MOSCOW (AP) ? Russia stepped up efforts Friday to resolve a dispute with neighbor Kazakhstan over its demand to reduce the number of commercial satellite launches from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome.
Kazakhstan, which in the past suspended Russian rocket launches after previous failures spilled toxic rocket fuel, has demanded that Russia cuts the number of Proton rockets lifting off from Baikonur from 17 to 12 this year.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov downplayed the dispute after talks in Moscow with his Kazakh counterpart Friday.
"The issue regarding the number of launches is linked to Kazakhstan's concerns about their impact on environment," Lavrov said. "Russia is taking all the necessary steps to address environmental aspects by using improved Proton-M booster rockets. There is no sensation about it, just working issues."
The dispute has threatened to cloud relations between the two ex-Soviet neighbors. Moscow would lose half a billion dollars if Kazakhstan succeeds in cutting the number of launches, according to Russia's pro-government daily Izvestia, which reported the Kazakh demand. The paper also said Moscow was threatening Kazakhstan with countermeasures.
Izvestia on Thursday quoted a note from Russia's Roscosmos space agency warning that the country would opt out of joint projects with Kazakhstan if it doesn't withdraw its demand for Russia to scale down its scheduled rocket launches from Baikonur.
Russia has a lease to use Kazakhstan's Soviet-built launch pad until 2050 and pays an annual fee of $115 million. It has continued to rely on Baikonur for all its manned missions and most of its commercial satellite launches.
This isn't the first time Kazakh authorities have voiced worries over the environmental impact of Russia's space program. Previously, they have briefly suspended Russian launches from Baikonur following the spill of highly toxic rocket fuel after failed launches of the heavylift Proton booster rocket, the main cash cow of Russia's space program.
Moscow also has the Plesetsk launch pad in the north of Russia but that is used mostly for launches of military satellites. It has moved to reduce its dependence on Kazakhstan by building a new cosmodrome in the far east.
The Vostochny cosmodrome, where construction started in 2011, is located 5,500 kilometers (3,400 miles) east of Moscow, and just about 100 kilometers (60 miles) away from the border with China.
The first rocket launch from the Vostochny cosmodrome is set to be conducted by 2015. An unmanned mission to the moon is also planned for the same year. In 2018 it is slated to launch a first manned mission.
Personal injury law is a broad term used in cases involving any number of unrelated actions such as car accidents, dog bites, wrongful death, or slip and fall (premises liability), which result in physical and/or psychological harm to an individual. When such incidents occur, the victim seeking justice and compensation should seek out the representation of a personal injury attorney.
Personal injury law is principally based upon tort law. A basic definition of a tort is a ?civil wrong?. The law of torts is very basic and predicated upon the idea that an injured party should be compensated in some way for the harm that was caused to them by the ?tortfeasor? (the person responsible for the act) or the ?tort? act. Ideally, the injured party should be compensated for any losses they have suffered whether they are physical, emotional or economic in nature.
The word tort comes from the Latin ?tortus?, meaning ?twisted? or ?crooked?. As the word was adopted into the English language, it was used to describe an act that was twisted, or not straight and became synonymous with the word ?wrong?. As the word fell out of use by the general public, it was retained in the legal arena to describe the types of cases taken up by personal injury attorneys.
All personal injury matters boil down to the concept of negligence. The elements of proving negligence are (1) duty ? each of us, no matter our role in society, owe a duty to one another, whether we are operating a motor vehicle, walking a dog or managing a property. If that duty is not upheld or is (2) breached, and that breach (3) causes (4) damages to another person, the person who committed the wrongful act (the tortfeasor) is negligent.
R. Klettke is a freelance writer. He writes about personal injury and medical malpractice law and other matters of jurisprudence.
Important Advisory: This article is not intended to provide legal advice upon which you or anyone else should rely in making any decisions regarding the instituting or prosecuting of a legal claim. Laws and rules relating to the bringing of a claim vary widely from state to state. You should always contact a personal injury attorney to obtain information as to the rules and the laws pertaining to any claim you might have.
HealthyUNCG, the university employee health promotion program, would like to invite you to participate in a research study designed to examine the effectiveness of health and wellness coaching on weight loss. All UNCG employees are eligible to participate.
HealthyUNCG is offering the Taking Pounds OFF Sensibly (TOPS) program. This research study will combine weight management strategies from the nationally recognized TOPS program with individual or small group health and wellness coaching sessions. Each week all participants will attend a 1 hour session.
