Usher, Shakira, Adam and Blake can finally keep their chairs forward for the season.
By Emilee Lindner
Usher on "The Voice"
Photo: NBC
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1705296/the-voice-teams.jhtml
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama said he'd been looking forward to a White House celebration of Memphis soul music for one reason.
"Let's face it, who does not love this music?" he asked Tuesday, opening the night's concert in an East Room bathed in amber light and transformed by the addition of a stage and backup musicians.
"These songs get us on the dance floor," Obama said. "They get stuck in our heads. We go back over them again and again. And they've played an important part in our history."
Memphis, Tenn., was segregated in the 1960s, but blacks and whites came together despite the institutional racism to create a soulful blend of gospel and rhythmic blues music that sought to "bridge those divides, to create a little harmony with harmony," Obama said.
He noted that two of the night's guests, Booker T. Jones and Steve Cropper, helped form one of the city's first integrated bands.
"They weren't allowed to go to school together. They weren't always allowed to travel or eat together," the president said. "But no one could stop them from playing music together."
"And that was the spirit of their music ? the sound of Soulsville, U.S.A., a music that, at its core, is about the pain of being alone, the power of human connection, and the importance of treating each other right," Obama said. "After all, this is the music that asked us to try a little tenderness. It's the music that put Mr. Big Stuff in his place. And it's the music that challenged us to accept new ways of thinking with four timeless words: 'Can you dig it?'"
And with that, Obama took his seat and the show opened with Sam Moore, half of the duo Sam & Dave, and "American Idol" finalist and gospel singer Joshua Ledet belting out Moore's "Soul Man," followed minutes later by Justin Timberlake and Cropper's rendition of Otis Redding's (Sittin' on) "The Dock of the Bay."
Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and their daughters, Malia and Sasha, sat in the front row. The president and first lady at times clapped their hands and bobbed and weaved their heads to the pulsating rhythms.
The concert was the 10th in the "In Performance at the White House" series since Obama took office. Other performers included Alabama Shakes, Ben Harper, Cyndi Lauper, Charlie Musselwhite, Mavis Staples , Queen Latifah and William Bell. Latifah also was the host and Jones led the band.
Earlier in the day, Bell said the concert reaffirmed years of hard work that began in the 1960s when Stax Records was created in Memphis, and the label cranked out one soul and R&B hit after another for more than a decade.
Redding, Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers, Bell and Sam & Dave were among the company's artists.
"As kids coming up, we didn't think it would last this long," the 73-year-old Bell said during a rehearsal break. He later performed his hit, "You Don't Miss Your Water."
Al Green had been scheduled to perform but, about an hour before the show, the White House released a statement from the singer's spokesman who said Green had suffered a back injury and would be unable to attend.
Hours before the show, Michelle Obama kicked off a workshop featuring Moore, Staples, Timberlake, Musselwhite and Harper for students from 16 schools and organizations in Virginia, California, Memphis, New York City, Maryland, Florida and Washington, D.C., who got to question the artists.
She noted Memphis' history as the birthplace of Elvis Presley's rock and roll and B.B. King's blues.
"And while you can hear both of those influences in Memphis soul, this music has a style and a story uniquely its own," Mrs. Obama said, before launching into the story of Stax Records.
She noted that the label also represented "somebody my husband thinks he sounds like" ? Green. "Let's just tell him he does, OK? Since he is the president, we like to boost him up a little bit."
It was a reference to Obama singing a few bars of Green's "Let's Stay Together" during a Democratic fundraiser at New York's Apollo Theater in February 2012.
Obama also joked about his singing during his brief remarks opening the concert.
"Tonight, I am speaking not just as a president, but as one of America's best-known Al Green impersonators," he said to laughter.
At the workshop, Mrs. Obama also tried to encourage the students, including some aspiring musicians, by noting that it took years of perfecting their talent for the artists perched on stools in front of them to get where they are.
She recalled playing the piano as a young girl and said she regretted not sticking with it. But she said the skills one learns by studying music are useful in other areas of life.
"The discipline, the patience, the diligence I learned through the study of music, those are all skills that I apply every single day in my life," Mrs. Obama said. "I applied them as a student, as a lawyer, as a first lady, and definitely as a mother."
Since February 2009, "In Performance at the White House" has highlighted the music of Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, plus Hispanic music, music from the civil-rights era, Motown and the blues, Broadway and country music. The series itself dates to 1978.
The Memphis soul concert is set to air next Tuesday on PBS stations. It will also be broadcast at a later date over the American Forces Network for service members and civilians at Defense Department locations worldwide.
