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Tuesday, 11 June 2013

$14 billion dollars later, BP's oil spill is cleaned from 3 of 4 affected states

BP said the Coast Guard has concluded 'active cleanup operations' in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, but the work continues along 84 miles of Louisiana's shoreline.

By Associated Press / June 10, 2013

Cars drive past a BP gas station in Manchester, England, May 15. BP has spent more than $14 billion to clean up the massive oil spill caused by the Deepwater Horizon offshore tanker in 2010. Cleanup efforts are now concluded in three states, BP says, but environmental protection groups say oil residue is still a problem.

Jon Super/AP

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Cleanup work has ended in three of the states affected by BP PLC's massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the company said Monday.

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The London-based oil giant said the Coast Guard has concluded "active cleanup operations" in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, but the work continues along 84 miles of Louisiana's shoreline.

The cleanup by BP contractors ended last Friday in Alabama, on June 1 in Florida and on May 1 in Mississippi, according to company spokesman Jason Ryan.

The Coast Guard will continue responding to reports of oil washing up anywhere along the Gulf Coast. BP said it will take responsibility for removing any oil that came from its blown-out Macondo well.

"This is another important step towards meeting our goal of returning the shoreline to as close to pre-spill conditions as possible while managing the scale of the response to meet conditions on the ground," Coast Guard Capt. Duke Walker said in a statement.

The director of the National Wildlife Federation's Gulf of Mexico Restoration Campaign said there is still much work to be done including rapid shoreline assessment and cleanup after storms.

"As much as one million barrels of oil from the disaster remains unaccounted for, and tar mats and tar balls from the spill continue to wash up on the coast," said David White. "Regardless of how our shorelines are monitored, BP must be held accountable for the cleanup. We cannot just accept oiled material on our beaches and in our marshes as the 'new normal.'"

BP said it has spent more than $14 billion on response and cleanup activities, with more than 48,000 people involved in those efforts at the height of the spill's aftermath.

"The transition is a significant milestone toward fulfilling our commitment to clean the Gulf shoreline and ensuring that the region's residents and visitors can fully enjoy this majestic environment," Laura Folse, BP's executive vice president for response and environmental restoration, said in a statement.

BP said teams surveyed nearly 4,000 miles of shoreline after the spill, identifying roughly 1,100 miles affected by oil and 778 miles that needed to be cleaned.

The April 2010 well blowout triggered an explosion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Ip5ngtUvmJU/14-billion-dollars-later-BP-s-oil-spill-is-cleaned-from-3-of-4-affected-states

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AP Interview: Wieseltier fears for Israel's future

In this Sunday, June 9, 2013 photo, Leon Wieseltier,.intellectual and philosopher who has been the literary editor of The New Republic for more than three decades, poses for a photograph in Tel Aviv, Israel. Wieseltier has been a leading supporter of Israel in Jewish American intellectual circles. But the U.S.-based author now fears the country?s survival may be in jeopardy and says much of the blame lies with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) ? Leon Wieseltier has long maintained a close relationship with the state of Israel. But the Jewish-American author now fears the country's survival may be in jeopardy ? and says much of the blame lies with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Wieseltier, in Israel this week to collect a prestigious award, joins a list of prominent American Jews to criticize Israel in recent years. While Israel has many critics, it has become troubling for Israelis to hear the tough words coming from people, particularly intellectuals, who were once considered a bedrock of support.

Wieseltier, 60, the child of Holocaust survivors and a fluent Hebrew speaker, is a widely respected, if contentious, intellectual and philosopher. He has been the literary editor of The New Republic for three decades, where his essays contribute to national conversations on current affairs. He is also the winner of the 1998 National Jewish Book Award for "Kaddish," his meditation on the ancient Jewish prayer of mourning.

"Unless there is a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there will not be a Jewish state for very long," Wieseltier said in an interview at Tel Aviv University after accepting the $1 million Dan David Prize late Sunday for his contributions to ideas and contemporary philosophy. The international prize is awarded every year for contributions to humanity through science, art, public service, humanities and entrepreneurship.

Wieseltier's argument echoes that of Israel's political left and center, that time is working against Israel, and if it doesn't withdraw from the Palestinian territories, it will either become an undemocratic Jewish state, or a non-Jewish democratic state.

