NEW YORK (Reuters) - Authors suing Google over the digitization of their books have asked a New York court to order the Internet company to pay $750 for each book it copied, distributed or displayed.
The authors' filing was lodged in federal court in the Southern District of New York last month, but was only made public on Friday. In the filing, the Authors Guild, whose president is novelist-lawyer Scott Thurow, urged the court to rule that Google's digitization project does not constitute "fair use" under copyright law.
A Google spokeswoman said in an emailed statement: "We believe Google Books constitutes fair use by allowing users to identify interesting books and find ways to borrow or buy those books, much like a card catalog for the digital age."
Litigation over Google's digitization project began seven years ago after Google began copying millions of books thanks to an agreement with libraries, including those at Harvard University, Oxford University and Stanford University.
Google has said it has scanned more than 20 million books since the agreement was made in 2004.
In March 2011, a federal judge rejected a $125 million settlement in the case. In May, the authors were granted class action status.
The named plaintiffs in the case include former New York Yankees baseball pitcher Jim Boulton, who wrote "Ball Four."
(Reporting by Rebecca Hamilton; editing by Andre Grenon)
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The development community has been off and running ever since the SDK for Jelly Bean was released a couple of days ago. It was originally only available to Google I/O attendees who received the takju version of the Galaxy Nexus. Shortly after, ROMs were created for all GSM Galaxy Nexus? as well as the Verizon Galaxy Nexus. Then yesterday we saw the HTC One X receive a port from the Verizon ROM, but not much was working.
Now all we have left is the Samsung Galaxy S III, at least for flagship phones. Well XDA member faryabb,?along with some help from randomblame, just del?
Continue Reading Here Samsung Galaxy S III (I9300) gets a Jelly Bean port as well Robert Nazarian ? talkandroid.com
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Key part of plants' rapid response system revealedPublic release date: 18-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Diana Lutz dlutz@wustl.edu 314-935-5272 Washington University in St. Louis
International collaboration puts molecular face on enzyme family that allows plants to adjust quickly to changing conditions
Science has known about plant hormones since Charles Darwin experimented with plant shoots and showed that the shoots bend toward the light as long as their tips, which are secreting a growth hormone, aren't cut off.
But it is only recently that scientists have begun to put a molecular face on the biochemical systems that modulate the levels of plant hormones to defend the plant from herbivore or pathogen attack or to allow it to adjust to changes in temperature, precipitation or soil nutrients.
Now, a cross-Atlantic collaboration between scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, both in Grenoble, France, has revealed the workings of a switch that activates plant hormones, tags them for storage or marks them for destruction.
The research appeared online in the May 24 issue of Science Express and will be published in a forthcoming issue of Science.
"The enzymes are cellular stop/go switches that turn hormone responses on and off," says Joseph Jez, PhD, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at WUSTL and senior author on the paper.
The research is relevant not just to design of herbicides some of which are synthetic plant hormones but also to the genetic modification of plants to suit more extreme growing conditions due to unchecked climate change.
What plant hormones do
Plants can seem pretty defenseless. After all, they can't run from the weed whacker or move to the shade when they're wilting, and they don't have teeth, claws, nervous systems, immune systems or most of the other protective equipment that comes standard with an animal chassis.
But they do make hormones. Or to be precise because hormones are often defined as chemicals secreted by glands and plants don't have glands they make chemicals that in very low concentrations dramatically alter their development, growth or metabolism. In the original sense of the word "hormone," which is Greek for impetus, they stir up the plant.
In plants as in animals, hormones control growth and development. For example, the auxins, one group of plant hormones, trigger cell division, stem elongation and differentiation into roots, shoots and leaves. The herbicide 2,4-D is a synthetic auxin that kills broadleaf plants, such as dandelions or pigweed, by forcing them to grow to the point of exhaustion.
Asked for his favorite example of a plant hormone, Corey S. Westfall brings up its chemical defense systems. Westfall, a graduate student in the Jez laboratory, who together with Chloe Zubieta, PhD, a staff scientist at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility did most of the work on the research.
