Scientists use Amazon Cloud to view molecular machinery in remarkable detail

Jan. 31, 2013 ? In this week's Nature Methods, Salk researchers share a how-to secret for biologists: code for Amazon Cloud that significantly reduces the time necessary to process data-intensive microscopic images.

The method promises to speed research into the underlying causes of disease by making single-molecule microscopy of practical use for more laboratories.

"This is an extremely cost-effective way for labs to process super-resolution images," says Hu Cang, Salk assistant professor in the Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center and coauthor of the paper. "Depending on the size of the data set, it can save over a week's worth of time."

The latest frontier in basic biomedical research is to better understand the "molecular machines" called proteins and enzymes. Determining how they interact is key to discovering cures for diseases. Simply put, finding new therapies is akin to troubleshooting a broken mechanical assembly line-if you know all the steps in the manufacturing process, it's much easier to identify the step where something went wrong. In the case of human cells, some of the parts of the assembly line can be as small as single molecules.

Unfortunately, in the past conventional light microscopes could not clearly show objects as small as single molecules. The available alternatives, such as electron microscopy, could not be effectively used with living cells.

In 1873, German physicist Ernst Abbe worked out the mathematics to improve resolution in light microscopes. But Abbe's calculations also established the optical version of the sound barrier: the diffraction limit, an unavoidable spreading of light. Think of how light fans out from a flashlight.

According to the Abbe limit, it is impossible to see the difference between any two objects if they are smaller than half the wavelength of the imaging light. Since the shortest wavelength we can see is around 400 nanometers (nm), that means anything 200 nm or below appears as a blurry spot. The challenge for biologists is that the molecules they want to see are often only a few tens of nanometers in size.

"You have no idea how many single molecules are distributed within that blurry spot, so essential features and ideas remain obscure to you," says Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, a Salk non-resident fellow and coauthor on the paper.

In the early 2000s, several techniques were developed to break through the Abbe Limit, launching the new field of super-resolution microscopy. Among them was a method developed by Lippincott-Schwartz and her colleagues called Photoactivated Localization Microscopy, or PALM.

PALM, and its sister techniques, work because mathematics can see what the eye cannot: within the blurry spot, there are concentrations of photons that form bright peaks, which represent single molecules. The downside to these approaches is that it can take several hours to several days to crunch all the numbers required just to produce one usable image.

"It's like taking a movie, then you go through some very complex math, so what you see is the end result of processing, which is extremely slow because there's so many parameters," Cang says. "When I first saw PALM, I was shocked by how good it was. I wanted to use it right away, but when I actually tried to use it, I found its usefulness was limited by computing speed."

Even using statistical shortcuts, processing these images was still so intense that a supercomputer was required to reduce the time to a practical level. "Calculating an area of 50 pixels can take nearly a full day on a state-of-the-art desktop computer," says Lippincott-Schwartz. "But what you'll have achieved is the difference between a guess and a definitive answer."

In their Nature Methods paper, the researchers offer other scientists the tools they need to use an easier alternative-the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon Elastic EC2), a service that provides access to supercomputing via the Internet, allowing massive computing tasks to be distributed over banks of computers.

To make PALM more practical for use in biomedical research, the team wrote a computer script that allows any biologist to upload and process PALM images using Amazon Cloud.

As a demonstration, Cang, Lippincott-Schwartz and post-doctoral researcher Ying Hu reconstructed the images of podosomes, which are molecular machines that appear to encourage cancer cells to spread. In one instance, they dropped the time needed to process an image from a whole day to 72 minutes. They also imaged tubulin, a protein essential for building various structures within cells. In that case, they were able to drop the time from nine days to under three and a half hours.

Their new paper provides a how-to tutorial for using the code to process PALM images through Amazon Cloud, helping the other labs achieve similar increases in speed.

