Emily Winters: We're Building A Patio! | The Pegboard

We?re so excited. Adding a patio space to the backyard has been a pipe dream since we designed and built the deck in 2010. The deck that extends off the back of the house is big enough for a table and chairs, but while you?re resting on it, you take a beating from the daytime sun, and we?ve been looking to build a secondary outdoor living area in a shadier part of the yard, closer to an area where we also want be grilling and having campfires.

As most time-intensive and cost-prohibitive?DIY projects start, we spent the last few weeks exploring and pricing products at local landscaping shops, and finally came up with something that would be the perfect fit for our yard. Note: It?s not what I?m vying over in this photo, it?s better.

Keep on reading to learn more about our patio planning process!

This is probably the most laborious project we?re taking on during the summer months, and we?re hoping to work fast so that we can thoroughly enjoy our new patio before fall sets in. We have grand plans to carpet a larger portion of the yard in flagstone (yes! Flagstone!) over the next few years, but we wanted to start small by paving a 225 sq. ft. area in the back of our property to make sure we really liked the way it looked, and how it served as a functional surface. Flagstone in bulk gets expensive, so it seems more logical to do a test run and save up gradually as we can.

Over the last few years, I?ve created a small half-circle area behind the garage and ornamented it with a tree (apple? cherry?), but the tree never really took root and always looked sickly. Time to yank it up and make better use of the space. With the half-circle space serving as inspiration, we set out to create a full, round area for the stones to sit within.

As I mentioned, we shopped around for weeks, calling different local landscapers, outdoor design centers, negotiating prices, comparing what the landscapers recommended in terms of supplies, and arranging deliveries.

It?s always a good idea to go to these centers and walk around the grounds to get your hands (and feet) on the products they sell. Many retailers will stage their own landscapes as a showroom to display all sorts of pavers and stone options, making it easy to see how the products will look in real-life settings and give you some really good ideas for execution. Remember to take lots of photos while you?re exploring your options, it?ll be worth having them to look back upon when you?re home making measurements and planning your project.

For our own reference, we captured a few photos of designs and stones that looked really nice in execution.

I liked the real steps made from these locking pavers; we won?t be needing steps to our new patio, but maybe someday we will in a future home. They looked so clean and geometric, and felt really solid.

This particular cove at one of the landscaping design centers felt a lot like how we envisioned our own patio, with a nice rounded edge and a floor space large enough for a chiminea and chairs, or a table for a backyard picnic. We really liked the rock retaining wall too, but that might have to come as a Phase 2 construction detail.

There are an overwhelming number of options when it comes to pavers and patio stones, but when you begin to consider the colors, textures, how they need to be assembled, and pricing by the palette/square foot, you?d be surprised how easily you can narrow down your decision. Nonetheless, the whole selection at one shop was really pretty and I probably would have taken any one of them home with me.

It?s worth chatting with the professionals at these landscaping centers; I?ve found that most were willing to help a novice DIY-er and offer good tips on quantity, material, and installation. One good piece of advice was that these smaller stones were better suited for building a wall than being used as floor pavers (boo, they would have made for a very affordable flooring).

At another shop, we seriously considered these thick, smaller pavers, so I posed in the summer lake breeze and had myself a little moment (they were $430/palette, but thicker than our flagstone option, so the whole palette wouldn?t have covered as much ground (literally):

But ultimately, we went with our gut and buy large palettes of heavy, jagged flagstone for our own backyard oasis. The shop that we bought from, Northern Stone & Design Center in nearby Fairport, NY had a lot of inventory, an amazing on-site outdoor showroom, and stocked both the lilac-colored flagstone (in the foreground of this next picture) as well as a more rainbow colored flagstone (the palette in the back). I don?t know the specific genus and species of these flagstones, but I do know that there are easily 100 colors and varieties depending on geography, and these are just the colors we saw supplied locally.

Rainbow was our pick. We liked how it looked dry (gray undertones which would look nice beside the garage and house), and when wet, the nuances in color really begin to shine.

