Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/296575861?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Friday, April 5, 2013
Iowa museum says tortoise was never stolen
In this undated photo provided by Katlyn R. Gerken, a staff member of the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa holds up an 18-pound African leopard tortoise named Cashew. KWWL-TV reports that officials at the museum and aquarium believe the tortoise was stolen, but that the thief quietly returned the animal. (AP Photo/Katlyn R. Gerken)
In this undated photo provided by Katlyn R. Gerken, a staff member of the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa holds up an 18-pound African leopard tortoise named Cashew. KWWL-TV reports that officials at the museum and aquarium believe the tortoise was stolen, but that the thief quietly returned the animal. (AP Photo/Katlyn R. Gerken)
DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) ? An African leopard tortoise thought to be stolen from an Iowa museum was actually trapped behind paneling in her enclosure, and a misguided employee who found her lied to keep up the story about her theft, the museum announced Friday.
In a bizarre move, the employee who found the 18-pound reptile named Cashew put her into a building elevator in an attempt to prevent the museum further embarrassment, said Jerry Enzler, president and CEO of the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque.
The tortoise was found alone in a museum elevator on Thursday, two days after the museum had discovered she was missing and announced that she had been stolen. Museum officials told media outlets Thursday that they believed a regretful thief had smuggled her back inside.
But several hours later, a museum employee came forward and told the truth: Cashew was never stolen.
"The action taken by the employee Thursday afternoon was wrong and is not reflective of the integrity of the staff who dedicate themselves to the highest of Museum & Aquarium standards," Enzler said in a statement Friday.
Enzler said the employee, whose name and position has not been released, will be reprimanded. He said it was a personal issue and did not provide any additional information.
Cashew is one of six large tortoises on display in the enclosure. A 4-foot glass wall separates visitors from the creatures.
Enzler said the notion of a stolen tortoise grabbed national attention.
"The idea that someone may steal a tortoise was so disturbing, and I think people responded to that," he said.
He's just glad the tortoise is in good health, and he said staff is reviewing the enclosures.
"It has good karma to know Cashew wasn't stolen and someone didn't violate the museum and its exhibit," he said. "I think it restores our faith in humanity to know someone didn't take the animal."
The 9-year-old tortoise will be back on display Saturday.
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City councilors and Mayor Dewey Bartlett unveiled a plaque in City Council chamb...
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Source: http://www.facebook.com/tulsaworld/posts/451127424964187
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Thursday, April 4, 2013
Scientists build material that mimics squid beak: Promising step toward safer, more comfortable implants
Apr. 3, 2013 ? Researchers led by scientists at Case Western Reserve University have turned to an unlikely model to make medical devices safer and more comfortable -- a squid's beak.
Many medical implants require hard materials that have to connect to or pass through soft body tissue. This mechanical mismatch leads to problems such as skin breakdown at abdominal feeding tubes in stroke patients and where wires pass through the chest to power assistive heart pumps. Enter the squid.
The tip of a squid's beak is harder than human teeth, but the base is as soft as the animal's Jello-like body. In order to connect these two mechanically dissimilar parts of the squid a major part of the beak has a mechanical gradient that acts as a shock absorber so the animal can bite a fish with bone-crushing force yet suffer no wear and tear on its fleshy mouth.
Nature's technology could make a range of medical devices more comfortable and safer for patients, from glucose sensors for diabetics to prosthetic arms and legs that attach to amputees' bones, the researchers say. Their work is published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
"We're mimicking the architecture and the water-enhanced properties of the squid to generate these materials," said Stuart J. Rowan, the Kent H. Smith professor of macromolecular science and engineering at Case Western Reserve, and senior author.
Rowan worked with PhD student Justin D. Fox and assistant professor of biomedical engineering Jeffrey R. Capadona at CWRU, and Paul D. Marasco, who, like Capadona, is a principal investigator at the Advanced Platform Technology Center at the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Other researchers have shown the structure of the beak is a nanocomposite composed of a network of chitin fibers embedded within increasingly cross-linked structural proteins from mouth to tip. The gradient is present when the beak material is dry, but is dramatically enhanced when in water, the squid's natural environment.
