U.N. rights chief to stay two more years; U.S., Syria aren't fans

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DNA vaccine and duck eggs protect against hantavirus disease

ScienceDaily (May 23, 2012) ? Army scientists and industry collaborators have successfully protected laboratory animals from lethal hantavirus disease using a novel approach that combines DNA vaccines and duck eggs. The work appears in a recent edition of the online scientific journal PLoS ONE, published by the Public Library of Science.

According to first author Jay W. Hooper of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), this is the first time that the DNA vaccine/duck egg system has been shown to produce an antiviral product capable of protecting against hantavirus disease.

Hantavirus causes a condition known as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), which has a case fatality rate of 35-40 percent. Currently there are no vaccines, prophylactics, or therapeutics to prevent or treat this highly pathogenic disease.

In this study, the research team used a hamster model of Andes virus, which is the predominant cause of HPS in South America and the only hantavirus known to be transmitted person-to-person. Infection of Syrian hamsters with Andes virus, as demonstrated in earlier studies at USAMRIID, results in a disease that closely mimics human HPS in incubation time, symptoms of respiratory distress, and disease pathology. This makes it an ideal system for evaluating the feasibility of postexposure protection strategies.

Collaborating with Aldevron of Fargo, N.D. and the Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, Chile, Hooper and his team first evaluated a natural product, human polyclonal antibody, which was obtained as fresh frozen plasma (FFP) from a patient who survived HPS. Their results indicate that FFP shows promise as a post-exposure preventive treatment for HPS.

The team then vaccinated ducks with a DNA vaccine against Andes virus. This vaccine, initially developed and tested at USAMRIID, uses genetic material, or DNA, that encodes a specific hantavirus gene to elicit an immune response in the recipient.

Next, they purified an antibody called IgY from the yolks of the duck eggs. This purified IgY, as well as a similar version produced in duck eggs, was capable of neutralizing Andes virus when tested in cell culture. More importantly, it also protected Syrian hamsters from lethal HPS -- even when administered as a single injection several days after the hamsters had been exposed to a lethal dose of virus.

The work demonstrates the feasibility of using DNA vaccine technology, coupled with the duck/egg system, to manufacture a product that could supplement or replace FFP. Furthermore, the new approach can be scaled as needed and eliminates the necessity of using blood products from HPS survivors, which may be in limited supply.

According to Hooper, another advantage of this technique is that duck IgY naturally loses a part of the antibody that has been associated with "serum sickness" when animal antibodies have been used in humans, making the product potentially less reactogenic.

"This antiviral product, if fully developed and manufactured, has the potential to be used in future outbreak situations," Hooper said. "It also could be used to treat health care workers and others who have close contact with HPS patients."

In addition, the authors suggest, the flexibility of the DNA vaccine/duck egg system could be applied to the production of antibodies against other infectious agents and toxins.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Rebecca Brocato, Matthew Josleyn, John Ballantyne, Pablo Vial, Jay W. Hooper. DNA Vaccine-Generated Duck Polyclonal Antibodies as a Postexposure Prophylactic to Prevent Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS). PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (4): e35996 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035996

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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.

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Stay Off Your Boss's Radar With This Stealth-Inspired Desk [Desks]

Some days you want your boss to be aware of all the great work you're doing. But other days you just want to slip beneath the radar, do what you gotta do, and get home. And we assume that's exacly what David Hsu's angled stealth desk is for. More »

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Police investigate mountain lion shooting

Santa Monica Police Department / Reuters

A mountain lion is seen as it is cornered in Santa Monica, Calif., on Tuesday.

By Kari Huus and Isolde Raftery, msnbc.com

Santa Monica police are conducting an internal investigation into the shooting death of a mountain lion that appeared in an office building courtyard in the city?s downtown, police Sgt. Richard Lewis told msnbc.com.

The cat, a 3-year-old male weighing about 90 pounds, had apparently wandered into the city overnight from the Santa Monica Mountains and jumped over an eight-foot wall into the building courtyard, Lewis said. At 5:45 a.m. on Tuesday morning, a maintenance worker called police, who then called in the fire department, California Fish and Game Department and a wildlife biologist from the National Parks Service.

This was an unfamiliar situation, Lewis said -- the first time in the memories of veteran Santa Monica police officers that a mountain lion had ventured into the city.

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The officials decided a member of Fish and Game would shoot the mountain lion with a heavy dosage tranquilizer dart, hoping he would slump into a corner and officials could then transport him back to the mountains.

