NEW YORK (AP) ? The stock market took a pause Monday after a scorching start to July.
Stocks inched higher in midday trading on Wall Street as the Standard & Poor's 500 index came off its best week since January.
The S&P 500 surged 3 percent last week and reached another record high on Friday, bouncing back from a slump in June on concern that the Federal Reserve was poised to start easing back on its stimulus to the economy. The central bank is currently buying $85 billion of bonds a month to keep interest rates low and to encourage borrowing and hiring.
"The market is consolidating its gains from last week," said Jim Russell, a regional investment director at US Bank.
Investors may also standing pat before testimony from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who will be giving his semi-annual testimony to Congress on Wednesday, Russell said. Comments from Bernanke late on Wednesday that the Fed would not ease its stimulus before the economy was ready helped power last week's surge in stocks.
A closely watched report on U.S. retail sales Monday morning had some disappointments for investors. Americans spent more at retail businesses in June, buying more cars and trucks, furniture and clothes, but they cut back on many other purchases, a mixed sign for economic growth. Retail sales rose just 0.4 percent from May, less than analysts had forecast and less than the 0.5 percent increase the previous month.
Stocks fluctuated between small losses and gains in the early going.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up 14 points, or 0.1 percent, to 15,478 as of 12:03 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose two points, or 1,682 and the Nasdaq Composite rose six points to 3,606.
Small-company stocks had the biggest gains Monday. The Russell 2000 rose six points, or 0.6 percent, to 1,042, bringing its gains for the year to 22.8 percent. That's far ahead of the S&P's gain of 18 percent.
The market's advance was held back by news that economic growth in China, the second-biggest economy in the world, fell to the lowest since 1991, hurt by weak trade and efforts to cool a credit boom. China's economy expanded at an annual rate of 7.5 percent in the second quarter, down from 7.7 percent in the same period a year earlier.
Slowing global growth is one of the biggest threats to this year's stock rally, said Uri Landesman, President of Platinum Partners. He predicts that stock markets may be poised to slump as much as 15 percent in coming months as this year's gains overstate the outlook for the economy.
"Most of the world's economies are sucking wind," Landesman said. "It's going to be very difficult to keep (the U.S. economy) going with weak exports."
In commodities trading, the price of oil fell 8 cents to $105.86 a barrel. Gold rose $6.30, or 0.5 percent, to $1,284 an ounce. The dollar rose against the euro and the Japanese yen.
In government bond trading, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.57 from 2.58 percent Friday.
Among stocks making big moves:
? Leap Wireless soared $8.96, or 112 percent, to $16.94 after the carrier agreed to be acquired by AT&T for $1.19 billion, or $15 a share. The deal was announced late Friday. AT&T fell 22 cents, or 0.6 percent, $35.59.
? Citigroup rose 64 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $51.46 after the bank reported earnings that beat analyst's expectations for the second quarter as investment banking profits surged.
? Boeing gained $3.19, or 3.2 percent, or $105.10 after an analysts at Sterne Agee recommended buying the stock. Boeing slumped 2 percent Friday following a fire on an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 parked at London's Heathrow airport.
Enjoying some rare downtime together, Keira Knightley and James Righton took a walk around East London this morning (July 10).
The ?Domino? dame and her Klaxons rocker hubby laughed and chatted as they navigated their way around the Brick Lane neighborhood while shutterbugs snapped a few pics.
Meanwhile, Keira appears in a new commercial for the Women?s Aid anti-domestic violence charity to help raise awareness of abused women.
She explained, "I wanted to take part in this advert for Women's Aid because while domestic violence exists in every section of society we rarely hear about it. Domestic violence affects one in four women at some point in their lifetime and kills two women every week.?
Enjoy the pictures of Keira Knightley and James Righton out in London (July 10).
Central State University will undergo $20 million in renovations to make the campus more energy efficient.
Central State University will undergo $20 million in renovations to make the campus more energy efficient.
The university looks to add interior and exterior lighting, building automation, mechanical upgrades, roof improvements and implement water conservation. The end result is expected to cut energy consumption 41 percent for utility savings of $1 million a year.
