LeBron James Securing Place In History As Heat Rack Up NBA Titles

MIAMI (AP) ? Dwyane Wade was walking down the hallway toward the Miami Heat locker room in the wee hours of Friday morning, still in uniform and fussing with the new championship hat atop his head as his team and their families were in the midst of partying the night away.

He stopped briefly and assessed the celebration.

"We're getting pretty good at these," Wade said.

That's understandable, the Heat are getting plenty of practice at throwing themselves end-of-season parties. Four trips to the NBA Finals since 2006, three championships in that span and with the last two titles coming consecutively, it's making the decisions that the Heat and LeBron James made three summers ago look pretty smart.

By topping San Antonio in Game 7 of a back-and-forth NBA Finals on Thursday, the Heat became the sixth franchise in league history to win consecutive championships. It's their third title overall; only four clubs have more. And for James, it capped two seasons where he won all he could ? two regular-season MVPs, two titles, two Finals MVPs, even an Olympic gold medal.

"It feels great. This team is amazing. And the vision that I had when I decided to come here is all coming true," James said. "Through adversity, through everything we've been through, we've been able to persevere and to win back to back championships. It's an unbelievable feeling. I'm happy to be part of such a first-class organization."

James said winning his first title was the toughest thing he's ever done.

It's now the second-toughest. Defending the crown, he said, was even more arduous. He was exhausted when it was over ? and still scored 37 points in the finale, more than he posted in any other postseason game this season.

"Believe in LeBron," Heat President Pat Riley said.

Miami did, all the way to the end.

The Heat rolled past Milwaukee in a first-round sweep, needed five games to oust Chicago in the second round, but then went to the seven-game limit against Indiana in the Eastern Conference finals and then to the last game again against the Spurs, who actually were 21 seconds away from ending the series in six games before James and the Heat engineered a huge rally.

Without that comeback, a championship-or-bust season would have gone bust.

Instead, legacies were enhanced, more trophies were hoisted, and Miami's place atop the NBA landscape was cemented.

"To be in the championship three years in a row, to win two of those three, is unbelievable," Wade said. "Everybody can't get to the Finals and win six in a row, like win six and not lose one like Michael Jordan. Everyone don't do that. But we are excited about the future of this organization. We are still a good team. And we're going to do everything we can to make sure that we can stay competitive."

Moves will be made, of course. The Heat have some luxury-tax concerns to address, and it would be a shock if they didn't try to get even better through a trade or free agency.

"All it's about now is what's in front of us," Riley said.

Then again, if James keeps getting better, Miami's place in history will probably only rise.

At 6-foot-8 and 250 pounds, James has a combination of size, speed and strength that seems unmatched in the NBA world. After Miami lost the 2011 finals to Dallas, James decided to improve his post play by working with Hakeem Olajuwon. Last season, his focus was on enhancing his mid-range jumper, something he continued working on throughout the season with Ray Allen.

So with about a half-minute left and the Heat up by two points, it was that mid-range jumper that sealed Miami's title. James delivered with 27.9 seconds left to make it a two-possession game. Not long afterward, he had the Larry O'Brien Trophy in one arm, the Finals MVP trophy in the other, ready for a well-deserved break from basketball.

"I want to be, if not the greatest, one of the greatest to ever play this game," James said. "And I will continue to work for that, and continue to put on this uniform and be the best I can be every night."

James has already put himself in that best-ever conversation.

"We all know his work ethic," said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, who spent part of his first day as a two-time champion coach at Jim Larranaga's basketball camp at the University of Miami. "It's probably unique for a guy who has been the best in the game since he was in seventh grade. Usually you wouldn't have the type of work ethic that would match that type of talent."

Jordan won six titles, James only has two. But if that's the sole standard, then Jordan isn't even close either, considering Bill Russell won 11 rings in his Boston career. Russell was there for the Heat title clincher, served as part of the on-court trophy presentations, then retreated to a small room not far from the Miami locker room as players meandered in for one of the immediate perks of winning a title ? a photo shoot with the trophy.