Rowan and Capadona were among a team of researchers who had previously reported a material that mimics the sea cucumber's skin, which is soft and pliable when wet and stiff and hard when dry.
They thought that material, in the form of a film, could be cross-linked with nanofibers to maintain stiffness when wet. They filled the film with functionalized cellulose nanocrystals that, when exposed to light, form cross-links.
To ramp up stiffness across the film, one end was exposed to no light and subsequent sections to increasingly more light. The longer the exposure, the more cross-links that formed.
Just like the beak, the grade from soft to hard was steeper when wet. Water switches off the weaker non-covalent bonds that form when the material is dry.
The wet environment inside the body will enhance the gradient just as well, which makes this technology especially attractive for implants, the researchers say.
"There are all sorts of places in medicine where we're using hard materials but we're mostly soft," Marasco said. The contrast is a recipe for sores and infection, poor performance and implant failure.
Needles in diabetics' insulin pumps, metal stents inserted in blood vessels and electrodes inserted in muscles or brains could be safer and more effective if materials would remain hard where they need to be but buffer surrounding soft tissues.
"Prosthetic limbs are connected to the arm or leg with a socket of hard plastic that fits over the residual limb," Marasco continued. "But bone moves around under the socket and can damage the soft tissue inside, while the socket can be hard on the skin where it makes contact."
A better solution, he said, would be to run a metal insert into the bone inside the body and attach a prosthesis directly outside the body using this kind of mechanical buffer where the hard metal passes through the soft skin.
The researchers are already working on the next generation of materials and cross-linking strategies to make the buffer gradient steeper. The tip of a squid's beak is 100 times harder than it's softest portion, while this first mimic's hard tip is five times harder than its soft end.
"This is a proof of concept," Rowan said. "Now that we have shown the concept works we're now getting a wee bit more complicated and targeting materials that will allow us to move closer to applications."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Case Western Reserve University, 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:
- Justin D. Fox, Jeffrey R. Capadona, Paul D. Marasco, Stuart J. Rowan. Bioinspired Water-Enhanced Mechanical Gradient Nanocomposite Films That Mimic the Architecture and Properties of the Squid Beak. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2013; 135 (13): 5167 DOI: 10.1021/ja4002713
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/strange_science/~3/j7iG4PN5Ihk/130403104224.htm
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Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Twitter Is Building A Gateway To The ?Web? Of Mobile Apps
Twitter is making a move to become the jumping off point for discovering, browsing and accessing the mobile app ecosystem, the company announced yesterday, in a somewhat understated event only developers were invited to attend. The event, due to its nature, was filled with geekier terminology like "footer tags," "deep linking," and "URL schemes," making summaries of its announcements hard to parse by the everyday Twitter user who isn't as familiar with what some of these things may mean.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/SifsJADa_UQ/
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Some Colo. sheriffs oppose more gun control
DENVER (AP) ? Some Colorado sheriffs are speaking out against any more gun control measures as President Barack Obama visits the state.
Sixteen sheriffs, including Larimer County's Justin Smith and John Cooke of Weld County, plan to hold a news conference Wednesday in Denver. They'll gather in a park near where the president will meet with law enforcement and community leaders to discuss the gun control package recently signed into law by Gov. John Hickenlooper.
He's trying to put pressure on a reluctant Congress to pass federal gun control legislation.
Colorado has gone further than any state outside the Northeast in passing new gun laws. The state now prohibits the sale of magazines that hold more than 15 bullets and requires background checks for all private gun sales.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/colo-sheriffs-oppose-more-gun-control-131042895.html
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Owen Thomas Joins ReadWrite As Editor-in-Chief, Says He Will Take The Site ?Back To Our Roots'
SAY Media just announced that Owen Thomas, previously the West Coast Editor at Business Insider, has joined ReadWrite (a tech blog that Say acquired in 2011) as editor-in-chief. I reported on Friday that Thomas (who's an old boss of mine ? he was executive editor at VentureBeat back when I was the assistant editor) was in talks for the position, though all SAY representatives would tell me at the time was that they were talking to a number of candidates.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/TMerzCi_JdA/
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