The renovation costs will be paid for through financing from the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority.
Among the major renovations will be a conversion of the steam plant ? which provides heat to 23 buildings ? to run on 14 hot water boilers tied into an automated system for climate control across campus. Automated climate control with sensors to detect room occupancy and adjust room temperature will be installed, and major energy or water-reducing equipment replacements will be made in buildings serving the Center for Education and Natural Sciences, Smith College of Business and Natatorium.
Other upgrades include LED lights, as well as repairs and replacements of window and door sealant and roofing.
The university is aiming for a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, as mandated by Ohio House Bill 251. It also says there will be a total guaranteed savings of $14.5 million over the 15 years the improvements will take place.
Brewer-Garrett Co. of Middleburg Heights has been selected undertake the project. Work began June 28.
Central State University is the ninth-largest college or university in the Dayton region with roughly 2,200 students, according to DBJ research.
Source: www.calendarwiz.com --- Monday, July 08, 2013 Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Greater Chesapeake's Eastern Shore Golf Classic will be held on Monday, July 8th at River Marsh Golf Club at the Chesapeake Bay Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, Maryland. Re... ...
Link to video: Quebec train crash aftermath ?like a war zone? says Canadian prime minister
The death toll in the oil train derailment in Quebec has been officially increased to 13 while around 40 more remain missing, police said after investigators were finally able to approach near where the runaway train exploded.
Sgt Benoit Richard of the Quebec provincial police said that eight more bodies had been found in the wreckage after conditions improved enough for inspectors to get better access to the charred site two days after the disaster. Police would not say where the bodies were located for fear of upsetting families.
Police are now considering the lakeside town of Lac-M?gantic, in Quebec's eastern township, a crime scene after a 72-car driverless freight train full of crude oil crashed into and pulverised the historic town centre early on Saturday morning.
The remains of 30 to 40 buildings and derailed tanker cars have been off-limits behind police cordons and the search for victims was hampered by the threat that burning tanker cars and their leaked contents, which locals fear leaked into the city's gutters, could cause further explosions.
"The vast majority of fires are out," confirmed S?ret? du Qu?bec officer Jean-Thomas Fortin, and a plan is in place to allow 1,500 of the 2,000 evacuated residents to return home from tomorrow.
Forensic pathologists are on the scene waiting to begin the work of identifying the victims, some of which they fear may have been completely vaporised by the blast, but the ground is still to hot for them to enter the front line of the blast, said Christine Savard, regional co-ordinator for public security.
Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, visited the town on Sunday afternoon and described it in a news conference as looking like a war zone. Around the village residents are still trying to come to terms with the scale.
"Every day there's another person declared missing, another family member not getting a phone call," says Jocelyne Legendre, a 53-year-old woman temporarily sheltered at the local school where the Red Cross and the Salvation Army are tending to the displaced.
She said that there must have been 40 people just at the Musi-Cafe, the local bar where many are feared to have died, "to say nothing of the blocks of people who died in their sleep". She was on her way to the bar that night before a "twist of fate" kept her home.
Mario Gabouri, who was woken by the crash, ran to see what was happening and saw his neighbour blown on to his back on the asphalt by the intensity of the explosion. "It was like a nightmare when you try to run but your limbs are too heavy," he said.
Gabouri, a 53-year-old wood factory worker displaced from his home located in what is now the "red zone", says at least four of his friends and colleagues are missing.
Gabouri alerted police on Saturday morning when he saw boiling green petrol pouring into the Chaudi?re river.
Quebec's environment minister, Yves-Fran?ois Blanchet, told CBC's Quebec AM that he estimated 100,000 litres of oil spilled into the river.
"What we have is a small, very fine, very thin layer of oil which, however, covers almost entirely the river for something like 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Lac-M?gantic to St-Georges-de-Beauce," he said.
The train was carrying heavy crude oil, according to Savard. It had been extracted from the Bekkan shale oil fields in North Dakota and was headed to eastern refineries in New Brunswick, according to Christophe Journet, senior sales marketing and management at Montreal, Maine & Atlantic, the rail company responsible for the track.