Registration in the national TOPS program is required, $29.50/year.
Participants will not receive compensation or reimbursement for joining TOPS or for participating in the study. Participants will receive TOPS program materials as part of their registration fee and health & wellness coaching services for free.
All information is confidential and only group data will be used for the study. You may participate in the TOPS program even if you do not participate in the research study.
Attend the information and sign-up session on Thursday, Jan. 24, noon in the Dogwood Room of EUC
For further information about the study, TOPS ? and to register for an information session ? visit http://healthy.uncg.edu
You may contact Michelle Cathorall, the director of HealthyUNCG and PI of the study,with any questions. She can be reached at healthy_uncg@uncg.edu or by phone at 334-9743.
Immune cells engineered in lab to resist HIV infection, Stanford study showsPublic release date: 22-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Ruthann Richter richter1@stanford.edu 650-725-8047 Stanford University Medical Center
STANFORD, Calif. Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found a novel way to engineer key cells of the immune system so they remain resistant to infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
A new study describes the use of a kind of molecular scissors to cut and paste a series of HIV-resistant genes into T cells, specialized immune cells targeted by the AIDS virus. The genome editing was made in a gene that the virus uses to gain entry into the cell. By inactivating a receptor gene and inserting additional anti-HIV genes, the virus was blocked from entering the cells, thus preventing it from destroying the immune system, said Matthew Porteus, MD, an associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford and a pediatric hematologist/oncologist at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.
"We inactivated one of the receptors that HIV uses to gain entry and added new genes to protect against HIV, so we have multiple layers of protection what we call stacking," said Porteus, the study's principal investigator. "We can use this strategy to make cells that are resistant to both major types of HIV."
He said the new approach, a form of tailored gene therapy, could ultimately replace drug treatment, in which patients have to take multiple medications daily to keep the virus in check and prevent the potentially fatal infections wrought by AIDS. The work was done in the laboratory, and clinical trials would still be needed to determine whether the approach would work as a therapy.
"Providing an infected person with resistant T cells would not cure their viral infection," said Sara Sawyer, PhD, assistant professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at the University of Texas-Austin and a co-author of the study. "However, it would provide them with a protected set of T cells that would ward off the immune collapse that typically gives rise to AIDS."
The study will be published in the Jan. 22 issue of Molecular Therapy.
One of the big challenges in treating AIDS is that the virus is notorious for mutating, so patients must be treated with a cocktail of drugs known as highly active antiretroviral therapy or HAART which hit it at various stages of the replication process. The researchers were able to get around that problem with a new, multi-pronged genetic attack that blocks HIV on several fronts. Essentially, they hope to mimic HAART through genetic manipulation.
The technique hinges on the fact that the virus typically enters T cells by latching onto one of two surface proteins known as CCR5 and CXCR4. Some of the latest drugs now used in treatment work by interfering with these receptors' activity. A small number of people carry a mutation in CCR5 that makes them naturally resistant to HIV. One AIDS patient with leukemia, now famously known as the Berlin patient, was cured of HIV when he received a bone marrow transplant from a donor who had the resistant CCR5 gene.
Scientists at Sangamo BioSciences in Richmond, Calif., have developed a technique using a protein that recognizes and binds to the CCR5 receptor gene, genetically modifying it to mimic the naturally resistant version. The technique uses a zinc finger nuclease, a protein that can break up pieces of DNA, to effectively inactivate the receptor gene. The company is now testing its CCR5-resistant genes in phase-1 and -2 trials with AIDS patients at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Stanford scientists used a similar approach but with an added twist. They used the same nuclease to zero in on an undamaged section of the CCR5 receptor's DNA. They created a break in the sequence and, in a feat of genetic editing, pasted in three genes known to confer resistance to HIV, Porteus said. This technique of placing several useful genes at a particular site is known as "stacking."
Incorporating the three resistant genes helped shield the cells from HIV entry via both the CCR5 and CXCR4 receptors. The disabling of the CCR5 gene by the nuclease, as well as the addition of the anti-HIV genes, created multiple layers of protection.
Blocking HIV infection through both the CCR5 and CXCR4 receptors is important, Porteus said, as it hasn't been achieved before by genome editing. To test the T cells' protective abilities, the scientists created versions in which they inserted one, two and all three of the genes and then exposed the T cells to HIV.
