MILEROCK Football Club totalled 34 points to finish ahead of the other seven teams in the Upper Demerara Football Association (UDFA), to win this year’s National Milling Company-sponsored Thunderbolt Flour Power U-17 league. Eagles United finished second and Botafago third.UDFA president Terrence Mitchell and the Guyana Football Federation president Wayne Forde presented medals and the championship trophy at the Wisburg Secondary School ground in Linden.
GFF president Wayne Forde presents the winning trophy to Milerock midfielder and captain Lorenzo Miller.In brief comments after expressing his satisfaction with the UDFA for completing the tournament, Forde said, “It is an honour for you to be playing in a tournament as prestigious as this. Your hard work and dedication brought you this far and it will take you further.”“This is not the end of the road, however; more challenges lie ahead. You must see them as opportunities, not challenges. Recognise football for the vehicle it is, respect it and always try to improve,” Forde said while congratulating the winning team.Milerock midfielder and captain, Lorenzo Miller, in expressing his satisfaction at the results stated, “My team and I deserve this. We trained hard and we played even harder. Coach is proud of us, I am proud of us and we plan to celebrate.”
Obama Budget Would Replace SGR Formula Boost Medicaid Mental Health
Among the changes included in the president’s 2014 budget blueprint are funding boosts for mental health and food and drug safety as well as the elimination of the SGR formula to set Medicare physician payment rates. The proposal also delays funding cuts to hospitals that treat the uninsured.Medscape: Obama Budget Replaces Sequester Cuts And SGRPresident Barack Obama today released a proposed $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2014 that would shrink the federal deficit by $1.8 trillion over the course of 10 years, but not on the backs of physicians. Instead, they are on the receiving end of some federal largesse. For starters, Obama’s deficit reduction, similar to that in the budget plan approved on March 23 by the Democratic-controlled Senate, would replace the automatic, across-the-board cuts called sequestration that include a 2% decrease in Medicare reimbursement for physicians (Lowes, 4/10). Medpage Today: HHS Budget Plan Cuts Billions From MedicareThe Obama administration released its fiscal year 2014 budget proposal Wednesday, trimming nearly $400 billion over 10 years from Medicare as expected. … The $967 billion proposed for the overall HHS budget, however, is larger than the $848.2 billion actually spent in FY 2012 and the $907.8 billion estimated for FY 2013. Medicare would eat up 54 percent — about $522 billion — of the amount proposed for next year, while 31 percent would go to Medicaid, with the remainder spent on other programs, including Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (Frieden, 4/10).Modern Healthcare: Obama Proposes $5.6B In Medicare Payment Cuts For FY 2014President Barack Obama’s highly anticipated fiscal 2014 budget (PDF) released Wednesday proposes $5.6 billion in Medicare payment cuts for that year and about $400 billion in total federal healthcare savings over the next decade. In a news conference at the White House, the president called his budget—which aims to reduce the deficit by nearly $1.8 trillion over 10 years and would eliminate the sequester cuts—“a fiscally responsible blueprint for middle-class jobs and growth” (Daly and Zigmond, 4/10). The Washington Post’s WonkBlog: The White House Wants To Reverse $500 Million In Medicaid CutsThe White House wants to reverse $500 million in cuts to the Medicaid program meant to start in 2014, aiming to ensure that states have adequate funds to assist those that remain uninsured under the Affordable Care Act. A bit of history is helpful here. For decades now, Medicaid has sent states billions of dollars in something called Disproportionate Share, or DSH, payments. These funds, which totaled $11.3 billion in 2011, go to the hospitals that provide a higher level of uncompensated care and are meant to help offset the bills of the uninsured (Kliff, 4/10).The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire: HHS Budget Aims To Boost Mental-Health ProgramsThe Obama administration is proposing to increase spending for mental health programs and the children’s Head Start program while cutting funding for low-income energy assistance and community service grants. The 2014 budget for the Department of Health and Human Services released Wednesday totals $80.1 billion, about $4 billion above the enacted budget for fiscal year 2012. It calls for $1.5 billion for the government to build an insurance exchange that will allow certain Americans to shop for health insurance, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday. The federal exchange is targeted to begin operating Oct. 1. and sell insurance coverage that kicks in Jan. 1 (Dooren and Burton, 4/10).Reuters: Health Budget Spends On Mental Health; Cuts MedicarePresident Barack Obama’s proposed 2014 budget includes an increase of $3.9 billion to the health department as it prepares to implement the administration’s healthcare overhaul, setting money aside for mental health, but cutting medicare. The budget asks for $1.5 billion in increased funding to help set up healthcare exchanges and educate consumers on the enrollment process, which is scheduled to begin on October 1 (Clarke, 4/10).ABC News: Obama Budget Includes $235 Million For Mental Health CarePresident Obama is asking for $235 million as part of his new budget proposal to fund mental health initiatives. Of the funds, $130 million will be used to train teachers and others to identify signs of mental illness in students and provide them with access to treatment. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius wrote in a blog on her agency’s website Tuesday that the funds include $205 million to help identify mental health problems, improve access to mental health services and support safer school environments. The plan would affect at least 8,000 schools according to Sebelius. Another $30 million will go toward public health research on gun violence (Mohney, 4/10). Politico: CMS, FDA Budget Winners; CDC, NIH Take HitPresident Barack Obama’s budget has significant new funding to implement the health reform law, modernize food and drug safety and implement mental health programs. The White House is requesting a 14 percent increase in its budget for the Department of Health and Human Services, much of it focused on the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (Haberkorn, 4/11). CQ HealthBeat: HHS: NIH Would Get Unexpected BoostDefying predictions of flat funding or a spending cut, President Barack Obama proposes fattening the budget at the National Institutes of Health by $472 million in fiscal 2014. At the same time, his budget request would slash funding at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by $432 million. Both changes are in comparison with fiscal 2012 spending levels (Reichard, 4/10). This is part of the KHN Morning Briefing, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription. Obama Budget Would Replace SGR Formula, Boost Medicaid, Mental Health
House panel hears Representative García bill to protect students officers in school
State Representative Daniela R. García, of Holland, testified before the House Education Reform Committee today on legislation to help ensure the safety of all students and limit response time for school resource officers called to respond to school incidents.García’s legislation addresses a loophole in restraint and seclusion legislation signed into law in 2016, which calls for specific training of teachers, administrators and education personnel in addition to regulations for seclusion and restraint in emergency situations. Her bill ensures school resource officers, who are contracted to a school district from a law enforcement department in the region, are able to utilize their training to effectively resolve incidents that may arise.“Clarity was needed in a state law to make certain our school resource officers were not limited in their response to incidents that occur within a school,” Representative García said. “Currently, an officer may have to respond to a potentially dangerous situation by placing a student under arrest or wait until a second officer responded to the scene to limit exposing the school officer to legal liability. I’m certain neither one of those options are acceptable to parents across Michigan.”The issue was brought to Representative García by local law enforcement and school officials. Testifying with her today was Holland Police Officer Joe Soto and Holland High School Assistant Principal Kevin Griffin.“I was happy to listen to the concerns my local police and school officials had with this law,” García said. “We’ve been able to work quickly to address this issue that will impact many school districts statewide. Our number one priority has been the safety of students, staff and law enforcement officers, and this bill will help to provide that safety.”HB 5126 remains under consideration of the committee.State Representative Daniela R. García, of Holland, speaks before the House Education Reform Committee in support of her legislation to address a loophole in state restraint and seclusion law pertaining to school resource officers. Joining García were Holland Police Officer Joe Soto (right) and Holland High School Assistant Principal Kevin Griffin. 19Oct House panel hears Representative García bill to protect students, officers in school Categories: Garcia News,News
Photosynthetic bacteria give biologists a cool new tool
AddThis ShareEditor’s note: Links to images for download appear at the end of this release.David Ruth713-348-6327david@rice.eduMike Williams713-348-6728mikewilliams@rice.eduPhotosynthetic bacteria give biologists a cool new toolRice University synthetic biologists turn protein pathway into reversible photoreceptor HOUSTON – (May 10, 2016) – Photosynthetic bacteria that have lived on Earth for 2.7 billion years are the source of a new and valuable biological regulatory tool being developed by Rice University bioengineers.Synechocystis bacteria produce a protein pathway that senses the presence of UV-violet light and activates a motor protein that moves the single-cell organism into safer surroundings.The pathway responds quickly to UV-violet light, a narrow band in the spectrum that includes long ultraviolet and short violet wavelengths, and is blind to all others. That makes it a perfect addition to the growing optogenetic suite of reversible photoreceptors being developed by researchers in the lab of Rice synthetic biologist Jeffrey Tabor. Tabor and graduate student Prabha Ramakrishnan co-authored a new paper about this research in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Synthetic Biology.