The Triumph is towed into the Mobile shipyard in February. (AP)The bad news just keeps coming from the seemingly cursed Carnival cruise ship Triumph.
Strong winds unmoored the Triumph from a dock in Mobile, Ala., where it was undergoing engine repairs, and blew a guard shack two docks over into the water.
"Due to strong winds in Mobile, Ala., Carnival Triumph, which was docked at a Mobile shipyard, broke away from its moorings," Carnival said in a statement. "The ship drifted and is currently resting against a cargo vessel. Tug boats and the U.S. Coast Guard are on site."
Back in February, some 3,100 passengers were stranded on the Triumph for days after an engine room fire left the cruise ship stranded at sea. In March, 17 passengers from the ship filed a federal lawsuit against Carnival, saying they suffered physical harm and feared for their lives during the ordeal.
Mobile Fire-Rescue announced on its Twitter account that a guard who had been in the shack was rescued, but that a second shipyard worker remains missing. (It's unclear whether he was also in the shack.) That report has been backed up by CNN. Petty Officer Second Class Bill Colclough told the AP that a crew is searching the Mobile River for the man.
The Mobile area has been hit by heavy rain and winds all day, with the National Weather Service saying winds had reached up to 35 mph.
NBC News says that the Triumph struck a moored Army Corps boat after it drifted away from the dock, but that no one on the vessel was harmed in the incident.
Recruiting strong educators to teach at low-income schools in urban and rural areas is not always easy. The stress and commitment can be daunting for some teachers, especially ones who?ve only been in the profession for a few years.
A bill currently on the desk of New Mexico Governor Susan Martinez could give teachers that extra push.
Sponsored by Albuquerque Representative Sheryl Williams Stapleton, the bill would help teachers pay off students loans if they work in schools with low-income students or where student perform poorly on state tests.
It is not clear if Martinez, a Republican, will sign the Democrat-sponsored bill. In 2011, she vetoed the bill, also sponsored by Stapleton.
?
?
Many educators and organizations say such bills are needed in the United States
?While the Association of American Educators hasn?t directly surveyed members on this specific policy, our teachers are in agreement that we must find innovative ways to attract effective teachers to the profession,? Gary Beckner, executive director of the Association of American Educators, told TakePart.
Beckner said that according to the group?s National Member Surveys, more than 80 percent of teachers support educators being paid more for taking on additional roles and responsibilities in their schools. He said 79 percent supported educators being paid more to teach in high-need schools.
?This bill speaks to the heart of this issue and would provide teachers with incentives to fill high-need positions,? he said.
West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, a Republican, recently signed legislation on a comprehensive education package, which included loan forgiveness to teachers willing to teach in critical-need areas. While many West Virginia education groups were against many components of the package, they did praise Tomblin?s initiative with teachers and loans.
?His loan forgiveness program will help us bring new, young teachers into areas of critical needs and shortage areas,? Judy Hale, president of the American Federation of Teachers?West Virginia, told local media.?
In Louisiana?s Lafayette Parish, education officials are recruiting nurses who excel in math and science to become schoolteachers. In June, the University Medical Center employees will be laid off after a partnership with another hospital begins.
Nurses with a bachelor?s degree can become classroom teachers within a year through an accelerated alternative certification program developed by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. They are encouraged to take out Perkins loans, a federal program that forgives debt if teachers work at high-poverty schools for at least five years.
South Carolina, too, is looking at ways to attract teachers to poor schools. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has proposed expanding the state?s Teach for America program, but some are criticizing that proposal. Critics say Walker should hire in-state teachers instead of inviting out-of-state teachers to Wisconsin.
For all the debate, the National Education Association warns that while attracting good teachers to high-needs schools is much needed, so is the ability to retain them.
?While NEA supports incentives and programs to attract talented educators to high-needs schools such as loan forgiveness and scholarships, we must also focus on providing a stable workforce,? Segun Eubanks, director of Teacher Quality at the National Education Association told TakePart. ?According to the most recent?Metlife Survey, maintaining an adequate supply of effective teachers is more difficult in high-needs schools than in other schools.?
Eubanks said that teachers entering high-needs schools need ?special preparation for teaching, support from more experienced colleagues, and programs that offer opportunities for knowing students better?such as flexible schedules and advisory classes.?
Related Stories on TakePart:
? 8 Ways to Keep Your Student Loan Debt From Crushing You
? If You Can?t Pay Off Your Student Loans, Your College May Sue You
? Student Loan Crisis: How We Got Into This Mess
Suzi Parker is an Arkansas-based?political and cultural journalist whose work frequently appears in?The Washington?Post?and?The Christian Science Monitor. She is the?author of two books. @SuziParker | TakePart.com?
