Today I noticed that a lot of good news centers around lottery winnings. I think that, although buying lotto tickets is form of gambling, most people see winning the lotto as good, because it generally gives lower income families a fresh start. In today's lotto winning story, a soldier who had deployed to Iraq twice was the winner. This really gave me a warm fuzzy. I thought, if anyone deserved a winning ticket, it was someone who had been to war, twice.
Also, I have put one more follow up on the NY philharmonic trip to North Korea. Apparently, it sparked something in someone, as shortly thereafter, NK announced that they would invite Eric Clapton to sing there next year. Anyway, hope you all enjoy today's pickings. :)
Today's Top 5:
1. Iraq Vet Wins $1 Million in Lottery Scratch-off (The Spokesman Review)
2. Fisherman Survives After 30hrs at Sea (News.Com AU)
3. Firefighter Rescues Fellow Bravest After Resident Rescued (New York Daily News)
4. Montana Girl Wins Planet Mnemonic Contest (Space.com)
5. Bacterial 'Battle For Survival' Leads To New Antibiotic (Science Daily)
Honorable Mentions:
1. Clapton may Play in P'yang Next Year: NK Embassy (Korea Herald)
2. China Closes Plastic Bags Firm (The Hindu)
1. Iraq Vet Wins $1 Million in Lottery Scratch-off
Jody Lawrence-Turner
February 27, 2008
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=13866
Wayne Leyde’s rent is going up.
So says his mom, after the 26-year-old National Guardsman won $1 million on a Washington Lottery scratch-off ticket.
Leyde, who lives with his parents in the Mount Spokane area and has served two tours of duty in Iraq, said today that if anyone should benefit from his windfall, it’s his parents.
Leyde came into his fortune Tuesday night after scratching off one of four tickets he bought at a Zip Trip in Mead. About 10:30 p.m., he scraped away the gray metallic cover on his Millionaire II ticket revealing the winning numbers and ran downstairs to tell his parents.
The former active-duty soldier says that as he tried to sleep Tuesday night, he thought of 50 people he should give money to and about 10,000 ways to spend it.
Leyde is now enlisted in the National Guard and works as a personal banker for Wells Fargo.
2. Fisherman Survives After 30hrs at Sea
February 28, 2008
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23289597-2702,00.html
ONE of two fishermen lost at sea after their fishing trawler sank off the coast of Byron Bay in northern NSW has been found alive.
A spokeswoman for the Maritime Safety Authority said the man was found floating about 15km north-east of Ballina, on the NSW north coast, at 8.15am (AEDT) today.
A rescue helicopter airlifted the man to Ballina Hospital in an unknown medical condition but rescue crews are concerned for the man's wellbeing.
“Obviously he's been in the water for quite some time,” the spokeswoman said.
The man survived up to 30 hours at sea after the trawler sank when it likely struck an offshore reef about 4am (AEDT) yesterday.
Another fisherman on board the boat swam 12 hours to shore yesterday to raise the alarm.
The 39-year-old made it to New Brighton Beach where he was found by a passerby about 4pm yesterday, suffering from exhaustion and dehydration.
A third man was still missing this morning.
Queensland Rescue spokesman Andy Christie said he spoke to the helicopter crew who located the second man.
“The crew said that he was talking, he was conscious - physically appeared to be okay ... but they were quick to point out that he had spent a very cold night in the water,” Mr Christie told Sky News.
He was not sure which of the two remaining men had been rescued or if he was clinging to an esky, as has been reported.
Westpac Life Saver Rescue Helicopter spokesman Roger Fry said the ability of two men to survive gave hope to search crews that they will find the third fisherman alive.
“Judging that the second fisherman survived through the night ... we can only hope that the same has occurred with the third,” Mr Fry told Sky News.
Up to 10 helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft from NSW and south-east Queensland were still searching for the missing crew member this morning.
It is believed the men's trawler, which operates from Brunswick Heads, north of Byron Bay, may have sunk after hitting a reef before dawn yesterday.
The alarm was not raised until about 4pm (AEDT) yesterday, when the 39-year-old fisherman made it to shore at New Brighton Beach after a marathon swim that police described as miraculous.
The survivor found yesterday is recuperating in Mullumbimby Hospital, where he was last night in a stable condition.
He told authorities he last saw his two crewmates clinging to a flotation device, possibly an Esky.