Other researchers on the study were: Xiaolin Nan, of Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine, and Sengupta Prabuddha, of The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Salk Institute, via Newswise.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. Ying S Hu, Xiaolin Nan, Prabuddha Sengupta, Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, Hu Cang. Accelerating 3B single-molecule super-resolution microscopy with cloud computing. Nature Methods, 2013; 10 (2): 96 DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.2335

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

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/thyjvu7Tnig/130201100257.htm

best buy black friday deals breaking dawn part 2 breaking dawn part 2 Jennifer Lacy Honey Baked Ham hostess israel

US weighs tougher action over China cyberattacks

WASHINGTON (AP) -- High-level talks with the Chinese government to address persistent cyberattacks against U.S. companies and government agencies haven't worked, so officials say the Obama administration is now considering a range of actions.

China-based hackers have long been an economic and national security concern, but as cybersecurity experts report an increase in attacks, U.S. leaders are looking at ways to better address the threat and analyze its impact.

Two former U.S. officials said the administration is preparing a new National Intelligence Estimate that, when complete, is expected to detail the cyberthreat, particularly from China, as a growing economic problem. One official said it also will cite more directly a role by the Chinese government in such espionage.

The official said the NIE, which reflects the views of the nation's various intelligence agencies, will underscore the administration's concerns about the threat, and will put greater weight on plans for more pointed diplomatic and trade measures against the Chinese government. The two former officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the classified report.

"We have to begin making it clear to the Chinese," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday, "that the United States is going to have to take action to protect not only our government's, but our private sector, from this kind of illegal intrusions."

She said the U.S. must help build an international alliance against the cyberthreat and added that there is a lot the U.S. is working on "in the event that we don't get some kind of international effort under way." She said no specifics have been finalized.

Underscoring that widespread threat, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that their computer systems had been infiltrated by China-based hackers. In both cases they said the focus was on monitoring news coverage and the reporters digging into stories the Chinese government deemed important.

Although the Obama administration hasn't yet decided what steps it may take, actions could include threats to cancel certain visas or put major purchases of Chinese goods through national security reviews.

"The U.S. government has started to look seriously at more assertive measures and begun to engage the Chinese on senior levels," said James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They realize that this is a major problem in the bilateral relationship that threatens to destabilize U.S. relations with China."

To date, extensive discussions between Chinese officials and top U.S. leaders ? including President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ? have had little impact on what government and cybersecurity experts say is escalating and technologically evolving espionage. The Chinese deny such espionage efforts.

The newly disclosed four-month long cyberattack against the Times is just the latest in a long string of breaches said to be by China-based hackers into corporate and government computer systems across the United States. Companies ranging from defense and high-tech industry leaders to Internet search leader Google have complained for years of computer network attacks that cybersecurity firms traced back to China, including allegations that some were backed or endorsed by the Beijing government.

The Times attacks, routed through computers at U.S. universities, targeted staff members' email accounts, the Times said, and were likely in retribution for the newspaper's investigation into the wealth amassed by the family of a top Chinese leader. The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, said its computer systems were breached by China-based hackers in an effort to monitor the newspaper's coverage of China issues.

Media organizations with bureaus in China have believed for years that their computers, phones and conversations were likely monitored on a fairly regular basis by the Chinese. The Gmail account of an Associated Press staffer was broken into in China in 2010.

Richard Bejtlich, the chief security officer at Mandiant, the firm hired by the Times to investigate the cyberattack, said the breach is consistent with what he routinely sees China-based hacking groups do. But, he said it had a personal aspect to it that became apparent: The hackers got into 53 computers but largely looked at the emails of the reporters working on a particular story. The newspaper's investigation delved into how the relatives and family of Premier Wen Jiabao built a fortune worth over $2 billion.

"We're starting to see more cases where there is a personal element," Bejtlich said, adding that it gives companies another factor to consider. "It may not just be the institution, but, is there some aspect of your company that would cause someone on the other side to take personal interest in you?"

The Chinese Foreign and Defense ministries called the Times' allegations baseless, and the Defense Ministry denied any involvement by the military.

"Chinese law forbids hacking and any other actions that damage Internet security," the Defense Ministry said. "The Chinese military has never supported any hacking activities."

In a report in November 2011, U.S. intelligence officials for the first time publicly accused China and Russia of systematically stealing American high-tech data for economic gain. And over the past several years, cybersecurity has been one of the key issues raised with allies as part of a broader U.S. effort to strengthen America's defenses and encourage an international policy on accepted practices in cyberspace.

