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The Body Shop Singapore | #DigitalFashionWeek Singapore 2013 Official Make-up
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The Body Shop Singapore | #DigitalFashionWeek Singapore 2013 Official Make-up - Video
Evils of Society Ep#13 - Evils of Social Networking (Part 1)
Evils of Society Ep#13 - Evils of Social Networking (Part 1)
By: MadaniChannel
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Evils of Society Ep#13 - Evils of Social Networking (Part 1) - Video
Chinas recent crackdown on online rumors may have quieted the nations social networking websites, but local authorities take that as a sign of progress and want to regulate the Internet even more.
In a rare question-and-answer session on Thursday, Chinese official Ren Xianliang spoke at length with journalists on the nations efforts to control the Internet. Few details were given, but China plans to exercise greater authority over the nations social networking services, including Sina Weibo and WeChat.
You brought up that Sina Weibos activity has fallen, but this just means that our crackdown on online rumors has been effective, said Ren, who is the deputy director of Chinas State Internet Information Office. The rumors have declined significantly, but this hasnt affected the normal flow of information, he added.
Ren spoke to the media two weeks after the government said it was falling behind in managing the online flow of information. China already is notorious for blocking popular websites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter as a way to weed out anti-government content. Locally, domestic Internet firms must self-censor, and often delete user posts on sensitive topics.
Chinas Internet populace, however, is growing at a fast pace. The country now has 604 million users, according to Ren. Half those users are either on microblogging sites such as Sina Weibo or using the mobile messaging app WeChat, he added. As a result, Chinas social networking platforms are generating billions of posts each day.
Our work in managing this has to catch up. We are specifically targeting social media, and we are forming the specific systems and laws to regulate it, he said without elaborating.
In recent months, China has cracked down on online rumors, claiming that the content is inaccurate or slanderous. As part of those measures, China will even jail users found guilty.
The strict measures have often put China in a negative light when it comes to online censorship. But local authorities view the matter as maintaining stability and removing harmful and illegal content from the Web.
Chinas intention is to not over-regulate the Internet, but to make it better, Ren said. Our hope is to figure out how make the proper laws, and the proper regulation. Its not to regulate the Internet to death, he added. Our intention is to not control, but to help the Internet develop better.
Authorities also want to maintain free speech for Internet users, but Ren indicated there would be limits. I think people want to hear constructive comments, not personal attacks or a diatribe, he said.
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A quiet social network makes China happy in recent crackdown
Newswise LA JOLLA, CANovember 28, 2013Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have determined the most detailed picture yet of a crucial part of the hepatitis C virus, which the virus uses to infect liver cells. The new data reveal unexpected structural features of this protein and should greatly speed efforts to make an effective hepatitis C vaccine.
The findings, which appear in the November 29, 2013 issue of the journal Science, focus on a protein known as E2 envelope glycoprotein.
Were excited by this development, said Ian A. Wilson, the Hansen Professor of Structural Biology at TSRI and a senior author of the new research with TSRI Assistant Professors Mansun Law and Andrew B. Ward. It has been very hard to get a high resolution structure of E2 and it took years of painstaking work to finally accomplish that.
Any successful hepatitis C vaccine is likely to target the E2 protein. Scientists already have isolated rare antibodies from patients that can bind E2 in ways that neutralize a broad range of viral strains.
It took our team six years to crack this very difficult scientific problem, but we didnt give up, said Law. Now that we can visualize the structural details of these binding sites, we can design vaccine molecules that mimic them.
A Silent Killer
There has long been an urgent need for an effective vaccine against hepatitis C virus. Once confined to isolated geographical regions, the virus spread globally during the 20th century, chiefly via blood transfusions, unsterilized medical instruments and re-used hypodermic needles. Although hospitals have screened blood products for hepatitis C virus (HCV) since the early 1990s, as many as 200 million people currently are thought to harbor the virus. These include more than 3 million people in the United States, where the virus is responsible for more deaths each year than HIV.
HCV was able to spread so widely because it typically causes few or no symptoms when it infects someone. In many cases it establishes a long-term infection of the liver, damaging it slowly for decadesuntil liver cirrhosis and/or cancer develop. Its known as a silent killer, said Law. Expensive and risky liver transplantation is often the only way to save a patients life. Some antiviral drugs are useful in treating and even curing chronic HCV infection, but the more effective ones are extremely expensiveand most HCV-positive people dont even know that theyre infected and need treatment.
An HCV vaccine could put an end to the global pandemic by preventing new infections. It could be given to people when theyre young and healthy, and theyd never have to worry about developing HCV-related liver diseases, said Ward.
However, like HIV and some other viruses, HCV uses several effective countermeasures to evade the immune system. These include fast-mutating regions on the E2 protein, which ensure that antibodies to one HCV strain typically are ineffective against other strains. The E2 protein also coats itself with relatively antibody-proof sugar molecules.
Nov. 28, 2013 Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have determined the most detailed picture yet of a crucial part of the hepatitis C virus, which the virus uses to infect liver cells. The new data reveal unexpected structural features of this protein and should greatly speed efforts to make an effective hepatitis C vaccine.
The findings, which appear in the November 29, 2013 issue of the journal Science, focus on a protein known as E2 envelope glycoprotein.
"We're excited by this development," said Ian A. Wilson, the Hansen Professor of Structural Biology at TSRI and a senior author of the new research with TSRI Assistant Professors Mansun Law and Andrew B. Ward. "It has been very hard to get a high resolution structure of E2 and it took years of painstaking work to finally accomplish that."
Any successful hepatitis C vaccine is likely to target the E2 protein. Scientists already have isolated rare antibodies from patients that can bind E2 in ways that neutralize a broad range of viral strains.
"It took our team six years to crack this very difficult scientific problem, but we didn't give up," said Law. "Now that we can visualize the structural details of these binding sites, we can design vaccine molecules that mimic them."
A Silent Killer
There has long been an urgent need for an effective vaccine against hepatitis C virus. Once confined to isolated geographical regions, the virus spread globally during the 20th century, chiefly via blood transfusions, unsterilized medical instruments and re-used hypodermic needles. Although hospitals have screened blood products for hepatitis C virus (HCV) since the early 1990s, as many as 200 million people currently are thought to harbor the virus. These include more than 3 million people in the United States, where the virus is responsible for more deaths each year than HIV.
HCV was able to spread so widely because it typically causes few or no symptoms when it infects someone. In many cases it establishes a long-term infection of the liver, damaging it slowly for decades -- until liver cirrhosis and/or cancer develop. "It's known as a 'silent killer'," said Law. Expensive and risky liver transplantation is often the only way to save a patient's life. Some antiviral drugs are useful in treating and even curing chronic HCV infection, but the more effective ones are extremely expensive -- and most HCV-positive people don't even know that they're infected and need treatment.
An HCV vaccine could put an end to the global pandemic by preventing new infections. "It could be given to people when they're young and healthy, and they'd never have to worry about developing HCV-related liver diseases," said Ward.
However, like HIV and some other viruses, HCV uses several effective countermeasures to evade the immune system. These include fast-mutating regions on the E2 protein, which ensure that antibodies to one HCV strain typically are ineffective against other strains. The E2 protein also coats itself with relatively antibody-proof sugar molecules.
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Scientists achieve most detailed picture ever of key part of hepatitis C virus