nation.
Sect members bombed two police stations in the city and robbed local branches for bank chains Guaranty Trust Bank PLC and Intercontinental Bank PLC, Bauchi police commissioner Ikechukwu Aduba said. One police officer, one soldier and four civilians were killed during the five-hour attack, he said.
"We did not make any arrest, as investigations are still being carried out," Aduba said.
Aduba blamed Boko Haram for the attack, saying the assault Sunday mirrored attacks its members have carried out in recent weeks. The group has launched a series of bombings against Nigeria's weak central government over the last year in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law across the nation of more than 160 million people home to both Christians and Muslims.
Boko Haram claimed responsibility for a Nov. 4 attack on Damaturu, Yobe state's capital, that killed more than 100 people. The group also claimed the Aug. 24 suicide car bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Nigeria's capital that killed 24 people and wounded 116 others.
Little is known about the sources of Boko Haram's support, though its members recently began carrying out a wave of bank robberies in the north. Police stations have also been bombed and officers killed.
Boko Haram has splintered into three factions, with one wing increasingly willing to kill as it maintains contact with terror groups in North Africa and Somalia, diplomats and security sources say.
The sect is responsible for at least 387 killings in Nigeria this year alone, according to an AP count.
___
Associated Press writers Shehu Saulawa in Bauchi, Nigeria and Jon Gambrell in Lagos, Nigeria contributed to this report.
(This version CORRECTS Corrects name of Guaranty Trust Bank.)
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
STATE COLLEGE, Pa (Reuters) ? The Second Mile charity has agreed to freeze its assets to settle a lawsuit filed by a man identified only as Victim 4 in a sexual abuse indictment against a former Penn State football coach, the man's lawyers said on Friday.
The Second Mile charity to help troubled children was founded by assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who is charged with molesting eight men when they were juveniles in a scandal that rocked the multimillion dollar world of college athletics.
The man identified as Victim 4 in the indictment filed the lawsuit last month in state court in Philadelphia to preserve Second Mile's assets. His lawyers, Ben Andreozzi and Jeffrey Fritz, said the charity has settled that suit.
They also said in a statement that the man planned to eventually file another lawsuit seeking damages "from the organizations and individuals responsible for the sexual assaults upon our clients."
Those clients include other accusers who have contacted the lawyers since the grand jury indicted Sandusky, a spokeswoman for the law firm said, declining further comment.
The Second Mile charity, through which Sandusky allegedly met his victims, has said it was considering three options for its future, one of which was closing. It recently told potential donors to give to another charity.
In settling the lawsuit, the Second Mile agreed to obtain court approval prior to the transfer of assets or closure, and to provide notice to the man. It also agreed to allow the man "to be heard by the court regarding the interest of victims and the distribution of assets."
In a statement issued after the settlement, Second Mile said: "The agreement reiterates the Second Mile's existing legal obligations; it does not include a finding of liability."
At the same time, Penn State's Board of Trustees formally dismissed legendary football coach Joe Paterno and President Graham Spanier, finalizing actions announced last month after Sandusky's indictment on 40 criminal counts.
The brief meeting of trustees made official the November 9 firings of Spanier and Paterno in the scandal. Paterno was head coach of the Nittany Lions, a college football powerhouse, for 46 years.
"I think today we wanted to make sure we crossed our 't's and dotted our 'i's," university spokesman Bill Mahon said.
Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator, was accused of sexually assaulting young boys over a 15-year period. If convicted, he faces life in prison. He has maintained his innocence.
A ninth accuser came forward this week to file a lawsuit against Sandusky, Penn State and The Second Mile.
The executive committee voted unanimously on the resolutions severing Paterno and Spanier from their positions, Mahon said. It also voted unanimously on a resolution to replace Spanier with Rodney Erickson.
Although technically fired, Spanier still holds a tenured position with the university. Mahon said he remains eligible to go on a one-year sabbatical and return to teach at Penn State following a hiatus.
Mahon could not say for certain if the same provision worked for Paterno.
(Additional reporting by Dave Warner; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst, Jerry Norton, Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)
SIOUX FALLS, S.D.?? Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern was being treated at a hospital in South Dakota after falling and hitting his head on the pavement outside a library bearing his name.
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McGovern's daughter Ann McGovern said her father was to be treated at a Sioux Falls hospital after being flown by helicopter from Mitchell, S.D., where a live C-SPAN interview was to take place at the Dakota Wesleyan University's McGovern Library on Friday.
"He had just walked from home to the center. He lives literally just across the street," Ann McGovern told The Associated Press.
McGovern has lived in St. Augustine, Fla., since 2008 but also has a home in Mitchell.
Friends and faculty who had gathered at the library for the C-SPAN taping said McGovern fell at about 5:15 p.m. ? less than two hours before the program began. A former South Dakota senator, McGovern, 89, was "bleeding profusely" but was conscious and talking as he was taken from the university by ambulance, said Donald Simmons, dean of the College of Public Service.
Ann McGovern was with her father before he was taken to Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls, but she wasn't sure how serious the injury was. Hospital officials said no new information was available late Friday night.
