As the Giants worry about whether another team will swoop in with an offer sheet for restricted free agent receiver Victor Cruz, their quarterback has a solution.
Eli Manning will restructure his deal if need be.
?If the Giants want to work something out, I am always up for listening and figuring out what I can do to help the cause,? Manning said Wednesday night, via ESPNNewYork.com.? ?That is kind of up to the Giants and what they want to do.? I am always up for listening and doing whatever is best for the team to put us in a [situation] to win more championships.?
It helps that Cruz is now represented by CAA, which also represents Manning.? So if getting a new deal with Cruz requires Manning to do a new deal, CAA can make that happen.
Of course, a restructuring from Eli wouldn?t cost him any money.? Instead, current cap dollars (he?s north of $20 million) would be pushed to future years, and Eli?s take-home pay wouldn?t change.
?I?ve been sending a few texts to him. ?Yeah, hey, get this done.? Make sure he stays with us,?? Manning said.? ?Obviously I want Victor back with the Giants, and obviously right now he is [tendered].
?I check the papers every morning to make sure no one else has offered him a contract.? It is nerve-racking though.? He is anxious.? I know he has been dealing with this contract issue for a long time.? I know he wants it just settled and wants to get back to playing football and just worrying about that.?
Here?s what Manning should be worrying about.? If the Giants keep low balling Cruz, Cruz or CAA may decide that the player is better off elsewhere.? And at that point CAA could decide to work with a new team to craft an offer sheet that the Giants will have a hard time matching.
Which would then make CAA far less likely to sign off on a restructuring of Eli?s deal.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A key Senate committee chairman on Wednesday chided bipartisan negotiators working on an immigration bill, saying their progress is too slow and the delay is setting back action on reform.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., also has criticized President Barack Obama, saying he's urged the president to send his own immigration bill to Congress. Obama has instead chosen to let the bipartisan negotiations proceed, even though deadlines have come and gone.
Leahy said in a statement that because there's no bill yet, the Judiciary Committee won't be able to approve a sweeping immigration bill by the end of April. That had been his goal.
"Without legislative language, there is nothing for the Judiciary Committee to consider this week," he said. "The upcoming recess period would have allowed all members of the committee and the American people to review the legislation. Now that process, and our work, will be delayed at least a month."
The bipartisan Gang of Eight, including Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., initially said they'd release their legislation in March but recently acknowledged it wouldn't happen until April.
Brian Fallon, Schumer's spokesman, said the Gang of Eight was very close to agreement and hopes the Judiciary Committee will take up their bill in April.
The legislation would call for securing the border, improving legal immigration and workplace enforcement, and creating a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country.
The Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who are not part of the Gang of Eight also have begun to complain about the pace of negotiations, although their concern has been that the process was moving too fast, not too slow. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and other Republicans signed a letter this week saying such an important issue shouldn't be dealt with behind closed doors and needed ample time for full committee consideration.
Google's big push toward richer search just got a bit more sporty. The site announced that it's adding sports schedules, stats and other contextual information to its results. Interested parties can now find game scores, full league standings, schedules grouped by day and week and can drill down for more info on players in individual games. For the sake of timeliness, March Madness answer cards now feature a bracket view, which can be viewed on desktop or mobile, if you're the betting type.
Adobe just announced its Q1 2013 earnings, which generally beat analyst estimates. Overall revenue for the first quarter was $1.01 billion and GAAP earnings per share of $0.12 and non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) of $0.35, ahead of the analyst consensus of $0.31 non-GAAP EPS on revenue of $986 million. Overall operating income was $240.7 million and net income was $177.9 million on a non-GAAP basis. Kevin Lynch Leaves Adobe (For Apple?) Just as the company released its earnings, however, an SEC filing also revealed that it’s long-term CTO Kevin Lynch is leaving the company on March 22 “to pursue other opportunities.” Rumor has it that he is leaving for Apple, which would be an interesting move for somebody who long defended Flash against Apple and once likened Apple’s walled-garden approach to 19th-century railroads. Almost 500K Creative Cloud Subscribers Maybe the most important metric of today’s earnings, however, wasn’t about the financial details but the face that the company’s Creative Cloud offering now has more than 479,000 paying subscribers, an increase of 153,000 compared to the end of the last quarter. Adobe also announced that it now has 2 million free and trial subscribers to its Creative Cloud. “We exited the quarter with 479 thousand paid subscriptions, and recently we crossed the half-million mark. With this momentum, we are on track to reach our goal of 1.25 million paid subscriptions by the end of this fiscal year,” Adobe CEP Shantanu Narayen said in a prepared statement (PDF) during the company’s earnings call today. The Adobe Marketing Cloud, another cornerstone of the company’s product line, achieved quarterly revenue of $215.4 million, a 20% year-over-year increase. For the whole year, Adobe expects its Marketing Cloud revenue to increase 25%.
