Sweden's death rate is high compared with those of its neighbors, who took much more drastic and appropriate action against the pandemic.

An anti-war student in Ohio at the time of the Kent State massacre explains why the protests were led largely by well-off whites.

Why the argument that we should reopen the economy because we don't shut it down over the thousands of car deaths every year is wrong.

The president brooks no criticism and disregards inconvenient facts, much like the Chinese government he opposes.

In one article, wealthy private schools get government aid. In another, desperate citizens beg for funds online.

The language of the 2nd Amendment suggests that the Constitution's framers did not want to empower rifle-wielding protesters to invade statehouses.

Thelma Schoonmaker began working with Martin Scorsese in 1967. Over the years, she says, it has become more of a collaboration.

A Mediterranean Revival-style home once owned by noted makeup artist Percival "Perc" Westmore is for sale in the Hollywood Hills for $5.495 million.

Holiday companies are desperate to persuade travellers whose holidays have been cancelled to accept a 'Refund Credit Note'. Should you? These are the key questions and answers

Tesla's financial results released last week didn't mention that the automaker's revenue included $200 million collected from regulatory credits.

With concerts cancelled and album releases amiss, musicians with mental health issues are struggling with the stress and uncertainty from the COVID-19 pandemic.

UNIVERSAL CREDIT claims have surged in recent weeks, as Britons have begun to feel the impact of the coronavirus crisis. How do earnings affect payments?

UNIVERSAL CREDIT claims have soared in recent weeks, as Britons have begun to feel the financial impact of the coronavirus crisis. How much is Universal Credit? The amount depends on whether certain circumstances apply.

UNIVERSAL CREDIT claims have surged in recent weeks, as Britons have begun to feel the impact of the coronavirus crisis. How do earnings affect payments?

PEOPLE locked into high cost loans and rent-to-own schemes should be spared the extra fees charged if they fall behind with payments, says affordable provider Fair for You .

ALARMING levels of plastic have been found on the Mediterranean seabed, scientists revealed yesterday.

Letters to the editor: May 6

Iowa Statesman, I was happy to hear the joint statement on tax reform from the US Congress, The White House and others in Washington. It’s about time. Our current tax code is severely dated, complex and debunked. Our tax code has not been updated since Reagan was in office and […]

It's only two weeks into the legislative session and the Indiana General Assembly has already hit an ethical speed bump. Who's steering this bus?

Gov. Mike Pence's Scott County order allowing a needle-exchange program is a welcome step. But it's just a start.

More than 100 companies and nonprofits have pledged support for the Your Life Matters initiative, created to help the city's most vulnerable residents. That's a great start, but momentum is critical.

The payoffs for such turnarounds can be extraordinary for the residents who live nearby and for the city as a whole.

The BMV's pattern of poor performance hardly inspires confidence in its ability to adequately monitor itself.

At Indianapolis Motor Speedway, even the old and the great must constantly be made new in today's world, and that's happening. The greatness of the Indianapolis 500, and of race weekend, remains.

The pandemic has impacted us in many ways, but despite these challenges, our commitment to our community and you is stronger than ever.

Trump might shut down the coronavirus task force. This won't do anything to boost our response to the pandemic.

The pandemic has impacted us in many ways, but despite these challenges, our commitment to our community and you is stronger than ever.

An organized kitchen doesn't have to be super minimal; it just has to function well. These editor-approved kitchen organizers help make the tools and ingredients in your kitchen more visible and accessible, so you can cook with more ease and joy!

Continue reading "Editors’ Picks: Kitchen Organizers" »

Hear about a western Mediterranean cruise to Spain, Gibraltar, France, Monaco and Italy on Holland America's Westerdam where I just attended a press trip.

Video: Merlin Mann - "Time & Attention Talk (improvised)"

Audio (mp3): "Merlin Mann - 'Rutgers Time & Attention Talk'"

This is a talk I did at Rutgers earlier this month. I kinda like it, but for a weird reason. Something something, perfect storm of technology Ragnarok, and yadda yadda, I had to start the talk 20 minutes late with no slides. Nothing.

So, I riffed.

And, I ended up talking about a lot of the new stuff you can expect to see in the Inbox Zero book—work culture, managing expectations, the 3 deadly qualities of email, and one surprising reason email's not as much fun as Project Runway.

Some people liked it. I think. I liked it. I hope you do, too.

Here's the slides I would have shown. ;-)

Many thanks, again, to my great pal, Dr. Donald Schaffner, for bringing me in for this visit. I had a great time and met some fantastic, passionate people. Much appreciated.

update 2010-04-27_13-50-00

Apologies—my friends at Rutgers (inexplicably) have placed this video under lock and key. Fortunately, I have a lock-picker called Firefox. Samizdat video available soon...

update 2010-04-27_14-42-24

Yay, fixed! Many thanks to my hero, Jesse Schibilia.

While infection rates remain steady across the region, the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit is reporting more than half of all 360 cases have now recovered.