In the next few decades, the number of Palestinians is expected to exceed the number of Jews living in areas now under Israeli control. Those who agree with Wieseltier insist that if Israel maintains the status quo, where Palestinians in the West Bank can't vote, but Israeli Jews can, it will end the country's democracy but maintain its Jewish character. Or it could grant Palestinians equal rights, including voting rights, threatening the country's Jewish majority.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza, territories claimed by the Palestinians for their state, in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Proponents of Palestinian independence say a Palestinian state is the only way to prevent a demographic catastrophe for Israel. But negotiations to carve out a Palestinian state have repeatedly faltered, with Israel and the Palestinians blaming each other for failure. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has been trying to revive talks in recent weeks.

Netanyahu says he favors the establishment of a Palestinian state, but Wieseltier said the Israeli leader has done little to advance this goal. Netanyahu has resisted Palestinian calls to halt settlement construction in the West Bank and refused to commit to the broad territorial concessions demanded by the Palestinians and backed by the international community. Netanyahu says negotiations should resume with no preconditions.

"One of the most shameful aspects of the Netanyahu government has been to succeed in taking the Palestinian question off the table," said Wieseltier, identifiable by his tall frame and white, unruly mane of hair.

Wieseltier spelled out his views in an essay in The New Republic in December, saying that he no longer believed that Mideast peace would occur in his lifetime. A number of prominent Jewish Americans have begun to express similar concerns about Israel's future, most prominently Wieseltier's former colleague at The New Republic, author Peter Beinart.

In contrast, many mainstream American Jewish groups and leaders back Israeli government policy or defer to Israel to handle its own affairs. Some openly and vocally support Israel's hard-liners.

Wieseltier said he also blamed Palestinian leaders for the stalemate, particularly for allowing the resignation of the respected Palestinian economist Salam Fayyad from his position as prime minister.

Fayyad helped build government institutions and clean up finances in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. He resigned in April after a six-year term after repeatedly clashing with the President Mahmoud Abbas.

"Nobody lifted a finger to help Salam Fayyad, who was the Palestinian leader we were all waiting for. No Palestinians and no Israelis. He came and went. It's a historical scandal of the first magnitude," Wieseltier said.

He said he would try visit the Palestinian territories. In the meantime, Wieseltier said he was enjoying Israel, despite its many flaws.

"I feel perfectly at home here," he said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-06-10-Israel-Wieseltier/id-0a7437bcbcca4441acd29fbf39bf6c7a

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Tuesday, 7 May 2013

Facebook Messenger update adds cute stickers and brings back swipe to delete

Facebook has pushed out an update to their Messenger application for iPhone and iPod Touch, that adds some new cuteness and brings back functionality that once was lost.

The latest version of Messenger has the popular -- and sometimes very cute looking -- stickers included, as they are in the main Facebook application. Facebook does say though, that the stickers will be available to everyone over the next few weeks. So, if you don't see them just yet, there's no need to panic.

Also included in this update is the re-appearance of the popular, and incredibly useful, swipe-to-delete feature. This is back 'by popular request' and rightly so. Most would question why something such as this would be taken away in the first place.

The update is live now in the App Store, so go grab it and start sending all your friends those adorable little kitty stickers!

Free - Download Now

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/wSdomAjbhsg/story01.htm

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Israeli airstrike in Syria brings Iran onstage, raising risk of proxy war

Iran dismissed Israeli claims that yesterday's airstrike in Syria targeted Iranian weapons destined for Hezbollah, accusing Israel of looking for an excuse to hammer the 'Axis of Resistance.'

By Scott Peterson,?Staff writer / May 6, 2013

An Iranian demonstrator holds a picture of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during an anti-Israel demonstration in front of the UN office in Tehran, Iran, Monday. Iran condemns Israeli air strikes on Syria and urged countries in the region to stand against the attack.

Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

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Iran has dismissed reports that Israel?s attack in Syria early yesterday targeted advanced Iranian-made missiles on their way to Hezbollah in Lebanon, calling?them??psychological operations??aimed at undermining the Iran-led Axis of Resistance.??

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By inserting itself into the furor following the attack, Iran highlights how Syria's local civil war has been sucking in every key actor in a volatile region, and turning it increasingly toward a full-blown a proxy war. Between Israel's strikes and Iran's overshadowing presence in the analysis after the attack, there is little doubt that the risk of spillover now looms larger.

Western and Israeli news reports quoted intelligence officials stating that Israel targeted a consignment of Fateh-110 missiles?intended?for Hezbollah, which would have bolstered the Lebanese militant group's already-extensive missile arsenal, enabling it to reach Tel Aviv and much of Israel from southern Lebanon.

Comments by Iran?s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei today also underscored the increasing sectarian nature of the Syrian conflict. He warned that the recent desecration of a Shiite shrine near Damascus by rebel Sunni extremists with an ?evil mindset? risked fanning Shiite-Sunni hostility.