Contact: Joshua Brown joshua.e.brown@uvm.edu 802-656-3039 University of Vermont
60-year-old health mystery solved by Vermont and French research team
In the early 1950's, a 66-year-old woman, sick with colon cancer, received a blood transfusion. Then, unexpectedly, she suffered a severe rejection of the transfused blood. Reporting on her case, the French medical journal Revue D'Hmatologie identified her as, simply, "Patient Vel."
After a previous transfusion, it turns out, Mrs. Vel had developed a potent antibody against some unknown molecule found on the red blood cells of most people in the worldbut not found on her own red blood cells.
But what was this molecule? Nobody could find it. A blood mystery began, and, from her case, a new blood type, "Vel-negative," was described in 1952.
Soon it was discovered that Mrs. Vel was not alone. Though rare, it is estimated now that over 200,000 people in Europe and a similar number in North America are Vel-negative, about 1 in 2,500.
For these people, successive blood transfusions could easily turn to kidney failure and death. So, for sixty years, doctors and researchers have huntedunsuccessfullyfor the underlying cause of this blood type.
But now a team of scientists from the University of Vermont and France has found the missing moleculea tiny protein called SMIM1and the mystery is solved.
Reporting in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, UVM's Bryan Ballif, Lionel Arnaud of the French National Institute of Blood Transfusion, and their colleagues explain how they uncovered the biochemical and genetic basis of Vel-negative blood.
"Our findings promise to provide immediate assistance to health-care professionals should they encounter this rare but vexing blood type," says Ballif.
The pre-publication results were presented online, March 18, 2013, and the finalized report will be published, as an open-access article, in the next edition of the journal.
(Last year, Ballif and Arnaud identified the proteins responsible for two other rare blood types, Junior and Langeris, moving the global count of understood blood types or systems from 30 to 32. Now, with Vel, the number rises to 33.)
Before this new research, the only way to determine if someone was Vel-negative or positive was with tests using antibodies made by the few people previously identified as Vel-negative following their rejection of transfused blood. Not surprisingly, these antibodies are vanishingly rare and, therefore, many hospitals and blood banks don't have the capacity to test for this blood type.
"Vel blood is one of the most difficult blood types to supply in many countries," the scientists write, "This is partly due to the rarity of the Vel? blood type, but also to the lack of systematic screening for the Vel?type in blood donors."
In response, the UVM and Paris researchers developed two fast DNA-based tests for identifying Vel-negative blood and people. These tests can be easily integrated into existing blood testing proceduresand can be completed in a few hours or less.
"It's usually a crisis when you need a transfusion" says Ballif. "For those rare Vel-negative individuals in need of a blood transfusion, this is a potentially life-saving time frame."
To make their discovery, Arnaud and coworkers in Paris used some of the rare Vel-negative antibody to biochemically purify the mystery protein from the surface of human red blood cells. Then they shipped them to Ballif in Vermont.
The little protein didn't reveal its identity easily. "I had to fish through thousands of proteins," Ballif says. And several experiments failed to find the culprit because of its unusual biochemistryand pipsqueak size. But he eventually nabbed it using a high-resolution mass spectrometer funded by the Vermont Genetics Network. And what he found was new to science. "It was only a predicted protein based on the human genome," says Ballif, but hadn't yet been observed. It has since been named: Small Integral Membrane Protein 1, or SMIM1.
Next, Arnaud's team in France tested seventy people known to be Vel-negative. In every case, they found a deletiona tiny missing chunk of DNAin the gene that instructs cells on how to manufacture SMIM1. This was the final proof the scientists needed to show that the Vel-negative blood type is caused by a lack of the SMIM1 protein on a patient's red blood cells.
Today, personalized medicine where doctors treat us based on our unique biological makeupis a hot trend. "The science of blood transfusion has been attempting personalized medicine since its inception," Ballif notes, "given that its goal is to personalize a transfusion by making the best match possible between donor and recipient."