U.S. cybersecurity worries are not about China alone. Administration officials and cybersecurity experts also routinely point to widespread cyberthreats from Iran and Russia, as well as hacker networks across Eastern Europe and South America

The U.S. itself has been named in one of the most prominent cyberattacks ? Stuxnet ? the computer worm that infiltrated an Iranian nuclear facility, shutting down thousands of centrifuges there in 2010. Reports suggest that Stuxnet was a secret U.S.-Israeli program aimed at destabilizing Iran's atomic energy program, which many Western countries believe is a cover for the development of nuclear weapons.

The White House declined comment on whether it will pursue aggressive action on China.

"The United States has substantial and growing concerns about the threats to U.S. economic and national security posed by cyber intrusions, including the theft of commercial information," said spokesman Caitlin Hayden. "We have repeatedly raised our concerns with senior Chinese officials, including in the military, and we will continue to do so."

Cybersecurity experts have been urging tougher action, suggesting that talking with China has had no effect.

In an unusually strong speech last October, Panetta warned that the U.S. would strike back against cyberattacks, even raising the specter of military action. And the White House has been urging Congress to authorize greater government action to protect infrastructure such as the nation's electric grid and power plants.

Alan Paller, director of research at SANS Institute, a computer-security organization, said that the level of cyberattacks, including against power companies and critical infrastructure, has shot up in the last seven or eight months. And the U.S. is getting more serious about blocking the attacks, including an initiative by the Defense Department to hire thousands of high-tech experts.

Lewis, who has met and worked with Chinese officials on the issue, said their response has been consistent denial that China is involved in the hacking and counter-accusations that the U.S. is guilty of the same things.

"In the next year there will be an effort to figure out a way to engage the Chinese more energetically," he said. "The issue now is how do we get the Chinese to take this more seriously as a potentially major disruption to the relationship."

The answer, he said, is, "You have to back up words with actions, and that's the phase I think we're approaching."

___

Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper in Washington and Michael Lietdke in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-weighs-tougher-action-over-090451706.html

Tropical Storm Sandy W S B H c mitt romney

2 children, 1 adult die in Detroit freeway pileup

DETROIT (AP) ? It took only seconds for the light snow to turn into a blinding curtain of white. Drivers slammed on their brakes, others swerved to avoid tractor-trailers jackknifed across a busy Detroit freeway that quickly turned into a mile-long string of wrecks.

Three people were killed, including two children. The maze of mangled vehicles closed Interstate 75 for several hours after the Thursday morning chain-reaction wrecks, which also sent more than a dozen people to local hospitals.

Ken Czarnecki recalled quickly swerving to avoid a stopped truck in his lane, then glancing off the side of a car wedged beneath another truck before striking the back of a semi-trailer. The falling snow, he said, took only moments to thicken.

"It was a total white sheet," Czarnecki said. "You couldn't see past the front of your car."

The children who died, a 7-year-old boy and 9-year-old girl from Windsor, Ontario, were believed to be siblings whose parents were injured in the accident, Michigan State Police Lt. Michael Shaw. An adult also was killed, though no other information about the victims has been released.

Police estimated that as many as 30 cars, SUVs and semi-trailers were crushed, buckled or damaged along the freeway, which cuts through a heavily industrialized part of the city and nearby communities. Semi-trailers and tankers dominate the interstate, some hauling loads and liquids to a nearby refinery and steel companies.

The freeway's surface was slick Thursday as temperatures in the Detroit area dropped by about 30 degrees from the previous day ? to only 24 degrees at the time of the pile up, along with strong winds. The accidents happened near an elevated stretch of expressway where the road surface can cool quickly and make driving hazardous, said National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Tilley.

Conditions for drivers went from "clear to total whiteout in a matter of seconds," Shaw said. "All of a sudden, they couldn't see anymore."

Motorists and passengers who were able to climb out of their vehicles huddled together on the side of the road, some visibly distraught, others looking dazed. A man and woman hugged under the gray, cloud-filled skies, a pair of suitcases next to them and a bumper on the ground behind.