One of the landscaping shops had offered this information as a guide for measuring the palette of stand-up broken flagstone:

• A palette of 1? thick stones would cover 200 sq. ft.
• A palette of 1.5? thick stones would cover 130 sq. ft.
• A palette of 2? thick stones would cover 90 sq. ft.

Because our space was roughly 225 sq. ft. (measured as a 15?15 circle, which is ), We ordered two pallets of stone and two yards of crusher to serve as an underlay. The total cost (with delivery) totaled just under $1,100.00, and we achieved some efficiencies in delivery by ordering all materials from the same supplier. It feels like a lot to invest for a small outdoor space (especially after overhauling your entire bathroom for only $1,500.00) but we?re excited to see it begin to take shape.

More to come in the coming weeks! Is anyone else out there working on installing a new patio during one of the hottest summers on record?

Catching the home improvement bug at an early age, Emily Winters is a now a devoted DIYer living in Rochester, NY. The projects she covers on her blog?Merrypad?range from painting a wall to building a deck, so it?s only natural she landed at DIYNetwork.com. You can follow Emily on twitter at?@merrypad?and like her on facebook at?facebook.com/merrypad.

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Source: http://blog.diynetwork.com/tool-tips/2012/07/19/emily-winters-were-building-a-patio/

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Human cells, plants, worms and frogs share mechanism for organ placement

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

As organisms develop, their internal organs arrange in a consistent asymmetrical pattern--heart and stomach to the left, liver and appendix to the right. But how does this happen?

Biologists at Tufts University have produced the first evidence that a class of proteins that make up a cell's skeleton -- tubulin proteins -- drives asymmetrical patterning across a broad spectrum of species, including plants, nematode worms, frogs, and human cells, at their earliest stages of development.

"Understanding this mechanism offers insights important to the eventual diagnosis, prevention and possible repair of birth defects that result when organs are arranged abnormally," said Michael Levin, Ph.D., senior author on the paper and director of the Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences.

"The research also suggests that the origin of consistent asymmetry is ancient, dating back to before plants and animals independently became multicellular organisms," he added.

The work appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition publishing the week of July 16, 2012.

Co-authors with Levin are Joan M. Lemire, Ph.D.,a research associate in the Department of Biology, and doctoral student Maria Lobikin, also in the Department of Biology.

Tubulin Proteins Operate Across Species

Up to now, scientists have identified cilia?rotating hair-like structures located on the outside of cells?as having an essential role in determining where internal organs eventually end up. Scientists hypothesized that during later stages of development, cilia direct the flow of embryonic fluid which allows the embryo to distinguish its right side from its left.

But it is known that many species develop consistent left-right asymmetry without cilia being present, which suggests that asymmetry can be accomplished in other ways.

Levin's team pinpointed tubulin proteins, an important component of the cell's skeleton, or cytoskeleton. Tubulin mutations are known to affect the asymmetry of a plant called Arabidopsis, and Levin's previous work suggested the possibility that laterality is ultimately triggered by some component of the cytoskeleton. Further, this mechanism could be widely used throughout the tree of life and could function at the earliest stages of embryonic development.

In their latest experiment, the Tufts researchers injected the same mutated tubulins into early frog embryos. The resulting tadpoles were normal, except that their internal organs' positions were randomly placed on either the left or right side.

In subsequent experiments, collaborators at the University Of Illinois College Of Medicine and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Research Foundation found that mutated tubulins also have the same effect on left-right asymmetry of the nervous system in nematodes and on the function of human cells in culture.

Altogether, the Tufts experiment showed that tubulins are unique proteins in the asymmetry pathway that drive left-right patterning across the wide spectrum of separated species.

Importantly, mutated tubulins perturbed asymmetry only when they were introduced immediately after fertilization, not when they were injected after the first or second cell division. This suggested that a normal cytoskeleton drives asymmetry at extremely early stages of embryogenesis, many hours earlier than the appearance of cilia. Further, the Tufts biologists found that tubulins play a crucial role in the movement of other molecules to the left and right sides of the early embryo.