"Identifying and making available rare blood types such as Vel-negative blood brings us closer to a goal of personalized medicine," he says. "Even if you are that rare one person out of 2,500 that is Vel-negative, we now know how to rapidly type your blood and find blood for youshould you need a transfusion."
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Joshua Brown joshua.e.brown@uvm.edu 802-656-3039 University of Vermont
60-year-old health mystery solved by Vermont and French research team
In the early 1950's, a 66-year-old woman, sick with colon cancer, received a blood transfusion. Then, unexpectedly, she suffered a severe rejection of the transfused blood. Reporting on her case, the French medical journal Revue D'Hmatologie identified her as, simply, "Patient Vel."
After a previous transfusion, it turns out, Mrs. Vel had developed a potent antibody against some unknown molecule found on the red blood cells of most people in the worldbut not found on her own red blood cells.
But what was this molecule? Nobody could find it. A blood mystery began, and, from her case, a new blood type, "Vel-negative," was described in 1952.
Soon it was discovered that Mrs. Vel was not alone. Though rare, it is estimated now that over 200,000 people in Europe and a similar number in North America are Vel-negative, about 1 in 2,500.
For these people, successive blood transfusions could easily turn to kidney failure and death. So, for sixty years, doctors and researchers have huntedunsuccessfullyfor the underlying cause of this blood type.
But now a team of scientists from the University of Vermont and France has found the missing moleculea tiny protein called SMIM1and the mystery is solved.
Reporting in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, UVM's Bryan Ballif, Lionel Arnaud of the French National Institute of Blood Transfusion, and their colleagues explain how they uncovered the biochemical and genetic basis of Vel-negative blood.
"Our findings promise to provide immediate assistance to health-care professionals should they encounter this rare but vexing blood type," says Ballif.
The pre-publication results were presented online, March 18, 2013, and the finalized report will be published, as an open-access article, in the next edition of the journal.
(Last year, Ballif and Arnaud identified the proteins responsible for two other rare blood types, Junior and Langeris, moving the global count of understood blood types or systems from 30 to 32. Now, with Vel, the number rises to 33.)
Before this new research, the only way to determine if someone was Vel-negative or positive was with tests using antibodies made by the few people previously identified as Vel-negative following their rejection of transfused blood. Not surprisingly, these antibodies are vanishingly rare and, therefore, many hospitals and blood banks don't have the capacity to test for this blood type.
"Vel blood is one of the most difficult blood types to supply in many countries," the scientists write, "This is partly due to the rarity of the Vel? blood type, but also to the lack of systematic screening for the Vel?type in blood donors."
In response, the UVM and Paris researchers developed two fast DNA-based tests for identifying Vel-negative blood and people. These tests can be easily integrated into existing blood testing proceduresand can be completed in a few hours or less.
"It's usually a crisis when you need a transfusion" says Ballif. "For those rare Vel-negative individuals in need of a blood transfusion, this is a potentially life-saving time frame."
To make their discovery, Arnaud and coworkers in Paris used some of the rare Vel-negative antibody to biochemically purify the mystery protein from the surface of human red blood cells. Then they shipped them to Ballif in Vermont.
The little protein didn't reveal its identity easily. "I had to fish through thousands of proteins," Ballif says. And several experiments failed to find the culprit because of its unusual biochemistryand pipsqueak size. But he eventually nabbed it using a high-resolution mass spectrometer funded by the Vermont Genetics Network. And what he found was new to science. "It was only a predicted protein based on the human genome," says Ballif, but hadn't yet been observed. It has since been named: Small Integral Membrane Protein 1, or SMIM1.
Next, Arnaud's team in France tested seventy people known to be Vel-negative. In every case, they found a deletiona tiny missing chunk of DNAin the gene that instructs cells on how to manufacture SMIM1. This was the final proof the scientists needed to show that the Vel-negative blood type is caused by a lack of the SMIM1 protein on a patient's red blood cells.
Today, personalized medicine where doctors treat us based on our unique biological makeupis a hot trend. "The science of blood transfusion has been attempting personalized medicine since its inception," Ballif notes, "given that its goal is to personalize a transfusion by making the best match possible between donor and recipient."