“The human eye can see colors that go all the way from violet to red,” Ramakrishnan said. “It turns out that marine algae – especially the bacteria these sensors come from – have evolved to see these and other colors as well.”Optogenetics is a fairly new discipline in which light-activated, genetically encoded photoreceptors are used to sense or control molecular biological processes like the expression of desired proteins. Because light is easy to direct and control, photoreceptors are simpler to use than tools that respond to chemical prompts.The Rice researchers turned the photosynthetic bacterial proteins into photoreversible, transcriptional regulators and installed them in Escherichia coli bacterial for lab testing. They reported exploiting them to program gene-expression signals “with high predictability.”The protein pathway known as UirS-UirR is the only optogenetic tool that responds exclusively to UV-violet light and gives biologists the ability to program circuits with light-activated proteins that won’t interfere with each other, Tabor said. “Biological systems are regulated by numerous interacting genes, and multiple optogenetic tools that don’t optically cross-react are needed to study these networks,” he said.The photoreversible pathway can be turned on by exposure to ultraviolet light and turned off by exposure to green light, or vice versa, depending on how the circuit is designed. Tabor expects they will be useful tools for scientists who design metabolic pathways for drug manufacture and biological sensors.The new sensors offer speed and versatility in circuit design. “We found that light sensors developed by others take more than two hours to switch on or off, and respond to a broad range of wavelengths,” Tabor said. “These aspects are not ideal for studying and controlling bacterial processes.”By contrast, the UV-violet sensor can be switched on or off in 10 minutes, Ramakrishnan said. “That’s good because producing proteins or controlling a biological process can be expensive for cells. Producing something that’s neither necessary for the cell nor to the product you’re trying to synthesize is wasteful.”Because the UV-violet sensor responds to such a narrow wavelength of light – from 380 to 420 nanometers – there’s no crosstalk with the red and green photoreversible tools already developed by the lab. “When these are put together in a single system, the fact that they don’t interact with each other at all and turn on and off rapidly is going to be very useful,” Ramakrishnan said.This could allow for “just-in-time” manufacturing on the cellular level. “There’s been theoretical work that shows that you can model the dynamics and get higher yields of your product by using this approach,” she said. “You turn a process on only when you need it and turn it off once you’re done.“That’s where we see a lot of industrial potential for this type of technology,” she said, “especially for drug design or for producing any sort of plastic intermediate, for example, that requires several different enzymes to make it.”Ramakrishnan said she looks forward to seeing how other labs use the discovery. “Jeff understands the power of developing reliable tools,” she said. “We try to give biologists and scientists well-engineered, well-characterized tools. We want other people to use this.”The National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research and the Welch Foundation supported the research.-30-Read the abstract at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acssynbio.6b00068Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.Related Materials:Tabor Lab: http://www.taborlab.rice.eduRice University Department of Bioengineering: http://bioe.rice.eduImages for download: http://news.rice.edu/files/2016/05/0209_BLUE-2-web-sm1okp.jpgRice University graduate student Prabha Ramakrishnan led the project to turn a protein found in freshwater photosynthetic bacteria into a photoreversible regulatory tool that can make the manufacture of substances by engineered cells more efficient. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University) http://news.rice.edu/files/2016/05/0209_BLUE-4-web-1mut3do.jpgRice University researchers have turned a protein pathway discovered in marine bacteria into a photoreversible regulatory tool that responds exclusively to UV-violet light. The UirS protein is anchored in the bacterial membrane where it “sees” the color illuminating the bacterium. If the illumination is UV-violet, UirS activates itself and relays this active state to a messenger protein, UirR. Active UirR is mobile, capable of binding a specific target DNA sequence called a promoter (PcsiR1), and turning on the expression of a desired gene, a fluorescent green protein (gfp). Switching to green light deactivates UirS, resulting in inactive UirR and turning off gene expression. (Illustration by Prabha Ramakrishnan/Rice University)Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,910 undergraduates and 2,809 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for best quality of life and for lots of race/class interaction by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview.
http://news.rice.edu/files/2016/05/0209_BLUE-3-web-v009nz.jpgRice University synthetic biologist Jeffrey Tabor and graduate student Prabha Ramakrishnan turned a protein used by freshwater photosynthetic bacteria to avoid damaging ultraviolet light into a photoreversible regulatory tool for synthetic biologists. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University) http://news.rice.edu/files/2016/05/0209_BLUE-1-web-13atbh3.jpgRice University synthetic biologist Jeffrey Tabor and graduate student Prabha Ramakrishnan have published their work to develop a photoreversible regulatory tool that can make the manufacture of substances by engineered cells more efficient. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)