Iran: Syria, Hezbollah don't need us

Hezbollah?reportedly already has such missiles, as well as a Syrian-made version. For decades, Iran has used Syria as a conduit to provide such weaponry to Hezbollah in its fight against Israel.

?Iran's top brass were careful with their choice of words, claiming that Syria had no reason to have any Iranian-made weapons that Israel might want to target ? and that Hezbollah no longer needed such Iranian hardware, either. ?

?Basically speaking, the Syrian government does not need Iran?s weapon assistance. These types of reports mostly serve [a] psychological and propaganda campaign,? Iran?s deputy armed forces commander, Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, told the Al Alam TV network.

?Fortunately, the Resistance movement has become mature enough to defend itself very well against any kind of aggression,? said Jazayeri, according to Fars News Agency. ?What [Palestinian] Hamas employed to defend itself [and] Hezbollah military capabilities are totally homemade.?

The strike was Israel's second in recent days against Syrian government targets. Damascus's?allies ? Iran, Hezbollah, and?to a lesser degree?Russia ? have lined up against what?has become?a proxy fight with the US and Sunni nations like Qatar and Turkey.?

Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for the attacks, which Syria?s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad called a ?declaration of war.?

Israel has insisted it is not seeking to take sides in Syria's civil war,?but it will take action to prevent Syria and Iran from supplying "game-changing" weapons to arch-foe Hezbollah.?

Iran's stake

Israel?s attack could affect Iranian calculations. Last January, Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to Iran?s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a possible presidential candidate in June 14 elections, warned that an attack against Syria would be considered an attack on Iran itself.

Rebel fighters and Syrian civilians in rebel-held territory have often reported seeing Iranian fighters and even snipers during clashes, but have produced little evidence.?Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers last year confirmed they had a presence on the ground in?Syria.

Iran has tread a fine line since the Syrian uprising first erupted in March 2011, in the course of the Arab Spring rebellions that toppled Arab dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, and eventually Libya.

Officially, Iran has cheered the other successful uprisings as part of a desirable people-power ?Islamic Awakening.? But when it comes to close ally Syria ? the only Arab nation that?supported Iran?in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war ??Iran has sided with the regime, calling those who took to the streets to change it ?terrorists.?

Syria has provided strategic depth in the Arab world for Iran?s pan-Islamic message of revolutionary resistance against Western hegemony, and provided direct access to the frontline fight against US-ally Israel.

?As a Muslim nation, we back Syria, and if there is need for training we will provide them with the training, but we won?t have any active involvement in the operations,? official Iranian media quoted Iran?s armed forces commander Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan as saying on Sunday.

?The Syrian Army has accumulated experience during years of conflict with the Zionist regime [Israel] and is able to defend itself and doesn?t need foreign assistance,? said Gen. Pourdastan.

Sectarian tensions

Speaking to Iranian officials today, Khamenei condemned the rebel attack on the mausoleum of Hujr Ibn Adi, a close companion of the Muslim prophet Mohammad who was also close to Imam Ali, the 7th-century figure revered by Shiites as the first Imam. The remains were reportedly exhumed and taken away by Islamist rebels of the Nusra Front; pictures posted online showed an empty grave and its ornate covering destroyed at the site near Damascus.

?Muslims? reaction to this bitter [incident] and condemnation of this move should continue [or] conspiracies will not stop at this limit,? Khamenei said, according to Fars News. The news agency also paraphrased Khamenei saying ?the clear footprints of enemies [were] revealed in such sacrilegious moves.??

Iran?s Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani called the desecration ?the Syrian terrorists? new crime,? using the term used by the Syrian government to describe the rebels arrayed against it.

Condemnation of the shrine attack even came from Yemen, where Yemeni?media reported the leader of?the rebellious Shiite Houthi community?saying, "This action which has been done in line with the Zionists? criminal plots seeks to increase religious intolerances.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/8xwI4zBwL9E/Israeli-airstrike-in-Syria-brings-Iran-onstage-raising-risk-of-proxy-war

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Escaping captors after 10 years, Amanda Berry ?real hero? in kidnapping case, police say

Updated 2:35 pm ET

Three women missing for about a decade are free today, and police are crediting the bravery of one of them?Amanda Berry, now 27?for escaping the captors and seeking help.

?The real hero here is Amanda,? assistant Cleveland police chief Ed Tomba told reporters at a news conference Wednesday morning. ?She got this rolling.?

Shortly before 6 p.m. ET Monday, Tomba said, Berry was able to break out of the home in Cleveland's west side neighborhood where she apparently had been held for the past 10 years. She was reported missing on April 21, 2003, after vanishing on the way home from her job at a local Burger King.