"Identifying and making available rare blood types such as Vel-negative blood brings us closer to a goal of personalized medicine," he says. "Even if you are that rare one person out of 2,500 that is Vel-negative, we now know how to rapidly type your blood and find blood for youshould you need a transfusion."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
For the first on this week's series of polls on keyboards and typing, we want to know whether you typically type on your iPhone with one hand or with two? Do you hold it and thumb away at the keyboard with the same hand? Do you hold it in your left and poke away at it with your right, or vice versa? Do you hold it in both hands and thumb away at it? If you use multiple methods, which one do you use most? Do you vary your grip when you want to type faster?
Vote in the poll and let me know the details, and the reasons for doing it the way you do, in the comments.
Mar. 18, 2013 ? A new National Research Council report finds that by the year 2050, the U.S. may be able to reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent for light-duty vehicles -- cars and small trucks -- via a combination of more efficient vehicles; the use of alternative fuels like biofuels, electricity, and hydrogen; and strong government policies to overcome high costs and influence consumer choices. While achieving these goals will be difficult, improving technologies driven by strong and effective policies could make deep reductions possible.
"To reach the 2050 goals for reducing petroleum use and greenhouse gases, vehicles must become dramatically more efficient, regardless of how they are powered," said Douglas M. Chapin, principal of MPR Associates, and chair of the committee that wrote the report."In addition, alternative fuels to petroleum must be readily available, cost-effective and produced with low emissions of greenhouse gases.Such a transition will be costly and require several decades.The committee's model calculations, while exploratory and highly uncertain, indicate that the benefits of making the transition, i.e. energy cost savings, improved vehicle technologies, and reductions in petroleum use and greenhouse gas emissions, exceed the additional costs of the transition over and above what the market is willing to do voluntarily."
Improving the efficiency of conventional vehicles is, up to a point, the most economical and easiest-to-implement approach to saving fuel and lowering emissions, the report says.This approach includes reducing work the engine must perform -- reducing vehicle weight, aerodynamic resistance, rolling resistance, and accessories -- plus improving the efficiency of the internal combustion engine powertrain.
Improved efficiency alone will not meet the 2050 goals, however.The average fuel economy of vehicles on the road would have to exceed 180 mpg, which, the report says, is extremely unlikely with current technologies.Therefore, the study committee also considered other alternatives for vehicles and fuels, including:
?hybrid electric vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius;
?plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, such as the Chevrolet Volt;
?battery electric vehicles, such as the Nissan Leaf;
?hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, such as the Mercedes F-Cell, scheduled to be introduced about 2014; and
?compressed natural gas vehicles, such as the Honda Civic Natural Gas.
Although driving costs per mile will be lower, especially for vehicles powered by natural gas or electricity, the high initial purchase cost is likely to be a significant barrier to widespread consumer acceptance, the report says.All the vehicles considered are and will continue to be several thousand dollars more expensive than today's conventional vehicles.Additionally, particularly in the early years, the report predicts that alternative vehicles will likely be limited to a few body styles and sizes; some will rely on fuels that are not readily available or have restricted travel range; and others may require bulky energy storage that will limit their cargo and passenger capacity.Wide consumer acceptance is essential, however, and large numbers of alternative vehicles must be purchased long before 2050 if the on-road fleet is to meet desired performance goals.Strong policies and technology advances are critical in overcoming this challenge.
The report identified several scenarios that could meet the more demanding 2050 greenhouse gas goal.Each combines highly efficient vehicles with at least one of three alternative power sources -- biofuel, electricity, or hydrogen.Natural gas vehicles were considered, but their greenhouse gas emissions are too high for the 2050 goal.However, if the costs of these vehicles can be reduced and appropriate refueling infrastructure created, they have great potential for reducing petroleum consumption.
While corn-grain ethanol and biodiesel are the only biofuels to have been produced in commercial quantities in the U.S. to date, the study committee found much greater potential in biofuels made from lignocellulosic biomass -- which includes crop residues like wheat straw, switchgrass, whole trees, and wood waste.This "drop-in" fuel is designed to be a direct replacement for gasoline and could lead to large reductions in both petroleum use and greenhouse gas emissions; it can also be introduced without major changes in fuel delivery infrastructure or vehicles.The report finds that sufficient lignocellulosic biomass could be produced by 2050 to meet the goal of an 80 percent reduction in petroleum use when combined with highly efficient vehicles.
Vehicles powered by electricity will not emit any greenhouse gases, but the production of electricity and the additional load on the electric power grid are factors that must be considered.To the extent that fossil resources are used to generate electricity, the report says that the successful implementation of carbon capture and storage will be essential.These vehicles also rely on batteries, which are projected to drop steeply in price.However, the report says that limited range and long recharge times are likely to limit the use of all-electric vehicles mainly to local driving.Advanced battery technologies under development all face serious technical challenges.
