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JUNEAU, Alaska ? A new report shows average annual employment on Alaska's North Slope at a 20-year high in 2010.

The report, commissioned by the Senate Finance Committee, looks at North Slope employment trends and work activity, and at nonresident workers in Alaska's oil and gas industry. It was conducted by the McDowell Group, and released this week.

It comes amid debate on whether Alaska should change its oil tax regime to boost oil production and investment. The report doesn't address any possible impact that the tax, passed in 2007, has had on hiring.

It shows average annual North Slope employment of 8,445 in 2010, the most recent full-year payroll data.

Job growth has occurred amid declining production. The report says high oil prices and investment in existing infrastructure are the main drivers.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120125/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_tax_jobs_alaska

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keepmyfareslow.org

By Rob Lovitt, msnbc.com contributor

Think the fight over the new rule from the Department of Transportation (DOT) requiring airlines to include all taxes and fees in their posted fares is over?

Think again. Even though the new rule is set to go into effect Thursday, it seems the battle is as intense as ever. Consider:

On Tuesday, Spirit Airlines, which is currently contesting the rule in court, launched a website called KeepMyFaresLow.org with the headline: Warning: New government regulations require us to HIDE taxes in your fares.

That brought a swift denunciation from Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, an advocacy group for corporate travel buyers. ?With this ill-considered attack on DOT, Spirit Airlines has reached a new low and no doubt secured the poster-child crown for 2012 for misleading consumers.?

Not so, countered Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza. ?Our view is that fares should be transparent and clear and that you should know what you?re paying your airline and what you?re paying in taxes,? he told msnbc.com.

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And then raising the specter of even higher taxes in these tax-averse times, he suggested the move toward full-fare advertising was ?an insidious way to then raise taxes on consumers? across the board. ?

?If the government is successful with this, it?s coming to everything you buy ? for cars, in restaurants, at big-box stores,? he said.

That ominous warning aside, the bottom line is that the new rule will go into effect on Thursday. Airlines will, indeed, be required to post fares that include all taxes and mandatory government fees. However, they?ll also be able to post information that shows the breakdown between the airline?s and the government?s respective portions.

?Nothing in our rule will prohibit a carrier from informing consumers that the fare includes a specified amount of taxes and government fees, as long as the stated fare includes those taxes and fees,? said DOT spokesman Bill Mosley. ?The carrier can then break out taxes and fees if it wishes.?

More stories you might like:

Rob Lovitt is a longtime travel writer who still believes the journey is as important as the destination. Follow him at Twitter.

Source: http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/25/10236937-fight-over-full-fare-rules-takes-bizarre-turn

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Cyberstep sent our hearts aflutter-ish at last year's NAMM with its prototype KDJ-One, a Game Boy with gigantism that held a portable digital audio workstation inside. Now, twelve months later, the company's pulled the dust sheets from a version that's ready for prime-time. Inside its roomy bowels you'll find a 1.0GHz Intel Atom processor, 512MB RAM, 4GB SSD and a 5-inch WVGA (800 x 400) touchscreen that'll let you control that piano-roll score editor. There's also 15 chunky rubber LED-lit keys, a Jog dial, D-Pad and a rumble pack so you really know when you've got a poppin' choon going. You'll be able to pre-order the vanilla kit for $800, but for $830 you'll also find WiFi baked inside, in either Game Boy White or Black'n'Red -- but be warned, orders are said to be fulfilled within six months. After the break we've got some new footage of the unit being put through its paces, which at no point shows it being used to play Super Mario Bros, shame.

Continue reading KDJ-One: the Game Boy of music making is real(ly coming, in a bit) (video)

KDJ-One: the Game Boy of music making is real(ly coming, in a bit) (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/QMU7qrgDmUE/

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chometssylvain · ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2012)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2012) ? A recent Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) study published in the journal Science investigating the molecular structure and function of an essential plant hormone could profoundly change our understanding of a key cell process, and might ultimately lead to the development of new drugs for a variety of diseases.