Montreal, Maine & Atlantic, said in a press release Sunday evening "Provincial and Federal authorities have taken control of the derailment area" preventing their internal investigation. They believe the locomotive was somehow shut down after the engineer left the train "which may have resulted in the release of air brakes on the locomotive that was holding the train in place."
The soaring global oil prices and the development of new technologies, such as hydraulic fracturing and and tar sands extraction, have caused a controversial bonanza in North American oil production.
According to the Montreal Gazette, Canadian Pacific's revenues per car have risen 12% in the first quarter since last year, thanks to the oil by rail surge, while 12% of Canadian railroad freight is hazardous material.
Serious public opposition to practices such as fracking and tar sands extraction, as well as the building of major pipelines has lead to a hasty surge in the transport of oil by freight.
Fishing in the sea of proteinsPublic release date: 2-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dr. Jessica Jacobs Jessica.Jacobs@rub.de 49-234-322-2197 Ruhr-University Bochum
Composition of splicing complex in chloroplasts identified for the first time
To convert a gene into a protein, a cell first crafts a blueprint out of RNA. One of the main players in this process has been identified by researchers led by Dr. Jessica Jacobs at the Ruhr-Universitt Bochum. The team "fished" a large complex of proteins and RNA, which is involved in the so-called splicing, from the chloroplasts of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. This cuts non-coding regions out of the messenger RNA, which contains the protein blueprint. "For the first time, we have established the exact composition of an unknown splicing complex of the chloroplasts", says Jacobs. She reports with her colleagues from the Department of General and Molecular Botany and the Work Group for Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry in the journal "Molecular and Cellular Proteomics".
From gene to protein craftwork required
Genes, the bearers of genetic information, contain coding and non-coding regions. To convert a gene into a protein, enzymes first create a copy of the gene, the messenger RNA. A useful blueprint for a protein is only obtained, however, when enzymes cut the non-coding regions, called introns out of the messenger RNA. Scientists call this process splicing. Large complexes of RNA and proteins are responsible for the splicing.
Components of the splicing complex identified in chloroplasts
The RUB researchers examined the splicing of the gene psaA, which is found in chloroplasts. These cellular constituents of plants which carry out photosynthesis probably originated from formerly free-living cyanobacteria. According to the endosymbiotic theory, the cyanobacteria lived in symbiosis with the plants and were eventually integrated into their cells. Chloroplasts therefore have their own genetic material - a relic from the cyanobacterial genome. However, the chloroplasts are dependent on the communication with the cell nucleus in order to be functional. The Bochum team identified the components of the protein complex that splices the chloroplast gene psaA. In the splicing complex they found 23 different proteins that are encoded in the genome of the cell nucleus. "The protein complex discovered gives us an insight into the functioning of components involved in the communication between chloroplasts and the nucleus", says Jessica Jacobs.
How to fish a splicing complex
The team carried out its investigations on the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. "We used a protein bait to fish the splicing complex out of the chloroplasts", says Jacobs. Before starting the experiment, it was known that the protein Raa4 is involved in the splicing of the psaA gene. The many interaction partners of Raa4, however, were unknown. The RUB biologists genetically altered the alga in such a way that it produced a modified form of the protein Raa4 - with a tag, i.e. a kind of "fish hook". They isolated all the proteins of the cell and filtered them through a particular material, on which only Raa4 got caught on its fish hook along with all of its bound interaction partners. They determined the components of the splicing complex fished out with the aid of mass spectrometry. The researchers found a splicing complex with the same composition for various environmental conditions: in light, darkness, and in an oxygen-free environment.
###
Bibliographic record
J. Jacobs, C. Marx, V. Kock, O. Reifschneider, B. Frnzel, C. Krisp, D. Wolters, U. Kck (2013): Identification of a chloroplast ribonucleoprotein complex containing trans-splicing factors, intron RNA and novel components, Molecular and Cellular Proteomics DOI: 10.1074/mcp.M112.026583
Further information
Dr. Jessica Jacobs, Department of General and Molecular Botany, Faculty of Biology and Biotechnology at the Ruhr-Universitt, 44780 Bochum, Germany, Tel. +49/234/32-22197, E-mail: Jessica.Jacobs@rub.de
Editor: Dr. Julia Weiler
[ | 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.