"It happened so fast. I've never seen anything like it," said Czarnecki, a 47-year-old who was headed to Toledo, Ohio, to train kitchen and bath salespeople on a new computer system. "I actually controlled my speed pretty well. I don't think anyone was really speeding. People weren't zipping by me."

Marc Milam said his all-wheel drive car allowed him to maneuver among "all the cars that were crashing" around him.

"It happened really fast, and it was over with," said Milam, who was headed to work for an auto supplier when the pileup started.

Authorities quickly called in as many ambulances that were available to transport victims to area hospitals. Rescue crews went vehicle to vehicle in the search for survivors and to provide aid.

At least 13 people were transported to hospitals, while others were treated at the scene, Shaw said.

It took more than six hours before the freeway's southbound lanes were reopened. Shaw said it could be a day or more before investigators identify which vehicles were involved in the initial wreck that spawned the other crashes.

The bad weather also was blamed for at least two other pileups Thursday in the state. U.S. 23 in Mundy Township near Flint was closed for hours after about 33 vehicles crashed during a sudden snow squall. In southwest Michigan, eight tractor-trailers and six cars crashed on I-94, closing the westbound lanes to traffic for hours at Paw Paw.

A similar pileup west of Indianapolis involving more than 40 vehicles that closed Interstate 70 in both directions. Authorities said five people remained hospitalized Thursday night, including on in critical condition.

___

Associated Press writers Mike Householder, David N. Goodman, Jeff Karoub and David Aguilar in Detroit, and Pamela Engel in Plainfield, Ind., contributed to this story.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/2-children-1-adult-die-detroit-freeway-pileup-080646152.html

lindsay lohan Ronda Rousey BCS Bowls palestine powerball winner powerball winner Zig Ziglar

Illuminati Skull & Bones HQ Burglarized at Yale | Illuminati

The illuminati Skull & Bones headquarters, called the Tomb was broken into by some curious students determined to expose this secret society.

Skull and Bones is the oldest of Yale?s secret societies and by far the most determinedly secretive. As such, it has long been an inspiration for speculation and imagination. It still is. The society is, of course, the inspiration for the new Universal Pictures thriller?The Skulls,?about a nefarious secret society at an Ivy League school in New Haven. In 1968, when George W. Bush was in Skull and Bones, there were eight ?abovegrounds,? or societies that met in their own ?tombs,? and as many as ten ?undergrounds,? which held meetings in rented rooms. In an article in the 1968 Yale yearbook Lanny Davis, a 1967 Yale graduate and a secret-society member who would go on to become a White House special counsel in the Clinton Administration, described how Bones, famous for its distinguished list of members, held more sway than the others.

Come ?Tap Day? ? if you?re a junior, despite the fact that you?ve banged your fist at the lunch table and said, ?This is 1968,? and have loudly denounced societies as anachronisms, when the captain of the football team is standing by your door and when the tower clock strikes eight he rushes in and claps your shoulder and shouts, ?Skull and Bones, accept or reject?? you almost always scream out, ?Accept!? and you never, never, pound your fist at the lunch table, not for that reason ever again.

Fewer than a tenth of Yale?s 1,400 seniors are members of the university?s secret societies, which many undergraduates view as self-serving vehicles for real and aspiring aristocrats. Certainly this view seems to have some validity when it comes to Bonesmen. Until 1992, when it became one of the last two secret societies to admit women, Skull and Bones had a history of picking the same kinds of people over and over. Davis?s yearbook article explained,

If the society had a good year, this is what the ?ideal? group will consist of: a football captain; a Chairman of the?Yale Daily News; a conspicuous radical; a Whiffenpoof; a swimming captain; a notorious drunk with a 94 average; a film-maker; a political columnist; a religious group leader; a Chairman of the Lit; a foreigner; a ladies? man with two motorcycles; an ex-service man; a negro, if there are enough to go around; a guy nobody else in the group had heard of, ever.