In this picture made available by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Pope Francis prays in front of the tomb of Pope John Paul II, at the Vatican Tuesday, April 2, 2013. Pope Francis has prayed before the tomb of Pope John Paul II on the eighth anniversary of the much-beloved pontiff's death. In his three weeks as pope, Francis has jolted the Catholic Church with several gestures that broke with tradition, including renouncing certain liturgical vestments and washing the feet of a Muslim woman during a Holy Thursday ritual re-enacting Jesus Christ's washing of his apostles' feet. (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano)
In this picture made available by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Pope Francis prays in front of the tomb of Pope John Paul II, at the Vatican Tuesday, April 2, 2013. Pope Francis has prayed before the tomb of Pope John Paul II on the eighth anniversary of the much-beloved pontiff's death. In his three weeks as pope, Francis has jolted the Catholic Church with several gestures that broke with tradition, including renouncing certain liturgical vestments and washing the feet of a Muslim woman during a Holy Thursday ritual re-enacting Jesus Christ's washing of his apostles' feet. (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano)
In this picture made available by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Pope Francis prays in front of the tomb of Pope John Paul II, at the Vatican Tuesday, April 2, 2013. Pope Francis has prayed before the tomb of Pope John Paul II on the eighth anniversary of the much-beloved pontiff's death. In his three weeks as pope, Francis has jolted the Catholic Church with several gestures that broke with tradition, including renouncing certain liturgical vestments and washing the feet of a Muslim woman during a Holy Thursday ritual re-enacting Jesus Christ's washing of his apostles' feet. (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano)
VATICAN CITY (AP) ? Pope Francis prayed Tuesday before the tomb of Pope John Paul II on the eighth anniversary of the beloved pontiff's death in what the Vatican said was evidence of Francis' "profound spiritual continuity" with popes past.
In his three weeks as pope, Francis has jolted the Catholic Church with several gestures that broke with papal tradition, including renouncing certain liturgical vestments, choosing to live in the Vatican hotel rather than the papal apartments, and washing the feet of a Muslim woman during a Holy Thursday ritual re-enacting Jesus Christ's washing of his apostles' feet.
But Francis has also visited with his immediate predecessor, Benedict XVI, and spoken on the phone with him at least three times. And on Monday, he visited the tomb of St. Peter, the first pontiff, which is located in the necropolis underneath St. Peter's Basilica.
On Tuesday, he waited until the basilica was closed to the general public to visit the tomb of John Paul II, the Polish pope who died in 2005. The tomb is located in the St. Sebastian chapel, just inside the entrance of the basilica. He also prayed before the tombs of Popes Pius X and John XXIII.
"As with the visit yesterday to the tomb of St. Peter and the Vatican grottoes, this evening's visit to the basilica expresses the profound spiritual continuity of the popes' petrine ministry, which Pope Francis lives and feels intensely, as he has shown repeatedly with his phone calls to his predecessor Benedict XVI," the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said in a statement.
Traditionalist Catholics have been devastated by some of Francis' gestures, which they have seen as a rejection primarily of efforts by Benedict XVI to revive the pre-Vatican II tradition of the church, including much of the pomp of the papacy.
As a result, Francis' visit to the tomb of Pope Pius X was particularly significant. Pius X, who lived from 1835-1914, is known to some degree as the anti-modern pope: He wrote an encyclical on the dangers of "modernism" in church doctrine and is the namesake of the schismatic group of traditionalist Catholics, the Society of St. Pius X, with whom Benedict tried unsuccessfully to reconcile during his eight-year pontificate.
Visiting Pius' tomb could be seen as a gesture by Francis to those traditionalists upset by his election. Aside from the gesture, however, he and Pius share many priorities ? particularly a concern for the poor.
John XXIII, meanwhile, called the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meetings that brought the church into the modern world. The Society of St. Pius X was formed in 1969 in stark opposition to Vatican II's modernizing reforms.
In visiting both tombs on Tuesday night, Francis may have been sending a signal that he sees himself as something of a bridge between the two seemingly contrasting pontificates and the resulting divisions within the church today.
John Paul in 2001 made the then-Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio a cardinal. Bergoglio was elected pope on March 13 and took the name Francis, the first time a pontiff has chosen that name.
___
Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
Yesterday we saw a lot of attempts at humor from tech companies, with varying degrees of success. To help shake off that April Fool's Day hangover, Vooza, the satirical "startup" that has been putting out spot-on parodies of modern tech company culture since this past summer with fake (but scarily real sounding) buzzwords like "Radimparency", is coming clean about what it's really up to -- creating a fresh kind of web-based advertisement for startups.