James posed for hundreds of photos during his time in there. Camera clicks were a constant sound for about 10 minutes when he was in the room. And before he left, he and Wade waved for Russell to come join them for some more snapshots.

"Get the legend up here," James shouted.

Russell walked to the front of the room as a few people, mostly Heat employees and family members, clapped. He shook hands with the Heat stars, then turned around to face the cameras and said something to James that was barely audible to those even a few feet away.

"You earned this one," Russell said.

James' grin became even broader, and camera shutters kept on whirring. Suddenly, that oft-mocked, oft-replayed "not two, not three, not four" answer James gave during the Heat celebration of their free agency coup in 2010 doesn't look like such a punch line anymore.

"I always felt that when he got up to five, six, seven that he was joking a little bit, but the media decided to take him very seriously," Heat managing general partner Micky Arison said. "I think right now he's real happy with two and next year he'll be worried about three."

James has played 10 seasons now. Including playoffs, his scoring average is 27.6, third-best in league history behind only Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain. Since the league began charting plus-minus (the point differential when a player is on the court), James' teams have outscored opponents by 3,861 points with him in regular-season and playoff games. Second-best on that list? Wade, at 2,301 points. That gap is simply huge.

With an average season next year, he'll move into the Top 25 in all-time regular-season scoring. He got more rebounds per game this season than ever before, shot the 3-pointer better than ever before, punctuating that by making five in Game 7 of the finals. And here's what might be truly frightening for opponents: For the sixth straight year, James' shooting percentage got better.

"Hopefully people will leave him alone a little more now," Heat forward Shane Battier said. "He takes a lot of heat, I think undeservedly. He's the best player on the planet. And hopefully now with two titles, he'll get more the benefit of the doubt. But, you know, he's the best. He's the best right now."

So are the Heat. And that can't be argued.

The Celtics, Lakers and Bulls are the only franchises to win three straight titles. That will be the challenge for the Heat next year, to take a great run and make it a truly elite run.

For now, though, James wants no part of that conversation. He's going to enjoy this one for a good long while.

"It's the ultimate," James said. "I don't want to think about next year right now, what our possibilities are next year. Got to take full advantage of this one. It's an unbelievable moment for our team."

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/21/lebron-james-greatest-nba-history-heat_n_3480672.html

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Yahoo to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion cash

LONDON, May 18 (Reuters) - Manchester United's outgoing manager Alex Ferguson has criticised neighbours Manchester City for sacking Roberto Mancini. The Italian boss was sacked on Monday having failed to retain the Premier League title he won last season and after losing the FA Cup final to Wigan Athletic. Mancini took out a full-page advertisement in the Manchester Evening News on Saturday, thanking fans for their support during his time in charge. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/yahoos-board-approves-1-1-billion-tumblr-acquisition-103611211.html

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RNA capable of catalyzing electron transfer on early earth with iron's help, study says

RNA capable of catalyzing electron transfer on early earth with iron's help, study says

Monday, May 20, 2013

A new study shows how complex biochemical transformations may have been possible under conditions that existed when life began on the early Earth.

The study shows that RNA is capable of catalyzing electron transfer under conditions similar to those of the early Earth. Because electron transfer, the moving of an electron from one chemical species to another, is involved in many biological processes ? including photosynthesis, respiration and the reduction of RNA to DNA ? the study's findings suggest that complex biochemical transformations may have been possible when life began.

There is considerable evidence that the evolution of life passed through an early stage when RNA played a more central role, before DNA and coded proteins appeared. During that time, more than 3 billion years ago, the environment lacked oxygen but had an abundance of soluble iron.

"Our study shows that when RNA teams up with iron in an oxygen-free environment, RNA displays the powerful ability to catalyze single electron transfer, a process involved in the most sophisticated biochemistry, yet previously uncharacterized for RNA," said Loren Williams, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The results of the study were scheduled to be published online on May 19, 2013, in the journal Nature Chemistry. The study was sponsored by the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which established the Center for Ribosomal Origins and Evolution (Ribo Evo) at Georgia Tech.