Indeed, George W.?s 1968 brethren slip easily into the desired slots: among them were the Olympic swimmer and gold medalist Don Schollander; a future Harvard Medical School surgeon, Gregory Gallico; a future Rhodes scholar, Robert McCallum; the Whiffenpoofs? pitch, Robert Birge; Donald Etra, an Orthodox Jew; Muhammed Saleh, a Jordanian; a future deputy director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Rex Cowdry; and the black soccer captain Roy Austin. Only George W. himself fell into none of the aforementioned categories. He was generally regarded as a legacy tap.

Given the society?s history as an incubator and meeting point for?rising generational elites, it is not surprising that an especially susceptible kind of ?barbarian? ? the Bones term for a nonmember ? has long seen the society as a locus of mystery, wealth, and conspiracy. One doesn?t need to scratch deeply to uncover accusations of sinister ties with the CIA, the Trilateral Commission, the Illuminati, the Council on Foreign Relations, even the Nazis. It turns out that the Yale admissions committee that voted to admit George W., despite his poor record at Andover, included three members (out of seven) who were Bonesmen; those seeking evidence of malign influence will surely raise an eyebrow. (For the conspiracy-minded, the most useful?omnium gatherum?is the British writer Antony C. Sutton?s feverish 1983 tract?An Introduction to the Order.) World domination aside, the most pervasive rumors about Bones are that initiates must masturbate in a coffin while recounting their sexual exploits, and that their candor is ultimately rewarded with a no-strings-attached gift of $15,000. Bonesmen, who are sworn to secrecy at initiation, have not publicly denied or confirmed these rumors; they have usually made a point of refusing to speak to the press about the society at all. As?The Skulls?was about to be released, and as George W.?s quest for the Republican presidential nomination looked increasingly certain to succeed, the society sent all members a memo reminding them of their vow of silence. Still, as I recently discovered in the course of looking into Skull and Bones, not all Bonesmen see the necessity of remaining tight-lipped about a society whose biggest secret may be that its secrets are essentially trivial.

Mark Dice

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]

Rating: 5.0/5 (3 votes cast)

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]

Rating: +3 (from 3 votes)

Illuminati Skull & Bones HQ Burglarized at Yale, 5.0 out of 5 based on 3 ratings

Recommended For You:

Source: http://kevingilmour.net/illuminati-skull-bones-hq-burglarized-yale/4746

vanessa minnillo super tuesday epidemiology total eclipse of the heart jionni lavalle earthquake san francisco donald payne

Hawaii lawmakers propose shielding celeb privacy

HONOLULU (AP) ? More than two-thirds of Hawaii's state senators have signed onto a bill to protect celebrities from paparazzi, giving them power to sue over unwanted beach photos and other snapshots on the islands.

And the bill's author says he's pushing the law at the request of Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler, the former "American Idol" judge who recently bought a new home in Maui.

A representative for Aerosmith declined comment late Thursday night, saying Tyler was not immediately available.

Maui Democrat Sen. Kalani English told The Associated Press the so-called "Steven Tyler Act" will help Hawaii's tourism and film industries, encouraging famous people to come here without fear of being stalked by paparazzi.

"These are my consituents as well," English said. "Public figures have a right to reasonable privacy. There's a balance that we need to create."

The bill would open people up to civil lawsuits if they invade the privacy of public figures by taking or selling photos or videos. It defines invasion of privacy as capturing or trying to capture images or sound of people "in a manner that is offensive to a reasonable person" during personal or family moments. It does not specify places where pictures would be OK or whether public places would be exempt. The bill says it would apply to people who are take photos from boats or anywhere else within ocean waters.

"Although their celebrity status may justify a lower expectation of privacy, the Legislature finds that sometimes the paparazzi go too far to disturb the peace and tranquility afforded celebrities who escape to Hawaii for a quiet life," English wrote in the bill.

Longtime Hawaii media lawyer Jeff Portnoy said the legislation is vague and panders to celebrities.

"It's unnecessary, it's potentially unconstitutional and it flies in the face of decades of privacy law," he said.

He said that it's hard to know how the court would interpret the state constitutional provision for the right to privacy in terms of this bill, but that based upon privacy-related court precedents, the law would be unnecessary.

