Handheld mobile device performs laboratory-quality HIV testing

Jan. 18, 2013 ? New research appearing in Clinical Chemistry, the journal of AACC, shows that a handheld mobile device can check patients' HIV status with just a finger prick, and synchronize the results in real time with electronic health records. This technology takes a step toward providing remote areas of the world with diagnostic services traditionally available only in centralized healthcare settings.

Of the 34 million people infected with HIV worldwide, 68% of them live in sub-Saharan Africa, with South and Southeast Asia bearing the second greatest burden of disease. Many HIV-infected people in these regions are unable to get tested or treated because they can't easily travel to centralized healthcare centers. This creates an extreme economic burden on already-poor nations, with the epidemic estimated to cause a 1.5% annual loss in gross domestic product each year for the worst-affected countries. It has also created 16.6 million AIDS orphans -- children who have lost one or both parents to the disease.

A low-cost mobile device that performs HIV testing could help combat these trends, and the overall global epidemic, by enabling the diagnosis and treatment of HIV-infected people in resource-limited settings. In this study, a team including Curtis D. Chin, PhD, and Yuk Kee Cheung, PhD, designed a device that captures all the essential functions of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, the most commonly used laboratory diagnostic for HIV. The authors show that the device performs laboratory-quality HIV testing in 15 minutes using finger-pricked whole blood.

The device also detects weakly positive samples, and uses cellphone and satellite networks to automatically synchronize test results with patient health records from anywhere in the world. Because of this real-time data upload, this mobile device will allow policymakers and epidemiologists to monitor disease prevalence across geographical regions quickly and effectively. This could improve effectiveness in allocating medications to different communities, and patient care in general.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC), via Newswise.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. C. D. Chin, Y. K. Cheung, T. Laksanasopin, M. M. Modena, S. Y. Chin, A. A. Sridhara, D. Steinmiller, V. Linder, J. Mushingantahe, G. Umviligihozo, E. Karita, L. Mwambarangwe, S. L. Braunstein, J. van de Wijgert, R. Sahabo, J. E. Justman, W. El-Sadr, S. K. Sia. Mobile Device for Disease Diagnosis and Data Tracking in Resource-Limited Settings. Clinical Chemistry, 2013; DOI: 10.1373/clinchem.2012.199596

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.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/tTKWZW4pFcI/130118112626.htm

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First on CNN: Attracting minority voters a key GOP goal as Obama begins second term

Washington (CNN) ? Days after President Barack Obama is sworn-in for a second term, Republican leaders from across the country will assemble in the southern city where Obama accepted his party?s presidential nomination in September to strategize a path forward for the GOP in a nation experiencing major demographic shifts.

It will be a three-day discussion focused primarily on how to grow the Republican Party by convincing black, Hispanic and Asian voters that the GOP better represents their values than the Democratic Party, according to a party official involved in the planning of the Republican National Committee?s winter meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The argument, certainly in the near term, will be tough sell for the GOP, given the unyielding positions and controversial comments from some conservative lawmakers and opinion leaders on the issue of illegal immigration and Democrats? deep ties to the black community. The CNN Exit Poll from the 2012 presidential election showed that Obama won 93% of the black vote, 71% of the Hispanic vote and 73% of the Asian vote.

?The big takeaway that will be discussed during the week and championed by Priebus is that the party needs more voters and needs to do a better job of reaching out to minority communities and not just six months before the election,? said the Republican official.

Priebus is RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, a 40-year-old lawyer from Wisconsin, who, until two years ago, was relatively unknown outside of the small, clubby world of the committee, an organization that has only 168 members. In January 2011, Priebus emerged from a pack of similarly ambitious Republicans, including his former political ally and then-Chairman Michael Steele, for the right to lead the national party. He inherited more than $20 million of debt after the 2010 midterm elections and a depressed RNC donor base that was being courted by White House hopefuls and congressional Republicans.

Priebus eventually pulled the RNC out of the red and handed Mitt Romney a relatively healthy national party operation when the former Massachusetts governor became the Republican presidential nominee. Paperwork filed with the Federal Election Commission shows that the RNC ended 2012 with about $3.3 million in the bank and no debt.

With the White House in Democratic hands and Capitol Hill Republicans focused on legislative fights with Obama, the task to grow the GOP, for now, rests primarily on his shoulders. He is expected to win a second term as national chairman as he faces only token opposition from a Maine Republican at the party?s meeting in North Carolina. Republicans won the state in November, the only bright spot in crushing November defeats where Obama easily defeated Romney, Republicans lost ground in the House and failed to regain control of the Senate.

The theme of the RNC meeting is ?Renew, Grow, Win,? a tacit admission that the party has some serious political reckoning to deal with in the coming months, especially with the fast-growing Hispanic population.

?The ideas and the principles of the party are sound,? said the GOP source. ?But the way they need to be communicated needs to be updated to become more relatable and relevant.?

