Call it "walled-garden manicuring," if you will. Adblock Plus is now capable of blocking that many more of the sorts of annoyances that only Facebook provides to its readers.
Having the ad-blocking plug-in block the likes of sponsored stories, promoted posts, and so on isn't new. What is new is the ability to block things like upcoming events in your area, or "People You May Know" displays.
Twenty-one additional Facebook elements can now be blocked with the new plug-in. Most of them are attempts to glean feedback from the user about other Facebook content ("Games you may like" or "Rate movies you've watched"). Even Adblock Plus' own makers admit, "[These] are not advertisements. Rather, this material is actually from Facebook, and it is served to you based upon the information Facebook receives from your profile and activities."
The privacy implications of this are never gladdening, especially if such material ends up leaking out of Facebook entirely. No surprise then that some people would prefer it was never served up at all. But being able to one-up Facebook's own customization almost certainly won't sit well with Facebook.
Adblock Plus has garnered itself a mixed reputation from content providers and end-users alike. Many end-users understand all too well that the vast majority of sites need ad revenue to survive, but are fed up with obnoxious, experience-killing ads that leak privacy data. But Adblock Plus' attempts to dictate the direction of Web-based advertising via its Acceptable Ads initiative has come off as a heavy-handed attempt to dictate how advertising on the Web should work. (Adblock Plus recently reached out to Twitter to be non-annoying right as that company was filing for its IPO.)
Until now Adblock Plus has focused most of its work on blocking ads on sites where the difference between an ad and the actual content is normally quite clear. But now it seems Adblock Plus is also attempting to change the ways end-users experience sites where content, advertisement, and promotion are heavily -- sometimes inextricably -- mixed.
Facebook could fight back in any number of ways. The most urbane would be to change its service to allow the most annoying content to be removed entirely or maybe after a short period of use. (For example, you have to endure "Games you may like" at least one day a month before you're given the option to toggle it off.) But it's more likely the company'll fight back by finding ways to render Adblock Plus' blocking useless -- a move that could spark an arms race between two of the Web's most contentious and divisive presences.
It all amounts to a striking example of one third-party company providing ways for users to experience another third-party company's content -- perhaps even at the expense of Facebook losing a way to harvest information from its users in an aboveboard fashion.
That's the real worry: What if, when faced with challenges like Adblock Plus to its data-gathering model, Facebook decides to remind folks what's going on Friday night downtown in the middle of a chat session or asks you whether or not you've seen a movie right when you're typing its name in a reply to someone else's post?
The Food and Drug Administration is trying to solve a stubborn mystery surrounding the deaths of almost 600 dogs that ate jerky treats, and officials are hoping pet owners and veterinarians can help them figure out what exactly may be causing the illnesses.
The problem appears to be tied to dog pet treats made in China, the FDA said, though investigators haven't yet found a certain cause. The FDA says it has received reports of illnesses in 3,600 dogs and 10 cats in the United States since 2007, and 580 dogs died. The pet treats were sold under a wide variety of brand names.
The complaints were sent in by pet owners, some of them unsure of the cause of their pet's illness. But many others were sent in by veterinarians who have seen repeated cases of kidney failure, gastrointestinal bleeding, and a rare kidney disorder, the FDA said.
FDA veterinarian Martine Hartogensis says the agency is now appealing to pet owners and veterinarians to send them more information on animals who may have gotten sick after eating the treats. Pets can suffer from a decreased appetite, decreased activity, vomiting and diarrhea among other symptoms within hours of eating treats sold as jerky tenders or strips made of chicken, duck, sweet potatoes or dried fruit.
"This has been one of the most mysterious and elusive issues we've had to investigate," Hartogensis said. She said the investigation has been particularly complicated because researchers haven't been able to pin down what ingredient may be causing the problem and because many of the treats and their ingredients are imported. And not much is known about animal deaths. While autopsies on humans can often determine the cause of death, pet owners usually forgo expensive autopsies on their deceased animals.
Dr. Richard Goldstein of the Animal Medical Center in New York said he has been investigating the illnesses since they appeared to begin in 2007, and he is still treating dogs that seem to suffer from the mysterious condition. He was consulted on a case just last week, he said.
In his experience, many of the cases have been small dogs who are eating a large amount of treats. He said the illnesses are rare, so he usually knows immediately when a sickness is connected to the jerky.
He said most dogs he treated were fine if they stop eating the treats. That's why it's important for dog owners to know about the problem, he said.
"The word is not out," he said. "Some vets don't even know about this."
The FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine has run more than 1,200 tests, visited pet treat manufacturing plants in China and worked with researchers, state labs and foreign governments but hasn't determined the exact cause of the illness.
The FDA has issued previous warnings, and a number of jerky pet treat products were removed from the market in January after a New York state lab reported finding evidence of up to six drugs in certain jerky pet treats made in China. The products removed from the market then included Milo's Kitchen Chicken Jerky Treats and Chicken Grillers, made by Del Monte, and Waggin' Train and Canyon Creek Ranch dog treats, made by Nestle Purina.
But others remain on store shelves, and FDA doesn't want to conduct a recall without a definitive cause.
Sling Media has just rolled out an update that brings a number of improvements to the Slingbox 500 and to the SlingPlayer app. For the Slingbox 500, Blockbuster On Demand is now available as a premium video service along with a new My Media feature that lets users access media via a USB drive. Only ...
Built on Apache Hadoop YARN architecture, HDP 2.0 changes Hadoop from a single-purpose Web-scale batch data processing platform into a multi-use operating system for batch, interactive, online, and stream processing.
Case in point: Running SQL on Hadoop. Business analysts have been using SQL as the query language to perform ad-hoc queries against data warehouses for years. If you're creating a data lake using Hadoop, you've got to be able to query that data using SQL.
"But by building SQL access on top of Hadoop, it just highlights the challenge of Hadoop being a single application system," writes Arun Murthy, founder and architect at Hortonworks and former architect of the Yahoo Hadoop Map-Reduce Development Team. "For when I run a SQL query on that data, it could consume all the resources of the cluster and cause performance issues for the other applications and jobs running in the cluster-not a good outcome to say the least."
The answer to that problem is YARN (Yet Another Resource Negotiator), the foundation of the recently released Hadoop 2. Apache Hadoop YARN serves as the Hadoop operating system, taking what was a single-use data platform for batch processing and evolving it into a multi-use platform that enables batch, interactive, online and stream processing.
YARN acts as the primary resource manager and mediator of access to data stored in HDFS (Hadoop distributed file system), giving enterprises the capability to store data in a single place and then interact with it in multiple ways, simultaneously, with consistent levels of service.
Hortonworks, provider of the HDP (Hortonworks Data Platform), one of the most popular distributions of Hadoop, was quick to take up the YARN banner today with the announcement of the general availability of HDP 2.0.
HDP 2.0 is the first commercial distribution built on Hadoop 2, delivering the YARN-based architecture and new features from Phase 2 of the Stinger Initiative. The Stinger Initiative is a community-based effort that aims to enhance the speed, scale and breadth of SQL semantics supported by Apache Hive.
"The YARN-based architecture of HDP 2.0 delivers on our mission to enable the modern data architecture by providing one enterprise Hadoop that deploy integrates with existing, and future, data center technologies, says Shaun Connolly, vice president of corporate strategy at Hortonworks.
"In our benchmarking across some of the customers we've been working with, classic MapReduce jobs will just port over from the 1.0 line to the 2.0 line," Connolly adds. "You get twice the performance and you can run twice the jobs. You get a lot more headroom in the cluster."
Meanwhile, the addition of Hive 0.12 (the culmination of phase 2 of the Stinger Initiative) delivers large performance gains for queries that bring them in line with "human interactive response time rather than batch response time."
Connolly says queries that previously took 1,400 seconds for a response can now get responses in fewer than 10 seconds. Phase 3 (targeted for the first quarter of 2014), is expected to improve those response times even more by allowing interim processing to happen within memory.
HDP 2.0 is available for download now. Connolly says HDP 2.0 for Windows will be available next month.
HIV-positive babies rest in an orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya. Treatment right after birth may make it possible for HIV-positive newborns to fight off the virus.
Brent Stirton/Getty Images
HIV-positive babies rest in an orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya. Treatment right after birth may make it possible for HIV-positive newborns to fight off the virus.
Brent Stirton/Getty Images
A 3-year-old girl born in Mississippi with HIV acquired from her mother during pregnancy remains free of detectable virus at least 18 months after she stopped taking antiviral pills.
New results on this child, published online by the New England Journal of Medicine, appear to green-light a study in the advanced planning stages in which researchers around the world will try to replicate her successful treatment in other infected newborns.
And it means that the Mississippi girl still can be considered possibly or even probably cured of HIV infection — only the second person in the world with that lucky distinction. The first is Timothy Ray Brown, a 47-year-old American man apparently cured by a bone marrow transplant he received in Berlin a half-dozen years ago.