Walking through a public park in St. Louis near WUSTL, Westfall often sees oak leaves with brown spots on them. The spots are cells that have deliberately committed cell suicide to deny water and nutrients to a pathogen that landed in the center of the spot. This form of self-sterilization is triggered by the plant hormone salicylic acid.
Westfall also mentions the jasmonates, which cause plants to secrete compounds such as tannins that discourage herbivores. Tannins are toxic to insects because they bind to salivary proteins and inactivate them. So insects that ingest lots of tannins fail to gain weight and may eventually die.
A little more, a little less
Hormones, in other words, allow plants to respond quickly and sometimes dramatically to developmental cues and environmental stresses. But in order to respond appropriately, plants have to be able to sensitively control the level and activity of the hormone molecules.
The Science paper reveals a key control mechanism: a family of enzymes that attach amino acids to hormone molecules to turn the hormones on or off. Depending on the hormone and the amino acid, the reaction can activate the hormone, put it in storage or mark it for destruction.
For example, in the model plant, thale cress, fewer than 5 percent of the auxins are found in the active free-form. Most are conjugated (attached) to amino acids and inactive, constituting a pool of molecules that can be quickly converted to the active free form.
The attachment of amino acids is catalyzed by a large family of enzymes (proteins) called the GH3s, which probably originated 400 million years ago, before the evolution of land plants. The genes diversified over time: there are only a few in mosses, but 19 in thale cress and more than 100 in total.
"Nature finds things that works and sticks with them," Jez says. The GH3s, he says, are a remarkable example of gene family expansion to suit multiple purposes.
A swiveling hormone modification machine
The first GH3 gene from soybean was sequenced in 1984. But gene (or protein) sequences reveal little about what proteins do and how they do it. To understand function, the scientists had to figure out how these enzymes, which start out as long necklaces of amino acids, fold into knobbly globules with protective indentations for chemical reactions.
Unfortunately, protein folding is a notoriously hard problem, one as yet beyond the reach of computer calculations at least as a matter of routine. So most protein structures are still solved by the time-intensive process of crystallizing the protein and bombarding the crystal with X-rays to locate the atoms within it. Both the Jez lab and the Structural Biology Group at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility specialize in protein crystallization.
By good fortune, the scientists were able to freeze the enzymes in two different conformations. This information and that gleaned by mutating the amino acids lining the enzyme's active site let them piece together what the enzymes were doing.
It turned out that the GH3 enzymes, which fold into a shape called a hammer and anvil, cataylze a two-step chemical reaction. In the first step, the enzyme's active site is open allowing ATP (adenosine triphosphate, the cell's energy storage molecule) and the free acid form of the plant hormone to enter.
Once the molecules are bound, the enzyme strips phosphate groups off the ATP molecule to form AMP and sticks the AMP onto an "activated" form of the hormone, a reaction called adenylation.
Adenylation triggers part of the enzyme to rotate over the active site, preparing it to catalyze the second reaction, in which an amino acid is snapped onto the hormone molecule. This is called a transferase reaction.
"After you pop off the two phosphates," Jez says, "the top of the molecule ratchets in and sets up a completely different active site. We were lucky enough to capture that crystallographically because we caught the enzyme in both positions."
The same basic two-step reaction can either activate or inactivate a hormone molecule. Addition of the amino acid isoleucine to a jasmonate, for example, makes the jasmonate hormone bioactive. On the other hand addition of the amino acid aspartate to the auxin known as IAA marks it for destruction.
This is the first time any GH3 structure has been solved.
Plant breeding in a hurry
Understanding the powerful plant hormone systems will give scientists a much faster and more targeted way to breed and domesticate plant species, speed that will be needed to keep up with the rapid shift of plant growing zones.
Plant hormones, like animal hormones, typically affect the transcription of many genes and so have multiple effects, some desirable and others undesirable. But GH3 mutants provide a tantalizing glimpse of what might be possible: some are resistant to bacterial pathogens, others to fungal pathogens and some are exceptionally drought tolerant.
Westfall mentions that in 2003, a scientist at Purdue University figured out that a corn strain that had a short stalk but normal ears and tassels had a mutation that interferes with the flow of the hormone auxin in the plant.