Mountain lion shot, killed

?That would cause one of two reactions,? Lewis said. ?The animal could become aggressive, or it could become docile and lay down. It chose to do what mountain lions do and it tried to escape.?

The officers acted quickly and shot pepper balls in hopes that the animal would slink back into the corner of the courtyard. They sprayed mist at the glass doors framing the courtyard so the cat wouldn?t try to go through them.

But it?did anyway, lunging at the two-inch glass doors, shattering them.

?At that point, the animal circled around, realized where it had jumped in from and started to jump over,? Lewis said. ?That?s when the order was given to use lethal force.?

Allowing the cat to jump back over the wall, near the popular Promenade by the beach, was not an option, Lewis said. The cat, injured, angry and able to run 40 to 50 miles per hour, would have encountered humans within seconds. Santa Monica, which houses about 90,000 residents, has a daytime population between 200,000 and 400,000.

Some questioned why a second dart wasn?t used, Lewis said, but that wasn?t possible either. A second dart would have killed the cat, he said, and anyway, it would have taken?15 minutes to take effect. The cat would have jumped over the wall by then.

The incident, from call to the cat?s death, lasted three hours. The internal investigation will focus on the shooting, the performance of the officers and whether they could have used different training, Lewis said.

The Fish and Game Department took its carcass and will perform a necropsy, conducting a chemical and DNA analysis to determine what it had eaten.

They will then cremate the mountain lion and a game warden or biologist will spread the ashes in a peaceful spot in the mountains.

"I call it the circle of life," Andrew Hughan?of the Fish and Game Department told msnbc.com.

The mountain lion population is under severe stress due to habitat loss and poaching, scientists say.

For a decade, the National Park Service has been tracking mountain lions in Southern California, including the 275 square miles of the Santa Monica range, which?is hemmed in by highways, urban areas, the ocean and agricultural land.

That island of habitat is?large enough to support 10 to 15 mountain lions, according to Jeff Sikich, a biologist with the project. Young adult males are forced to set out to establish their own territory or reckon with a dominant male in the area, he said.

"Most young adult males we have followed in the Santa Monica mountains have ended up getting killed on a freeway or by an adult male in that territory," Sikich said.

Wanted: Poacher who cut off cougar's paws

The park service is conducting genetic tests to determine whether the mountain lion killed on Tuesday is a part of the tiny Santa Monica population, which Sikich says is likely.

"This is regrettable," said Tim Dunbar, executive director of the nonprofit conservation group Mountain Lion Foundation. "By having this poor lion die now ? that will put even more pressure on the survivability of the species down there."

Dunbar said the Sacramento-based foundation had dispatched staff to Santa Monica to investigate the animal?s death.

"Though we tried to get information from the local police they were not forthcoming," Dunbar said. "We are presently requesting a copy of?(the California Fish and Game Department's)?incident report."

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For monogamous sparrows, it doesn't pay to stray (but they do it anyway)

ScienceDaily (May 22, 2012) ? It's quite common for a female song sparrow to stray from her breeding partner and mate with the male next door, but a new study shows that sleeping around can be costly.

The 20-year study, which is reported in The American Naturalist, found that offspring conceived outside sparrows' social pairs go on to have lower reproductive success than within-pair offspring. The findings throw a monkey wrench into theories about why ostensibly monogamous animals might be inclined to cheat.

Most bird species display some form of monogamy. Bonded pairs stay together for a breeding season, a few seasons, or sometimes for life. But beneath this veneer of monogamy, there's plenty of hanky-panky in most species. Why promiscuity exists in monogamous species is "one of the biggest remaining enigmas in evolutionary ecology," said Jane Reid, a research fellow at the University of Aberdeen and one of the study's authors.

One hypothesis for this is that when a female strays she makes it count by mating with a male of higher genetic quality than her social mate. The result is higher-quality offspring that have a better chance of carrying a female's genes into future generations. This study, however, turns that explanation on its head.

The researchers studied a population of song sparrows in Mandarte Island in British Columbia, Canada. Each year starting in 1993 the team drew small blood samples from nearly every hatchling in the population and used genetic markers to see who fathered each bird. They found that 28 percent of all chicks were fathered by males other than a female's socially paired mate. Thirty-three percent of broods had chicks that were fathered by multiple males.

The researchers tracked both within- and extra-pair offspring throughout their lives. They found that extra-pair offspring had 40 percent fewer offspring of their own, and 30 percent fewer grandoffspring, compared to within-pair offspring.

