Ex-Border Patrol agents get at least 30 years

SAN DIEGO (AP) ? A federal judge on Friday sentenced two former Border Patrol agents to at least 30 years in prison for running a ring that smuggled more than 500 illegal immigrants into the United States.

U.S. District Court Judge John Houston sentenced Raul Villarreal to 35 years in prison for being the ring leader. His brother, Fidel Villarreal, was sentenced to 30 years for managing the operation.

The sentences are among the longest given to border law enforcement officials.

Houston said he gave the severe sentences to deter other agents who have been entrusted by the American people to protect the border. The judge called their smuggling operation "disgusting" and a threat to national security.

Prosecutors said Raul Villarreal ? who made television appearances as an agency spokesman and once played the role of a smuggler in a public service ad ? recruited his brother to his ring. The brothers worked in cahoots with a corrupt Tijuana police officer and a network of others who arranged the pickups and drop-offs.

The agents would abandon their job duties manning the border to transport the migrants in Border Patrol vehicles ? sometimes several times a day, federal officials said. Prosecutors said they smuggled in as many as 1,000 Mexicans and Brazilians; the judge put the figure at more than 500.

The brothers charged each immigrant about $10,000, and they made more than $700,000, the judge said.

"This long-term guaranteed method of bringing aliens into the United States was disgusting, pervasive and impacted significantly the national interest," Houston told the court before handing down their sentences.

The brothers did not show any emotion when the sentences were announced.

The federal probe began in May 2005 when an informant tipped off the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Investigators installed cameras in areas where migrants were dropped off, planted recording devices and placed tracking instruments on Border Patrol vehicles. They also trailed the ring's smuggling operations by airplane.

Prosecutors said when the brothers learned they were being investigated in June 2006, they quit their jobs and fled to Mexico.

Two years later, the brothers were arrested there and extradited to the U.S. where they were charged with human smuggling, witness tampering and bribery.

Raul Villarreal's attorney, David Nick, had argued the prosecution's witnesses were not credible and surveillance yielded no evidence of wrongdoing by his client.

Fidel's attorney, Zenia Gilg, echoed that argument, saying the prosecution's case rested largely on two alleged accomplices who were promised leniency for testifying and "inconsistent statements" from migrants.

The Border Patrol has suffered a string of such embarrassments since doubling its size in less than a decade, including the case of an agent who pleaded guilty in April to smuggling marijuana while on duty along the Arizona-Mexico border.

But prosecutors and Judge Houston said the Villarreal case stands out as being among the worst corruption cases.

"They used their positions as Border Patrol agents to line their pockets," Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Salel said, adding later: "Unlike other corruption cases where agents have been led astray to join an organization, these agents created the organization. They called the shots. They were the ring leaders."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-06-21-US-Border-Agents-Sentencing/id-1929fc775986440c9acf16c64f33b89c

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Hack a day modder builds a custom controller for disabled gamers

Sure, when tinkerer Caleb Kraft found out that pressure switches marketed at the disabled were massively overpriced, he got mad like anybody else. But then he decided to get even the best way he knew how: by building his own, and posting the plans for all to follow on Hack a day for free. The project came about via a kid with muscular dystrophy named Thomas, who enjoyed Minecraft but may eventually lose the ability to hold a controller or use a mouse and keyboard. Caleb's idea was to build low-pressure switches using a 3D printer and simply map them to the Minecraft keyboard and mouse commands using a $20 Teensy board. He posted his plans online, but since he feels they could be improved on, also created a site called the Controller Project (see the More Coverage link). From there, those in need of a custom device can make a request, other modders can post their own plans and builders can use them to make controllers for donation. Since more is always merrier for such things, if you have such talents or know someone who needs them, hit the source for more info.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/21/hack-a-day-modder-builds-a-custom-controller-for-disabled-gamers/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Scrooser Is A Motorized Scooter From The Future

The unfortunately-named Scrooser (the creators are from Dresden so maybe it sounds better in German) is actually surprisingly cool. It looks like a standard, two-wheel kick scooter but actually has a motor built in and it can go about 15 miles per hour on a good day.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/TZnIPsymbtg/

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High court sets stage for frantic finale

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 8, 2010. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

To the dismay of court watchers everywhere, the Supreme Court did not hand down decisions in the four biggest pending cases on Thursday, leaving their simultaneous release for the final, frantic week of the court's term.