This new report addresses many of the questions raised earlier this year when disclosure of the Mississippi child's case was called a possible game-changer in the long search for an HIV cure.
"There was some very healthy skepticism," Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester, tells Shots. She's part of the team that has been exhaustively testing the toddler's blood and considering every possible explanation for her apparently HIV-free state.
Luzuriaga is confident the latest tests prove that the child was truly infected with HIV at the time of her birth — not merely carrying remnants of free-floating virus or infected blood cells transferred before birth from her mother, as some skeptics wondered.
The UMass researcher says there's no way the child's mother could have contributed enough of her own blood plasma to the newborn to account for the high levels of HIV detected in the child's blood shortly after birth.
Similarly, Luzuriaga says, new calculations show that the mother "would have had to transfer a huge number of [HIV-infected] white blood cells to the baby in order for us to get the [viral] signal that we got early on."
Clinching the question as far as the researchers are concerned is the infant's response to anti-HIV drugs that she began receiving shortly after birth. The remarkable earliness of her treatment is a crucial feature that makes this child different from almost any other.
"There's a very characteristic clearance curve of viruses once we start babies on treatment," Luzuriaga says. "The decay of viruses we see in this baby is exactly what we saw in early treatment trials from 20 years ago when we initiated anti-retroviral therapy and shut off viral replication. That's a very different decay curve than you would expect if it were just free virus transferred to the baby."
It might be helpful to recap the unusual, if not unique, features of the Mississippi case.
Her mother did not receive prenatal care, so she was not identified as HIV-infected before delivery. If she had been, she would have received drugs that are highly effective in preventing mother-to-child transmission of the virus.
While the mother was in labor, she got HIV testing, as is routine for women without prenatal care. When that came up positive, Dr. Hannah Gay, a pediatrician at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, was ready to test the newborn for infection and start anti-retroviral medicines within 30 hours of birth.
The treatment quickly cleared the virus from the baby's blood. Normally such children would stay on antiviral drugs for a lifetime. But in this case the mother – whose life circumstances were reportedly chaotic – stopped giving the child the medication between 15 and 18 months after birth.
Gay and her colleagues caught up to the child when she was 23 months old and were astonished to discover she was apparently still virus-free despite being off treatment. Five rounds of state-of-the-art testing — at UMass, Johns Hopkins, federal research labs and the University of California San Diego — failed to reveal any trace of the virus in her blood.
That led to last spring's report and widely reported hope that the child had been cured of HIV.
But Dr. Scott Hammer, an HIV researcher at Columbia University in New York, is not quite convinced. "Is the child cured of HIV infection? The best answer at this moment is a definitive 'maybe,' " Hammer writes in a New England Journaleditorial that accompanied the report.
The reason is that a couple of tests done when the child was about 2 years old found indications that her system may contain pieces of RNA or DNA from HIV. This hints that some of the nucleic acid building blocks of the virus are hanging around within her blood cells.
There's no evidence these "proviral" remnants are capable of assembling themselves into whole viruses that can make copies of themselves. But researchers are concerned about that possibility and how it might be headed off.
"The question is whether those viral nucleic acids have the ability at some point to replicate and allow a rebound of the virus," Luzuriaga acknowledges. "That's why it's important to continue to test the baby over time." She says that means years.
But for now, the signs from the Mississippi child's case are encouraging enough to have generated an ambitious global human experiment that Luzuriaga says is in final planning stages.
Women who present in labor without having had prenatal care will be tested for HIV and, if positive, their infants will be intensively treated within a couple of days of birth, as the Mississippi child was. Then they'll be followed with the most sensitive tests to determine if the virus has been eradicated.
If certain criteria are met, researchers plan to decide whether it would be safe to discontinue HIV treatment deliberately and follow the children closely to see if the virus returns. (If it did, treatment would be restarted.)
If the experiment succeeds, it would be a huge advance in the prevention of childhood HIV and AIDS in many parts of the world. More than 9 out of 10 of the world's 3.4 million HIV-infected children live in sub-Saharan Africa, where many women deliver without having had prenatal care or HIV treatment. Around 900 children are newly infected every day.
Meanwhile, researchers pursuing an HIV cure will convene next month in San Francisco to consider various strategies — for adults as well as children. One other recent glimmer of hope was provided this summer by Boston researchers who reported that two HIV-infected men with lymphoma remain virus-free without treatment for several months after stopping antiviral treatment.