The study builds on earlier work by the same team of investigators at VARI that was published in the journal Nature in 2009. That study shed light on how plants respond when they are under stress from extreme temperatures, drought and other harsh environmental conditions and was later named by Science as one of the top scientific breakthroughs of 2009.

Understanding how cells talk

In signal transduction -- the basic process of intercellular and intracellular communication -- enzymes known as kinases and phosphatases serve as the opposing partners and key regulators of this process.

VARI scientists mapping the structure of the receptor for Abscisic acid (ABA), a plant hormone that controls growth, development and responses to environmental stress, discovered that ABA regulates the stress-response pathway by affecting an enzyme belonging to the phosphatase family -- which in turn binds to a kinase.

"This process has been little understood," said Karsten Melcher, Ph.D., Head of the VARI Laboratory of Structural Biology and Biochemistry and co-author of the study. "We believe that the activation mechanism may in many cases also be structural. Phosphatases inactivate the active site like a plug -- changing the shape of the kinase."

"The textbook assumption has been that enzymatic phosphatases inhibit kinases only by taking away phosphates from the kinases. There have been few recorded examples of non-enzymatic phosphatases inhibiting kinases."

Knowing that these enzymes mimic the structure of the opposing enzyme enables scientists to more accurately develop mechanisms to activate or inhibit intercellular and intracellular communication. Inhibiting or activating this process in plant cells could lead to plants that more readily survive drought or other conditions of stress.

Possible impact on the treatment of diseases

In mammalian cells the ability to impact communication has numerous and far-reaching implications. For example, applications that inhibit or activate cell communication in out-of-control metastasizing cancer cells have enormous potential to affect tumor growth.

Writing in the journal Science, where the study was published on January 6, Jeffrey Leung notes that "molecular mimicry might be a common mechanism in many biological processes involving kinase-phosphatase complexes?The structural studies on the core ABA signaling proteins establish a new paradigm for kinase-phosphatase co-regulation and coevolution."

The possibility of broader scientific implications is also noted by Melcher.

"The current studies take a step back from application and focus back on fundamental cellular mechanisms with a broad implication beyond ABA signaling," said Melcher.

In their 2009 study in Nature, Melcher and H. Eric Xu, Ph.D., used X-ray crystallography to detail precisely how ABA works at the molecular level. One of ABA's effects is to cause plant pores to close when plants are stressed so that they can retain as much water as possible.

In a follow-up 2010 study published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, the VARI team identified several synthetic compounds that fit well with ABA's many receptors to have the same effect. By finding compounds that can close these pores, researchers' findings could lead to sprays that use a plant's natural defenses to help it survive harsh environmental conditions. "This type of finding once again demonstrates the importance of identifying, mapping and understanding fundamental cellular and molecular processes because of the profound implications for human health," said Xu, Director of the VARI Center for Structural Biology and Drug Discovery and co-author of the current Science study.

"Proteins with similarities to plant ABA receptors are also found in humans and further studies in this area could reveal important implications for people with cellular stress disorders." The lead authors of the current Science study are Fen-Fen Soon, Ley-Moy Ng, and Edward Zhou. The project was carried out in conjunction and collaboration with scientists from the National University of Singapore, Purdue University, The Scripps Research Institute, Scripps Florida, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Synchrotron Research Center of Northwestern University, and University of California at Riverside.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Van Andel Research Institute.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal References:

F.-F. Soon, L.-M. Ng, X. E. Zhou, G. M. West, A. Kovach, M. H. E. Tan, K. M. Suino-Powell, Y. He, Y. Xu, M. J. Chalmers, J. S. Brunzelle, H. Zhang, H. Yang, H. Jiang, J. Li, E.-L. Yong, S. Cutler, J.-K. Zhu, P. R. Griffin, K. Melcher, H. E. Xu. Molecular Mimicry Regulates ABA Signaling by SnRK2 Kinases and PP2C Phosphatases. Science, 2011; 335 (6064): 85 DOI: 10.1126/science.1215106
J. Leung. Controlling Hormone Action by Subversion and Deception. Science, 2012; 335 (6064): 46 DOI: 10.1126/science.1217667

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120123175705.htm

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George W. Bush shared their values. Newt Gingrich shares their resentments.