After she called 911, police responded to the home at 5:52 p.m. Two other women, Gina DeJesus, who had been missing since 2004, when she was 14, and Michelle Knight, who had been missing since 2002 when she was 20, were found inside.

Berry escaped the house along with a 6-year old girl. Police would not say who the father of the child was, but confirmed that the girl is Berry?s daughter.

While police would not comment publicly on whether the women had been abused or raped while held captive, several publications quote police sources as saying the women had been forced to have sex with their captors, resulting in multiple pregnancies.

Police have arrested three brothers in connection to the case: Ariel Castro, 52, the owner of the home, and brothers Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50. They have not been charged. Tomba said the men were taken into custody about 6:30 p.m. and will be charged within 36 hours.

The stories of Berry and DeJesus have captivated the city of Cleveland for a decade. They have been the subject of numerous vigils and city searches. Police have followed leads over the years, including digging up two backyards seeking their remains. On Monday, crowds gathered in the neighborhood where they were found and at the hospital where they were taken later.

?Our prayers have finally been answered?this nightmare is over,? said Stephen Anthony, special agent in charge of the Cleveland office of the FBI.

While much has been written about Berry and DeJesus, and the efforts to find them, not much has been written about Michelle Knight. "She has been the focus of very few tips," Tomba said.

Knight was last seen on Aug. 22, 2002. Police say she was 20 years old at the time and went missing from the same neighborhood as Berry and DeJesus.

Police said all three women appeared healthy, other than needing a good meal. They were taken to a Cleveland hospital, where they were reunited with their families?a scene police described as "chaotic."

According to public records, Ariel Castro has owned the home where the kidnapped women were found since 1992. Records also show Castro has at least one adult son and a grown daughter living two to three hours from Cleveland.

Several media outlets also report that a younger daughter, Emily Castro, is in an Indiana prison for slashing the throat of her then-11-month-old daughter in 2008. Indiana prison records confirm Emily Castro is currently serving 25 years for attempted murder.

Photos on a Facebook page show the man believed to be Castro?s son visiting Emily Castro in prison earlier this year.

?A Father's Love for his Children is like none other,? reads a comment on the photo from a man who identifies himself as Ariel Castro on Facebook.

Police said that officers had been called to Castro's home twice but nothing had come of the calls.

In March 2000, Castro reported a fight in the street, and in January 2004, officials from Children and Family Services went to the home to investigate an incident related to his employment as a bus driver. Castro, then a bus driver for the Cleveland schools, had gone to lunch after running his route, despite having one more child still on the bus.

Police say they investigated that incident, but felt there was no criminal wrong-doing and the matter was dropped.

?He was interviewed extensively due to that investigation,? Tomba said.

Mayor Frank Jackson said housing and building records also have been reviewed and no reports of violations were found.

An American flag and a Puerto Rican flag hung outside the front door of the house Tuesday. The Puerto Rican flag bothered Lucy Delgado, a nearby resident with family living in the largely Puerto Rican neighborhood.

"It doesn't deserve to be there," Delgado said of the flag. "This is like, oh my God crazy stuff like this should never happen here."

Delgado described the community as tight knit. "Everybody knows each others business," she said.

Police declined to provide specific details about the home where the women were kept or its condition upon their arrival on Monday. They said the home is an active crime scene and detectives were processing it through the night.

Asked if they believe the kidnappings were part of a larger operation, police officials said they were looking into every possible angle. It appears that Berry, DeJesus and Knight were the only victims.

Click image to see more photos. (AP/FBI)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/escaped-cleveland-woman-amanda-berry-real-hero-kidnapping-141444873.html

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Thursday, 7 March 2013

lemunicipal.org | Making Online Businesses

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Source: http://lemunicipal.org/making-online-businesses.html

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Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Stressed proteins can cause blood clots for hours

Mar. 5, 2013 ? New research from Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and the Puget Sound Blood Center (PSBC) has revealed how stresses of flow in the small blood vessels of the heart and brain could cause a common protein to change shape and form dangerous blood clots. The scientists were surprised to find that the proteins could remain in the dangerous, clot-initiating shape for up to five hours before returning to their normal, healthy shape.

The study -- the first of its kind -- focused on a protein called von Willebrand factor, or VWF, a key player in clot formation. A team led by Rice physicist Ching-Hwa Kiang found that "shear" forces, like those found in small arteries of patients with atherosclerosis, cause snippets of nonclotting VWF to change into a clot-forming shape for hours at a time. The finding appears online this week in Physical Review Letters.

