innate and adaptive immune response innate defenses anti complement
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Microfluidic chip to quickly diagnose the flu
Researchers miniaturize a more expensive diagnostic test into a single-use microfluidic chip roughly the size of a miscroscope slide.
antigens immune system cell mediated immune system complement system immune system
Stand up before you keel over: Sitting increases risk of dying in three years by 40%
Sitting down for 11 hours or more per day increases your chances of dying within three years - whether you're physically active or not, say scientists from the University of Sydney.
elisa reagent white blood cells fight infection chemiluminescent elisa
Legendary idol group Shinhwa returns with ?Venus? on ?Music Core?!
Shinhwa, the longest-running boy group in all of K-Pop history, has finally dropped their long-anticipated 10th...
The New iPad's Screen Is Underrated
If you spend a significant amount of time reading on your iPad, find a way to upgrade.
Friday, March 30, 2012
'American Idol': No Doubt's Gwen Stefani, Tony Kanal to Mentor Top 8 (Exclusive)
Shirley Halperin Two of the Grammy-winning band's four members will help the finalists on '80s week -- an appropriate fit considering No Doubt had a hit in 2003 with a song from 1985, Talk Talk's "It's My Life."
Creepy But Cool: Artist Turns Old Software Manuals Into Skulls
Other than being a big door stop, there's not much you can do with old computer manuals. How about carving skulls into them instead?
What Developers Can Expect at Google I/O 2012
Google's annual developer conference sold out in 20 minutes. Here's what all the fuss is about.
Ted Poe: Give me Liberty (County) or give me death! Well, not really.
Like Patrick Henry before him, Ted Poe is willing to fight for Liberty. But unlike the American patriot who fought against the British crown a quarter-millennium ago, the Texas congressman fought against the Texas Legislature and the federal courts.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
What the Candidates Didn?t Talk About Tonight
Tonight?s GOP debate featured a longer discourse on Arlen Specter than it did on America?s relationship with the rest of the world. It?s become something of a lost cause to lament the lack of discussion of foreign policy issues in...
Human rights group cites violations on U.S.-Mexico border
By Michael Martinez and Gustavo Valdes, CNN
March 29, 2012 -- Updated 0058 GMT (0858 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Amnesty International studies human rights violations on the U.S.-Mexico border
- Latinos, immigrants and Native Americans are subject to racial profiling, group says
- The group criticizes the lack of access to justice for immigrant survivors of crime
- Federal, Arizona officials dispute the report, saying it's outdated, anecdotal and generalized
(CNN) -- Latinos, immigrants and Native Americans experience "a pattern of human right violations" in the American Southwest under U.S. immigration policies, Amnesty International said in a new report.
A two-year study focusing mostly on Arizona and Texas found that "communities living along the border -- particularly Latinos and individuals perceived to be of Latino origin, and indigenous communities -- are disproportionately affected by a range of immigration control measures, resulting in a pattern of human rights violations," Amnesty International said.
The report cited the failure of federal and state laws to respect immigrants' right to life and found that U.S. citizens of Latino descent and Native Americans are subjected to "discriminatory profiling by federal, state and local law enforcement officials, that result in their being disproportionately targeted for police stops and searches."
Other breaches of international human rights standards occurred in the access to justice for immigrant survivors of crime and in accountability for state officials and private individuals accused of abusing immigrants' rights, the group said.
"All immigrants, irrespective of their legal status, have human rights. Amnesty International's report shows that the USA is failing in its obligations under international law to ensure these rights," the report said.
The group's report, which urged a suspension and a federal review of all immigration enforcement programs, was criticized and dismissed by U.S. officials.
"Amnesty International's report is based almost entirely on either outdated information or anonymous anecdotes that can be neither investigated nor resolved," Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler said.
"Moreover, the report does not offer thoughtful, actionable recommendations for improvement but instead calls for the wholesale suspension of immigration enforcement programs nationwide," Chandler said.
Federal and state authorities disputed the report's accusations of racial profiling and other findings.
"The Amnesty International Report makes a rather general statement of criticism toward all law enforcement in Southern Arizona," said Bart Graves, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety. "The Arizona Department of Public Safety does not take part in racial profiling."
Texas state police refer cases to the Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement when there is a "reasonable suspicion that a person is in violation of a federal immigration law," said Tom Vinger, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
"The state of Texas does not have immigration laws. However, DPS officers do arrest criminal aliens, regardless of country of origin, when they violate state laws," Vinger said in a statement.
The federal Secure Communities initiative was designed to prevent racial profiling by having the fingerprints of every person arrested and taken into custody checked against FBI criminal records and federal immigration records, Chandler said.
That initiative reduces "the risk of discrimination or racial profiling because the program applies to all who are arrested and booked for a crime, including U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents," Chandler said.
The Amnesty International report said monitoring and accountability of immigration and law officers who practice discriminatory profiling is "lacking," and those officials are "rarely held to account, with the result that such practices have become both commonplace and entrenched," the report said.
FBI statistics show that bias crimes against Latinos have increased 40% from 2003 to 2007, and about 56% of bias victims don't file police reports because they often believe police won't help them, Amnesty International said.