The following article, Busted! Late-Night Hack Comedian, Jimmy Kimmel Is Forced To Apologize For Sharing Highly Edited Video Of VP Pence To Make Him Look Bad, was first published on 100PercentFedUp.com.

Last night, Jimmy Kimmel, host of the low-rated, late-night Jimmy Kimmel Show, shared a deceptively edited video clip of Vice President Pence delivering PPE to a nursing home. Today, liberal activist Matt McDermott tweeted the videotaped segment on VP Pence that was edited to make the vice president look like he was faking a delivery […]

Continue reading: Busted! Late-Night Hack Comedian, Jimmy Kimmel Is Forced To Apologize For Sharing Highly Edited Video Of VP Pence To Make Him Look Bad ...

In our computational study, we use molecular simulations to substantiate a hypothetical mechanism for glycosidic bond cleavage in the presence of a single catalytic acid at the active site of the mutant D10N HiCel45A. In addition to discussing this plausible mechanism from the context of structurally related MltA lytic transglycosylase and subfamily C GH45s, we also suggest the implications of the plausible mechanism for our current understanding of the action of expansins and lytic transglycosylases. As correctly pointed out by Professor Cosgrove (1), there is large body of evidence, a significant portion of which was regrettably not discussed in our paper, that suggests that expansins are incapable of lytic action on polysaccharide substrates. Whereas these insights do not change the results or the conclusions of our article, we would like to thank Professor Cosgrove for these additional insights. In particular, our main point with respect to expansins is that our results suggest the possibility that expansins are capable of nonhydrolytic lytic activity. Our intention was not to suggest this was the mechanism of expansins, but that it should be considered based on our results and the similarity of the active sites.The molecular mechanisms of how expansins enable cell wall expansion remains to be fully understood. Whereas our proposed mechanism resulting in the formation of the 1,6-anhdro product might be found in expansins and might contribute to the mode of action of expansins, we would like to emphasize that the intent of this study was only to suggest this as a...

From their simulations of endoglucanase Cel45A, Bharadwaj et al. (1) propose that structurally related expansins and MltA may cut glycan backbones without generating reducing ends. This is tenable for MltA, a peptidoglycan lytic transglycosylase whose action produces nonreducing 1,6-anhydro products, but is untenable for expansins.Expansins loosen plant cell walls and induce wall expansion. Contrary to the assertion by Bharadwaj et al., the conclusion that expansins are not lytic is not merely based on lack of new reducing ends but is supported by multiple (negative) tests for polysaccharide cleavage that do not rely on detection of reducing ends. At least eight studies with three divergent groups of expansins document this point. For instance, α-expansin did not reduce the viscosity of various wall polysaccharide solutions, an endolytic assay that does not rely on measuring reducing ends (e.g. see Ref. 2 and other studies).Walls treated with α-expansin did not release saccharide fragments, measured by pulsed amperometric detection, which can detect nonreducing saccharides (3).In the case of β-expansins, protein treatments did not cleave the backbones of a wide range of dye-coupled cross-linked wall polysaccharides; nor did they cleave backbones of polysaccharides extracted from plant cell walls, measured by gel permeation chromatography (4).For five microbial expansins, tests with a range of dye-coupled cross-linked polysaccharides likewise did not detect lytic activity (e.g. see Ref. 5). Thus, extensive published evidence argues against lytic action by expansins, as proposed by Bharadwaj (1), and attempts to identify 1,6-anhydro products seem unlikely to succeed.

17 February 2020

We've all been saying it: These are unprecedented times. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are incredibly wide-ranging and affect all facets of life. One that is hitting the scientific community very hard is the cancellation of meetings, large and small. While we are well-versed in connecting with colleagues and collaborators across a variety of online platforms, these do not replace the immensely gratifying aspects of attending meetings in person: the pleasure of catching up with old friends and making new ones, the insights gained from having real-time conversations with others working on the same topic but with different expertise and perspectives, and the stimulating new scientific ideas we carry home. We have all been feeling the disappointment as we learn that one meeting after another is forced to cancel, from the vibrant ASBMB annual meeting to summer conferences of all types.Another loss from the appropriate but painful decision to cancel the ASBMB annual meeting was the chance to hear from our Herbert Tabor Early Career Investigator Awardees, who represent the best science published in JBC in the preceding year. This year, the competition was particularly fierce. We hope and anticipate that we will be able to hear from the winners at next year's ASBMB annual meeting. But in the meantime, we want to raise a toast to Wenchao Zhao, Yue Yang, Manisha Dagar, Febin Varghese, and Ayumi Nagashima-Kasahara as our 2020 winners. We've captured their award-winning 2019 papers (1–5) on the JBC website (6), and extended profiles of the...

Members Event

Event participants

HE George Vella, President, Republic of Malta

Chair: Dr Alex Vines OBE, Managing Director, Ethics, Risk & Resilience; Director, Africa Programme, Chatham House

Expert