Though the T cells with the single- and double-gene modifications were somewhat protected against an onslaught of HIV, the triplets were by far the most resistant to infection. These triplet cells had more than 1,200-fold protection against HIV carrying the CCR5 receptor and more than 1,700-fold protection against those with the CXCR4 receptor, the researchers reported. The T cells that hadn't been altered succumbed to infection with 25 days.
Porteus said he views the work as an important step forward in developing a gene therapy for HIV.
"I'm very excited about what's happened already," he said. "This is a significant improvement in that first-generation application."
He said a potential drawback of the strategy is that while the nuclease is designed to create a break in one spot, it could possibly cause a break elsewhere, leading to cancer or other cell aberration. He said it's also possible the cells may not tolerate the genetic change.
"It's possible the cells won't like the proteins they're asked to express, so they won't grow," he said.
But he said he believes both problems are technically surmountable. He said the researchers' next step is to test the strategy in T cells taken from AIDS patients, and then move on to animal testing. He said he hopes to begin clinical trials within three to five years.
Though the method is labor-intensive, requiring a tailored approach for each patient, it would save patients from a lifelong dependence on antiretroviral drugs, which have adverse side effects, Porteus noted.
He said he also hopes to adapt these techniques for use against other diseases, such as sickle cell anemia, one of his areas of interest. Porteus works with patients in the Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant service at Packard Children's.
In addition to Sawyer, he collaborated with Richard Voit, a former Stanford graduate student who is now an MD/PhD candidate at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and Moira McMahon, PhD, a former postdoctoral scholar at Stanford who is now at the University of California-San Diego.
###
The study was supported by a grant from the American Foundation for AIDS Research and by a Laurie Krauss Lacob Faculty Scholar Award from the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health.
Information about Stanford's Department of Pediatrics, which also supported the work, is available at http://pediatrics.stanford.edu.
The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. For information about all three, please visit http://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.
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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.
Immune cells engineered in lab to resist HIV infection, Stanford study showsPublic release date: 22-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Ruthann Richter richter1@stanford.edu 650-725-8047 Stanford University Medical Center
STANFORD, Calif. Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found a novel way to engineer key cells of the immune system so they remain resistant to infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
A new study describes the use of a kind of molecular scissors to cut and paste a series of HIV-resistant genes into T cells, specialized immune cells targeted by the AIDS virus. The genome editing was made in a gene that the virus uses to gain entry into the cell. By inactivating a receptor gene and inserting additional anti-HIV genes, the virus was blocked from entering the cells, thus preventing it from destroying the immune system, said Matthew Porteus, MD, an associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford and a pediatric hematologist/oncologist at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.
"We inactivated one of the receptors that HIV uses to gain entry and added new genes to protect against HIV, so we have multiple layers of protection what we call stacking," said Porteus, the study's principal investigator. "We can use this strategy to make cells that are resistant to both major types of HIV."
He said the new approach, a form of tailored gene therapy, could ultimately replace drug treatment, in which patients have to take multiple medications daily to keep the virus in check and prevent the potentially fatal infections wrought by AIDS. The work was done in the laboratory, and clinical trials would still be needed to determine whether the approach would work as a therapy.
"Providing an infected person with resistant T cells would not cure their viral infection," said Sara Sawyer, PhD, assistant professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at the University of Texas-Austin and a co-author of the study. "However, it would provide them with a protected set of T cells that would ward off the immune collapse that typically gives rise to AIDS."
The study will be published in the Jan. 22 issue of Molecular Therapy.
One of the big challenges in treating AIDS is that the virus is notorious for mutating, so patients must be treated with a cocktail of drugs known as highly active antiretroviral therapy or HAART which hit it at various stages of the replication process. The researchers were able to get around that problem with a new, multi-pronged genetic attack that blocks HIV on several fronts. Essentially, they hope to mimic HAART through genetic manipulation.
The technique hinges on the fact that the virus typically enters T cells by latching onto one of two surface proteins known as CCR5 and CXCR4. Some of the latest drugs now used in treatment work by interfering with these receptors' activity. A small number of people carry a mutation in CCR5 that makes them naturally resistant to HIV. One AIDS patient with leukemia, now famously known as the Berlin patient, was cured of HIV when he received a bone marrow transplant from a donor who had the resistant CCR5 gene.