___
Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-celebrates-sounds-memphis-soul-164730499.html
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By Stephanie Grace
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Louisiana lawmakers on Tuesday questioned the wisdom of eliminating the state's income tax without raising sales taxes, one day after Governor Bobby Jindal said he would delay his plan to scrap the income tax.
Jindal, a possible 2016 Republican presidential candidate, shelved his package on the two-month legislative session's opening day on Monday, acknowledging that widespread public discomfort doomed its chances.
Instead he called on lawmakers to pass their own plan and "send me a bill to get rid of these taxes."
His plan would have eliminated all state personal and corporate income taxes. It also called for a 56 percent increase in the state sales tax, a much higher cigarette tax, and the elimination of some tax loopholes to make up the $3 billion shortfall from abolishing the income taxes.
The question of whether to cut income taxes without raising the sales tax dominated the legislative debate on Tuesday. Another idea being floated was getting rid of the taxes over time instead of all at once.
At a Senate hearing, Republican Senator Robert Adley asked Department of Revenue Executive Counsel Tim Barfield whether an income tax repeal would still need to be revenue-neutral to pass muster with the governor.
"I think that would be the ultimate desire," Barfield said. "But I think if you look at a long-term phase-out of that (income tax), I think you have a lot more leeway."
Jindal's package, designed to make Louisiana more competitive with nearby income tax-free states such as Florida and Texas, would have seen the sales tax top 11 percent in some localities, the highest in the nation, when combined with local taxes.
Simply eliminating the income tax could be an easier sell than pursuing tax hikes to make up for the lost revenue. For one thing, it would not require a two-thirds vote of each chamber of the legislature.
But watchdog groups warned lawmakers against going ahead with a big tax cut on the fly.
"Pursuing a 10-year phase-out of the income tax while trying to find offsets that even the governor couldn't find would be a daunting task at best and of great potential risk to the state at worst," the Council for a Better Louisiana said in a statement. "And simply phasing out the income tax without offsets would be irresponsible."
Representative Joel Robideaux, the Republican Ways and Means chairman who was the sponsor of Jindal's plan, also has weighed in on the side of finding offsets.
House Democratic Caucus Chair John Bel Edwards accused Jindal of being more worried about building a record for a possible presidential run than addressing Louisiana's needs.
"The governor is looking to court folks outside of Louisiana instead of addressing the concerns we have here," Edwards said. "Until we can adequately fund our priorities, we should not even begin to discuss dismantling our tax system."
(Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Xavier Briand)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/louisiana-lawmakers-weigh-options-eliminating-income-tax-032718670.html
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Apr. 9, 2013 ? Multiple genes contribute to risk for schizophrenia and appear to function in pathways related to transmission of signals in the brain and immunity, according to an international study led by Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy researchers.
By better understanding the molecular and biological mechanisms involved with schizophrenia, scientists hope to use this new genetic information to one day develop and design drugs that are more efficacious and have fewer side effects.
In a study published online in the April issue of JAMA Psychiatry, the JAMA Network journal, researchers used a comprehensive and unique approach to robustly identify genes and biological processes conferring risk for schizophrenia.
The researchers first used 21,953 subjects to examine over a million genetic markers. They then systematically collected results from other kinds of biological schizophrenia studies and combined all these results using a novel data integration approach.
The most promising genetic markers were tested again in a large collection of families with schizophrenia patients, a design that avoids pitfalls that have plagued genetic studies of schizophrenia in the past. The genes they identified after this comprehensive approach were found to have involvement in brain function, nerve cell development and immune response.
"Now that we have genes that are robustly associated with schizophrenia, we can begin to design much more specific experiments to understand how disruption of these genes may affect brain development and function," said principal investigator Edwin van den Oord, Ph.D., professor and director of the Center for Biomarker Research and Personalized Medicine in the Department of Pharmacotherapy and Outcomes Science at the VCU School of Pharmacy.
"Also, some of these genes provide excellent targets for the development of new drugs," he said.
One specific laboratory experiment currently underway at VCU to better understand the function of one of these genes, TCF4, is being led by Joseph McClay, Ph.D., a co-author on the study and assistant professor and laboratory director in the VCU Center for Biomarker Research and Personalized Medicine. TCF4 works by switching on other genes in the brain. McClay and colleagues are conducting a National Institutes of Health-funded study to determine all genes that are under the control of TCF4. By mapping the entire network, they aim to better understand how disruptions to TCF4 increase risk for schizophrenia.
"Our results also suggest that the novel data integration approach used in this study is a promising tool that potentially can be of great value in studies of a large variety of complex genetic disorders," said lead author Karolina A. Aberg, Ph.D., research assistant professor and laboratory co-director of the Center for Biomarker Research and Personalized Medicine in the VCU School of Pharmacy.