The source added that in his speech next week to fellow Republicans, Priebus will offer a ?very optimistic and bold agenda,? but was careful not to say much more beyond the overall theme of trying to broaden the party?s appeal.

After the election, Priebus pledged to do a top-to-bottom review of the party, named it the ?Growth and Opportunity Effort? and appointed five Republicans to lead the project.

While minority outreach and recruitment will serve as a main theme of the Charlotte meeting, Priebus is also expected to emphasize a need to update the party?s digital operations. The Obama campaign?s emphasis on developing and utilizing cutting edge technology and fusing it with traditional get-out-the vote methods was widely praised and considered key to the president winning a second term.

Representatives from companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter are expected to attend the meeting, said the source, as will Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, one of many Republicans said to be eyeing a run for president in 2016. Jindal will speak at a dinner on Thursday.

?Simply put, we cannot win if we continue to fight just over battleground states,? said the source, referring to the narrow mathematical paths to victory Romney had in the election. Large states such as California, New York and Pennsylvania are considered Democratic strongholds, and besides North Carolina, Romney failed to win any of the so-called swing states that neither party has a lock on, such as Colorado and Nevada, two states with growing Hispanic populations.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_politicalticker/~3/B4pHWcJCCwQ/

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Charges stay for now in Sept. 11 at Guantanamo

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) ? The prosecution of five Guantanamo Bay prisoners accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks will go on ? for now ? with eight charges against each of the men, the Pentagon said Friday.

A Department of Defense legal official declined a prosecution request to withdraw the charge of conspiracy, which faced a likely challenge because of an appeal's court ruling in a separate case.

Convening Authority Bruce McDonald, a retired admiral and former Navy judge advocate general, said it was too soon to withdraw conspiracy because the ruling in the separate case might also ultimately be reversed.

The uncertain legal standing of the conspiracy charge will be a contested issue as the U.S. prepares to prosecute the five men before a military tribunal at the U.S. base in Cuba, a trial that is likely at least a year away.

Even if the conspiracy charge is later dropped from the case, all five could still get the death penalty.

The five prisoners face charges that include terrorism and nearly 3,000 counts of murder for their alleged roles in the planning and preparations for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The men, who have been held at Guantanamo since September 2006, include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has portrayed himself as the mastermind of the plot.

The chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, had recommended dismissal of the conspiracy charge because of an appeals court decision in October that threw out the August 2008 conviction by of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden.

Hamdan was convicted at Guantanamo of providing material support to terrorism, but the appeals court ruled that was not a war crime under international law at the time he engaged in the activity for which he was convicted. The government is challenging the ruling, but legal experts say the same reasoning could be used to dismiss the conspiracy charge in the Sept. 11 case. Martins had said that dismissing the charge would remove a potential legal challenge.

James Connell, a lawyer for accused prisoner Ammar al-Baluchi, criticized the decision by the convening authority to allow the conspiracy charge to stand even though the chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, said it may not be legally viable and should be dismissed.

"The convening authority's attempt to drive the prosecution forward shows that the military commission structure is fundamentally unfair," he said.

A weeklong pretrial hearing is scheduled to start Jan. 28 to deal largely with defense challenges to other aspects of the case.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-01-18-Guantanamo-Sept%2011%20Trial/id-7e81ae06b9f442e59da983eddcdd3320

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Financing Car Repairs In Wilmington Delaware - Buckley's Auto Care

gbuckley | Jan 18, 2013 | 0 comments

Car repairs are necessary. That?s fact. Nothing stays together for long and on occasion a larger than expected situation can pop up. Or, you may not have all of the funding available at the moment but you need your vehicle to keep running right. Don?t worry. Buckley?s Auto Care has the answer. Right now our arrangement with PayPal and it?s Bill Me Later option, we?re able to offer qualified applicants a great way to budget their car care repairs. With any repairs or maintenance over $99, PayPal will offer you up to 6 months of NO PAYMENTS with NO INTEREST.

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Source: http://buckleysautocare.com/financing-car-repairs-in-wilmington-delaware/

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Arnold Schwarzenegger: I?m a better actor after being Governor of California

Arnold Schwarzenegger promises he?s a better actor in his new movie ?The Last Stand.? How can this be, since the former Governor of California took a hiatus from the movie-making business to pursue a career in politics?

?I experienced certain things as governor that helped me with my performance,??Schwarzenegger explained in an interview with CNN.??I think I?m better today than when I left the acting field.?

The former Governor did not elaborate on those ?certain things.?

The 2004 movie ?Around the World in 80 Days? was the actor?s swan song before he said ?Hasta la vista, baby!? to Hollywood and took office.

But after playing smaller roles in ?The Expendables? and ?The Expendables 2? ? and appearing as himself in the film ?2012? ? the Austrian is acting in his first lead role since he became Governor.