Opinions that could drastically expand the rights of gays and lesbians in society, sharply curtail the use of race in college admissions and strike down civil rights legislation protecting minorities at the ballot box could all be released at the same time on Monday, unless the court adds more decision days to its schedule for later that week.

Though undoubtedly every case the nine justices decide has important effects on the legal system, each term a handful of controversial cases particularly captures the public's attention. This year, the court decided to wade into the gay marriage debate for the first time in its history, and it also took up two landmark cases involving race. One of the cases, a challenge to the University of Texas' affirmative-action program, was argued in front of the court all the way back in October, and many legal experts are stumped as to why the justices have taken such an unusually long time to release an opinion.

It's common for the court to delay releasing its biggest decisions until the very last day. Last year, the court did just that, releasing its bombshell decision upholding the health care law on June 28. This is often because the controversial cases are the most difficult and require more back-and-forth between the justices' dissents and the main opinion and concurrences.

Two highly anticipated gay marriage cases?Perry v. Hollingsworth and Windsor v. United States?are sure to have attracted just this sort of judicial shuffling.

In the Perry case, the court is expected decide whether California voters discriminated against gay people when they voted "yes" to Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage, in 2008. In Windsor, the court is weighing whether the federal Defense of Marriage Act?which limits all federal marriage benefits to opposite sex couples?violates the constitutional rights of same-sex couples.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative-leaning swing vote on the court with a history of backing gay rights, is expected to decide the fate of both cases.

But it's possible that the justices could dodge the legal heart of those two cases?whether gays and lesbians have a fundamental right to marriage?and instead rule narrowly on procedural or standing grounds.

David Boies, an attorney representing same-sex couples in California in the Perry case, has said he believes the justices will rule that the proponents of Proposition 8 do not have the legal standing to challenge the lower court's ruling striking down the ban. (In the Proposition 8 case, California's elected officials opted not to appeal the lower court's ruling, and it's unclear if an unelected coalition of Proposition 8 supporters have the legal right to appeal on behalf of California voters.) If the court rules on these narrow grounds, it would make same-sex marriage legal again in California without having any implications for the dozens of states that currently ban same-sex marriage. This would punt the fundamental gay marriage question down the road for the court to decide later.

In the DOMA case, the justices may decide to strike it down based on the federalist argument that states should be allowed to define marriage for themselves. It's also possible that the justices will decide that Congress doesn't have the standing to defend the law, after the Obama administration's Justice Department declined to defend it in court. Either possibility would result in a narrow decision without much legal implications for the gay rights movement's larger argument that same-sex couples should be allowed to wed.

The two cases involving race, Shelby County v. Holder and Fisher v. University of Texas, will also most likely be released on Monday or another decision day next week.

In Shelby, the justices could significantly scale back the federal government's right to supervise states with a history of voting discrimination against minorities. If the justices decide to strike down this key part of the Voting Rights Act?a cornerstone of the civil rights movement that helped dismantle decades of discriminatory voting restrictions?states would have more leeway to pass laws the Obama administration considers to be discriminatory. These include laws that tighten identification requirements and limit early voting hours at the ballot box, which have passed in dozens of states in the past few years.

In Fisher, the court will decide whether universities can use race as a factor in undergraduate admissions. The Supreme Court established in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger that universities could use race as a factor in admissions as long as they did not use quotas (for example, that 10 percent of the class must be black). The justices said affirmative action was still necessary to counteract the effects of institutionalized racism that had prevented minorities from attending college in the past. The majority wrote that they believed that in 25 years, affirmative action would no longer be necessary and should be stopped.