The study was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health grants R01HG004240; R01MH078069; 1R01MH097283; and R01MH080403.
Collaborating institutions included Copenhagen University Hospital in Roskilde, Denmark; Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden; School of Medicine at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom; St. James Hospital in Ireland; University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom; University of California at Los Angeles; University College of London in the United Kingdom; University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom; University of Munich in Germany; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital in Norway; University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine; VA Boston Healthcare System; and Harvard Medical School.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/genes/~3/5SSY9zStYuo/130409173552.htm
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Apr. 8, 2013 ? Controlling the shapes of nanometer-sized catalytic and electrocatalytic particles made from noble metals such as platinum and palladium may be more complicated than previously thought.
Using systematic experiments, researchers have investigated how surface diffusion -- a process in which atoms move from one site to another on nanoscale surfaces -- affects the final shape of the particles. The issue is important for a wide range of applications that use specific shapes to optimize the activity and selectivity of nanoparticles, including catalytic converters, fuel cell technology, chemical catalysis and plasmonics.
Results of the research could lead to a better understanding of how to manage the diffusion process by controlling the reaction temperature and deposition rate, or by introducing structural barriers designed to hinder the surface movement of atoms.
"We want to be able to design the synthesis to produce nanoparticles with the exact shape we want for each specific application," said Younan Xia, a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. "Fundamentally, it is important to understand how these shapes are formed, to visualize how this happens on structures over a length scale of about 100 atoms."
The research was reported April 8 in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Controlling the shape of nanoparticles is important in catalysis and other applications that require the use of expensive noble metals such as platinum and palladium. For example, optimizing the shape of platinum nanoparticles can substantially enhance their catalytic activity, reducing demand for the precious material, noted Xia, who is a Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) eminent scholar in nanomedicine. Xia also holds joint appointments in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech.
"Controlling the shape is very important to tuning the activity of catalysts and in minimizing the loading of the catalysts," he said. "Shape control is also very important in plasmonic applications, where the shape controls where optical absorption and scattering peaks are positioned. Shape is also important to determining where the electrical charges will be concentrated on nanoparticles."
Though the importance of particle shape at the nanoscale has been well known, researchers hadn't before understood the importance of surface diffusion in creating the final particle shape. Adding atoms to the corners of platinum cubes, for instance, can create particles with protruding "arms" that increase the catalytic activity. Convex surfaces on cubic particles may also provide better performance. But those advantageous shapes must be created and maintained.
Natural energetic preferences related to the arrangement of atoms on the tiny structures favor a spherical shape that is not ideal for most catalysts, fuel cells and other applications.
In their research, Xia and his collaborators varied the temperature of the process used to deposit atoms onto metallic nanocrystals that acted as seeds for the nanoparticles. They also varied the rates at which atoms were deposited onto the surfaces, which were determined by the injection rate at which a chemical precursor material was introduced. The diffusion rate is determined by the temperature, with higher temperatures allowing the atoms to move around faster on the nanoparticle surfaces. In the research, bromide ions were used to limit the movement of the added atoms from one portion of the particle to another.
Using transmission electron microscopy, the researchers observed the structures that were formed under different conditions. Ultimately, they found that the ratio of the deposition rate to the diffusion rate determines the final shape. When the ratio is greater than one, the adsorbed atoms tend to stay where they are placed. If the ratio is less than one, they tend to move.
"Unless the atomic reaction is at absolute zero, you will always have some diffusion," said Xia, who holds the Brock Family Chair in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. "But if you can add atoms to the surface in the places that you want them faster than they can diffuse, you can control the final destination for the atoms."
Xia believes the research may also lead to improved techniques for preserving the unique shapes of nanoparticles even at high operating temperatures.
"Fundamentally, it is very useful for people to know how these shapes are formed," he said. "Most of these structures had been observed before, but people did not understand why they formed under certain conditions. To do that, we need to be able to visualize what happens on these tiny structures."
Xia's research team also studied the impact of diffusion on bi-metallic particles composed of both palladium and platinum. The combination can enhance certain properties, and because palladium is currently less expensive than platinum, using a core of palladium covered by a thin layer of platinum provides the catalytic activity of platinum while reducing cost.
In that instance, surface diffusion can be helpful in covering the palladium surface with a single monolayer of the platinum. Only the surface platinum atoms will be able to provide the catalytic properties, while the palladium core only serves as a support.
The research is part of a long-term study of catalytic nanoparticles being conducted by Xia's research group. Other aspects of the team's work addresses biomedical uses of nanoparticles in such areas as cancer therapy.