Polling data from South Carolina and Florida suggests that Tea Party and evangelical voters may finally be coalescing around a candidate, and that candidate is Newt Gingrich. Which is interesting, because as many people have noted he does not seem to make obvious sense for either group.

Evangelicals in the heyday of the Moral Majority would never have gone for someone with Gingrich's tangled (to put it politely) personal past. Perhaps if there were a profound public act of contrition and the declaration that the experience of being born again had saved him from his faults, but not with Gingrich's arrogant dismissal of any discussion of the issue. Nor would the conversion to Catholicism have played well back in the day. More generally, Gingrich does not make any real effort to sell himself as a man with Jesus in his heart the way Bush did, which is what conventional wisdom says that evangelical voters want. Evangelicals are emphatically "values" voters, yet Gingrich does not seem to embody their values or even to be particularly inclined to pretend that he shares them.

As for the Tea Party voters, they are supposed to be looking for an outsider ? la Ron Paul, not a man who has spent decades in Washington, first as a politician and then profiting from politics.

So what is going on? Simple. Gingrich does not share the evangelical or the Tea Party voters values -- he shares their resentments. He resents the media, "elites," the rich, the leadership of his own party, the Democrats, educated people, people who live in big cities, liberals, and of course, Obama, just as they do. Gingrich and his supporters do not oppose Obama, they resent the fact of his existence. He will speak for his constituents by articulating their resentments in more strident, more combative, more articulate terms than they can themselves, which is why they find him brilliant. Ron Paul's supporters find him brilliant because he reduces the complexities of the world into easy soundbites. Gingrich does that too, but he does much more -- he tells them that their nastiest, darkest, angriest, most irrational self-indulgent justifications are 100% absolutely right. It's a negative version of a politics of self-esteem: not that you are right to feel good about yourself, but that you are right to be resentful of everyone else.

The worldview is Manichean: Obama's economic policies are not mistaken, he is deliberately trying to make Americans poorer. Obama's foreign policy is not misguided, he is deliberately trying to surrender America to foreign powers. And Obama is not merely not one of the people, he wants to destroy American culture. It is a perfect expression of what Richard Hofstadter called "the paranoid style" in American politics. But it's a weirdly infantilized version of that style. When Gingrich talks I hear Rowdy Roddy Piper in They Live: "I am here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I am all out of bubble gum." Gingrich is the WWF version of a national politician, playing out an over-the-top script where the championship belt would belong to us except we were cheated and the refs are crooked and this time we're bringing the folding chair into the ring and that'll show 'em! It's infantilizing in just the way that professional wrestling is pitched to a 12-year-old boy's sensibilities (have you seen those costumes?). Gingrich frequently give the impression of a child about to have a tantrum, and that's just fine -- tantrums are all about resentment. It's not quite the same thing as anger, not even righteous anger -- this is more personal, more envious, more spiteful. The difference between anger and resentment is the difference between "this injustice shall not stand" and "it's not faaaaairrr." Romney wants to be the grownup in the room -- Newt wants to be the bad boy in the corner.

And that's why these voters don't care that Gingrich was a Washington insider, or has a record on family values that would give pause to one of the Borgia popes. It's why they don't really care that he contradicts himself, or says crazy things. They want crazy. They want to hear their anger and resentment made into a national platform. They are the victims of an evil conspiracy -- no one plays the victim better than Gingrich when cornered -- and they resent it. They don't really care what Gingrich says he will do, or whether it makes sense, or even whether they would approve of his policies or benefit from them. The are filled with resentment, and Gingrich has captured that voice. Romney can't project it, nor can Santorum or Paul. Plenty of the other candidates share the good-versus-evil absolutism, the paranoid style, the willingness to say anything no matter how crazy. But only Newt, Bad Boy Newt, Nasty Newt, the Grandiose One, the Historian (the guy has too many monikers to keep track of, we'll have to hold a contest) only Newt has captured the key emotive element that drives the Republican core this year: resentment. The hard right core of the Republican Party is filled with resentment, and they have found just the man to let us all know about it.