Free oxygen gas was almost nonexistent in the Earth's atmosphere more than 3 billion years ago. When free oxygen began entering the environment as a product of photosynthesis, it turned the earth's iron to rust, forming massive banded iron formations that are still mined today. The free oxygen produced by advanced organisms caused iron to be toxic, even though it was ? and still is ? a requirement for life. Williams believes the environmental transition caused a slow shift from the use of iron to magnesium for RNA binding, folding and catalysis.

Williams and Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry postdoctoral fellow Chiaolong Hsiao used a standard peroxidase assay to detect electron transfer in solutions of RNA and either the iron ion, Fe2+, or magnesium ion, Mg2+. For 10 different types of RNA, the researchers observed catalysis of single electron transfer in the presence of iron and absence of oxygen. They found that two of the most abundant and ancient types of RNA, the 23S ribosomal RNA and transfer RNA, catalyzed electron transfer more efficiently than other types of RNA. However, none of the RNA and magnesium solutions catalyzed single electron transfer in the oxygen-free environment.

"Our findings suggest that the catalytic competence of RNA may have been greater in early Earth conditions than in present conditions, and our experiments may have revived a latent function of RNA," added Williams, who is also director of the RiboEvo Center.

This new study expands on research published in May 2012 in the journal PLoS ONE. In the previous work, Williams led a team that used experiments and numerical calculations to show that iron, in the absence of oxygen, could substitute for magnesium in RNA binding, folding and catalysis. The researchers found that RNA's shape and folding structure remained the same and its functional activity increased when magnesium was replaced by iron in an oxygen-free environment.

In future studies, the researchers plan to investigate whether other unique functions may have been conferred on RNA through interaction with a variety of metals available on the early Earth.

In addition to Williams and Hsiao, Georgia Tech School of Biology professors Roger Wartell and Stephen Harvey, and Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry professor Nicholas Hud, also contributed to this work as co-principal investigators in the Ribo Evo Center at Georgia Tech.

###

Georgia Institute of Technology: http://www.gatech.edu

Thanks to Georgia Institute of Technology for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128307/RNA_capable_of_catalyzing_electron_transfer_on_early_earth_with_iron_s_help__study_says

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Steve Mariotti: The Best and the Brightest -- My Favorite Book

Everyone has a favorite book. I read The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam over and over again, at least once a year. Sometimes, I will pick it up to touch and feel it, reading just a page or two, knowing by heart whole sections.

It took three years for David to research and another two years to write. Finally published in 1972, it tells the tale of the Vietnam tragedy of how the United States went from 15,000 troops in 1962 to over 500,000 soldiers by 1968, spending trillions of dollars in the process and losing over 50,000 American lives.

Arguably, Vietnam was the biggest tragedy for the U.S. since the Civil War. Halberstam was fascinated by Vietnam having won a Pulitzer for his writings on the war early on in '62. So irritated with his questioning of our policy, President Kennedy called Sulzberger, the owner of the New York Times, to ask that the young David be reassigned.

David began his masterpiece with a trip to Saigon in 1967 to cover the escalating war for Harper's. Given the opportunity to write as much as he wanted with an unlimited time limit, he eventually turned the article into a 652 page book -- perhaps the greatest non-fiction political analysis ever written. In my opinion, David Halberstam is the greatest journalist of the last 100 years.

Writing and researching 10 hours a day, David finally finished and the book became an instant best seller with awesome critical reviews as well. I first read the book in 1977 when I had just fulfilled a lifelong dream and became a part of Ford Finance Staff, the legendary group that ran Ford Motor Company and had been created by Bob McNamara, the main character in Halberstam's book. Ford Finance was located on the 10th and 11th floors of Ford World Headquarters located in Dearborn, Michigan, and my office was on the 10th floor in Room 1036, the area of international finance.