"We are very excited by this result because it is generic and can apply to understand and control diffusion on the surfaces of many systems," Xia added. "Ultimately we want to see how we can take advantage of this diffusion to improve the catalytic and optical properties of these nanoparticles."
The research team also included Xiaohu Xia, Shuifen Xie, Maochang Liu and Hsin-Chieh Peng at Georgia Tech; and Ning Lu, Jinguo Wang and Professor Moon J. Kim at the University of Texas at Dallas.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant DMR-1215034 and by startup funds from Georgia Tech. Any conclusions expressed are those of the principal investigator and may not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.
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Public release date: 8-Apr-2013
Share ] Contact: Whitney Heins
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University of Tennessee at Knoxville
The Gulf of Mexico may have a much greater natural ability to self-clean oil spills than previously believed, according to Terry Hazen, University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor's Chair for Environmental Biotechnology.
The bioremediation expert presented his Deepwater Horizon disaster research findings at the 245th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.
Hazen conducted research following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which is estimated to have spilled 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. His research team used a powerful new approach for identifying microbes in the environment to discover previously unknown and naturally occurring bacteria that consume and break down crude oil.
"The Deepwater Horizon oil provided a new source of nutrients in the deepest waters," said Hazen. "With more food present in the water, there was a population explosion among those bacteria already adapted to using oil as a food source. It was surprising how fast they consumed the oil. In some locations, it took only one day for them to reduce a gallon of oil to a half gallon. In others, the half-life for a given quantity of spilled oil was six days."
This data suggests that a great potential for intrinsic bioremediation of oil plumes exists in the deep sea and other environs in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil-eating bacteria are natural inhabitants of the Gulf because of the constant supply of oil as food.
Hazen's team used a novel approach for identifying previously recognized kinds of oil-eating bacteria that contributed to the natural clean up of the Deepwater Horizon spill. Instead of growing the microbes in a laboratory, the team used "ecogenomics." This approach uses genetic and other analyses of the DNA, proteins and other footprints of bacteria to provide a more detailed picture of microbial life in the water.
"The bottom line from this research may be that the Gulf of Mexico is more resilient and better able to recover from oil spills than anyone thought," Hazen said. "It shows that we may not need the kinds of heroic measures proposed after the Deepwater Horizon spill, like adding nutrients to speed up the growth of bacteria that break down oil or using genetically engineered bacteria. The Gulf has a broad base of natural bacteria, and they respond to the presence of oil by multiplying quite rapidly."
###
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. For more information, visit http://www.acs.org.
[ | 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.
Public release date: 8-Apr-2013 Share ] Contact: Whitney Heins
wheins@utk.edu
865-974-5460
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
The Gulf of Mexico may have a much greater natural ability to self-clean oil spills than previously believed, according to Terry Hazen, University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor's Chair for Environmental Biotechnology.
The bioremediation expert presented his Deepwater Horizon disaster research findings at the 245th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.
Hazen conducted research following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which is estimated to have spilled 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. His research team used a powerful new approach for identifying microbes in the environment to discover previously unknown and naturally occurring bacteria that consume and break down crude oil.
"The Deepwater Horizon oil provided a new source of nutrients in the deepest waters," said Hazen. "With more food present in the water, there was a population explosion among those bacteria already adapted to using oil as a food source. It was surprising how fast they consumed the oil. In some locations, it took only one day for them to reduce a gallon of oil to a half gallon. In others, the half-life for a given quantity of spilled oil was six days."
This data suggests that a great potential for intrinsic bioremediation of oil plumes exists in the deep sea and other environs in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil-eating bacteria are natural inhabitants of the Gulf because of the constant supply of oil as food.
Hazen's team used a novel approach for identifying previously recognized kinds of oil-eating bacteria that contributed to the natural clean up of the Deepwater Horizon spill. Instead of growing the microbes in a laboratory, the team used "ecogenomics." This approach uses genetic and other analyses of the DNA, proteins and other footprints of bacteria to provide a more detailed picture of microbial life in the water.
"The bottom line from this research may be that the Gulf of Mexico is more resilient and better able to recover from oil spills than anyone thought," Hazen said. "It shows that we may not need the kinds of heroic measures proposed after the Deepwater Horizon spill, like adding nutrients to speed up the growth of bacteria that break down oil or using genetically engineered bacteria. The Gulf has a broad base of natural bacteria, and they respond to the presence of oil by multiplying quite rapidly."
###
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. For more information, visit http://www.acs.org.
[ | 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.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/uota-uot040813.php
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