An Understanding of Birth Defects

"What's remarkable about these findings is that the same proteins are involved in establishing asymmetry in organisms as diverse as plants, nematodes, and frogs, and they even affect symmetry in human tissue culture cells," said Susan Haynes, Ph.D., of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which partially funded the work. "This work is a great example of basic research that not only illuminates fundamental developmental mechanisms, but also increases our understanding of a class of serious human birth defects."

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Tufts University: http://www.tufts.edu

Thanks to Tufts University for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/121764/Human_cells__plants__worms_and_frogs_share_mechanism_for_organ_placement

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How aging impairs immune response

ScienceDaily (July 17, 2012) ? Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have uncovered one of the mechanisms by which aging may compromise the ability of the immune system to fight infections and respond to vaccines. The study, conducted in aging mice, shows that administering antioxidants may help reverse this loss of immune function. The findings were published online this month in the journal Cell Reports.

"Aging is known to affect immune function, a phenomenon known as immunosenescence, but how this happens is not clear," said study leader Laura Santambrogio, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of pathology and of microbiology & immunology at Einstein. "Our study has uncovered several ways in which aging can worsen the body's overall ability to mount an effective immune response."

All cells generate chemicals called free radicals as a normal part of metabolism. These highly reactive, unstable molecules can readily damage proteins, lipids and other cellular components through oxidation (the reaction between oxygen and substances it comes in contact with). Cells keep "oxidative stress" in check by producing several enzymes that are scavengers of free radicals. But in aging, increased production of free radicals coupled with cells' decreased production of antioxidant enzymes cause a buildup of damaged proteins and other molecules that can be toxic to cells.

The current study is the first to examine whether age-related oxidative stress compromises the function of a type of immune cell called dendritic cells. "Dendritic cells are known as the 'sentinels of the immune system' and alert the rest of the immune system to the presence of microbial invaders," explained Dr. Santambrogio. "When you are exposed to viruses or bacteria, these cells engulf the pathogens and present them to the immune system, saying in effect, 'There's an infection going on, and here is the culprit -- go get it.'"

Dr. Santambrogio, in collaboration with Einstein colleagues Fernando Macian-Juan, M.D., Ph.D., and Ana Maria Cuervo, M.D., Ph.D., isolated dendritic cells from aging mice and found that oxidation-damaged proteins had accumulated in those cells and had caused harmful effects. For example, oxidatively modified proteins hampered the function of endosomes, the cell's organelle where pathogens are inactivated.

When the mice were injected with a potent antioxidant in the abdominal cavity daily for two weeks, some of the effects of oxidative stress were reversed. This finding has implications for designing vaccines or therapies for humans, especially the elderly, whose weakened immune systems increase their susceptibility to infections and cancer, and reduces vaccine effectiveness. "Many elderly people respond very poorly to vaccination, so perhaps a cycle of therapy with antioxidants before vaccination might improve their immune response to vaccines," Dr. Santambrogio noted.

The paper is titled "Age-related Oxidative Stress Compromises Endosomal Proteostasis." In addition to Dr. Santambrogio, Dr. Macian-Juan, associate professor of pathology, and Dr. Cuervo, professor of developmental and molecular biology, of anatomy and structural biology and of medicine, other Einstein contributors were Elvira Cannizzo PhD candidate, Cristina Clement, Ph.D.; Kateryna Morozova, Ph.D.; Rut Valdor, Ph.D.; Susmita Kaushik PhD, Larissa Almeida PhD candidate, Carlo Follo PhD, and Ranjit Sahu, Ph.D.

The study was supported by several grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (AI48833), the National Institute on Aging (AG031782), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Diseases (DK041918), and a NIH Fogarty Geographic Infectious Diseases Training Grant (D43TW007129).