University President Robert Duffett said McGovern had been excited to take part in the live C-SPAN program called "The Contenders," which focuses on failed presidential candidates who changed the landscape of American politics." McGovern lost his 1972 challenge against President Richard Nixon, who eventually resigned amid the Watergate scandal.
Duffett said he had coffee with McGovern just hours before the fall and that McGovern was returning to the campus to grab dinner with faculty before the interview.
McGovern was entering a side door when he "tripped and fell and hit his head hard," said Duffett, audibly frazzled. "It's just one of those things. He's made that walk many times before."
McGovern has an office inside the library named for both him and his late wife, Eleanor.
Ann McGovern said the injury was unrelated to her father's hospitalization in late October for exhaustion. She was with her father was he was being readied to be taken to Avera McKennan Hospital, but she wasn't sure how serious the injury was.
C-SPAN went ahead and aired the segment on McGovern, with program host Amity Shlaes interviewing political experts and journalists to analyze McGovern's ill-fated campaign. Shlaes said on air that McGovern had taken "a spill" and wasn't able to be on the program as planned, but she said he was fine.
McGovern was elected to his first of three terms in the Senate in 1962. Though he later lost the presidential race to Nixon, he continued to distinguish himself during his political career and was a lifelong advocate for U.S. and world food programs.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Usually a finicky phenomenon limited to tiny, ultracold objects, entanglement has now been achieved for macroscopic diamonds at room temperature
By John Matson
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December 1, 2011
NOT SO SMALL: One of the diamond wafers used in the entanglement experiment, with a coin for scale.Image: CQT
Diamonds have long been available in pairs?say, mounted in a nice set of earrings. But physicists have now taken that pairing to a new level, linking two diamonds on the quantum level.
A group of researchers report in the December 2 issue of Science that they managed to entangle the quantum states of two diamonds separated by 15 centimeters. Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon by which two or more objects share an unseen link bridging the space between them?a hypothetical pair of entangled dice, for instance, would always land on matching numbers, even if they were rolled in different places simultaneously.
But that link is fragile, and it can be disrupted by any number of outside influences. For that reason entanglement experiments on physical systems usually take place in highly controlled laboratory setups?entangling, say, a pair of isolated atoms cooled to nearly absolute zero.
In the new study, researchers from the University of Oxford, the National Research Council of Canada and the National University of Singapore (NUS) showed that entanglement can also be achieved in macroscopic objects at room temperature. "What we have done is demonstrate that it's possible with more standard, everyday objects?if diamond can be considered an everyday object," says study co-author Ian Walmsley, an experimental physicist at Oxford. "It's possible to put them into these quantum states that you often associate with these engineered objects, if you like?these closely managed objects."
To entangle relatively large objects, Walmsley and his colleagues harnessed a collective property of diamonds: the vibrational state of their crystal lattices. By targeting a diamond with an optical pulse, the researchers can induce a vibration in the diamond, creating an excitation called a phonon?a quantum of vibrational energy. Researchers can tell when a diamond contains a phonon by checking the light of the pulse as it exits. Because the pulse has deposited a tiny bit of its energy in the crystal, one of the outbound photons is of lower energy, and hence longer wavelength, than the photons of the incoming pulse.
Walmsley and his colleagues set up an experiment that would attempt to entangle two different diamonds using phonons. They used two squares of synthetically produced diamond, each three millimeters across. A laser pulse, bisected by a beam splitter, passes through the diamonds; any photons that scatter off of the diamond to generate a phonon are funneled into a photon detector. One such photon reaching the detector signals the presence of a phonon in the diamonds.
But because of the experimental design, there is no way of knowing which diamond is vibrating. "We know that somewhere in that apparatus, there is one phonon," Walmsley says. "But we cannot tell, even in principle, whether that came from the left-hand diamond or the right-hand diamond." In quantum-mechanical terms, in fact, the phonon is not confined to either diamond. Instead the two diamonds enter an entangled state in which they share one phonon between them.
To verify the presence of entanglement, the researchers carried out a test to check that the diamonds were not acting independently. In the absence of entanglement, after all, half the laser pulses could set the left-hand diamond vibrating and the other half could act on the right-hand diamond, with no quantum correlation between the two objects. If that were the case, then the phonon would be fully confined to one diamond.
If, on the other hand, the phonon were indeed shared by the two entangled diamonds, then any detectable effect of the phonon could bear the imprint of both objects. So the researchers fired a second optical pulse into the diamonds, with the intent of de-exciting the vibration and producing a signal photon that indicates that the phonon has been removed from the system. The phonon's vibrational energy gives the optical pulse a boost, producing a photon with higher energy, or shorter wavelength, than the incoming photons and eliminating the phonon in the process.
Carrier IQ has issued a new press release defending its business and reminding us all that it works not unilaterally, but for the operator -- the carrier. The nut:
Carrier IQ acts as an agent for the Operators. Each implementation is different and the diagnostic information actually gathered is determined by our customers – the mobile Operators. Carrier IQ does not gather any other data from devices.
We've got a massive discussion coming up on the podcast, folks.
Check out the whole press relase for yourself after the break.
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