Scientists at Sangamo BioSciences in Richmond, Calif., have developed a technique using a protein that recognizes and binds to the CCR5 receptor gene, genetically modifying it to mimic the naturally resistant version. The technique uses a zinc finger nuclease, a protein that can break up pieces of DNA, to effectively inactivate the receptor gene. The company is now testing its CCR5-resistant genes in phase-1 and -2 trials with AIDS patients at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Stanford scientists used a similar approach but with an added twist. They used the same nuclease to zero in on an undamaged section of the CCR5 receptor's DNA. They created a break in the sequence and, in a feat of genetic editing, pasted in three genes known to confer resistance to HIV, Porteus said. This technique of placing several useful genes at a particular site is known as "stacking."
Incorporating the three resistant genes helped shield the cells from HIV entry via both the CCR5 and CXCR4 receptors. The disabling of the CCR5 gene by the nuclease, as well as the addition of the anti-HIV genes, created multiple layers of protection.
Blocking HIV infection through both the CCR5 and CXCR4 receptors is important, Porteus said, as it hasn't been achieved before by genome editing. To test the T cells' protective abilities, the scientists created versions in which they inserted one, two and all three of the genes and then exposed the T cells to HIV.
Though the T cells with the single- and double-gene modifications were somewhat protected against an onslaught of HIV, the triplets were by far the most resistant to infection. These triplet cells had more than 1,200-fold protection against HIV carrying the CCR5 receptor and more than 1,700-fold protection against those with the CXCR4 receptor, the researchers reported. The T cells that hadn't been altered succumbed to infection with 25 days.
Porteus said he views the work as an important step forward in developing a gene therapy for HIV.
"I'm very excited about what's happened already," he said. "This is a significant improvement in that first-generation application."
He said a potential drawback of the strategy is that while the nuclease is designed to create a break in one spot, it could possibly cause a break elsewhere, leading to cancer or other cell aberration. He said it's also possible the cells may not tolerate the genetic change.
"It's possible the cells won't like the proteins they're asked to express, so they won't grow," he said.
But he said he believes both problems are technically surmountable. He said the researchers' next step is to test the strategy in T cells taken from AIDS patients, and then move on to animal testing. He said he hopes to begin clinical trials within three to five years.
Though the method is labor-intensive, requiring a tailored approach for each patient, it would save patients from a lifelong dependence on antiretroviral drugs, which have adverse side effects, Porteus noted.
He said he also hopes to adapt these techniques for use against other diseases, such as sickle cell anemia, one of his areas of interest. Porteus works with patients in the Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant service at Packard Children's.
In addition to Sawyer, he collaborated with Richard Voit, a former Stanford graduate student who is now an MD/PhD candidate at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and Moira McMahon, PhD, a former postdoctoral scholar at Stanford who is now at the University of California-San Diego.
###
The study was supported by a grant from the American Foundation for AIDS Research and by a Laurie Krauss Lacob Faculty Scholar Award from the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health.
Information about Stanford's Department of Pediatrics, which also supported the work, is available at http://pediatrics.stanford.edu.
The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. For information about all three, please visit http://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.
[ | 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.
People love to spend their holidays in various countries. If you are one of those looking for a new place to discover, India might be a perfect place for you to see. Going to this country will totally make your vacation truly remarkable. You will experience being amazed by its beautiful sites as well as its cultural history. This article will help you to find out the most amazing places to visit in India.
India is a country which has almost everything needed for a major tourism destination. You can also do many adventure sports like skiing, trekking, mountaineering, and paragliding. The snow-clad mountains, the valleys, and the mystic rivers make the country a perfect vacation spot for all travelers. Darjeeling, Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir, Ladakh, Kumaon, Arunachal Pradesh, and Garhwal are some of the other picturesque sites for vacationers. Some of the other major attractions in India are the beaches of Kerala, golden desert of Rajasthan, Goa, and the temple of Madhya Pradesh.
India is a top tourist destination because of its many natural wonders, exotic cuisine, and exquisite art. Visiting the country is one of the best ways to learn about new culture. The country has rich heritage and historical customs. A religious devotee may likewise be fascinated with the many different temples of India. Some of the most important pilgrims of India are Gangotri, Golden Temple, Anandpur Sahib, Badrinath, Jama Masjid, and St Francis of Assisi Church. Spending your holiday vacation in India will surely provide you total calmness and relaxation. You will forget about your worries and tensions, thus you will truly feel rejuvenated.
If you are a true nature lover, you will definitely enjoy the wildlife in India. You can find many wildlife sanctuaries. Some of the famous parks are Ranthambhore National Park, Corbett National Park, Kaziranga National Park, Kanha National Park, Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary, Kumarakom Bird Sanctuary, and Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary.