Because the plants are so much smaller, they are relatively drought resistant and might be able to grow in India, where North American corn varieties cannot survive. Similar high-yield dwarf varieties might prevent famine in areas of the world where many people are at risk of starvation.
###
[ | 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.
Key part of plants' rapid response system revealedPublic release date: 18-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Diana Lutz dlutz@wustl.edu 314-935-5272 Washington University in St. Louis
International collaboration puts molecular face on enzyme family that allows plants to adjust quickly to changing conditions
Science has known about plant hormones since Charles Darwin experimented with plant shoots and showed that the shoots bend toward the light as long as their tips, which are secreting a growth hormone, aren't cut off.
But it is only recently that scientists have begun to put a molecular face on the biochemical systems that modulate the levels of plant hormones to defend the plant from herbivore or pathogen attack or to allow it to adjust to changes in temperature, precipitation or soil nutrients.
Now, a cross-Atlantic collaboration between scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, both in Grenoble, France, has revealed the workings of a switch that activates plant hormones, tags them for storage or marks them for destruction.
The research appeared online in the May 24 issue of Science Express and will be published in a forthcoming issue of Science.
"The enzymes are cellular stop/go switches that turn hormone responses on and off," says Joseph Jez, PhD, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at WUSTL and senior author on the paper.
The research is relevant not just to design of herbicides some of which are synthetic plant hormones but also to the genetic modification of plants to suit more extreme growing conditions due to unchecked climate change.
What plant hormones do
Plants can seem pretty defenseless. After all, they can't run from the weed whacker or move to the shade when they're wilting, and they don't have teeth, claws, nervous systems, immune systems or most of the other protective equipment that comes standard with an animal chassis.
But they do make hormones. Or to be precise because hormones are often defined as chemicals secreted by glands and plants don't have glands they make chemicals that in very low concentrations dramatically alter their development, growth or metabolism. In the original sense of the word "hormone," which is Greek for impetus, they stir up the plant.
In plants as in animals, hormones control growth and development. For example, the auxins, one group of plant hormones, trigger cell division, stem elongation and differentiation into roots, shoots and leaves. The herbicide 2,4-D is a synthetic auxin that kills broadleaf plants, such as dandelions or pigweed, by forcing them to grow to the point of exhaustion.
Asked for his favorite example of a plant hormone, Corey S. Westfall brings up its chemical defense systems. Westfall, a graduate student in the Jez laboratory, who together with Chloe Zubieta, PhD, a staff scientist at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility did most of the work on the research.
Walking through a public park in St. Louis near WUSTL, Westfall often sees oak leaves with brown spots on them. The spots are cells that have deliberately committed cell suicide to deny water and nutrients to a pathogen that landed in the center of the spot. This form of self-sterilization is triggered by the plant hormone salicylic acid.
Westfall also mentions the jasmonates, which cause plants to secrete compounds such as tannins that discourage herbivores. Tannins are toxic to insects because they bind to salivary proteins and inactivate them. So insects that ingest lots of tannins fail to gain weight and may eventually die.
A little more, a little less
Hormones, in other words, allow plants to respond quickly and sometimes dramatically to developmental cues and environmental stresses. But in order to respond appropriately, plants have to be able to sensitively control the level and activity of the hormone molecules.
The Science paper reveals a key control mechanism: a family of enzymes that attach amino acids to hormone molecules to turn the hormones on or off. Depending on the hormone and the amino acid, the reaction can activate the hormone, put it in storage or mark it for destruction.
For example, in the model plant, thale cress, fewer than 5 percent of the auxins are found in the active free-form. Most are conjugated (attached) to amino acids and inactive, constituting a pool of molecules that can be quickly converted to the active free form.
The attachment of amino acids is catalyzed by a large family of enzymes (proteins) called the GH3s, which probably originated 400 million years ago, before the evolution of land plants. The genes diversified over time: there are only a few in mosses, but 19 in thale cress and more than 100 in total.
"Nature finds things that works and sticks with them," Jez says. The GH3s, he says, are a remarkable example of gene family expansion to suit multiple purposes.