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. Elvira?S. Cannizzo, Cristina?C. Clement, Kateryna Morozova, Rut Valdor, Susmita Kaushik, Larissa?N. Almeida, Carlo Follo, Ranjit Sahu, Ana?Maria Cuervo, Fernando Macian, Laura Santambrogio. Age-Related Oxidative Stress Compromises Endosomal Proteostasis. Cell Reports, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2012.06.005

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/2012/07/120717162133.htm

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The Supreme Court Still Thinks Corporations Are People (Atlantic Politics Channel)

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Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/237941640?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Rodent thieves explain mystery of tree survival

Thievery?by rodents moved an estimated 87 percent of seeds beyond the immediate vicinity of the parent tree, according to a study.

By Wynne Parry,?LiveScience Senior Writer / July 16, 2012

Rodents, such as rabbit-size agoutis, carry away seeds and bury them, creating caches of stored food.

Pearson Scott Foresman

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Large-seeded trees in the American tropics have posed a mystery: How have the young trees survived, when local wildlife can?t swallow the fruits and seeds whole and transport them away from the parent tree?

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The fruits can be up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) in diameter, and researchers have proposed that, many millennia ago, the enormous animals of the Pleistocene, including the relatives of elephants and?mastodons, did the job of consuming the fruit and dropping the seeds elsewhere. But those animals are long gone, and today, smaller animals inhabit the region.

Now, scientists report they?ve found the seed spreader: thieving rodents.

Rodents, such as rabbit-size agoutis, carry away seeds and bury them, creating caches of stored food. Until now, scientists didn?t think rodents?such as agoutis?were up to the task of handling the large seeds. For one thing, the animals didn?t appear to carry the seeds far enough away from the parent tree to give seedlings a good shot at establishing themselves.

But prior work didn?t take agoutis? thieving ways into account.

An international team of researchers, led by Patrick Jansen of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, followed the fate of 589 black palm seeds on Panama?s Barro Colorado Island by attaching transmitters to the roughly 1.2-inch (3-centimeter) long seeds, with the orange fruit scraped off. They also followed the movements of 16 clearly identifiable agoutis, and monitored 154 agouti caches with remote cameras for a year.

They found that the agoutis raided each others? caches, moving seeds to new locations, which were themselves then plundered by other agoutis.

One seed was hidden as many as 36 times,?traveling more than 2,460 feet (749 meters), and ending up 920 feet (280 m) from its starting point, when it was dug up and eaten 209 days later, the researchers write in results published online today (July 16) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This thievery moved an estimated 87 percent of seeds beyond the immediate vicinity of the parent tree, according to the study.

What?s more, only a fraction of the seeds removed from the initial cache ? about 13 percent ? were eaten, and an estimated 14 percent of cached seeds survived to the next year, when new fruit became available to distract the rodents, they found.?

Rodents and large-seeded plants such as the black palm have a very old relationship that dates to before?the Pleistocene, the researchers noted.

"These plants may have a long history of seed dispersal by rodents, and perhaps never depended on megafauna (large animals) in the first place," they concluded.

Follow Wynne Parry on Twitter?@Wynne_Parry?or?LiveScience?@livescience. We're also on?Facebook?&?Google+.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/PcCcGZ-M_0Y/Rodent-thieves-explain-mystery-of-tree-survival

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Business Travel: Tips When looking for brilliant low-cost package of ...

Holiday offers can be very expensive for some people, especially if they are cheap or if you do not have a lot of purchasing power. On these events, it is proposed that seek discounted travel deals. Read on as I have something extra about it.

Budget Planning

Based on my experience, is always a good strategy of the funds before you start preparing everything else. Once you have the funds, you can then move on to prepare for your actions, determining a location, etc. In general, the strategy, because the first funds that will create the rest of the preparation of a lot easier.

Visit Journey Cope Websites

The next step is to look for sites dealing with travel. These sites are often available with the existing Internet directory that guests with a wide range of travel discount offers. Visitors will not only be spoiled for options, but must also be able to compare the cost to be between the different deals.

