vouch pervasive

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Enron's Skilling reaches deal for shortened sentence

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - Jeffrey Skilling, the convicted former Enron Corp chief executive, could be freed from prison a decade earlier than originally expected over his role in bringing down the energy trader, in one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history.

According to court papers filed on Wednesday, federal prosecutors and Skilling have agreed that he should be resentenced to between 14 and 17-1/2 years in prison, down from his original 24-year sentence.

In exchange, Skilling agreed to end his appeals of his May 2006 conviction by a Houston federal jury on 19 counts of securities fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying to auditors. Skilling has long maintained his innocence.

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake in Houston is scheduled to resentence Skilling on June 21.

Skilling, 59, has been in prison since December 2006, and with good behavior could be released in 2018 if Lake resentences him as requested. Lake had imposed the original 24-year term, but a federal appeals court later found it too harsh.

"The proposed agreement brings certainty and finality to a long painful process," Skilling's lawyer Daniel Petrocelli said in a statement. "Although the recommended sentence for Jeff would still be more than double any other Enron defendant, all of whom have long been out of prison, Jeff will at least have the chance to get back a meaningful part of his life."

Skilling had already been expected to forfeit more than $40 million to be used as restitution for victims of Enron's fraud. That money had been held up because of negotiations on a new sentence, and Wednesday's agreement would allow it to be freed up.

"This agreement ensures that Mr. Skilling will be appropriately punished for his crimes and that victims will finally receive the restitution they deserve," said Peter Carr, a U.S. Department of Justice spokesman. "Mr. Skilling will no longer be permitted to challenge his conviction for one of the most notorious frauds in American history."

ACCOUNTING SCANDAL

Once ranked seventh on the Fortune 500 list of large U.S. companies, Enron went bankrupt on December 2, 2001.

Along with WorldCom Inc and Adelphia Communications Corp, it was at the center of a series of accounting scandals that led to reforms including the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

Skilling had worked for Enron for about two decades, the last six months of which as chief executive.

He is being held at a low-security prison for men in Littleton, Colorado, and according to federal prison records is currently scheduled to be freed around February 2028, assuming good behavior.

At the 2006 trial, the Houston jury also found Kenneth Lay, who preceded and followed Skilling as Enron's chief executive, guilty of fraud and conspiracy. Lay died in July 2006, and his death led to his conviction being thrown out.

Former Enron Chief Financial officer Andrew Fastow, considered the mastermind behind the company's fraud, testified against Skilling and Lay.

Fastow was sentenced to six years in prison and released in December 2011. He declined to comment on Wednesday.

In 2009, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Skilling's conviction, but called his sentence too harsh. The following year, the U.S. Supreme Court also upheld the conviction, but rejected one legal theory behind it. Then in 2011, the 5th Circuit reaffirmed the conviction.

The case is U.S. v. Skilling, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, No. 04-cr-00025.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Dena Aubin in New York and Aruna Viswanatha in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Chris Reese)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/former-enron-ceo-skilling-prison-term-shortened-183051641.html

Kristen Stewart Rupert Sanders Photos 2016 Olympics TD Bank mountain lion hanley ramirez Christian Bale visits victims Christian Bale

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Sony's New Cheap Laptops Are Actually Kind of Beautiful

We've sort of gotten used to having to spend a disproportionate amount of money on nice-looking computers. Cheap laptops are not the same as premium laptops. We understand that. For once, though, inexpensive doesn't mean "junky plastic mess".

New insights into Ebola infection pave the way for much-needed therapies

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

The Ebola virus is among the deadliest viruses on the planet, killing up to 90% of those infected, and there are no approved vaccines or effective therapies. A study published by Cell Press on May 7th in the Biophysical Journal reveals how the most abundant protein making up the Ebola virus?viral protein 40 (VP40)?allows the virus to leave host cells and spread infection to other cells throughout the human body. The findings could lay the foundation for the development of new drugs and strategies for fighting Ebola infection.

"Little research is available on how the Ebola virus buds from the plasma membrane of human cells," says senior study author Robert Stahelin of Indiana University School of Medicine. "By shedding light on this process, our study will help us to identify potential drug candidates that could interfere with this step in the viral life cycle."

