Forecasting Flu Pandemics Hinges on Insights into the Virus

Influenza is a crafty opponent. Just when researchers think they might know where it's headed next, it mutates. New strains form constantly, allowing the virus to evade detection by the human immune system, and these new strains can turn into pandemics with little to no warning. In 1918, the H1N1 subtype caused the most serious pandemic to date, killing 50 million people worldwide. That disaster was followed by the H2N2 pandemic in 1957, the H3N2 in 1968, and the resurgence last year of H1N1, now also known as swine flu.

To predict what the next dangerous strain will look like, researchers are trying to develop more sophisticated models of the biology and evolution of the virus. "If I was to make a prediction, I'd say that the H2 strain of the virus could cause the next pandemic," says Klaus Stohr, director of influenza vaccine franchises at Novartis and former head of the World Health Organization's global influenza program. But he admits that predictions like his are just educated guesses. Above all, he says, "we need better models that could genetically predict which subtype will cause the next pandemic?that would be a real breakthrough. That, in my view, could be a Nobel Prize-winning discovery."

In contrast to pandemic flu, seasonal flu occurs with predictable regularity and is largely controllable. Six months before the beginning of the flu season in each hemisphere, the World Health Organization examines circulating strains from the previous year and determines which six are mostly likely to be a problem. Those are the strains that appear in the flu vaccines distributed to physicians' offices each year, and they're usually spot on. But when the virus genome mutates in ways scientists don't anticipate?when it picks up a gene from one of the strains that infect birds or pigs, or when it manages to hop straight from livestock to humans?the result is a type of influenza against which humans have limited immunity. That has the potential to attack hard and spread fast.

A severe flu pandemic could result in as much as a 5.5 percent drop in the U.S. gross domestic product, amounting to a $683 billion loss to the country's economy, according to a report by the Trust for America's Health. And despite the unceasing work of labs around the world?the World Health Organization has more than 100 laboratories participating in its influenza network?there is not yet much that researchers or public health officials can do to predict a pandemic, let alone prevent one. "People are studying the virus and its genome all the time and want to get to those answers," says Martin Meltzer, a health economist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We don't know enough about how the genome of the flu virus interacts with the human genome that it infects."

While developing a model that predicts what the next pandemic virus will look like is proving difficult, "there's been more progress in predicting how it will spread once it has started circulating in the human population," says Cecile Viboud, an epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health. "Modeling suggested very early on, for pandemic influenza, that it was not useful to close borders and air traffic, because by the time you detected the virus somewhere it had already spread to other places." Modeling has also proved important for understanding who should be vaccinated, against both seasonal and pandemic strains. "If you vaccinate school kids, you reduce disease transmission in the entire community," Viboud says.

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News Analysis: A Bridge to Republicans Alienates Liberal Base

For the first time since his party?s drubbing in last month?s election, and arguably for the first time on a major domestic policy since he took office, Mr. Obama forged a deal with the Republican opposition, swallowing hard to give up a central campaign promise while maneuvering to win enough other priorities to declare partial victory.

In that deal come the first clues to how he plans to govern for the next two years with a divided Congress, an anemic economy and his own re-election looming on the horizon. He made clear he was willing to alienate his liberal base in the interest of compromise, more interested in crafting measures that can pass to the benefit of the middle class than waging battle to the end over principle. And in the process, he is gambling he can convince the American people that he is the bridge-builder they thought he was.

?I know there?s some people in my own party and in the other party who would rather prolong this battle, even if we can?t reach a compromise,? Mr. Obama said in announcing the bipartisan agreement on tax cuts and unemployment benefits. ?But I?m not willing to let working families across this country become collateral damage for political warfare here in Washington.?

This was not a compromise he could relish. Ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of households was a major theme of his campaign in 2008. But if he had to agree to a two-year extension, he exacted a price from Republicans in the form of extended unemployment benefits, a temporary payroll tax cut to help the working class and the continuation of tax breaks for parents and students.

Unlike with other issues, Mr. Obama and the Republicans had a powerful incentive to split the difference, an implacable end-of-the-year deadline that would have resulted in a tax increase for nearly every American. Moreover, he arguably just punted the issue into the 2012 campaign.

The White House was careful not to extrapolate too much from one deal. Still, after Mr. Obama got passage of sweeping economic stimulus, health care and financial regulation measures with virtually no Republican support, this represents something of a break, and centrists and Republicans saw hope for a more collaborative two years.