"When I first heard what Dr. Kiang's team had found, I was shocked," said blood platelet expert Dr. Joel Moake, a study co-author who holds joint appointments at Rice and BCM. Moake, whose research group was the first to describe how high shear stress could cause platelets to stick to VWF, said, "I had thought that the condition might last for such a short time that it would be unmeasurable. No one expected to find that this condition would persist for hours. This has profound clinical implications."

Kiang, associate professor of physics and astronomy and of bioengineering, studies the forces involved in protein folding. Proteins are the workhorses of biology. Tens of thousands are produced each second in every living cell, and each of these folds into a characteristic shape within moments of its creation. Despite its ubiquity, protein folding is an immensely complex process that is shrouded in mystery.

Kiang is a pioneer in the use of atomic force microscopes (AFM) to shed light on the fundamental physical processes involved in protein folding. The AFM has a tiny needle with a tip measuring just a few atoms across. The needle is suspended from a tiny arm that bobs up and down over a surface. Kiang's team uses the bobbing needle to grab and pull apart individual protein molecules. By stretching these like rubber bands, her team has shown it can measure the precise physical forces that hold them in their folded shape.

"In this study, we did more than just measure the forces; we used those measurements to see what state the molecule was in," Kiang said. "In this way, we were able to study the dynamics of the molecule, to see how it changed over a period of time."

Moake, a senior research scientist in bioengineering at Rice and professor of medicine at BCM, said the work is vitally important because it helps explain the workings of VWF.

"VWF is synthesized in the cells that line the walls of blood vessels, and it's stored there until the cells get signals that the vessels are in danger of injury," Moake said. "In response to those stimuli, the cell secretes VWF. It's a long protein, and one end remains anchored to the cell while the rest unfurls from the wall like a streamer."

The act of unfurling makes VWF sticky for platelets, and that begins the process of hemostasis, which prevents people from bleeding to death when blood vessels are damaged by cuts and wounds.

"The body recognizes when clotting must stop -- when there are too many strings, too much sticking, too many platelet clumps -- and it uses an enzyme to clip the long VWF strings," Moake explained. "First, it makes large, soluble versions of the strings that remain somewhat sticky, and then these large soluble portions of VWF are reduced into smaller subunits of VWF that circulate in the plasma."

Under normal conditions, these circulating subunits, which are called PVWF, fold into compact shapes and cease to be sticky to platelets. However, previous research had shown that a type of physical stress called "shear" -- which can arise in partially occluded arterial blood vessels with high flow rates -- could cause PVWF to become sticky to platelets.

"That's all we knew," Moake said. "We didn't know how the conformation of the PVWF protein changed. That is why Dr. Kiang's research is so important and makes it more likely that therapeutic interventions can be more rationally designed."

To study the problem, Kiang's lab worked closely with Moake's team at Rice's BioScience Research Collaborative and with researchers from the laboratory of co-author Jing-fei Dong, formerly of BCM and now at PSBC in Seattle. Moake's and Dong's groups prepared samples of PVWF, subjecting some to the shear stresses known to induce clot formation. Kiang's team used AFMs to test the samples. Through a combination of experiments and deductive reasoning, her team determined exactly which portion of PVWF changed its conformation during shear stress. They also determined how long the protein remained partially unfurled before relaxing into its natural shape.

"The next step will be to design new experiments that allow us to monitor the proteins as they bind to platelets and initiate clot formation," Kiang said. "That will tell us even more about the physical properties of the proteins and provide more clues about potential therapies."

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Alliance for NanoHealth, the Welch Foundation, the Mary R. Gibson Foundation and the Everett Hinkson Fund. Study co-authors include Rice graduate students Sithara Wijeratne and Eric Frey, former Rice graduate student Eric Botello, BCM researchers Hui-Chun Yeh and Angela Bergeron, Rice undergraduate Jay Patel, PSBC's Zhou Zhou and Rice senior research technicians Leticia Nolasco and Nancy Turner.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Rice University. The original article was written by Jade Boyd.

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

Journal Reference:

Sithara S. Wijeratne, Eric Botello, Hui-Chun Yeh, Zhou Zhou, Angela L. Bergeron, Eric W. Frey, Jay M. Patel, Leticia Nolasco, Nancy A. Turner, Joel L. Moake, Jing-Fei Dong, and Ching-Hwa Kiang. Mechanical Activation of a Multimeric Adhesive Protein Through Domain Conformational Change. Physical Review Letters, 2013 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.108102

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/wWpqEdbBShI/130305145815.htm

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