Obama on AIDS: 'We can beat this disease'

President Barack Obama makes remarks on World AIDS Day , Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, at George Washington University in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama makes remarks on World AIDS Day , Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, at George Washington University in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Alicia Keys, center, and Muhtar Kent, the chairman of the Board and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, left, applaud as President Barack Obama spoke during a World AIDS Day event, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, at George Washington University in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Musicians Bono, right, and Alicia Keys talk during a panel discussion on World AIDS Day, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, at George Washington University in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Musicians Bono, right, and Alicia Keys take part in a panel discussion on World AIDS Day, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, at George Washington University in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama set an ambitious goal Thursday for significantly increasing access to life-saving AIDS drugs for people in the U.S. and around the world, as he announced a renewed American commitment to ending a pandemic that has killed 30 million people.

"We can beat this disease," Obama declared during a World AIDS Day event in Washington. Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton also participated via satellite.

Obama pledged U.S. support to help 6 million people in countries hardest hit by the virus get access to antiretroviral drugs by the end of 2013, increasing the original U.S. goal by 2 million. And he announced plans to boost spending on HIV treatment in the U.S. by $50 million.

"The rate of new infections may be going down elsewhere, but it's not going down here in America," he said. "There are communities in this country being devastated still by this disease. When new infections among young, black, gay men increase by nearly 50 percent in three years, we need to do more to show them that their lives matter."

As part of Obama's new overseas initiatives, the U.S. will also aim to get antiretroviral drugs to 1.5 million HIV-positive pregnant women to prevent them from passing the virus to their children; distribute more than 1 billion condoms in the developing world in the next two years; and fund 4.7 million voluntary medical male circumcisions in eastern and southern Africa over the next two years. Research shows circumcisions reduce the risk of female-to-male HIV transmission by more than 60 percent.

The new global goals build on the work of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which focuses on prevention, treatment and support programs in 15 countries hit hardest by the AIDS pandemic, 12 of them in Africa. Bush launched the $15 billion plan in 2003, and in 2008, Congress tripled the budget to $48 billion over five years.

Obama praised Bush for his leadership on AIDS relief, saying the program will be one of the former president's greatest legacies.

"That program ? more ambitious than even leading advocates thought was possible at the time ? has saved thousands and thousands and thousands of lives, spurred international action, and laid the foundation for a comprehensive global plan that will impact the lives of millions," Obama said. "And we are proud that we have the opportunity to carry that work forward."

Despite Obama's more ambitious goals, the relief program's budget is not expected to increase. Instead officials said the expanded targets would be funded through savings achieved by making the program more efficient and cutting the costs of treatment.

The president urged other wealthy nations to fulfill their financial pledges to a global fund to fight HIV and AIDS, and jabbed those who have not contributed money.

"Countries that haven't made a pledge need to do so," he said. "That includes China and other major economies that are now able to step up as major donors."

Obama also announced new initiatives to combat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in the U.S. The White House said there are 1.2 million Americans living with HIV, and 50,000 new infections each year. Officials said he would direct the Department of Health and Human Services to increase funding for domestic treatment by $50 million

The bulk of the new funding ? $35 million ? will go to state programs that help people living with HIV and AIDS get access to medicine. There are currently more than 6,500 Americans living with the virus on waiting lists for medication, according to the White House.

The rest of the domestic funds will go to HIV medical clinics across the country, with an emphasis on areas where infections have increased and care and treatment are not readily available. Officials said the additional clinic funding would give 7,500 more patients access to treatment.

The $50 million is already part of the HHS budget, and officials said Obama does not need congressional approval to reallocate the funds.

The HIV virus has infected an estimated 60 million people worldwide since the deadly pandemic began 30 years ago. More than 33 million people are currently living with the virus.

While the failure to find an effective HIV vaccine continues to frustrate the medical community, experts say scientific research in recent years has led to substantial progress in preventing and treating the virus.