The bill has only been introduced and referred to committee; lawmakers haven't set a date to discuss it yet. While 18 of 25 of the state's senators have signed on, including the Senate majority leader, it's unclear whether the bill would stand a chance in the state House.

English said he believes the bill is constitutional. He said the state has a provision in its constitution to protect the right to privacy.

"Generally, we've respected people's privacy but we have a different time now," English said.

Like other destinations, Hawaii has a steady stream of high-profile visitors. President Barack Obama vacations on Oahu once a year with his family, while Lance Armstrong escaped to the Big Island last month after a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey at his home in Texas.

___

Anita Hofschneider can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ahofschneider .

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hawaii-lawmakers-propose-shielding-celeb-privacy-092455190.html

collateral dick cheney heart umf elite eight stephon marbury the lion king suzanne collins

Wall Street dips on profit taking, Friday data eyed

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged lower on Thursday as investors took profit after a mixed bag of economic data, while stellar earnings from Qualcomm helped buoy the Nasdaq.

Even with the retreat, the S&P 500 is on track to post its best month since October 2011 and its best start to a year since 1997.

Investors are expecting a pullback in equities after recent gains, though they have bought on dips over the past four weeks, analysts said. The largest daily decline on the S&P 500 so far in 2013 was Thursday's 0.39 percent drop, after data showed the economy contracted in the last quarter of 2012.

"This is a highly rotational market," said Janelle Nelson, portfolio analyst at RBC Wealth Management in Minneapolis, noting how investors dive into beaten-down sectors on the smallest encouraging news.

Job market data released earlier on Thursday showed mildly positive signs for a still-fragile economy, with jobless claims slightly higher and incomes growing at the best pace since 2004.

Those reports come ahead of Friday's payrolls report, which is expected to show employers added 160,000 jobs in January after an increase of 155,000 in December. Friday will also bring reports on consumer confidence, U.S. manufacturing, construction spending and car sales.

"The market's lack of movement is due in part to the large number of economic releases coming out tomorrow," said Nelson.

Qualcomm Inc gained 4.6 percent to $66.43 as the top boost to the Nasdaq Composite after the world's leading supplier of chips for cellphones beat analysts' expectations for quarterly profit and revenue, and raised its targets for the year.

Facebook Inc lost 2.5 percent to $30.47, a day after the social network company said it doubled its mobile advertising revenue in the fourth quarter. However, growth trailed some of Wall Street's most aggressive estimates.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 34.71 points or 0.25 percent, to 13,875.71; the S&P 500 <.spx> lost 4.04 points or 0.27 percent, to 1,497.92 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> dropped 1.74 points or 0.06 percent, to 3,140.57.

The S&P 500 has advanced 5 percent in January after legislators in Washington temporarily sidestepped a "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that could have derailed the economic recovery, and in the wake of better-than-expected corporate earnings.

United Parcel Service Inc lost 2 percent to $79.63 after reporting fourth-quarter earnings that were below analysts' estimates on Thursday and forecasting weaker-than-expected profit for 2013.

Kirby Corp added 6.6 percent to $70.87 and Ryder Systems Inc climbed 2.9 percent to $55.81 after posting quarterly results.

Thomson Reuters data through Thursday morning shows that of the 231 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings this season, 69.3 percent have exceeded expectations, a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are forecast to have risen 3.7 percent. That's above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season, but well below a 9.9 percent profit growth forecast on October 1, the data showed.

WMS Industries Inc surged 52.6 percent to $24.98 after the company agreed to be acquired by Scientific Games Corp for $26 per share in cash. Scientific Games jumped 11.9 percent to $9.99.

(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stock-futures-mixed-eyes-facebook-110715716--finance.html

Butch Jones thursday night football japan earthquake Star Trek Into Darkness Heisman watch John McAfee Jenny Rivera

1 dead in Arizona office shooting, suspect on loose

PHOENIX (AP) ? Police are hunting for an "armed and dangerous" 70-year-old man suspected in a Phoenix office complex shooting that left one person dead and two wounded.

Arthur Douglas Harmon allegedly opened fire at the end of a mediation session Wednesday morning at a three-story office complex in north-central Phoenix, police said.