The Ebola virus is made up of seven proteins, including VP40, which plays a key role in enabling the virus to leave host cells and infect other cells in the human body. Past studies have shown that a part of VP40 called the C-terminal domain penetrates the plasma membrane surrounding host cells. But until now, it was not known exactly how VP40 binds to the plasma membrane to allow the virus to escape host cells.

To address this question, Stahelin and his team made vesicles designed to mimic the plasma membrane of host cells and exposed these vesicles to VP40. Observing their interactions under the microscope, they found that VP40's C-terminal domain penetrates more than halfway into one layer of the vesicles. VP40 also caused the vesicle membranes to bend into the shape of the Ebola virus, paving the way for its escape. When the researchers mutated the C-terminal domain of VP40, the protein was much less effective at binding to and bending membranes and forming virus-like particles that could escape from host cells.

Altogether, the findings reveal how VP40's C-terminal domain allows the Ebola virus to spread infection. "Currently, we are trying to find small molecules that can inhibit VP40 interactions with the plasma membrane," Stahelin says. "This effort could lead to the discovery of potential drug candidates that could form the basis of much-needed therapies for this deadly virus."

###

Biophysical Journal, Soni et al.: "The Ebola Virus Matrix Protein Deeply Penetrates the Plasma Membrane: An Important Step in Viral Egress."

Cell Press: http://www.cellpress.com

Thanks to Cell Press for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 21 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128168/New_insights_into_Ebola_infection_pave_the_way_for_much_needed_therapies

polling place comedy central philadelphia eagles obamacare Todd Akin Register To Vote Obama 2016

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Children's 'healthy' foods marketed at children are higher in fat, sugar and salt

May 7, 2013 ? Foods being marketed to children in UK supermarkets are less healthy than those marketed to the general population according to researchers at the University of Hertfordshire, who question whether more guidelines may be needed in regulating food marketed to children.

With the rise in childhood obesity across Europe, there has been much attention on how governments can reduce the advertising of products with high fat, sugar and/or salt levels, directly to children. Much of the focus has been on snack foods like confectionery and soft drinks. However, this study found that foods marketed to children that are often considered to be 'healthy' foods, such as yoghurts, cereal bars and ready meals, were still found to be higher in fat, sugar and salt than those marketed to the general population.

Dr Kirsten Rennie, from the University of Hertfordshire's Centre for Lifespan and Chronic Illness Research, said: "Consumers may think that foods marketed for children, using cartoon characters and promoted for lunchboxes might be healthier options than the equivalent foods marketed more for adults. In fact we found that it was the opposite. Foods like yoghurts and cereal bars often had substantially more fat and sugar per 100g than similar adult-version products. This is very worrying and does not help consumers' confidence in choosing appropriate healthy foods for their children."

Nutritional data was collected on yoghurts, cereal bars and ready meals from seven major UK supermarkets and categorised as children's or non-children's products based on the characteristic, promotional nature or information on the product packaging. Fat, sugar and salt content was compared per 100g and per recommended portion size.

Dr Angela Madden, Principal Lecturer in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Hertfordshire, said: "This study was co-ordinated by one of our students, Amy Lythgoe, who graduated with a BSc (Hons) Dietetics in 2011. Amy and the research team have provided some useful new evidence which will help parents become aware that choosing foods that are marketed to children may not be the healthiest option. This is an opportunity for food manufacturers to look at their child-orientated products and think about how they can improve them."

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/mind_brain/consumer_behavior/~3/QIB7YkZqCKM/130507134457.htm

jackie robinson Coachella 2013 Scary Movie 5 MTV Movie Awards 2013 masters masters leaderboard Psy Gentleman

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Cancer treatment could target inflammation in CVD

May 5, 2013 ? Peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) with radiolabeled somatostatin analogs, an established treatment for cancer patients, could offer a novel therapeutic approach to decrease levels of inflammation in the atherosclerotic plaques of patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD), reported an abstract? study at the International Conference on Nuclear Cardiology and Cardiac CT, May 5 to 8 in Berlin, Germany.