India is also a good place for art lovers. The country has many heritage buildings, monuments, and forts. The breathtaking Taj Mahal features beauty and extensive architectural work.
Going to India for a holiday vacation is the most memorable trip that you will experience. Furthermore, your perspective of life broadens by seeing many of its amazing places and people.
Many travel companies claim to offer cheap holidays to Kerala, but here at Falcon and Sachz you'll discover that we really do offer some of the cheapest holiday deals on the web! We can tailor make all types of great value holidays, everything from cheap all inclusive holidays to great value self catering holidays.
FILE - In this Monday, April 25, 2011 file photo, a prisoner looks out of his cell window at the main prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The United Nations said Sunday that Afghan authorities were still torturing prisoners, such as hanging them by their wrists and beating them with cables. Particularly in the southern province of Kandahar, the U.N. received reports that authorities were using unofficial sites to torture detainees before transporting them to the regular prison. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan, File)
FILE - In this Monday, April 25, 2011 file photo, a prisoner looks out of his cell window at the main prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The United Nations said Sunday that Afghan authorities were still torturing prisoners, such as hanging them by their wrists and beating them with cables. Particularly in the southern province of Kandahar, the U.N. received reports that authorities were using unofficial sites to torture detainees before transporting them to the regular prison. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan, File)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? The United Nations said Sunday that Afghan authorities were still torturing prisoners, such as hanging them by their wrists and beating them with cables, a year after the U.N. first documented the abuse and the Afghan government promised detention reform.
The report shows little progress in curbing abuse in Afghan prisons despite a year of effort by the U.N. and international military forces in Afghanistan. The report also cites instances where Afghan authorities have tried to hide mistreatment from U.N. monitors.
The slow progress on prison reform has prompted NATO forces to once again stop many transfers of detainees to Afghan authorities out of concern that they would be tortured.
In multiple detention centers, Afghan authorities leave detainees hanging from the ceiling by their wrists, beat them with cables and wooden sticks, administer electric shocks, twist their genitals and threaten to shove bottles up their anuses or to kill them, the report said.
In a letter responding to the latest report, the Afghan government said that its internal monitoring committee found that "the allegations of torture of detainees were untrue and thus disproved." The Afghan government said that it would not completely rule out the possibility of torture at its detention facilities, but that it was nowhere near the levels described in the report and that it was checking on reports of abuse.
The findings, however, highlight the type of human rights abuses that many activists worry could become more prevalent in Afghanistan as international forces draw down and the country's Western allies become less watchful over a government that so far has taken few concrete actions to reform the system.
As one detainee in the western province of Farah told the U.N. team: "They laid me on the ground. One of them sat on my feet and another one sat on my head, and the third one took a pipe and started beating me with it. They were beating me for some time like one hour and were frequently telling me that, 'You are with Taliban and this is what you deserve.'"
More than half of the 635 detainees interviewed had been tortured, according to the report titled Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody: One Year On. That is about the same ratio the U.N. found in its first report in 2011.
It's a troubling finding given the amount of international attention and pledges of reform that came after the first report. At that time, the NATO military alliance temporarily stopped transferring Afghans it had picked up to national authorities until they could set up a system free of abuse. Though it said the findings were exaggerated, the Afghan government promised after the first report to increase monitoring.
But little appears to have changed. Once NATO forces resumed the transfers and decreased inspections, torture quickly returned to earlier levels, the report said. And even though the international military force was making a serious effort to delay transfers if there was risk of torture, about 30 percent of 79 detainees who had been transferred to Afghan custody by foreign governments ended up being tortured, the report said. That's higher than in 2011, when the U.N. found that 24 percent of transferred detainees were tortured.
"Torture cannot be addressed by training, inspections and directives alone," said Georgette Gagnon, the head of human rights for the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, explaining that there has been little follow-through by the Afghan government.
In particular, the U.N. report found that the Afghan government appeared to be trying to hide the mistreatment and refusing to prosecute those accused of torturing prisoners.
The U.N. team received "multiple credible reports" that in some places detainees were hidden from international observers in secret locations underground or separate from the main facility being inspected. Also, the observers said they saw what appeared to be a suspicious increase in detainees held at police facilities when an intelligence service facility nearby was being monitored.
And particularly in the southern province of Kandahar, the U.N. received reports that authorities were using unofficial sites to torture detainees before transporting them to the regular prison.