?This is the first in a series of painful deals that the president will have to cut if he is to move us forward for the next two years,? said Matt Bennett, vice president of Third Way, an advocacy group of moderate Democrats, and a veteran of Bill Clinton?s White House. ?It is proof that he is governing as an adult, looking for opportunities to negotiate.?

Frank J. Donatelli, chairman of Gopac, a Republican group, and White House political director under Ronald Reagan, said the opposition would welcome the move. ?It?s the first time he has ever defied his base, which is a small step in the right direction,? Mr. Donatelli said. ?It will make him a better president to govern from the center.?

But to his base, this is just the latest and most outrageous betrayal in what it sees as a two-year cycle of caving to conservative pressure and Republican obstructionism. The litany from the left is now familiar: Mr. Obama was too modest in his stimulus package, too afraid to fight for a government-sponsored option in his health plan, too deferential to Wall Street in his financial reforms, too weak to stand up to the generals on Afghanistan.

?Obama may have just ensured that he?ll face a significant challenge to his renomination in 2012 from inside the Democratic Party,? said Norman Solomon, a leader of Progressive Democrats of America. ?By giving away the store on such a momentous tax issue, he has now done huge damage to a large portion of the progressive base that helped to make him president.?

Mr. Solomon added, ?If he thinks that won?t have major effects on his re-election chances, he?s been swallowed up by a delusional bubble.?

For the moment, no credible primary challenger to Mr. Obama has emerged. But the anger on Monday extended beyond party activists. Democratic Congressional leaders acutely remember being cut out of the action when Mr. Clinton ?triangulated? with Republicans in the 1990s, and Mr. Obama?s tax deal may provoke an open revolt.

Tony Fratto, a White House official under George W. Bush, said Mr. Obama failed to lay the groundwork with his own party. ?Although the outcome here was inevitable, it will have real consequences for the president?s relationship with Congressional Democrats and his base,? Mr. Fratto said.

Mr. Obama seemed to recognize that during his remarks on Monday evening and addressed disappointed supporters.

?Sympathetic as I am to those who prefer a fight over compromise, as much as the political wisdom may dictate fighting over solving problems, it would be the wrong thing to do,? he said. ?The American people didn?t send us here to wage symbolic battles or win symbolic victories.?

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Justices Hear Case on Denial of Help to Veteran

WASHINGTON ? Justice Stephen G. Breyer wanted to know whether it was possible that Congress intended to deny help to veterans who missed filing deadlines because of the very disabilities for which they sought help.

?You have someone who served his country and was wounded and has post-traumatic stress syndrome or schizophrenia,? Justice Breyer said at a Supreme Court argument Monday. ?Who in Congress would have likely thought such a thing??

But the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last year ruled that Congress had indeed meant to bar the courthouse door to David L. Henderson, who served on the front lines in the Korean War and was discharged after receiving a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. That disability, his lawyers said, caused him to bungle a deadline.

The appeals court said its ruling was required by a 2007 decision of the Supreme Court that said deadlines for filing appeals must be applied strictly.

The appeals court?s ruling in the Henderson case, according to a dissent from three of its judges, created ?a Kafkaesque adjudicatory process in which those veterans who are most deserving of service-connected benefits will frequently be those least likely to obtain them.?

Mr. Henderson, who died while his Supreme Court case was pending, had sought additional government help for his condition in 2001. He was turned down in 2004. A federal law gave him 120 days to appeal that determination to the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, but it took him 135 days.

He sought leniency. His psychiatrist testified that ?Mr. Henderson has been incapable of understanding and meeting deadlines? because he was ?incapable of rational thought or deliberate decision-making.?

But the Supreme Court?s 2007 decision, Bowles v. Russell, said that deadlines for filing appeals were ?jurisdictional,? meaning they are not subject to exceptions or excuses.

The Bowles case concerned an inmate who missed a deadline because he had been given erroneous instructions by a federal judge. Justice David H. Souter, in a dissent also signed by three other justices, said that ?it is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way.?

On Monday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had joined that dissent, said the Bowles decision was ?a substantial hurdle to contend with.? Justice Antonin Scalia went further, saying approvingly that ?Bowles was a nice, clear case.?

Mr. Henderson?s lawyer, Lisa S. Blatt, said the two cases were different, in part because of the special status of the court to which her client had tried to appeal.

?Congress established this court to open the door to veterans seeking disability benefits,? Ms. Blatt said, ?and it would just conflict with that purpose to, at the same time, shut the door when the veteran?s disability prevents him from getting to the courthouse.?

Some justices said there was a second distinction. The inmate in the Bowles case had tried to appeal from one court to another, while Mr. Henderson sought to appeal the determination of an agency to a court.