But fans of the actor-turned-politician shouldn?t be surprised by his return. He did always promise ?I?ll be back.?

?The idea was always that I would step out of my show-business profession and give seven years of my life to public service and then go back to what I was doing,? Schwartzenegger told The Hollywood Reporter.

And in typical Schwarzenegger fashion, he came back with a bang, braving a crowd of thousands at ?The Last Stand? premiere on Monday.

Schwarzenegger also compared his own comeback to his character in ?The Last Stand,? the Roman Emperor Cincinnatus, thereby equating the role of Governor of California to emperor of the Roman Empire.

?Cincinnatus was a farmer, and he became the emperor of Rome, and then went to farming again, because his time of service was over; that?s exactly how I look at it,? Schwarzenegger explained to The Hollywood Reporter.

Apparently his return to ?farming? also entails presenting at the Golden Globes. He, along with Sylvester Stallone, presented the??best foreign language film? award to ?Amour? on Sunday night.?Schwarzenegger joked the duo was chosen to give the award because ?English is for both of us a foreign language.?

Watch The Governator himself explain how the political arena has molded him as an actor.

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Source: http://redalertpolitics.com/2013/01/16/arnold-schwarzenegger-im-a-better-actor-after-being-governor-of-california/

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401k Gold Investing Principles | Liberty

Although the rates of gold might fluctuate over short time periods, its worth has continuously improved throughout the years. These fluctuations are brief and were attributable to market forces of supply and demand. Paper currency may lose buying power over time. Nonetheless, gold more or less maintains exactly the same value.

Currencies of different countries may vary every so often due to the different exchange rates used. Nonetheless, the value of these metals stays exactly the same everywhere you go. Gold is not going to lose value. Placing such metals on an IRA provides a great chance to diversify standard IRAs.

Only particular metals are permitted which have a specified measure of pureness. The purity quality intended for gold is expected to be 0.999. Silver is supposed to meet 0.995 pureness level. Palladium and platinum have to be 99.95% pure. However, the American Eagle gold coin is different because it is accepted with a fineness degree of 0.916. An individual can acquire either bullion bars or coins.

It is rather simple to set up the IRA. The initial step comprises opening an account which is self-directed with the trust company. It provides a person the chance to decide on which financial investments to obtain. An individual may then tell the trust company to carry out the financial transactions.

Acquiring precious metals IRA is a great solution to diversify one?s portfolio. It reduces the risks connected with stocks, and annuities but maximizing growth potential.

To obtain a lot more info, it is best to visit this site Gold IRA

This entry was posted in Family on January 17, 2013 by admin.

Source: http://dwiminneapolis.com/family/401k-gold-investing-principles/

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Study: Learning Spanish With Duolingo Can Be More Effective Than College Classes Or Rosetta Stone

Education is quickly moving online, but we haven?t seen all that many studies that actually look into the effectiveness of these new forms of online learning. To see how its program performed, the language learning service Duolingo, founded by CAPTCHA inventor Luis von Ahn, commissioned a study (PDF)into the effectiveness of its program. The result, which even surprised von Ahn: it only takes a Duolingo user 34 hours to learn the equivalent of a first college semester?s worth of Spanish.

A similar study by the same researchers who conducted Duolingo?s study, by the way, found that it took Rosetta Stone users between 55 and 60 hours to learn the same amount of material.

These studies were conducted by Roumen Vesselinov, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Queens College, City University of New York, and John Grego, Professor and Chair of the Statistics Department and the University of South Carolina. While the study was obviously funded by Duolingo, the data collection and analysis was done independently by the researchers.

Using the WebCAPE test for Spanish, a placement test many universities also use for their students, the study found that the average student gained around 91 points over the course of eight weeks and the average participant gained about 8 points per hour of study with Duolingo, though its worth noting that the researchers also found that Duolingo was a little bit more effective for students who started with a very basic knowledge of Spanish than for those who were already more advanced.

The study also found that those learners who said they wanted to brush up on their Spanish for travel registered the largest average gains (17.6 points per hour) and while the majority of participants said they studied for personal interests and school, that group only registered an average gain of 5.7 points per hour.

Being self-motivated enough to learn a language by yourself is obviously hard and it?s no surprise that many participants dropped out or only studied for two hours over the course of the study. A student in a college class, by contrast, may not learn as effectively as the Duolingo users who made it through the program, but chances are most students will make it through the semester with more than 2 hours of instruction and without dropping out. Still, almost 94% of the participants in the study said they would continue to use the product after the end of the eight weeks.

Duolingo is clearly doing something right. Overall, von Ahn tells us, Duolingo now has over 1 million active users and 100,000 daily users. The team?s iPhone app, which launched last December, has been in the top 15 education apps in the App Store since its launch.

With Duolingo you learn a language for free while helping to translate the web.

? Learn more

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/17/study-learning-spanish-with-duolingo-can-be-more-effective-than-college-classes-or-rosetta-stone/

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