The question now is, how far can a pure politics of resentment take a candidate in today's environment? The answer, I suspect, is pretty far.

?

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-schweber/newt-gingrich_b_1225572.html

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AUTOS: Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale Scores With Million-Dollar Saturday Sales

Tucker Torpedo, Bentley Franay, Mercedes Gullwing among the prime-time cars selling for more than $2 million each.

The big-dog collector cars hit the stage at Barrett-Jackson on Saturday, with a number of multi-million-dollar sales as superb classics and unique concepts thrilled the gigantic crowd in the main tent.

All told, eight cars ran into the millions of dollars. Through Saturday, total sales for the Scottsdale auction exceed $76 million.

The rare and beautifully restored 1948 Tucker Torpedo is the highest seller of the Scottsdale auction at $2.65 million, plus 10 percent bidder fee. (Photo: Bob Golfen) Not surprisingly, the headline collector car of the Scottsdale auction, the 1948 Tucker Torpedo, became the top sale of the event with a resounding bid of $2.65 million, plus 10 percent bidder fee.

One of just 51 cars built in the short life of the Tucker car company, the gleaming-blue, rear-engine sedan with its signature triple headlights rolled onto stage with a round of applause from the massive auction crowd that didn?t stop until the Tucker was hammered ?sold? by auctioneer Spanky Assiter.

?The best Tucker in the world in my opinion,? Barrett-Jackson president Steve Davis said of the car consigned from the Ron Pratte collection in Chandler, Ariz.

Another star of the Scottsdale auction, the 1947 Bentley Mark VI with its glorious Franay body, climbed quickly to a winning bid of $2.5 million, plus 10 percent bidder fee.

The Franay-bodied 1947 Bentley Mark VI won a top sale of $2.5 million. plus bidder fee. (Photo: Bob Golfen) Widely considered to be the most beautiful Bentley ever built, the auction car was also brought to the auction by Pratte, a Barrett-Jackson regular and renowned car enthusiast.

?An English chassis with a beautiful French coach on it,? auction CEO Craig Jackson said before the bidding. ?This has to be the most beautiful Bentley ever produced.?

The all-original 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing driven just over 4,000 miles was the first car of the evening to hit $2 million, before 10 percent bidder fee, which is a towering price for a steel (rather than alloy) Gullwing but not unexpected considering its pristine condition.

Next up was the exotic and extremely rare 1933 Pierce Arrow Silver Arrow, also from Don William?s Blackhawk Collection, that equaled the Gullwing sale at $2 million, before fee.

Source: http://automotive.speedtv.com/article/autos-barrett-jackson-scores-with-million-dollar-saturday-sales/

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WASHINGTON ? Lawyers for a Utah abortion doctor charged with murder for the death of a fetus in Maryland asked a judge Friday to throw out the charges, arguing she is immune from prosecution and that the state is trying to infringe upon a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy.

Dr. Nicola Riley and her former colleague, Dr. Steven Brigham of New Jersey, were indicted last month under a law that allows murder charges to be brought in the death of a viable fetus. The 2005 law had only been used previously for cases in which defendants were accused of assaulting or killing pregnant women, and prosecutors have acknowledged they are in uncharted territory by using it to charge abortion doctors. Thirty-seven other states have similar statutes.

At Riley's bail review hearing Friday in Cecil County Circuit Court in Elkton, Md., attorney Stuart O. Simms argued that prosecutors were attempting to criminalize constitutionally protected medical treatment.

"Based on their interpretation of the statute, they are now threatening to charge any medical professional in Cecil County with a state crime," Simms told The Associated Press after the hearing.

Judge Keith Baynes set bail for Riley at $300,000, the amount requested by Deputy State's Attorney Kerwin Miller, who argued that the evidence against the 46-year-old Salt Lake City resident is strong and characterized her as a flight risk. She was arrested Dec. 28 on a fugitive warrant and was extradited to Maryland on Thursday.