?Why wouldn?t it be a bright, clear line if we said, ?Court to court, Bowles controls; agency to court, Bowles does not apply??? Justice Ginsburg asked.

Eric D. Miller, a lawyer for the federal government, said, ?The same principle applies for appeals from agencies.?

He added that ?just about everybody? agreed that some late filings would be allowed in a perfect world ? but not under the current law. Indeed, he said, the Department of Veterans Affairs has asked Congress to add flexibility to the system.

As in many cases, Justices Breyer and Scalia disagreed about how to determine the meaning of the statute before them.

Justice Scalia said the court should rely solely on the text of the law to determine the correct result in the case, Henderson v. Shinseki, No.09-1036.

?Don?t we pretty much have to go on what they wrote?? he asked.

Justice Breyer, on the other hand, said he would ?try to work out from context, language and objective purpose what a reasonable member of Congress would have intended.?

But the two more or less agreed on what would be an example of a strong hypothetical case for imposing a flexible deadline.

?The dog ate it, maybe,? Justice Scalia said.

?Yes,? Justice Breyer said. ?Right. The dog ate the court.?

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Nvidia launches 500-series mobile graphics with rebadged GT 435M

Having shipped its first GeForce GTX 500 series desktop graphics card, Nvidia decided it'd be a good time to extend the name to its mobile product line. The company has kicked off its GeForce 500M family with a "new" mid-range chip, the GT 540M. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot to get excited about as Nvidia continues its ongoing practice of rebadging chips.

The latest entry features almost exactly the same specifications as the GeForce GT 435M, including the same 40nm fabrication, 96 CUDA cores, up to 1.5GB of memory with a 128-bit memory bus, and support for DirectX 11. However, thanks to the "maturation of the production process," Nvidia has raised the graphics, processor and memory clocks by a marginal degree.


While the GeForce GT 435M has a core, shader and memory speed of 650MHz, 1,300MHz, and 800MHz, the GT 540M is set at 672MHz, 1,344MHz, and 900Mhz. Despite the 22MHz, 44MHz, and 100MHz increase, power levels remain the same. The updated part is already shipping to Chinese customers in an Acer notebook with global availability expected next month.

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Tumblr Explains Its 24 Hours of Downtime [TNW Apps]

There were rumors abound as to why microblogging site Tumblr went down for about 24 hours and most of them were centered on the folks over at 4chan. Turns out, at least according to Tumblr, that it wasn?t 4chan after all.

It was an issue during a planned maintenance period.

Tumblr, in an official blog post from CEO David Karp (that?s right, they can finally post on their own blog again) states that during  planned maintenance that wasn?t supposed to interrupt service, a problem took down a critical database cluster which in turn brought the entire network down. After that, their engineers worked round the clock to bring it back online, an effort that took an entire day.

That?s it.

That?s the entire explanation and one that is not going to sit well with its user base some of which still can?t access their blogs, Timeline or Dashboard.

For a site that not only sits in the top 50 U.S. websites in terms of traffic and one that just recently ventured into the world of e-commerce, 24 hours of downtime is horrific to say the least. Tumblr even admits that they weren?t prepared for the amount of traffic that hits the site on a monthly basis stating that:

Frankly, keeping up with growth has presented more work than our small team was prepared for ? with traffic now climbing more than 500M pageviews each month. But we are determined and focused on bringing our infrastructure well ahead of capacity as quickly as possible. We?ve nearly quadrupled our engineering team this month alone, and continue to distribute and enhance our architecture to be more resilient to failures like today?s.

The impact of the outage remains to be seen. Many users, on here and on other forums like Twitter, said they planned on leaving the site for good because of this. And if they weren?t threatening, they were complaining. And if they weren?t complaining they were laughing about how ridiculous it was that a site as big and as popular as Tumblr?s could be down for 24 hours.

Some users even said that the downtime didn?t bother them and not because they were patient but because happened so frequently, something that Karp even acknowledges in his post:

While you might feel like you?ve gotten used to seeing errors on Tumblr recently, know that this is absolutely unacceptable to our team, and unacceptable for a platform determined to be the best place in the world for your creative expression.

While there are many lessons to be learned here but if there is one greater than the others, it?s this.

If Tumblr plans on expanding, plans on becoming a major player, plans on keeping a large user base, then things like the past 24 hours can never happen again.

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Gates Skeptical of ?Don?t Ask , Don?t Tell? Repeal This Year

MUSCAT, Oman ? Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates cast doubt Monday that the Senate would vote before the end of the year to allow gay men and women to serve openly in the armed forces.