One man ? identified by police as 48-year-old Steve Singer ? died hours after the shooting. They said a 43-year-old man was listed in critical condition and a 32-year-old woman suffered non-life threatening injuries.

"We believe the two men were the targets. It was not a random shooting," said Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a Phoenix police spokesman.

Thompson said the gunman arrived at the office building about 10:30 a.m. and got into a dispute with someone, a conflict that escalated to the point where the suspect drew a gun and shot three people.

Police believe Harmon acted alone and fled the scene in a car. Police said he had at least one gun and was considered "armed and dangerous."

Harmon also allegedly shot at someone who tried to follow him after the shooting in an attempt to get his license plate number, according to authorities.

Police didn't immediately release the names of the wounded. But a Phoenix law firm, Osborn Maledon, said one of its lawyers, Mark Hummels, was among the wounded. The firm said Hummels "was representing a client in a mediation" when he was shot.

According to court documents, Harmon was scheduled to go to a law office in the same building where the shooting took place for a settlement conference in a lawsuit he filed last April against Scottsdale-based Fusion Contact Centers LLC, where Singer was the CEO.

The company had hired him to refurbish office cubicles at two call centers in California, but a contract dispute arose.

Fusion said Harmon was paid nearly $30,000 under the $47,000 contract. But the company asked him to repay much of the money when it discovered that the cubicles could not be refurbished, according to the documents.

Harmon argued Fusion hung him out to dry by telling him to remove and store 206 "worthless" work stations after the mix-up was discovered. Harmon said Fusion then told him that the company decided to use a competitor.

Harmon's lawsuit had sought payment for the remainder of the contract, $20,000 in damages and reimbursement for storage fees and legal costs.

Hummels was representing Fusion in the lawsuit.

Pro tempore Judge Ira Schwartz, who scheduled the meeting, didn't immediately return an email seeking comment. A message left Wednesday at the home of Singer also wasn't returned.

As police searched for the shooter, SWAT teams and two armored vehicles surrounded a home about 7 miles north of the shooting scene. Police served a search warrant to enter the house, which county property records show was sold by Harmon to his son last year for $26,000.

For a time, officers used a megaphone to ask Harmon to surrender, believing he might be inside the home.

Lois Ellen, who has lived across the street from the Harmon home for about eight years, said she was startled to see all the police cars in the neighborhood.

She said she never met Arthur Harmon but had seen him walking a dog before.

Ellen said he wasn't very neighborly and the people in the Harmon home "keep to themselves."

The gunfire at the office complex prompted terrified workers to lock the doors to their offices and hide far from the windows. SWAT officers searched the building.

"Everyone was just scared, honestly, just scared," said Navika Sood, assistant director of nursing at First at Home Health Services who along with her co-workers locked the entrances to their office.

Sood said police evacuated the office about 30 minutes after she first heard the popping noises.

Vanessa Brogan, who works in sales support at an insurance business in the three-story complex, said she heard a loud bang that she thought at first was from somebody working in or near the building.

She said others at the business thought they heard multiple loud noises. She said people locked themselves in offices until authorities evacuated the complex that houses insurance, medical and law offices.

Becky Neher, who works for a title company in the building, said the two gunshots she heard sounded like two pieces of metal banging against each other.

Watching from her second-story office, she saw people leaving the building.

"Someone yelled, 'We have a shooter,'" she said. She saw two victims lying on the ground outside the back side of the building. She said health care workers who have offices in the complex came out to help.

Don Jaksa, a software consultant who works in the building, said he was listening to the radio when he suddenly heard "two pops." He said he didn't think they were gunshots.

"My co-worker goes to the range all the time," he said. "He identified it as gunfire."

The shooting took place on the same day that hearings on legislation to address gun violence were convened in Washington, with former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords testifying for stricter gun controls.

A gunman shot Giffords in the head during a shooting rampage in Tucson in January 2011.

_____

Associated Press writers Paul Davenport, Felicia Fonseca, Terry Tang and Walter Berry contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-1-dead-ariz-shooting-suspect-loose-234833738.html

dingo nba all star weekend malin akerman jeff carter chomp national enquirer kate gosselin