Ford Finance staff produced more CEOs of Fortune 500 firms than any other organization other than Harvard Business School. It was clearly the greatest finance department in American business and had done so much to build modern management techniques. It had been developed by the Whiz Kids -- a group of elite Air Force officers who were brought to Ford by Henry Ford in 1946 to help save the company by bringing in advance management techniques.

I highly recommend the book The Whiz Kids for background on this interesting story. The Whiz Kids were spectacularly successful in turning around Ford and much of their success was because of Bob McNamara and my own boss, Edward J. Lundy, the Senior Vice President of Finance.

Bob had become president of Ford in 1960 before being named by President Kennedy to head up the Department of Defense -- becoming the foolish protagonist in Halberstams book.

Halberstam had written over 10 pages on Ford Finance Staff, capturing our culture brilliantly; and in my second year firmly entranced as the treasury analyst of Ford South Africa and Ford Aerospace, Ford Venezuala and Ford Mexico, I made 40 copies of the 10 pages and distributed them to senior finance staff members.

Everyone was quite pleased as Halberstam had brilliantly captured how we felt about ourselves -- The Best and the Brightest. The legendary Lundy called me himself -- by then, I was called "Stevie Wonder" -- to say: "Awesome job, Steve. Great for morale. Although, I felt Bob got a bad rap on Vietnam. It was those generals that gave him bad advice." Not wanting to express my own opinion, I said, "Yes sir, Mr. Lundy, there was a lot of blame to go around."

At Ford, we used tape recordings in our personal meetings. We taped and then listened to people talk in what was called 'face offs.' It was part of our culture and we were proud of it. Finance staff faceoffs were daily through out world headquarters -- like massive therapy sessions, everyone voice was heard literally. Not only was listening and analyzing conversations part of our culture, but we made a lot of the equipment for suvailance at our division, Ford Aerospace, for which I was the financial analyst in the Treasurers Department.

As I was the analyst for both Ford Aroespace and Ford South Africa, I would review the agreement to sell surveillance equipment to places like the South African government.

I though that it was immoral to be helping a totalitarian racist regime and began under the tutelage of Reverend Sullivan, a legendary African-American political activist, to change Ford policy, coming up with guidelines on who we could sell to, prohibiting us from selling to corrupt governments. But that is a story for later so back to my tale of meeting Halberstam...

After I left Ford, I moved to New York City seeking fame and fortune. My plan was to call all the people I had read about in Michigan and go see them. My first call was to Halberstam.

"I think your book is brilliant. I was at Ford and we loved it." I said eagerly.

"Thank you Steve. Any feedback?" he asked. I could not resist." I was curious as to why you never mentioned anything about the use of surveillance at the company. We made all the equipment and sold it around the world, but it was always first tested at Ford world headquarters by Henry himself."

I could see him through the phone, aghast. He thought I was a kook. Feeling uncomfortable, he quickly got off the phone, and I was deeply hurt and embarrassed.

But time and truth were on my side. In 1982, Lee Iacocca published his book, Iacocca. Brilliantly written, it became a bestseller, and everyone was reading it. Sure enough, on page 117, Lee wrote about what I had seen, took part in and told David Halberstam about -- the use of surveillance equipment at Ford.

Lee wrote openly that we made the equipment and Henry Ford himself would test it by seeing if he could hear what was going on in Lee Iacocca's office when he went out to lunch about a mile a way.

Vindicated, I got a copy of the book, marked page 117, and sent a note on top to Mr. Halberstam saying, "here is some investigative research on the issue of surveillance at Ford motor company which we discussed." Probably not one of my finer moments, but it made me feel better to set the history straight. Soon after my phone rang and I picked up.

"Steve Mariotti, it is David Halberstam. You were right about the tapes and I wish I had written about it. How about lunch?"

The very next day in 1982, we feasted at his favorite place, the Harvard Club, and he told me in great detail about writing the first draft of The Best and the Brightest. It was the funniest lunch I have ever had.