"These results are remarkable because they are completely opposite to expectation," Reid said. "They show that females suffer a cost of promiscuity because they produce worse offspring through extra pair mating. Rather than answering the question of why females should mate promiscuously, [these results] have blown the question wide open."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Rebecca J. Sardell, Peter Arcese, Lukas F. Keller and Jane M. Reid. Are There Indirect Fitness Benefits of Female Extra-Pair Reproduction? Lifetime Reproductive Success of Within-Pair and Extra-Pair Offspring. American Naturalist, 79:6 (June 2012)

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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MARKET NEWS: Best of real estate celebrated at EuropaProperty's 7th

?

The seventh annual EuropaProperty SEE Real Estate Awards, which highlighted some of the best and most accomplished companies, projects and professionals for 2011, continued to give the region reason to cheer by giving away an impressive 26 awards.

The awards gala, held on May 17^th at the five-star Athenee Palace Hilton Hotel in Bucharest, brought together some of the top-performing firms and professionals operating in the SEE region.

Chosen by members of EuropaProperty?s esteemed SEE Real Estate Awards Academy, this year?s winners were recognised for their continued market success in the region.

One of big winners of this year?s ceremony was Swan Office & Technology Park, Chayton Capital?s revolutionary green building launched in 2011 in Romania, which took home awards in three categories. The jury awarded the project: Office Development of the Year, Overall Project of the Year and the SEE Green Building Award for BREEAM Post-Construction Assessment ? Buildings A, B, C (Very Good).

?We are extremely honoured and grateful for all three awards,? commented David Allen, Head of Real Estate at Chayton Capital. ?The EuropaProperty SEE Awards are of significant importance to us, as they represent the voice of some of the most valuable real estate professionals. In response to their vote of confidence, we will continue the pursuit for high-quality, innovative, environmental-responsible building, as well as the endeavours for improving infrastructure amenities.?

Further crowning a successful evening, David Allen picked up the coveted Professional of the Year award for 2011. ?I am extremely happy and honoured to receive such recognition, based on the accomplishment of Swan Office & Technology Park,? Allen said on collecting his award. ?These awards highlight Chayton?s continuous efforts to support and improve successful investments in the SEE region,? he continued.

Other big winners on the night included Jones Lang LaSalle, which recorded a treble of agency awards in the Office, Retail and Warehouse sectors, an achievement unprecedented in previous years.

Developer GTC also received a glut of awards including Retail Development of the Year and Overall Developer of the Year as well as four further Green Building Awards for their office developments Ana Tower and City Gate and their retail developments Avenue Mall and Galleria Burgas. ?

Other popular winners included Europa Captial who collected Overall Company of the Year and Investor of the Year. EBRD also scored a brace of awards by picking Bank of the Year as well as Professional Woman of the Year for its very own Michele Small.?

For the second year running H&M proved its continuing consumer popularity and unrivalled expansion throughout the region by picking up the Overall Retailer of the Year for the second time.

Other developments awarded on the night included Baneasa Developments? Baneasa Commercial Area for Extended/Refurbished Retail Development of the Year. Alinso Group?s Ploiesti Park West won Warehouse Development of the Year and Oxford Gardens (Phase 2), by Willbrook International, collected Residential Development of the Year.

Further company awards were received by DTZ Echinox for Property Management Firm of the Year, WSP Group picked up Professional Service Provider of the Year and Project Management Firm of the Year went to Gardiner & Theobald again. Other awards were presented to Chapman Taylor as Architectural Firm of the Year and Salans was awarded Law Firm of the Year.

New for this year, recognising the growing influence of green-based ideologies in real estate EuropaProperty, in association with the Green Building Professionals Association, gave away an additional 12 SEE Green Building Awards. The 12 projects were awarded for their innovation and sustainability in green development.

The gala dinner was preceded by a series of high impact panel discussions on the main issues affecting the SEE markets in Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria. Speakers and participants agreed that although the market is still difficult in some countries, a brighter outlook is on the horizon.?

The EuropaProperty SEE Real Estate Awards for 2011 was sponsored by Premier Partner: Jones Lang LaSalle. Award Sponsors: ?Retail Development of the Year? Mk Illumination ?Overall Retailer of the Year? DTZ Echinox and ?Overall Company of the Year? CA Immo. Audit and SEE Forum Partner: Ernst & Young. Energy Software Partner: International Business Contracts. Organizer: EuropaProperty. Supporting Partners: RICS and the Association of Green Building Professionals. Venue Partner: Athenee Palace Hilton Hotel. Media Partners: IBP Real Estate, Build Green Romania, Thomas Daily, Europe Real Estate and imopedia.ro.

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