In a letter responding to the U.N. report, Gen. John Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that his staff had written letters to Afghan ministers urging them to investigate more than 80 separate allegations of detainee abuse during the past 18 months.
"To date, Afghan officials have acted in only one instance," Allen said in the letter. In that case Afghan authorities did not fire the official in question, but transferred him from Kandahar province to Sar-e-Pul in the north.
The report documents what it called a "persistent lack of accountability for perpetrators of torture," noting that no one has been prosecuted for prisoner abuse since the first report was released.
Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for the Afghan president, said torture and abuse of prisoners was not Afghan policy.
"However, there may be certain cases of abuse and we have begun to investigate these cases mentioned in the U.N. report," he said. "We will take actions accordingly."
But he said that while the Afghan government takes the allegations in the report very seriously, "we also question the motivations behind this report and the way it was conducted." He did not elaborate.
The NATO military alliance responded to the most recent report by stopping transfers of detainees to seven facilities in Kabul, Laghman, Herat, Khost and Kunduz provinces ? most of them the same facilities that were flagged a year ago. The transfers were halted in October, when the U.N. shared its preliminary findings with the military coalition.
"This action is a result of concerns over detainee treatment at certain Afghan detention facilities," said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the international military alliance in Kabul.
He said there has been no suspension of transfers to the massive detention center next to Bagram Air Field outside of Kabul. That facility has been particularly contentious because the U.S. has held back from transferring all the detainees it holds there to Afghan custody.
But as international troops draw down in Afghanistan, there will be fewer people to monitor the Afghan detention centers. Allen said in his letter that the NATO military alliance planned to focus on monitoring only a subset of Afghan facilities in the future.
And even the manner in which the U.N. report was compiled and released shows the waning influence of Western allies over the Afghan government. Both last year and again on Sunday, the report was released without a news conference. Instead, it was quietly posted on the U.N. website in what appeared to be an effort to avoid publicly antagonizing the Afghan government that it criticizes in the report.
"I think it's being dealt with in the appropriate way. Maybe we don't need to do it publicly," Gagnon said, noting that there have been plenty of discussions with the Afghan government about how to improve the prison system.
Asked what progress had been made toward improving the prison system since 2011, Gagnon was at a loss to give an example. But, she stressed: "There has been quite a lot of effort."
Jan. 16, 2013 ? A high-tech robotic fish hatched at Michigan State University has a new look. A new skill. And a new name.
MSU scientists have made a number of improvements on the fish, including the ability to glide long distances, which is the most important change to date. The fish now has the ability to glide through the water practically indefinitely, using little to no energy, while gathering valuable data that can aid in the cleaning of our lakes and rivers.
Designed and built by Xiaobo Tan, MSU associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his team, the fish is equipped with an array of sensors that not only allow it to travel autonomously, but also measure water temperature, quality and other pertinent facts.
"Swimming requires constant flapping of the tail," Tan said, "which means the battery is constantly being discharged and typically wouldn't last more than a few hours."
The disadvantage to gliding, he said, is that it is slower and less maneuverable.
"This is why we integrated both locomotion modes -- gliding and swimming -- in our robot," Tan said. "Such integration also allows the robot to adapt to different environments, from shallow streams to deep lakes, from calm ponds to rivers, with rapid currents."
The robot's ability to glide is achieved through a newly installed pump that pushes water in and out of the fish, depending on if the scientists want the robot to ascend or descend. Also, the robot's battery pack sits on a kind of rail that moves backward and forward, in sync with the pumping action, to allow the robot to glide through water on a desired path.
The robotic fish now has a name: Grace, which stands for "Gliding Robot ACE."
Late last year Tan and his team took Grace for a test drive on the Kalamazoo River, where it exceeded all expectations.
"She swam at three sites along the river and wirelessly sent back sensor readings," Tan said. "I'm not sure, but we may have set a world record -- demonstrating robotic fish-based sampling with commercial water-quality sensors in a real-world environment."
The KalamazooRiver is, of course, the site of a 2010 oil spill. Interestingly, the robot's crude oil sensor had some readings upriver from where the spill occurred, although the readings downstream from the spill site were higher.
Underwater gliders, or seagliders, are becoming more common in oceanography. In fact, one traveled all the way across the Atlantic Ocean in late 2009.
One major difference in Grace is that, aside from its swimming capability, it is about 10 times smaller and lighter than a commercial underwater glider.
Tan's research is supported by the National Science Foundation.
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Public release date: 22-Jan-2013
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