"Our results should act as a stimulus for further exploration of radionuclide based interventions in atherosclerosis. Ultimately such therapies might be used to lower the degree of inflammation in atherosclerosis which has the potential to reduce the occurrence of heart attacks," said Imke Schatka, the first author of the study from the Department of Nuclear Medicine at Hannover Medical School, Germany.

PRRT is a technique currently used to treat patients with metastatic neuroendocrine tumours (NETS), a diverse group of malignancies deriving from the neuroendocrine cell system (the most frequent locations being pancreas, small intestine and lung).

The discovery of over expression of somatostatin receptors (SSTR) on NET tumours first opened the way for development of radiolabelled somatostatin analogs to image tumours during PET/CT scans. DOTATATE is a somatostatin receptor (SSTR) ligand targeting SSTR-2, a receptor known to be expressed on 70% of NET tumours. Once tumours have been visualized, it is possible to target therapy by attaching the beta-emitter ??? Lutetium (???Lu) to the ligand.

Active inflammation has been widely implicated in the initiation, progression and disruption of vulnerable plaques, and consequently offers an emerging target for the imaging and treatment of atherosclerosis. "Since SSTR-2 receptors are also expressed on macrophages we speculated that DOTATATE-PET/CT might be used to detect vulnerable plaques and that a PRRT procedure could reduce inflammation in the arterial wall," explained Schatka.

For the current study, 11 patients (from a group of 165 undergoing PRRT for NET tumours) were retrospectively identified because they met the criteria of only receiving the beta emitter???Lu treatment after undergoing two consecutive scans, with a third scan following treatment.

For each of the three scans, vessel wall uptake of the DOTATATE ligand was measured in six arterial segments of PET images (carotid, aortic arch, ascending, descending, abdominal aorta, and iliac arteries) and then the overall vessel uptake was determined for each individual patient.

Results showed that for the first scan the overall vessel uptake of the ligand correlated with the age of the patient (P<0.01), the number of calcified plaques (P<0.001) and furthermore was higher in subjects with hypercholesterolemia (p=0.04). No significant differences in overall vessel uptakes were found between scans 1 and 2, confirming reproducibility in the absence of treatment.

However, when treatment with the beta-emitter ??? Lu-DOTATATE was delivered following scan 2, scan 3 showed significant reductions in the overall vessel uptake of the ligand when compared with both scan 1 (p=0.001) and scan 2 (p=0.004).

"Uptake of the ligand can be considered to be a measure of the quantity of SSTR receptors, which in turn is likely to correlate with the number of activated macrophages and the extent of the inflammatory process," explained Schatka. "Our results suggest that treatment has had a beneficial effect in reducing inflammation."

The next step, said Schatka, would be to get histological proof that reductions in inflammation really had been imaged with DOTATATE-PET/CT by looking at carotid artery samples removed from patients during routine surgery.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/kSFPN-PLCog/130505073744.htm

NFL scores week 3 kat dennings Steve Sabol Yom Kippur 2012 Aaron Paul packers Dancing With The Stars All Stars

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

IBM solar collector will concentrate the power of 2,000 suns, keep its cool

Modern solar collectors can concentrate only so much energy for safety's sake: too much in one place and they risk cooking themselves. An IBM-led group is working on a new collector dish that could avoid that damage while taking a big step forward in solar power efficiency. The hundreds of photovoltaic chips gathering energy at the center will be cooled by the same sort of microchannel water cooling that kept Aquasar from frying, letting each chip safely concentrate 2,000 times the solar energy it would normally face. The collector also promises to do more with sunlight once it's trapped: since the microchannels should absorb more than half of the waste heat, their hot water byproduct can either be filtered into drinkable water or converted into air conditioning.

As you might imagine, IBM sees more than just the obvious environmental benefit. When a receiver will generate about 25kW of energy while costing less to make through cheaper mirrors and structures, a fully developed solar array could be an affordable replacement for coal power that delivers greater independence -- picture remote towns that need a fresh water supply. IBM doesn't estimate when we'll see production of these collectors beyond several prototypes, but the finished work will likely be welcome to anyone frustrated by the scalability of current solar energy.

Filed under: Science