It's possible that the justices will use Abigail Fisher's complaint that she was rejected from UT because she is white to step up the timeline set out in the 2003 decision, and reject the college's use of affirmative action as unconstitutional. The college argues that Fisher's grade point average and standardized test scores made her inadmissible regardless of her race, and that using race as one factor in admission helps it maintain a diverse student body.

The justices also have the option of not deciding some of the cases at all, which would mean they would have to be reargued in October. But that's rare. A hectic Monday full of four legal landscape-changing decisions is much more likely.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/supreme-court-holds-big-four-cases-final-frantic-170036331.html

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Stupid Celebrities Exclusive: Q & A at the Pre-Oscar Party Red Carpet

Stupid Celebrities Exclusive: Q & A at the Pre-Oscar Party Red Carpet

While on the red carpet at the OK! Magazine’s Pre-Oscar Party, I got to snag a few of the celebs and grilled them a bit. LMFAO’s Stefan Kendal Gordy SC: What are you currently working on? SKG: I’m working on my own album right now. SC: Was there a movie that inspired you to do ...

Stupid Celebrities Exclusive: Q & A at the Pre-Oscar Party Red Carpet Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News

Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/02/stupid-celebrities-exclusive-q-a-at-pre-oscar-party/

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Video: Researchers develop protein 'passport' that help nanoparticles get past immune system

Video: Researchers develop protein 'passport' that help nanoparticles get past immune system

Friday, February 22, 2013

The body's immune system exists to identify and destroy foreign objects, whether they are bacteria, viruses, flecks of dirt or splinters. Unfortunately, nanoparticles designed to deliver drugs, and implanted devices like pacemakers or artificial joints, are just as foreign and subject to the same response.

Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science and Penn's Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics have figured out a way to provide a "passport" for such therapeutic devices, enabling them to get past the body's security system.

The research was conducted by professor Dennis Discher, graduate students Pia Rodriguez, Takamasa Harada, David Christian and Richard K. Tsai and postdoctoral fellow Diego Pantano of the Molecular and Cell Biophysics Lab in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Penn.

It was published in the journal Science.

"From your body's perspective," Rodriguez said, "an arrowhead a thousand years ago and a pacemaker today are treated the same ? as a foreign invader.

"We'd really like things like pacemakers, sutures and drug-delivery vehicles to not cause an inflammatory response from the innate immune system."

The innate immune system attacks foreign bodies in a general way. Unlike the learned response of the adaptive immune system, which includes the targeted antibodies that are formed after a vaccination, the innate immune system tries to destroy everything it doesn't recognize as being part of the body.

This response has many cellular components, including macrophages ? literally "big eaters" ? that find, engulf and destroy invaders. Proteins in blood serum work in tandem with macrophages; they adhere to objects in the blood stream and draw macrophages' attention. If the macrophage determines these proteins are stuck to a foreign invader, they will eat it or signal other macrophages to form a barrier around it.

Drug-delivery nanoparticles naturally trigger this response, so researchers' earlier attempts to circumvent it involved coating the particles with polymer "brushes." These brushes stick out from the nanoparticle and attempt to physically block various blood serum proteins from sticking to its surface.

However, these brushes only slow down the macrophage-signaling proteins, so Discher and colleagues tried a different approach: Convincing the macrophages that the nanoparticles were part of the body and shouldn't be cleared.

In 2008, Discher's group showed that the human protein CD47, found on almost all mammalian cell membranes, binds to a macrophage receptor known as SIRPa in humans. Like a patrolling border guard inspecting a passport, if a macrophage's SIRPa binds to a cell's CD47, it tells the macrophage that the cell isn't an invader and should be allowed to proceed on.

Penn's Dennis Discher explains how his lab designed a protein that acts a "passport" for the body's immune system. Nanoparticles equipped with this passport last longer in the bloodstream than equivalent particles without it.Credit: Kurtis Sensenig, University of Pennsylvania

"There may be other molecules that help quell the macrophage response," Discher said. "But human CD47 is clearly one that says, 'Don't eat me'."

Since the publication of that study, other researchers determined the combined structure of CD47 and SIRPa together. Using this information, Discher's group was able to computationally design the smallest sequence of amino acids that would act like CD47. This "minimal peptide" would have to fold and fit well enough into the receptor of SIRPa to serve as a valid passport.