In comments aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, Mr. Gates said that he was unsure that there would be a repeal of the 17-year-old ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy that requires gay men and women in the military to keep their sexual orientation secret or face discharge.

?I?d have to say I?m not particularly optimistic that they?re going to get this done,? he told sailors aboard the Lincoln, although he added, ?I would hope that they would.? Mr. Gates?s remarks were provided by a pool report from a small group of journalists accompanying him on the ship.

Mr. Gates repeated his concern that if Congress did not act on the legislation, the courts might overturn the policy on their own. His greatest fear, he said, is that ?we will be told to implement it without any time for preparation for training.?

The House of Representatives has voted to repeal the law, and there appear to be the votes for the Senate to do the same, but it is unclear if there is enough time before the end of the year to advance the measure. President Obama, Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have all called for its repeal.

Mr. Gates spoke aboard the same ship that former President George W. Bush used for his May 2003 speech declaring the end of major combat operations in Iraq, with the now infamous ?Mission Accomplished? banner behind him. The United States did not officially end combat operations until the end of August this year, more than seven years later.

Mr. Gates was aboard the ship to meet with sailors and see in part how the United States fights the air war in Afghanistan. Planes that take off from the ship provide close air support and surveillance for forces on the ground.

On North Korea?s recent behavior, including the shelling of a South Korean island and the North?s recent disclosure of a new nuclear facility, Mr. Gates told the sailors that it was part of a succession drama as the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, prepared for his son to take his place.

?These all seem to be designed to show that the son is tough and strong,? Mr. Gates said. ?And the message is to the elites in North Korea, especially the military, that he is strong enough to take leadership.?

Mr. Gates said that it was a ?difficult and potentially dangerous time,? then added: ?The North Koreans have engaged in some very provocative actions. They get everyone upset, then they volunteer to come back to talks, and we basically end up buying the same horse twice.?

Echoing a call throughout the Obama administration for help from China, Mr. Gates said, ?I think we just have to work with the Chinese and with others to see if we can?t bring some greater stability, some greater predictability to the regime in Pyongyang.?

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Spenders Become Savers in Race for Key House Post

?Uncle Needs a Diet,? declares the package assembled by Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California, one of three candidates in the race for one of the most powerful, and now paradoxical, jobs in government: leading the House Appropriations Committee in the new Congress as the Republican leadership tries to transform the panel from a fountain of federal spending into ground zero for budget cutting.

Selecting a chairman ? a party vote is expected Tuesday ? is the first step in perhaps the most audacious aspect of the plan by Representative John A. Boehner, the incoming Republican speaker, to alter the way the House works. Like Mr. Lewis, the other two leading candidates, Representatives Harold Rogers of Kentucky and Jack Kingston of Georgia, are campaigning to convince their party?s leadership that they can cast aside their own histories as earmarkers and pork-allocators and lead a shift in focus from how to spend it to how to save it.

To make the effort more than a slogan will mean upending one of the most entrenched cultures in Washington, a bipartisan tradition of directing money to favored causes with an eye as much to political gain as to policy outcome. Under both parties, the committee has long been a power unto itself, a secretive realm where subcommittee chairmen hold sway over cabinet secretaries and generals and financing can almost magically materialize or disappear for little-scrutinized local projects even as national priorities are set or dismissed.

Leading the committee toward a belt-tightening mandate would also mean taking on an entire industry that has been built up around the federal trough, a complex of lobbyists, consultants and corporations that feeds off the competition for dollars and with some regularity produces scandals ? and provides a substantial chunk of the campaign contributions that fuel the American political system.

?It has been a favor factory for years, and now it is going to become a slaughterhouse,? said Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican and longtime antagonist of the Appropriations Committee who on Monday was endorsed by Mr. Boehner to be one of several antispending conservatives to be seated on the panel. ?It is going to get ugly.?

All the candidates for chairman have more than 15 years on the committee and all have hungrily sought earmarks. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, in the last fiscal year, Mr. Lewis won 62 earmarks worth $97.6 million, followed by Mr. Rogers with 59 costing $93.4 million, and Mr. Kingston 40 worth $66.8 million.

Mr. Lewis was chairman of the committee before Democrats took control of the House in 2006 and would need a special exemption to be chairman again because of party-imposed term limits. In campaigning for the job, he has emphasized his past efforts to push spending cuts. Mr. Rogers has promoted his party fund-raising and his willingness to confront the executive branch on spending. Mr. Kingston has the backing of some outside fiscal watchdogs and promises a new openness on the panel.