Obama ordered his staff to reevaluate both their international and domestic approaches to HIV and AIDS this summer after being briefed on the scientific advancements.

Members of both parties praised the new initiatives and commended Democratic and Republican leaders for coming together.

"Here's what we can do when we work together. We've got leaders of both political parties standing behind something that works," said Gayle Smith, Obama's senior director for development and democracy at the National Security Council.

Tony Fratto, a former Bush spokesman, urged both parties to avoid making the fight against AIDS a political issue.

"The only way to undermine this historic undertaking is if it becomes a partisan issue," he said. "The reasons a Barack Obama and a George W. Bush can support America's leading role in addressing this disease may be very different, but what's important is they've sought the same goal."

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2011-12-01-US-Obama-AIDS/id-b9b14c0491454a7a845e3bfe7344090f

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Kabul's poor demand attention of Bonn delegates (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) ? Kabul's residents have called on delegates at next week's international talks on Afghanistan in Bonn to put their needs on the agenda, saying the government is not doing enough to alleviate poverty and hunger in the Afghan capital.

Those living in Kabul's poorest quarters are at the sharp end of a country where unemployment is believed to run as high as 40 percent, violence scars day to day life, and nearly half the population has no access to clean drinking water.

A decade after delegates attended the first Bonn conference on Afghanistan with high hopes for its future, the gathering in the former West German capital on Monday is likely to take on a rather more sober mood.

Despite 2001's optimism and the billions of aid dollars that have poured into the country since that year, many of its people are still living in abject poverty.

"At the conference, they should be helping the poor," Kabul fruit seller Sardar Wali told Reuters. "When aid dollars go into the pockets of Afghan ministers, mayors or the government, it doesn't do anything for poor people."

"We want a man who will work for our country (to represent us), not a man who will get funding and build tall buildings."

In eastern Kabul, hundreds of people live under canvas, mainly internally displaced persons from provinces such as Helmand in the south and Baghlan in the north, where fighting has been fierce.

Tendrils of white smoke curl above the rows of white tents in which they live, while outside children busy themselves in the street, doing laundry and collecting water in plastic bottles from a hose.

The United Nations estimates that up to half a million Afghans are currently internally displaced, most fleeing violence or the drought that has left three million Afghans facing hunger, malnutrition and disease this year.

Among them is Waheeda, who lives in one of the tents in Kabul's eighth district. She displays a picture of her two sons -- one has been killed, while the other has disappeared -- and says the government is doing little to help her and her grandchildren.

"I'm dying of hunger, I'm dying of thirst," she says.

"It costs me five Afghanis to buy water. I have young grandchildren. I hope the government gives me some support, because I have a lot of problems in life."

Afghanistan is one of the world's biggest aid recipients, receiving an estimated $16 billion this year.

But in Kabul, public roads are crumbling and the electricity supply is intermittent at best, while country-wide only a fifth of households have sanitary toilet and washing facilities.

Residents say it is these basics that they want to see addressed in Bonn.

"For almost three years, we have been living in tents," Mohammed Ibrahim, a community elder of the group of refugees living in the canvas village, said.

"We ask whether the international community, or the Afghan President himself, will give us food and shelter."

(Reporting by Sayed Hassib Sadat; Writing by Jan Harvey; Editing by Yoko Nishikawa)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111203/wl_nm/us_afghanistan_kabul_bonn

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UFC on Xbox Live pushed back to December 20 (Digital Trends)

In a bit of a surprise, the new UFC app that was scheduled to debut on Xbox Live today has been delayed until December 20. No explanation has been given.

The delay shouldn?t cause much concern, but it does mean that people expecting to purchase UFC 140 on December 10 via the Xbox, will instead have to do it the old fashioned way. The plan was to have the new UFC app up and running with original and on-demand HD content, interactive fight cards, and full Kinect integration in time for the title bout between Jon Jones and Lyoto Machida, plus a rematch of Frank Mir and Antonio Nogueira.