When hydrogen is used as a fuel cell in electric vehicles, the only vehicle emission is water.However, varying amounts of greenhouse gases are emitted during hydrogen production, and the low-greenhouse gas methods of making hydrogen are more expensive and will need further development to become competitive.Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles could become less costly than the advanced internal combustion engine vehicles of 2050.Fuel cell vehicles are not subject to the limitations of battery vehicles, but developing a hydrogen infrastructure in concert with a growing number of fuel cell vehicles will be difficult and expensive, the report says.
The technology advances required to meet the 2050 goals are challenging and not assured.Nevertheless, the committee considers that dramatic cost reduction and overall performance enhancement is possible without unpredictable technology breakthroughs.Achieving these goals requires that the improved technology focus on reducing fuel use rather than adding greater power or weight, the report says.
It is impossible to know which technologies will ultimately succeed, the report says, because all involve uncertainty.The best approach, therefore, is to promote a portfolio of vehicle and fuel research and development, supported by both government and industry, designed to solve the critical challenges in each major candidate technology.Such primary research efforts need continuing evaluation of progress against performance goals to determine which technologies, fuels, designs, and production methods are emerging as the most promising and cost-effective.
Overcoming the barriers to advanced vehicles and fuels will require a rigorous policy framework that is more stringent than the proposed fuel economy standards for 2025.This policy intervention could include high and increasing fuel economy standards, R&D support, subsidies, and public information programs aimed at improving consumers' familiarity with the new fuels and powertrains.Because of the high level of uncertainty in the pace and scale of technology advances, this framework should be modified as technologies develop and as conditions change.
It is essential that policies promoting particular technologies to the public are not introduced before these new fuels and vehicle technologies are close to market readiness, and consumer behavior toward them is well understood.The report warns that forcing a technology into the market should be undertaken only when the benefits of the proposed support justify its costs.
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Adobe just announced its Q1 2013 earnings, which generally beat analyst estimates. Overall revenue for the first quarter was $1.01 billion and GAAP earnings per share of $0.12 and non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) of $0.35, ahead of the analyst consensus of $0.31 non-GAAP EPS on revenue of $986 million. Overall operating income was $240.7 million and net income was $177.9 million on a non-GAAP basis. Kevin Lynch Leaves Adobe (For Apple?) Just as the company released its earnings, however, an SEC filing also revealed that it’s long-term CTO Kevin Lynch is leaving the company on March 22 “to pursue other opportunities.” Rumor has it that he is leaving for Apple, which would be an interesting move for somebody who long defended Flash against Apple and once likened Apple’s walled-garden approach to 19th-century railroads. Almost 500K Creative Cloud Subscribers Maybe the most important metric of today’s earnings, however, wasn’t about the financial details but the face that the company’s Creative Cloud offering now has more than 479,000 paying subscribers, an increase of 153,000 compared to the end of the last quarter. Adobe also announced that it now has 2 million free and trial subscribers to its Creative Cloud. “We exited the quarter with 479 thousand paid subscriptions, and recently we crossed the half-million mark. With this momentum, we are on track to reach our goal of 1.25 million paid subscriptions by the end of this fiscal year,” Adobe CEP Shantanu Narayen said in a prepared statement (PDF) during the company’s earnings call today. The Adobe Marketing Cloud, another cornerstone of the company’s product line, achieved quarterly revenue of $215.4 million, a 20% year-over-year increase. For the whole year, Adobe expects its Marketing Cloud revenue to increase 25%.![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u7w2ysULWTtVFkhNfF28IZkJ8Gljc8doeAy279dk8FZX7CwCJUMOV8DMIcnmHGZAJqRjnIv-EvclinPNw2aesH3rOpnNZ1B48t5zfYr5w=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 20-Mar-2013
Share ] ![How do you type on your iPhone: Hand position? [Poll]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ucx-tA0uUYp5CGQKAucsyb7aImvw0aJI0vM1TRDEkaskue_FQidxfZLoi80oTJd8cxyxNtJxDsJaSoJWQNe2oWa8z3SDFgGoGl28tgFMs0Hh-F7wvhXSKfD56OyQZWOj-iinDA7jiuD1cWQ0aYv_J42B03Iq10cNegyDfHcsX_=s0-d)