The team of Republican leaders planning to take over the House on Jan. 5 is exploring a variety of changes intended to break the committee?s spending mind-set, starting with the new majority?s promise to slice $100 billion from President Obama?s budget request for the current fiscal year.

The three longtime committee members who aspire to head the panel have clearly gotten the message.

Like Mr. Lewis, his two rivals for the chairmanship are also committee members who have promised to devote themselves to paring spending, though all have funneled money to scores of projects through earmarks in past bills. The effort to reshape the committee promises to be a stern test of Republicans? rededication to fiscal sobriety after falling off the wagon during the dozen years, through 2006, that their party controlled the House, when government spending rose at rapid rates.

?They have promised things that they have neither delivered in the past nor, in my opinion, are going to be able to deliver on in the future,? said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat and a veteran of the Appropriations Committee himself.

To succeed and satisfy the conservative Tea Party-style voters that propelled them to power, Republicans will have to quickly make significant cuts in government programs and somehow find a way to enact those cuts into law in cooperation with a Democratically controlled Senate and a Democratic president.

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Justices Hear Case on Denial of Help to Veteran Who Missed Filing Deadline

WASHINGTON ? Justice Stephen G. Breyer wanted to know whether it was possible that Congress intended to deny help to veterans who missed filing deadlines because of the very disabilities for which they sought help.

?You have someone who served his country and was wounded and has post-traumatic stress syndrome or schizophrenia,? Justice Breyer said at a Supreme Court argument Monday. ?Who in Congress would have likely thought such a thing??

But the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last year ruled that Congress had indeed meant to bar the courthouse door to David L. Henderson, who served on the front lines in the Korean War and was discharged after receiving a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. That disability, his lawyers said, caused him to bungle a deadline.

The appeals court said its ruling was required by a 2007 decision of the Supreme Court that said deadlines for filing appeals must be applied strictly.

The appeals court?s ruling in the Henderson case, according to a dissent from three of its judges, created ?a Kafkaesque adjudicatory process in which those veterans who are most deserving of service-connected benefits will frequently be those least likely to obtain them.?

Mr. Henderson, who died while his Supreme Court case was pending, had sought additional government help for his condition in 2001. He was turned down in 2004. A federal law gave him 120 days to appeal that determination to the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, but it took him 135 days.

He sought leniency. His psychiatrist testified that ?Mr. Henderson has been incapable of understanding and meeting deadlines? because he was ?incapable of rational thought or deliberate decision-making.?

But the Supreme Court?s 2007 decision, Bowles v. Russell, said that deadlines for filing appeals were ?jurisdictional,? meaning they are not subject to exceptions or excuses.

The Bowles case concerned an inmate who missed a deadline because he had been given erroneous instructions by a federal judge. Justice David H. Souter, in a dissent also signed by three other justices, said that ?it is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way.?

On Monday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had joined that dissent, said the Bowles decision was ?a substantial hurdle to contend with.? Justice Antonin Scalia went further, saying approvingly that ?Bowles was a nice, clear case.?

Mr. Henderson?s lawyer, Lisa S. Blatt, said the two cases were different, in part because of the special status of the court to which her client had tried to appeal.

?Congress established this court to open the door to veterans seeking disability benefits,? Ms. Blatt said, ?and it would just conflict with that purpose to, at the same time, shut the door when the veteran?s disability prevents him from getting to the courthouse.?

Some justices said there was a second distinction. The inmate in the Bowles case had tried to appeal from one court to another, while Mr. Henderson sought to appeal the determination of an agency to a court.

?Why wouldn?t it be a bright, clear line if we said, ?Court to court, Bowles controls; agency to court, Bowles does not apply??? Justice Ginsburg asked.

Eric D. Miller, a lawyer for the federal government, said, ?The same principle applies for appeals from agencies.?

He added that ?just about everybody? agreed that some late filings would be allowed in a perfect world ? but not under the current law. Indeed, he said, the Department of Veterans Affairs has asked Congress to add flexibility to the system.

As in many cases, Justices Breyer and Scalia disagreed about how to determine the meaning of the statute before them.

Justice Scalia said the court should rely solely on the text of the law to determine the correct result in the case, Henderson v. Shinseki, No.09-1036.

?Don?t we pretty much have to go on what they wrote?? he asked.

Justice Breyer, on the other hand, said he would ?try to work out from context, language and objective purpose what a reasonable member of Congress would have intended.?

But the two more or less agreed on what would be an example of a strong hypothetical case for imposing a flexible deadline.

?The dog ate it, maybe,? Justice Scalia said.

?Yes,? Justice Breyer said. ?Right. The dog ate the court.?

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