3. Firefighter Rescues Fellow Bravest After Resident Rescued
BY TANANGACHI MFUNI and MICHAEL WHITE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/02/27/2008-02-27_firefighter_rescues_fellow_bravest_after.html
Wednesday, February 27th 2008, 4:00 AM
A Queens firefighter rescued his fellow Bravest from a burning house early Tuesday - and then jumped to safety from a second-floor window just seconds before the bedroom was engulfed in flames.
"As soon as they bailed out, the room lit up," FDNY Battalion Chief Patrick Ginty said of the 3:30 a.m. heroics at the two-alarm fire in Richmond Hill.
Firefighter Robert Grover of Engine 143 became trapped on the second floor of the cluttered 114th St. house as he searched for residents he believed were still inside.
When Grover couldn't escape the flames, Firefighter Anthony Romano of Engine 142 climbed a ladder to the rear bedroom to save him, officials said.
Romano ducked in through a window, found Grover in the bedroom and helped him back to the window. The pair then jumped to the ground about 20 feet below, Ginty said.
"They tumbled off of the roof and [then] fell about 10 feet," said Ginty, his face smeared with soot. "They did a great job."
Firefighters also rescued the 74-year-old homeowner, Robert Fuchs, who was sleeping in the burning house.
"Two of the firemen broke through the window and they pulled me out," Fuchs said. "If they didn't come, I'd be dead."
Fuchs was later arrested on weapons charges after fire marshals found several unlicensed guns in the house.
Grover was recovering last night at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell with burns on his neck, ears and hands. He was in stable condition. Romano was treated for minor injuries and released.
Fire officials said the blaze was accidental.
4. Montana Girl Wins Planet Mnemonic Contest
http://www.space.com/news/ap-080227-planet-mnemonic-contest.html
posted: 27 February 200811:09 am ET
GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP) - A fourth-grader at Riverview Elementary School has won the National Geographic planetary mnemonic contest, developing a handy way to remember the newly assigned 11 planets, including three dwarfs.
National Geographic Children's Books created the contest in response to the recent announcement by the scientific community that there are now 11 recognized planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Eris. Ceres, Pluto and Eris are considered dwarf planets.
Ten-year-old Maryn Smith's winning mnemonic is My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants.
"When I got the call, my first response was, 'I won?'" Smith said in a statement. "I can't believe that next year my teacher will be teaching her new class the order of the planets using my mnemonic!"
Smith's mnemonic will be published in astronomer David Aguilar's next National Geographic book, "11 Planets: A New View of the Solar System.'' It also will be recorded into a song by Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Lisa Loeb. Both are scheduled to be released in March.
5. Bacterial 'Battle For Survival' Leads To New Antibiotic
ScienceDaily (Feb. 27, 2008)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226115618.htm
— MIT biologists have provoked soil-dwelling bacteria into producing a new type of antibiotic by pitting them against another strain of bacteria in a battle for survival.
The antibiotic holds promise for treatment of Helicobacter pylori, which causes stomach ulcers in humans. Also, figuring out the still murky explanation for how the new antibiotic was produced could help scientists develop strategies for finding other new antibiotics.
A combination of luck, patience and good detective work contributed to the discovery of the new antibiotic, according to Philip Lessard, research scientist in Professor Anthony Sinskey's laboratory at MIT.
Sinskey's lab has been studying Rhodococcus, a type of soil-dwelling bacteria, for many years. While sequencing the genome of one Rhodococcus species, the researchers noticed that a large number of genes seemed to code for secondary metabolic products, which are compounds such as antibiotics, toxins and pigments.
However, Rhodococcus does not normally produce antibiotics. Many bacteria have genes for antibiotics that are only activated when the bacteria are threatened in some way, so the researchers suspected that might be true of Rhodococcus.
Kazuhiko Kurosawa, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Biology, decided to try to provoke the bacteria into synthesizing antibiotics by placing them in stressful environments. He tried turning the temperature up and down, then altered the bacteria's growth medium, but nothing worked.
Kurosawa then decided to stress the Rhodococcus bacteria by forcing them to grow in the presence of a competing bacteria, a strain of Streptomyces. Streptomyces produces an antibiotic that normally kills other bacteria, but in one of the experimental test tubes, Rhodococcus started producing its own antibiotic, which wiped out the Streptomyces.
The researchers isolated the antibiotic, dubbed it rhodostreptomycin, and started testing it to see what else it would kill. It proved effective against many other strains of bacteria, most notably Helicobacter pylori. Rhodostreptomycin is a promising candidate to treat H. pylori because it can survive in very acidic environments such as the stomach.