Creatine has been wildly popular since the 1990s. It's touted as a shortcut to gaining lean muscle mass, and packed into everything from supplement pills and powders to sports drinks. But how does it work, if at all? Is it even safe? Allow us to demystify this strange chemical beast.
There's a lot to love about USB. The plugs are small and convenient. The cable can carry both power and data. Plus, USB is, well, universal. This is why USB is considered by some to be the future of electricity. Smart grids, more convenient storage, solar power—according to a new Economist report it's all easier with USB.
The tiny tot, who is third in line to the throne, wore his cream-colored traditional christening gown for the occasion, and though he was heard crying before entering St. James' Palace for the service, he looked calm in his mother's arms upon exiting.
Middleton, 31, wore a matching cream-colored Alexander McQueen dress with coordinated pumps and a fascinator.
The service was short with only two hymns, two lessons read, and two anthems sung. The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby baptized Prince George, and Pippa Middleton and Prince Harry each read a Bible verse for the occasion.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge welcomed Prince George on July 22, 2013, and have since taken a hands-on approach to parenting. They hired Jessie Webb, Prince William's childhood nanny, to look after their son on a part-time basis.
Contact: Dr. Harald W. Platta Harald.Platta@rub.de 49-234-322-4968 Ruhr-University Bochum
2 opposing mechanisms regulate the transport of proteins in peroxisomes
Recycling or "scrap press": physicians at the Ruhr-Universitt have found out which molecular mechanisms decide about the fate of the import receptor Pex18. Pex18 is responsible for the import of proteins into specific cell components, namely peroxisomes. Two opposing regulatory circuits determine whether the receptor remains active or is broken down after the transport has been completed. "Thus, the picture of the regulation of the protein import into peroxisomes has been completed and integrated to form one single model," says Junior Professor Dr Harald Platta from the RUB Faculty of Medicine. Together with Prof Dr Ralf Erdmann and other colleagues he reports in the journal "Traffic".
Ubiquitin signals determine the fate of the receptors
Because they don't have their own DNA, peroxisomes have to import all proteins that are necessary for them to fulfil their function. For this purpose, the cell is equipped with dynamic import receptors such as Pex18. They bind proteins in the cytoplasm and transport them to the peroxisome. The RUB team had demonstrated in a previous study that the signal protein ubiquitin subsequently decides about the future fate of the receptors: if a single ubiquitin protein docks with the receptor, the receptor gets recycled; it migrates back into the cytoplasm and launches a new transport process. If an ubiquitin chain docks with the receptor, a signal is sent out for the receptor to be broken down by the proteasome, an "intracellular scrap press", so to speak. Prior to this discovery, it had not been understood in what way the cell determines on the molecular level what happens to the receptor.
Recycling or "scrap press": It all depends on the enzyme cascade
The RUB physicians found out that different enzyme cascades catalyse the two ubiquitin modifications of Pex18. In both cases, it is a three-step process: the E1 enzyme activates the ubiquitin signal which is subsequently transferred by the E2 enzyme and, eventually, coordinated by the E3 enzyme to dock with the receptor. By analysing yeast cells, the Bochum physicians found out that E2 and E3 enzymes occur in different variations, whereas there is only one type of the E1 enzyme. The docking of one single ubiquitin and an ubiquitin chain is determined by different combinations of E2 and E3 enzymes. "That means two opposing molecular machines determine the fate of the import receptor Pex18," says Harald Platta. "This discovery illustrates just how precisely the receptor's control is calibrated and how precisely the regulation associated with it is effected for the entire peroxisomal function. This project constitutes a crucial foundation for further research into the molecular causes of peroxisomal disorders."
Peroxisomes: The cell's multi-functional tools
Peroxisomes are important reaction states within the cell. They may contain up to 50 enzymes which are crucial for breaking down of fatty acids, for the disposal of hydrogen peroxide and the generation of plasmalogens which are an important component of the brain's white matter. A disruption of the protein import in peroxisomes has a negative impact on the entire metabolism and may be fatal especially for newborns.