"The fact that local law enforcement officials are used to implement federal immigration programs has exacerbated this problem. Those who do decide to report crimes may still be denied access to justice because law enforcement officials see them not as the victims of crime, but as criminals," the report said.
"Immigrant victims of crimes such as human trafficking and domestic violence also face obstacles when attempting to access justice and remedies, while the proliferation of recently enacted state laws in Arizona and other states across the country obstructs immigrants' ability to access education and essential health care services," the report added.
But the federal government said that under a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy, officers exercise "appropriate discretion to ensure victims and witnesses to crimes are not penalized by removal," Chandler said. The federal agency also developed a policy to protect victims of domestic violence and other offenses and to ensure the crimes are prosecuted, Chandler said.
The rights group criticized U.S. border policy for pushing undocumented immigrants to use deadly desert routes as a way to enter the country. Amnesty International reported as many as 5,287 migration deaths along the border from 1998 to 2008.
"Increasingly, state laws and local policies are creating barriers to or discouraging immigrants from accessing their rights to education and essential health care services, impacting their U.S. citizen children," the report said.
At the same time, the U.S. government has reported that 14,500 to 17,000 people are trafficked into the country for sexual or labor exploitation, and while the federal government offers so-called T-visas for such trafficking survivors, only 6% of such visas were actually utilized in 2009, Amnesty International said.
The report also recommended that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection should consult with the 26 Indian nations along the border and respect and facilitate the use of tribal passports, identification papers and immigration documents for travel across the international lines.
For example, the Tohono O'odham nation straddles both countries, including 76 miles of the international line, with 28,000 members in Arizona, the report said. The tribe uses identity cards listing one of five districts to which a U.S.-born member belongs, while the cards for members born on the Mexico side list "ND" for "No District," the report said.
Customs and Border Protection said it is working with tribes to develop forms of identification, and as of January, the federal government has approved six of 12 tribes' memoranda of understanding to develop tribal identification that is valid for crossing the border, Chandler said.
Of the six, two tribes, the Kootenai of Idaho and the Pascua Yaqui of Arizona, have fully approved Enhanced Tribal Cards that are accepted as documents to enter the United States, Chandler said.
Skeltrack: Tracking the Human Skeleton With Kinect
Skeltrack, an open source skeletal tracking library for Microsoft?s Kinect, builds a model of your ?skeleton? that it can follow in real time.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
TTR Halfpipe Tour Champions - Iouri Podladtchikov and Kelly Clark
The 2011/2012 TTR World Tour came to a close at the 6Star Burton US Open with men's and women's halfpipe finals. After a gripping season full of countless highlights, Iouri Podladtchikov (SUI) and Kelly Clark (USA) clinched the TTR Halfpipe World Tour Champion titles. Kelly Clark took a podium spot once again to receive the TTR World Tour Champion trophy for her clear domination in the halfpipe over the course of the season. Although Kelly didn’t manage to come in first in her home state after being undefeated in 16 consecutive contests, she undeniably sets the standard for women's halfpipe snowboarding. It was Elena Hight (USA), finishing the season in World No. 4 in the TTR Halfpipe Rankings, who broke Kelly's string of wins with less than a one point difference today. Kelly had this to say about her second TTR title win, "I’m super happy to have won this, it has been a competition at every event and the other girls have really pushed me to level where I am right now."Iouri Podladtchikov also had an amazing season standing atop podiums at every TTR competition he entered. Reaching back to the Burton New Zealand Open where Iouri took third place, he continued his season of success with a first place finish at the World Snowboarding Championships in Oslo, Norway and won again at the Burton European Open in Laax, Switzerland. He capped off his season nicely with the coveted win here at the US Open.
Are you going to have a heart attack? New test could tell
By Rachael RettnerMyHealthNewsDailyA simple blood test may predict a heart attack up to two weeks in advance, new research suggests. The test searches a patient's blood sample for abnormal cells that the researchers say could be indicative of the very early stages of a heart atta …
Katy Perry's Rumored Rebound Beau Posts Cuddlefest Twitpic?So What's the Deal?
Are they or aren't they? Oh, they so are...twitpic buddies, of course! What?
But while Katy Perry and her frantically rumored rebound beau Baptiste Giabiconi keep the public guessing...
complement factor d professional antigen presenting cell bronto hla
Why Is RIM Hiring iOS App Developers?
A new RIM job ad seeks developers with at least two years of professional experience in writing iOS apps and the ability to show off a few of them in the iTunes App Store.
Kids All Over America Are Being Put On Buses And Sent To Alternate Locations During School Terror Drills
Michael Snyder, Contributor Activist Post All over the United States, school children are being taken out of their classrooms, put on buses and sent to “alternate locations” during terror drills.� These exercises are often called “evacuation drills” or “relocation drills” and they are more than a little disturbing.� Sometimes parents are notified in advance where [...]
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Doodle Clock Will Draw the Time For You
Using an Arduino board and a robotic arm, an industrious hacker created a clock that writes out the time in longhand.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)