The delay means that the app will instead be available in time for UFC 141 on December 30, featuring Brock Lesnar and Alistair Overeem.

The main card will also feature Lightweights Nate Diaz vs. Donald Cerrone, Welterweights Jon Fitch vs. Johny Hendricks, Light Heavyweights Vladamir Matyushenko vs. Alexander Gustafsson, and Featherweights Nam Phan vs. Jimy Hettes.

No official word on pricing yet, but the Xbox UFC pay-per-view matches will likely be in keeping with the standard pay-per-view pricing, which cost $44.99 per event.

?

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

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Gay groups boycott Salvation Army red kettle drive

Tim Boyle / Getty Images

Salvation Army bell-ringer Debra Vazquez works near her red donation kettle Dec. 20, 2005. in Park Ridge, Ill.

By James Eng, msnbc.com

The Salvation Army?s annual red kettle fundraising campaign is not getting a ringing endorsement from gays and lesbians.

Gay-rights groups are urging a boycott of donations to the iconic holiday bell-ringers, saying the Salvation Army has a history of discriminating against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people -- a charge the charity denies.

?As the holidays approach, the Salvation Army bell ringers are out in front of stores dunning shoppers for donations. If you care about gay rights, you'll skip their bucket in favor of a charity that doesn't actively discriminate against the LGBT community,? Bil Browning, editor-in-chief of The Bilerico Project, a national LGBT blog, wrote in a recent post titled "Why You Shouldn't Donate to the Salvation Army Bell Ringers."

"While you might think you're helping the hungry and homeless by dropping a few dollars in the bright red buckets, not everyone can share in the donations. Many LGBT people are rejected by the evangelical church charity because they're ?sexually impure.'?

?We are urging a boycott of the Salvation Army because it uses its selective interpretation of the Bible to promote discrimination against LGBT people in employment benefits and leadership positions within the Army,? Andy Thayer, co-founder, Gay Liberation Network,?told msnbc.com in an email.

"Of all the very many, often bizarre, prohibitions mentioned in Leviticus, the Army chooses to single out and promote the few prohibitions against gays, which suggests to us that it is bigotry, not literal Bible belief, that motivates their actions."

The Salvation Army, a charitable evangelical Christian organization that provides aid and services to the needy, denies that it discriminates against anyone.

"Nothing can be further from the truth," Lt. Col. Ralph Bukiewicz, divisional commander of the Salvation Army Metropolitan Division, told msnbc.com on Wednesday.

The charitable organization notes that its services are available to all who qualify, without regard to sexual orientation.

?In our policies, in our practices, in our programs and in our eligibility for any service within the Salvation Army, there is not a request for any details concerning sexual orientation,? says Bukiewicz.

Gay-rights advocates contend the organization has a history of lobbying for ?anti-gay? policies and legislation. As an example, Browing says that in 2004 the Salvation Army threatened to close all their soup kitchens for the homeless?in New York to protest the city's decision to require vendors and charities doing business with the city to adhere?to the state?s civil rights laws forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Gays and celibacy
On its national website, the Salvation Army says it holds "a positive view of human sexuality" and does not consider same-sex orientation "blameworthy in itself.?

The position statement on homosexuality goes on to say: ?Scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex. The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life. There is no scriptural support for same-sex unions as equal to, or as an alternative to, heterosexual marriage.

?Likewise, there is no scriptural support for demeaning or mistreating anyone for reason of his or her sexual orientation. The Salvation Army opposes any such abuse.?

Browning says the Salvation Army has denied services to LGBT people unless they renounce their sexuality or end their same-sex relationships -- a charge Bukiewicz denies.

"I've seen the discrimination the Salvation Army preaches first hand,? Browning wrote. ?When a former boyfriend and I were homeless, the Salvation Army insisted we break up before they'd offer assistance. We slept on the street instead and declined to break up as they demanded.?