Another advantage of discount offers to search for travel on the Internet is that you also get to do some research on different locations that are in another country to visit for. As such, it will also be able to assess the costs among the resort, the resort scores. In simple terms, you will get a better picture of each village and you can create a better decision from there.

Fly When Off-Peak

If you are not traveling to the nation of his position to obtain a certain occasion, you may want to consider traveling during the peak period. This is due to the fact that you make some deals given to many a much lower price. Not only that, but usually do not see a lot of tourists at the moment. As such, there is no need to contest, with an audience of other tourists when you're organizing your entry, viewing tourism opportunities or to arrange an accommodation. This goes to those who do not like large crowds of people and then have fun with the whole living room or refreshment to themselves.

Other places you can look

Finally, you could look out for all the coupons provided by organizations or commercial airlines offers provided by your card company credit scores. If you are a client of a particular organization dedicated commercial airline, the airline trade organization could exist with coupons that can be used with their rates. In addition, some creditors provide their loyal customers with offset points, which can in turn use to receive offers, as the program offers travel.

We hope to have a better picture of how you can book your travel discount offers on the Internet. With this, I wish you a pleasant holiday, and we appreciate your vacation!

Source: http://boudicaofsuburbia.blogspot.com/2012/07/tips-when-looking-for-brilliant-low.html

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New way to induce programmed cell death, or apoptosis

ScienceDaily (July 17, 2012) ? Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Weizmann Institute of Science have developed a technique to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, that could lead to new approaches to treating cancer.

Apoptosis is an essential defense mechanism against the spread of abnormal cells such as cancer. It is a complex process that occurs through networks of proteins that interact with each other. Cancer cells usually avoid this process due to mutations in the genes that encode the relevant proteins. The result is that the cancer cells survive and take over while healthy cells die.

The research, by graduate student Chen Hener-Katz at the Hebrew University, involved collaboration between Prof. Assaf Friedler of the Hebrew University's Institute of Chemistry and Prof. Atan Gross of the Weizmann Institute's Department of Biological Regulation. It was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry under the title ''Molecular Basis of the Interaction between Proapoptotic Truncated BID (tBID) Protein and Mitochondrial Carrier Homologue 2 (MTCH2) Protein.''

The study examined the interaction between two important proteins involved in cell death: mitochondrial carrier homologue 2 (MTCH2), which was discovered in the lab of Prof. Gross, and truncated BID (tBID), which are both involved in the apoptotic process. The researchers found the regions in the two proteins that are responsible for binding to each other, a critical step in initiating apoptosis. Following their discovery, the researchers developed short synthetic protein fragments, or peptides, that mimicked the areas on the proteins that bind to each other, and by doing so inhibited this binding. In lab experiments conducted on cell cultures, this resulted in the death of cancer cells of human origin.

''These protein segments could be the basis of future anti-cancer therapies in cases where the mechanism of natural cell death is not working properly,'' said Prof. Friedler. ''We have just begun to uncover the hidden potential in the interaction between these proteins. This is an important potential target for the development of anticancer drugs that will stimulate apoptosis by interfering with its regulation. ''

Prof. Friedler is the head of the school of chemistry at the Hebrew University. His major research interests are using peptides to study protein-protein interactions in health and disease, and developing peptides as drug leads that modulate these interactions, specifically in relation to HIV and cancer. Prof. Friedler won the prestigious starting grant from the ERC (European Research Council) as well as the outstanding young scientist prize by the Israeli Chemical Society. His research was supported by a grant from the Israel Ministry of Health and by a starting grant from the European Research Council.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. C. Katz, Y. Zaltsman-Amir, Y. Mostizky, N. Kollet, A. Gross, A. Friedler. Molecular Basis of the Interaction between Proapoptotic Truncated BID (tBID) Protein and Mitochondrial Carrier Homologue 2 (MTCH2) Protein: KEY PLAYERS IN MITOCHONDRIAL DEATH PATHWAY. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2012; 287 (18): 15016 DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M111.328377

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/2012/07/120717100237.htm

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