"It gets no bigger than this," Miller said in reference to Riley's first-degree murder charge, the Cecil Whig of Elkton reported.

Riley posted bail shortly after the hearing and was released from custody. As a condition of her release, she was ordered not to perform abortions.

Miller and State's Attorney Ellis Rollins did not return messages seeking comment. They have declined to speak to reporters since they were criticized by Riley's attorneys for discussing the indictment publicly while it was still under seal.

The charges against Riley stem from a botched abortion in August 2010 at Brigham's Elkton clinic. The 18-year-old patient suffered serious injuries, and Riley drove her to a nearby hospital rather than call 911, according to medical regulators. The fetus was 21 weeks old. Doctors generally consider fetuses to be viable outside the womb starting around 23 weeks.

Brigham, of Voorhees, N.J., has been charged with murder in the death of that fetus and four others. He was released from custody Jan. 6 after posting a $500,000 bond. His attorney has also argued that Brigham has not violated the fetal homicide law.

Riley's Maryland medical license was suspended over the August 2010 incident, and Brigham was ordered to stop practicing medicine without a license in Maryland. Regulators discovered that Brigham was beginning second-trimester abortions in New Jersey and having patients drive themselves to Elkton the next day to complete the procedures.

Brigham was not authorized to perform abortions in New Jersey after the first trimester, and regulators called his actions manipulative and deceptive. He also lost his New Jersey license, leaving him without a valid license in any state.

In Maryland, licensed physicians can perform abortions before the fetus is deemed capable of surviving outside the womb, and abortions of viable fetuses are permitted to protect the life or health of the mother or if the fetus has serious genetic abnormalities.

The state's fetal homicide law was approved in 2005 in the wake of the highly publicized slaying of Laci Peterson in Modesto, Calif. Peterson was seven months pregnant, and her husband, Scott Peterson, was convicted of killing both her and their unborn son.

The law specifically exempts licensed physicians performing legal abortions. Before the bill was passed, its sponsor, Delegate Charles Boutin, wrote in a letter to a committee chairman that it is "clearly and solely a victim's rights bill. It takes care of the `Laci Peterson' issue in Maryland, while protecting a woman's right to choose."

"The General Assembly never intended for doctors to be prosecuted at all for performing abortions, let alone convicted and subjected to criminal penalty," Riley's attorneys argued in their motion to dismiss the indictment.

Experts on both sides of the abortion debate say the use of a fetal homicide law to target doctors ? or medical professionals of any kind ? is highly unusual if not unprecedented in U.S. history. Most states have provisions excluding doctors from prosecution. Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel with Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group, said the Cecil County prosecutors appeared to be testing the limits of that exclusion.

"It's a case of first impression," Forsythe said.

Jennifer Nash, a policy analyst with the Guttmacher Institute, a research institution that favors abortion rights, noted that abortion doctors have faced prosecution dating to the mid-19th century, but most such cases have fallen under criminal abortion statutes.

Some anti-abortion activists have hailed the arrests of Brigham and Riley, saying the charges shed light on the troubling practices of certain abortion doctors. A search of Brigham's Elkton clinic revealed a freezer containing 35 late-term fetuses, including one believed to have been aborted at 36 weeks, according to documents released by medical regulators.

___

Follow Ben Nuckols on Twitter at http://twitter.com/APBenNuckols

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120120/ap_on_re_us/us_md_abortion_doctors_charged

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(Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

BOSTON (CBS) ?Some Massachusetts residents will see only a small rise in health care premiums this year.

State regulators have approved premium hikes averaging 2.3% for what?s called the Small Group Market.? That includes thousands of small businesses and self-employed residents.
They go into effect in April.

Last year, people saw health care premiums rise 9 percent, and there have been double-digit increases in years past.

State officials say the lower increases reflect years of efforts to get costs under control.

Source: http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/01/21/health-insurance-increase-okayed-in-mass-for-2012/

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