A swiveling hormone modification machine
The first GH3 gene from soybean was sequenced in 1984. But gene (or protein) sequences reveal little about what proteins do and how they do it. To understand function, the scientists had to figure out how these enzymes, which start out as long necklaces of amino acids, fold into knobbly globules with protective indentations for chemical reactions.
Unfortunately, protein folding is a notoriously hard problem, one as yet beyond the reach of computer calculations at least as a matter of routine. So most protein structures are still solved by the time-intensive process of crystallizing the protein and bombarding the crystal with X-rays to locate the atoms within it. Both the Jez lab and the Structural Biology Group at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility specialize in protein crystallization.
By good fortune, the scientists were able to freeze the enzymes in two different conformations. This information and that gleaned by mutating the amino acids lining the enzyme's active site let them piece together what the enzymes were doing.
It turned out that the GH3 enzymes, which fold into a shape called a hammer and anvil, cataylze a two-step chemical reaction. In the first step, the enzyme's active site is open allowing ATP (adenosine triphosphate, the cell's energy storage molecule) and the free acid form of the plant hormone to enter.
Once the molecules are bound, the enzyme strips phosphate groups off the ATP molecule to form AMP and sticks the AMP onto an "activated" form of the hormone, a reaction called adenylation.
Adenylation triggers part of the enzyme to rotate over the active site, preparing it to catalyze the second reaction, in which an amino acid is snapped onto the hormone molecule. This is called a transferase reaction.
"After you pop off the two phosphates," Jez says, "the top of the molecule ratchets in and sets up a completely different active site. We were lucky enough to capture that crystallographically because we caught the enzyme in both positions."
The same basic two-step reaction can either activate or inactivate a hormone molecule. Addition of the amino acid isoleucine to a jasmonate, for example, makes the jasmonate hormone bioactive. On the other hand addition of the amino acid aspartate to the auxin known as IAA marks it for destruction.
This is the first time any GH3 structure has been solved.
Plant breeding in a hurry
Understanding the powerful plant hormone systems will give scientists a much faster and more targeted way to breed and domesticate plant species, speed that will be needed to keep up with the rapid shift of plant growing zones.
Plant hormones, like animal hormones, typically affect the transcription of many genes and so have multiple effects, some desirable and others undesirable. But GH3 mutants provide a tantalizing glimpse of what might be possible: some are resistant to bacterial pathogens, others to fungal pathogens and some are exceptionally drought tolerant.
Westfall mentions that in 2003, a scientist at Purdue University figured out that a corn strain that had a short stalk but normal ears and tassels had a mutation that interferes with the flow of the hormone auxin in the plant.
Because the plants are so much smaller, they are relatively drought resistant and might be able to grow in India, where North American corn varieties cannot survive. Similar high-yield dwarf varieties might prevent famine in areas of the world where many people are at risk of starvation.
###
[ | 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.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) ? "Tell President Obama: Stop the spending," screams an ad running during the broadcast of NBC's "Today" show in central Virginia. At a break during ABC's "The View," Mitt Romney is praised in a different spot for his "strong leadership."
In Tampa, Fla., a commercial in the middle of "Dateline NBC" shows a woman fretting about the national debt under President Barack Obama and saying: "He spent like our country's credit card had no limit." In an ad seen during evening newscasts, the Obama campaign trashes Romney for "the worst economic record in the country" when he was governor of Massachusetts.
The political pitches are coming early and often in Virginia, Florida and other hotly contested states that are expected to determine the outcome of the White House contest. So far they're mostly jammed around local newscasts and current affairs shows along with an occasional appearance on shows like "The Price is Right" on CBS and ABC's "General Hospital."
At this stage in the campaign, both Republicans and Democrats are focusing the bulk of their advertising on selling their campaign message to a select group of people ? those who pay close attention to the news, seek to stay informed and influence those around them.
"They are trying to get opinion leaders, early donors and the press to focus on certain issues or events," says Joe Mercurio, a New York-based political media buyer.