Landmark study describes prostate cancer metastasis switchPublic release date: 2-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Garth Sundem garth.sundem@ucdenver.edu University of Colorado Denver
Loss of E-Cadherin allows metastasis -- CU Cancer Center researchers make cancer cells restart production
Prostate cancer doesn't kill in the prostate it's only once the disease travels to bone, lung, liver, etc. that it turns fatal. Previous studies have shown that loss of the protein E-Cadherin is essential for this metastasis. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the Journal of Biological Chemistry describes for the first time a switch that regulates the production of E-Cadherin: the transcription factor SPDEF turns on and off production, leading to metastasis or stopping it cold in models of prostate cancer.
"When E-Cadherin is lost, cells become 'rouge' they can detach from their surrounding tissues, move effortlessly through the circulatory system, grow and attach at new sites. In prostate tumors that had lost E-Cadherin, we put in SPDEF and the tumors once again expressed E-Cadherin. They were once again anchored in place and unable to metastasize. We can make these 'rouge' cells back into epithelial-like cells and these epithelial cells stay anchored and lose the ability to migrate," says Hari Koul, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and professor and director of Urology Research at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, the study's senior author.
In fact, the work could have implications far beyond prostate cancer, as increasing evidence points to loss of E-Cadherin as a prerequisite for metastasis in many cancers.
Koul and colleagues first showed that E-Cadherin levels varied directly with the addition or subtraction of SPDEF. Then the group artificially knocked down E-Cadherin despite the presence of SPDEF and showed that cells remained able to migrate and invade new tissues (SPDEF didn't by itself affect metastasis and was instead dependent on modulating E-Cadherin, which is the driver). The group also showed a one-way switch SPDEF regulates E-Cadherin, but E-Cadherin expression does nothing to affect levels of SPDEF.
"Taken together, these studies paint a pretty compelling picture of SPDEF working in part through the modulation of E-Cadherin to inhibit prostate cancer metastasis," Koul says. "To the best of our knowledge these are the first studies demonstrating the requirement of SPDEF for expression of E-Cadherin."
Koul says that his group is getting very close to turning off the loss of E-Cadherin in cancer cells by re-arming tumors with the gene that makes SPDEF and my testing small molecules that increase SPDEF in cancer cells.
"This could be a real landmark," Koul says. "We see a prerequisite for metastasis and now we have a very clear picture of how to remove this necessary condition for the most dangerous behavior of prostate cancer."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Landmark study describes prostate cancer metastasis switchPublic release date: 2-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Garth Sundem garth.sundem@ucdenver.edu University of Colorado Denver
Loss of E-Cadherin allows metastasis -- CU Cancer Center researchers make cancer cells restart production
Prostate cancer doesn't kill in the prostate it's only once the disease travels to bone, lung, liver, etc. that it turns fatal. Previous studies have shown that loss of the protein E-Cadherin is essential for this metastasis. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the Journal of Biological Chemistry describes for the first time a switch that regulates the production of E-Cadherin: the transcription factor SPDEF turns on and off production, leading to metastasis or stopping it cold in models of prostate cancer.
"When E-Cadherin is lost, cells become 'rouge' they can detach from their surrounding tissues, move effortlessly through the circulatory system, grow and attach at new sites. In prostate tumors that had lost E-Cadherin, we put in SPDEF and the tumors once again expressed E-Cadherin. They were once again anchored in place and unable to metastasize. We can make these 'rouge' cells back into epithelial-like cells and these epithelial cells stay anchored and lose the ability to migrate," says Hari Koul, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and professor and director of Urology Research at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, the study's senior author.
In fact, the work could have implications far beyond prostate cancer, as increasing evidence points to loss of E-Cadherin as a prerequisite for metastasis in many cancers.
Koul and colleagues first showed that E-Cadherin levels varied directly with the addition or subtraction of SPDEF. Then the group artificially knocked down E-Cadherin despite the presence of SPDEF and showed that cells remained able to migrate and invade new tissues (SPDEF didn't by itself affect metastasis and was instead dependent on modulating E-Cadherin, which is the driver). The group also showed a one-way switch SPDEF regulates E-Cadherin, but E-Cadherin expression does nothing to affect levels of SPDEF.
"Taken together, these studies paint a pretty compelling picture of SPDEF working in part through the modulation of E-Cadherin to inhibit prostate cancer metastasis," Koul says. "To the best of our knowledge these are the first studies demonstrating the requirement of SPDEF for expression of E-Cadherin."
Koul says that his group is getting very close to turning off the loss of E-Cadherin in cancer cells by re-arming tumors with the gene that makes SPDEF and my testing small molecules that increase SPDEF in cancer cells.
"This could be a real landmark," Koul says. "We see a prerequisite for metastasis and now we have a very clear picture of how to remove this necessary condition for the most dangerous behavior of prostate cancer."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The Triumph is towed into the Mobile shipyard in February. (AP)The bad news just keeps coming from the seemingly cursed Carnival cruise ship Triumph.
Yesterday we saw a lot of 
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 2-Apr-2013
Share ]