Fishing in the sea of proteinsPublic release date: 2-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dr. Jessica Jacobs Jessica.Jacobs@rub.de 49-234-322-2197 Ruhr-University Bochum
Composition of splicing complex in chloroplasts identified for the first time
To convert a gene into a protein, a cell first crafts a blueprint out of RNA. One of the main players in this process has been identified by researchers led by Dr. Jessica Jacobs at the Ruhr-Universitt Bochum. The team "fished" a large complex of proteins and RNA, which is involved in the so-called splicing, from the chloroplasts of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. This cuts non-coding regions out of the messenger RNA, which contains the protein blueprint. "For the first time, we have established the exact composition of an unknown splicing complex of the chloroplasts", says Jacobs. She reports with her colleagues from the Department of General and Molecular Botany and the Work Group for Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry in the journal "Molecular and Cellular Proteomics".
From gene to protein craftwork required
Genes, the bearers of genetic information, contain coding and non-coding regions. To convert a gene into a protein, enzymes first create a copy of the gene, the messenger RNA. A useful blueprint for a protein is only obtained, however, when enzymes cut the non-coding regions, called introns out of the messenger RNA. Scientists call this process splicing. Large complexes of RNA and proteins are responsible for the splicing.
Components of the splicing complex identified in chloroplasts
The RUB researchers examined the splicing of the gene psaA, which is found in chloroplasts. These cellular constituents of plants which carry out photosynthesis probably originated from formerly free-living cyanobacteria. According to the endosymbiotic theory, the cyanobacteria lived in symbiosis with the plants and were eventually integrated into their cells. Chloroplasts therefore have their own genetic material - a relic from the cyanobacterial genome. However, the chloroplasts are dependent on the communication with the cell nucleus in order to be functional. The Bochum team identified the components of the protein complex that splices the chloroplast gene psaA. In the splicing complex they found 23 different proteins that are encoded in the genome of the cell nucleus. "The protein complex discovered gives us an insight into the functioning of components involved in the communication between chloroplasts and the nucleus", says Jessica Jacobs.
How to fish a splicing complex
The team carried out its investigations on the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. "We used a protein bait to fish the splicing complex out of the chloroplasts", says Jacobs. Before starting the experiment, it was known that the protein Raa4 is involved in the splicing of the psaA gene. The many interaction partners of Raa4, however, were unknown. The RUB biologists genetically altered the alga in such a way that it produced a modified form of the protein Raa4 - with a tag, i.e. a kind of "fish hook". They isolated all the proteins of the cell and filtered them through a particular material, on which only Raa4 got caught on its fish hook along with all of its bound interaction partners. They determined the components of the splicing complex fished out with the aid of mass spectrometry. The researchers found a splicing complex with the same composition for various environmental conditions: in light, darkness, and in an oxygen-free environment.
###
Bibliographic record
J. Jacobs, C. Marx, V. Kock, O. Reifschneider, B. Frnzel, C. Krisp, D. Wolters, U. Kck (2013): Identification of a chloroplast ribonucleoprotein complex containing trans-splicing factors, intron RNA and novel components, Molecular and Cellular Proteomics DOI: 10.1074/mcp.M112.026583
Further information
Dr. Jessica Jacobs, Department of General and Molecular Botany, Faculty of Biology and Biotechnology at the Ruhr-Universitt, 44780 Bochum, Germany, Tel. +49/234/32-22197, E-mail: Jessica.Jacobs@rub.de
Editor: Dr. Julia Weiler
[ | 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.
If there are two things in this world that folks just do not respect, it's the US Congress and the obscene amounts of torque that an electric engine can produce. And like its two-wheeled brethren, the Lola B12 69/EV has more than enough torque to spare. Enough, even, to propel a former UK government official to over 200 MPH and into the history books.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 2-Jul-2013
Share ] 