After chemically synthesizing this minimal peptide, Discher's team attached it to conventional nanoparticles that could be used in a variety of experiments.

"Now, anyone can make the peptide and put it on whatever they want," Rodriguez said

The research team's experiments used a mouse model to demonstrate better imaging of tumors and as well as improved efficacy of an anti-cancer drug-delivery particle.

As this minimal peptide might one day be attached to a wide range of drug-delivery vehicles, the researchers also attached antibodies of the type that could be used in targeting cancer cells or other kinds of diseased tissue. Beyond a proof of concept for therapeutics, these antibodies also served to attract the macrophages' attention and ensure the minimal peptide's passport was being checked and approved.

"We're showing that the peptide actually does inhibit the macrophage's response," Discher said. "We force the interaction and then overwhelm it."

The test of this minimal peptide's efficacy was in mice that were genetically modified so their macophages had SIRPa receptors similar to human. The researchers injected two kinds of nanoparticles ? ones carrying the peptide passport and ones without ? and then measured how fast the mice's immune system cleared them.

"We used different fluorescent dyes on the two kinds of nanoparticles, so we could take blood samples every 10 minutes and measure how many particles of each kind were left using flow cytometry," Rodriguez said. "We injected the two particles in a 1-to-1 ratio and 20-30 minutes later, there were up to four times as many particles with the peptide left."

Even giving therapeutic nanoparticles an additional half-hour before they are eaten by macrophages could be a major boon for treatments. Such nanoparticles might need to make a few trips through the macrophage-heavy spleen and liver to find their targets, but they shouldn't stay in the body indefinitely. Other combinations of exterior proteins might be appropriate for more permanent devices, such as pacemaker leads, enabling them to hide from the immune system for longer periods of time.

While more research is necessary before such applications become a reality, reducing the peptide down to a sequence of only a few amino acids was a critical step. The relative simplicity of this passport molecule to be more easily synthesized makes it a more attractive component for future therapeutics.

"It can be made cleanly in a machine," Discher said, "and easily modified during synthesis in order to attach to all sorts of implanted and injected things, with the goal of fooling the body into accepting these things as 'self.'"

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University of Pennsylvania: http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews

Thanks to University of Pennsylvania for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126976/Video__Researchers_develop_protein__passport__that_help_nanoparticles_get_past_immune_system

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T.J. Warren?s Monster Game Leads North Carolina State Past Florida State

Rob Kinnan-USA Today Sports

The importance of North Carolina State freshman T.J. Warren has been known for some time.

Long story short, when Warren is clicking on the offensive end, the Wolfpack are that much more dangerous, especially with March nearing its arrival.

On Tuesday night, Warren shone for a career-high 31 points. In addition, he grabbed 13 rebounds, which also marked a season-high. In turn, it was the first double-double of Warren?s young career.

As the disappointments continue to pile up for Florida State, the Wolfpack got exactly what they needed on Tuesday night: a convincing win. North Carolina State will find themselves jostling for position and seeding, not only for the upcoming ACC Tournament, but also in the NCAA Tournament.

A three-game losing skid earlier this month has quickly been countered by three consecutive wins, so head coach Mark Gottfried knows that his team has the capability of getting hot down the stretch. The Wolfpack are not currently ranked within the AP Top 25, but N.C. State certainly has the potential to make a run within the Big Dance, there is no doubt about that.

Moving forward, it?s clear that Warren?s importance and overall production will be counted upon more and more. It?s unlikely that Warren will have games like he did on Tuesday night, but that potential can certainly derail opponents. His contributions to the team will be just another worry for teams that N.C. State matches up with in the final weeks.

A true road test at North Carolina is on the docket for this weekend.

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Follow Paul Seaver on Twitter: @PaulSeaverRS

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Source: http://www.rantsports.com/ncaa-basketball/2013/02/19/t-j-warrens-monster-game-leads-north-carolina-state-past-florida-state/

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