Browning, Thayer and other gay-rights activists are urging people to ignore the sidewalk and storefront red kettle bell-ringers and instead redirect their holiday donations to other charities.

Bukiewicz says the campaign by gay-rights groups is based on ?erroneous understanding.? He notes their boycott actions in previous years haven?t put a crimp in holiday donations.

Last year, Salvation Army raised a record $142 million during its Christmas appeal campaign, the most noticeable component of which are the red kettles. That was a 5 percent increase over the previous year.

More news and feature stories from msnbc.com:

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/01/9143097-gay-groups-boycott-salvation-army-red-kettle-drive

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Cain to Backers: 'It Ain't Over' (ABC News)

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Biocompatible graphene transistor array reads cellular signals

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Researchers have demonstrated, for the first time, a graphene-based transistor array that is compatible with living biological cells and capable of recording the electrical signals they generate. This proof-of-concept platform opens the way for further investigation of a promising new material. Graphene's distinctive combination of characteristics makes it a leading contender for future biomedical applications requiring a direct interface between microelectronic devices and nerve cells or other living tissue. A team of scientists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen and the Juelich Research Center published the results in the journal Advanced Materials.

Today, if a person has an intimate and dependent relationship with an electronic device, it's most likely to be a smart phone; however, much closer connections may be in store in the foreseeable future. For example, "bioelectronic" applications have been proposed that would place sensors and in some cases actuators inside a person's brain, eye, or ear to help compensate for neural damage. Pioneering research in this direction was done using the mature technology of silicon microelectronics, but in practice that approach may be a dead end: Both flexible substrates and watery biological environments pose serious problems for silicon devices; in addition, they may be too "noisy" for reliable communication with individual nerve cells.

Of the several material systems being explored as alternatives, graphene ? essentially a two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms linked in a dense honeycomb pattern ? seems very well suited to bioelectronic applications: It offers outstanding electronic performance, is chemically stable and biologically inert, can readily be processed on flexible substrates, and should lend itself to large-scale, low-cost fabrication. The latest results from the TUM-Juelich team confirm key performance characteristics and open the way for further advances toward determining the feasibility of graphene-based bioelectronics.

The experimental setup reported in Advanced Materials began with an array of 16 graphene solution-gated field-effect transistors (G-SGFETs) fabricated on copper foil by chemical vapor deposition and standard photolithographic and etching processes. "The sensing mechanism of these devices is rather simple," says Dr. Jose Antonio Garrido, a member of the Walter Schottky Institute at TUM. "Variations of the electrical and chemical environment in the vicinity of the FET gate region will be converted into a variation of the transistor current."

Directly on top of this array, the researchers grew a layer of biological cells similar to heart muscle. Not only were the "action potentials" of individual cells detectable above the intrinsic electrical noise of the transistors, but these cellular signals could be recorded with high spatial and temporal resolution. For example, a series of spikes separated by tens of milliseconds moved across the transistor array in just the way action potentials could be expected to propagate across the cell layer. Also, when the cell layer was exposed to a higher concentration of the stress hormone norepinephrine, a corresponding increase in the frequency of spikes was recorded. Separate experiments to determine the inherent noise level of the G-SFETs showed it to be comparable to that of ultralow-noise silicon devices, which as Garrido points out are the result of decades of technological development.

"Much of our ongoing research is focused on further improving the noise performance of graphene devices," Garrido says, "and on optimizing the transfer of this technology to flexible substrates such as parylene and kapton, both of which are currently used for in vivo implants. We are also working to improve the spatial resolution of our recording devices." Meanwhile, they are working with scientists at the Paris-based Vision Institute to investigate the biocompatibility of graphene layers in cultures of retinal neuron cells, as well as within a broader European project called NEUROCARE, which aims at developing brain implants based on flexible nanocarbon devices.

###

Technische Universitaet Muenchen: http://www.tum.de

Thanks to Technische Universitaet Muenchen for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115601/Biocompatible_graphene_transistor_array_reads_cellular_signals

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