This was the finding when an Associated Press reporter recently spent several hours watching television in Richmond and Tampa, two population hubs in states that have emerged as pivotal to the election prospects for Obama and Romney. Obama carried Virginia and Florida over Republican John McCain in 2008 but is fighting for a repeat this time.
Both states and both media markets are awash in TV ads in a crush noteworthy for its negativity, early start and involvement of outside groups that are likely to spend more on commercials than both the Obama and Romney campaigns.
To be sure, both sides dramatically will expand their advertising in the coming months. They'll try to target their messages to older people by running TV ads during daytime programming, and to young voters by focusing on late-night shows.
But for now, their target is those who tend to set the agenda in communities, as well as the most prized voters.
As Elizabeth Wilner, vice president of Kantar Media-Campaign Media Analysis Group, put it: "News programming is still a reliable place to find undecideds."
___
The Richmond-Petersburg media market is one of three in Virginia that consistently rank among the top 10 in the country for ad spending by both the campaigns and independent groups. The others are Norfolk/Newport News on the state's eastern edge and Lynchburg/Roanoke in south-central Virginia.
The Obama campaign spent $721,000 to advertise in Virginia during this recent week compared with $384,000 for the Romney campaign. But Crossroads GPS, a conservative-leaning independent group spent about $437,000 on ads attacking Obama in Virginia, putting the pro-Romney efforts on par with the president's team.
Obama also got an assist from Priorities USA Action, a group formed by two of his former aides. It spent about $90,000 on ads in Virginia that week.
In Richmond, campaign ads were tucked between commercials for Verizon and Dove soap, as well as spots for local restaurants and businesses like carpet cleaners.
Romney's campaign had the largest ad presence, with media trackers estimating that an average television viewer would have seen a Romney ad 10 times over the course of the week, an Obama ad eight times, a Crossroads ad four times and a Priorities USA ad three times.
Romney's ad, "Strong Leadership," popped up during morning shows and around evening newscasts. It featured upbeat music and imagines of Romney and his wife Ann on the campaign trail and a narrator promising unity and results if Romney defeats Obama in November.
From day one, Mitt Romney's strong leadership will make all the difference on jobs," the ad says.
Crossroads ran ads attacking Obama. "Stopwatch" warned of the growth in federal debt since Obama took office, asserting: "He's adding $4 billion in debt every day."
The Obama campaign responded in kind with a spot that criticized Romney's one-year term as Massachusetts governor, showing a clip of Romney from 2002 saying: "I speak the language of business. ... I know how jobs are created." The ad then ticked through economic statistics and said: "Romney economics: It didn't work then, and it won't work now."
Priorities USA Action focused on Romney's years at the private equity firm Bain Capital. The group's ad, "Loris," featured a woman describing her experience being laid off by the Ampad company in Indiana. "When Mitt Romney did that, he made me sick," she said.
___
Tampa is the second largest metropolitan region in Florida and anchors the western end of the I-4 corridor that bisects the central part of the state. The corridor is home to many swing voters and Tampa will host the Republican National Convention in late August.
In Florida during this recent week, the Obama campaign spent just under $1 million to run ads compared with $638,000 for Crossroads GPS. That gave the Romney campaign the luxury of staying off the air and saving money.
Indeed, a day of television viewing in Tampa found a nearly constant stream of negative ads volleyed between the Obama campaign and Crossroads. As in Virginia, both sides focused on running ads around morning and evening newscasts in Tampa.
The Obama campaign has run several commercials in Florida including ads showcasing his support for Medicare and federal assistance for veterans. But the anti-Romney ad "Heard it All Before," which Obama also was running in Virginia, held sway in Tampa that week.
Priorities USA Action was up with its "Loris" ad but the spot ran less frequently than the Obama campaign's own ads.
Crossroads dug in with two ads, including one targeting women who may have voted for Obama in 2008 but are looking elsewhere this time. The ad depicts a mother of two adult children who still live with her because they can't find work.
"I supported President Obama's agenda. But he spent like our country's credit card had no limit. How will my kids pay that off when they can't get jobs?" the woman says.
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Follow Beth Fouhy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bfouhy
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Public release date: 18-Jun-2012
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