The antibiotic turned out to be a type of molecule called an aminoglycoside, composed of peculiar sugars, one of which has a ring structure that has not been seen before. The ring structure could offer chemists a new target for modification, allowing them to synthesize antibiotics that are more effective and/or stable.
"Even if (rhodostreptomycin) is not the best antibiotic, it provides new structures to make chemical derivatives of," said Lessard. "This may be a starting point for new antibiotics."
One mystery still to be solved is why Rhodococcus started producing this antibiotic. One theory is that the presence of the competing strain of bacteria caused Rhodococcus to "raise the alarm" and turn on new genes.
The version of Rhodococcus that produces the antibiotic has a "megaplasmid," or large segment of extra DNA, that it received from Streptomyces. A logical conclusion is that the plasmid carries the gene for rhodostreptomycin, but the researchers have sequenced more than half of the plasmid and found no genes that correlate to the antibiotic.
Another theory is that the plasmid itself served as the "insult" that provoked Rhodococcus into producing the antibiotic. Alternatively, it is possible that some kind of interaction of the two bacterial genomes produced the new antibiotic.
"Somehow the genes in the megaplasmid combined with the genes in Rhodococcus and together they produced something that neither parent could make alone," said Lessard.
If scientists could figure out how that happens, they could start to manipulate bacterial genomes in a more methodical fashion to design new antibiotics.
The work is reported in the February issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Other authors of the paper are T.G. Sambandan, research scientist in MIT's Department of Biology, MIT professors Anthony Sinskey of biology and ChoKyun Rha of the Biomaterials Science and Engineering Laboratory, and Ion Ghiviriga and Joanna Barbara of the University of Florida.
The research was funded by the Cambridge-MIT Institute and the Malaysia-MIT Biotechnology Partnership Program.
Adapted from materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Honorable Mentions:
1. Clapton may Play in P'yang Next Year: NK Embassy
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/
2008.02.27
World-renowned English rock guitarist Eric Clapton is highly likely to perform in Pyongyang early next year, an official from the North Korean Embassy in London was quoted as saying by Yonhap News Agency.
His remark came on the heels of a historic 90-minute concert by the New York Philharmonic in the North Korean capital earlier in the day.
"Clapton's Pyongyang concert is being pushed in the form of reciprocating our national orchestra's performance set for September in London," the official, asking anonymity, told Yonhap News Agency over the phone.
"As Clapton is scheduled to perform in Japan early next year, chances are high his concert in Pyongyang will take place around that time," the official said. "We welcome his Pyongyang concert." Meanwhile, the North's State Symphony Orchestra's London concert is being arranged by British vocalist Suzannah Clark, who performed at a Pyongyang festival to mark the birthday of the late North Korean President Kim Il-sung at the invitation of his son, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, in April last year. It is unusual for the communist North to invite a Western pop artist as it has banned pop music in fear of the spread of capitalist Western pop culture into its society, although classical music is allowed.
2. China Closes Plastic Bags Firm
http://www.hindu.com/2008/02/28/stories/2008022854421400.htm
Pallavi Aiyar
27 February 2008
Beijing: The battle to clean up China’s environment has led to the closure of the country’s largest producer of plastic bags.
The announcement comes after a state-led campaign discouraging the consumption of plastics was launched last month. The new regulations banned the use of ultra-thin bags (under 0.025 mm thick) and ordered supermarkets and shops to stop giving away free carriers from June 1. Following the move, Suiping Huaqiang Plastic Co., a company that annually produced some 250,000 tonnes of bags, has closed.
State media revealed that the firm ceased production in mid-January. “Over 90 per cent of our products are on the limit list, so the only way forward for the factory is closure,” a management official was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.
According to official statistics, Chinese people use up to 3 billion plastic bags a day and the country has to refine 5 million tonnes (37 million barrels) of crude oil every year to make plastics used for packaging.
Suiping Huaqiang, a 2.2-billion yuan ($305 million) company, employed 20,000 persons who now face an uncertain future. China’s decree on plastics was a surprise move that went further than similar action taken by the United States and many other developed nations. It is being seen as a sign of growing environmental awareness in a country where breakneck economic growth has led to a serious toll on the air and water.
The closure of Suiping Huaqiang may well be followed by others. Chinese leaders are increasingly anxious about the environment and draft laws to punish polluters will be high on the agenda of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, China’s Parliament, next week.
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