###
Bibliographic record
F. El Magraoui, R. Brinkmeier, A. Schrtter, W. Girzalsky, T. Mller, K. Marcus, H.E. Meyer, R. Erdmann, H.W. Platta (2013): Distinct ubiquitination cascades act on the PTS2-co-receptor Pex18p, Traffic, DOI: 10.1111/tra.12120
Figure online
A figure related to this press release can be found online at: http://aktuell.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pm2013/pm00269.html.en
Further information
Jun.-Prof Dr Harald W. Platta, Physiological Chemistry, Faculty of Medicine at the Ruhr-Universitt, 44780 Bochum, Germany, phone +49/234/32-24968, email: Harald.Platta@rub.de
One click away
Earlier press release regarding protein import in peroxisomes
http://aktuell.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pm2011/pm00233.html.de
Editor: Dr Julia Weiler
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The yin and yang in the life of proteins
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
22-Oct-2013
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Contact: Dr. Harald W. Platta Harald.Platta@rub.de 49-234-322-4968 Ruhr-University Bochum
2 opposing mechanisms regulate the transport of proteins in peroxisomes
Recycling or "scrap press": physicians at the Ruhr-Universitt have found out which molecular mechanisms decide about the fate of the import receptor Pex18. Pex18 is responsible for the import of proteins into specific cell components, namely peroxisomes. Two opposing regulatory circuits determine whether the receptor remains active or is broken down after the transport has been completed. "Thus, the picture of the regulation of the protein import into peroxisomes has been completed and integrated to form one single model," says Junior Professor Dr Harald Platta from the RUB Faculty of Medicine. Together with Prof Dr Ralf Erdmann and other colleagues he reports in the journal "Traffic".
Ubiquitin signals determine the fate of the receptors
Because they don't have their own DNA, peroxisomes have to import all proteins that are necessary for them to fulfil their function. For this purpose, the cell is equipped with dynamic import receptors such as Pex18. They bind proteins in the cytoplasm and transport them to the peroxisome. The RUB team had demonstrated in a previous study that the signal protein ubiquitin subsequently decides about the future fate of the receptors: if a single ubiquitin protein docks with the receptor, the receptor gets recycled; it migrates back into the cytoplasm and launches a new transport process. If an ubiquitin chain docks with the receptor, a signal is sent out for the receptor to be broken down by the proteasome, an "intracellular scrap press", so to speak. Prior to this discovery, it had not been understood in what way the cell determines on the molecular level what happens to the receptor.
Recycling or "scrap press": It all depends on the enzyme cascade
The RUB physicians found out that different enzyme cascades catalyse the two ubiquitin modifications of Pex18. In both cases, it is a three-step process: the E1 enzyme activates the ubiquitin signal which is subsequently transferred by the E2 enzyme and, eventually, coordinated by the E3 enzyme to dock with the receptor. By analysing yeast cells, the Bochum physicians found out that E2 and E3 enzymes occur in different variations, whereas there is only one type of the E1 enzyme. The docking of one single ubiquitin and an ubiquitin chain is determined by different combinations of E2 and E3 enzymes. "That means two opposing molecular machines determine the fate of the import receptor Pex18," says Harald Platta. "This discovery illustrates just how precisely the receptor's control is calibrated and how precisely the regulation associated with it is effected for the entire peroxisomal function. This project constitutes a crucial foundation for further research into the molecular causes of peroxisomal disorders."
Peroxisomes: The cell's multi-functional tools
Peroxisomes are important reaction states within the cell. They may contain up to 50 enzymes which are crucial for breaking down of fatty acids, for the disposal of hydrogen peroxide and the generation of plasmalogens which are an important component of the brain's white matter. A disruption of the protein import in peroxisomes has a negative impact on the entire metabolism and may be fatal especially for newborns.
###
Bibliographic record
F. El Magraoui, R. Brinkmeier, A. Schrtter, W. Girzalsky, T. Mller, K. Marcus, H.E. Meyer, R. Erdmann, H.W. Platta (2013): Distinct ubiquitination cascades act on the PTS2-co-receptor Pex18p, Traffic, DOI: 10.1111/tra.12120
Figure online
A figure related to this press release can be found online at: http://aktuell.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pm2013/pm00269.html.en
Further information
Jun.-Prof Dr Harald W. Platta, Physiological Chemistry, Faculty of Medicine at the Ruhr-Universitt, 44780 Bochum, Germany, phone +49/234/32-24968, email: Harald.Platta@rub.de
One click away
Earlier press release regarding protein import in peroxisomes
http://aktuell.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pm2011/pm00233.html.de
Editor: Dr Julia Weiler
[
| 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.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all the others once seemed to have our interests at heart; now that's looking a little more questionable; in the future, who knows where it'll end? Problem is, subtle privacy changes creep up on us in such a way that we're practically oblivious to them.
Sling Media has just rolled out an update that brings a number of improvements to the Slingbox 500 and to the SlingPlayer app. For the Slingbox 500, Blockbuster On Demand is now available as a premium video service along with a new My Media feature that lets users access media via a USB drive. Only ...
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