We stayed friends for the next 15 years until his tragic auto accident in California.

David Halberstam truly was one of The Best and the Brightest.

?

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-mariotti/the-best-and-the-brightes_1_b_3309299.html

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BrandYourself Upgrades Its Online Reputation Tools With A Full-Service Concierge Feature

BrandYourself is expanding its efforts to take on the big names in the online reputation market (particularly Reputation.com) with the launch of a new version of its service. The company started out as a fairly simple self-service tool for trying to improve your presence online, for example by creating a website and other content to push down undesirable results when someone Googles your name. (It has become increasingly focused on Google results over time.) The basic service is free, but BrandYourself charges $10 a month for additional features and usage.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/8CNOqvZSXP0/

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Mechanism linking key inflammatory marker to cancer identified

May 20, 2013 ? In a new study described in the journal Oncogene, researchers reveal how a key player in cell growth, immunity and the inflammatory response can be transformed into a primary contributor to tumor growth.

Scientists call this Jekyll-and-Hyde molecule NF-kappa B. In healthy cells, it is a powerful "first responder," a vital part of the body's immune and inflammatory responses. It spends most of its life in the cell's cytoplasm, quietly awaiting orders. But when extracellular signals -- of a viral or bacterial invasion, for example -- set off chemical alarms, the cell unchains this warhorse, allowing it to go into the nucleus where it spurs a flurry of defensive activity, including the transcription of genes that trigger inflammation, promote cell proliferation and undermine cell death.

Researchers have known for years that a hyperactive form of NF-kappa B that gets into the nucleus and stays there is associated with various cancers. But they didn't know what was keeping it active in the nucleus.

"Normally in the cell NF-kappa B is in the cytosol, it's not in the nucleus, and it's not activated," said University of Illinois medical biochemistry professor Lin-Feng Chen, who led the new study. "You have to stimulate normal cells to see NF-kappa B in the nucleus. But in cancer cells without any stimulation you can see this nuclear form of NF-kappa B. The cell just won't die because of this. That is why NF-kappa B is so important in cancer."

In the new study, Chen's group found that another molecule known to help regulate gene expression, called BRD4, recognizes a specific amino acid on a subunit of the NF-kappa B protein complex after the amino acid has been marked with a specific tag, called an acetyl group. This "acetylation" allows the BRD4 to bind to NF-kappa B, activating it and preventing its degradation in cancer cells.

Previous studies had shown that BRD4's recognition of the acetylated subunit increased NF-kappa B activation, but this recognition had not been linked to cancer.

BRD4 belongs to a class of molecules that can recognize chemical markers on other proteins and interact with them to spur the marked proteins to perform new tasks. Chemical "readers" such as BRD4 are important players in the field of epigenetics, which focuses on how specific genes are regulated.

"In epigenetics, there are writers, there are readers and there are erasers," Chen said. The writers make modifications to proteins after they are formed, without changing the underlying sequence of the gene that codes for them. These modifications (such as acetylation) signal other molecules (the readers) to engage with the marked proteins in various ways, allowing the proteins to fulfill new roles in the life of the cell. Epigenetic erasers remove the marks when they are no longer of use.

Such protein modifications "have been shown to be critically involved in transcription regulation and cancer development," the researchers report.

To test whether BRD4 was contributing to the sustained presence of NF-kappa B in the nucleus of cancer cells, Chen and his colleagues exposed lung cancer cells in cell culture and in immune-deficient mice to JQ1, a drug that interferes with BRD4 activity. Exposure to JQ1 blocked the interaction of BRD4 and NF-kappa B, blocked the expression of genes regulated by NF-kappa B, reduced proliferation of lung cancer cells and suppressed the ability of lung cancer cells to induce tumors in immune-deficient mice, the researchers found.

The researchers also discovered that depletion of BRD4 or the treatment of cells with JQ1 induced the degradation of the NF-kappa B subunit recognized by BRD4.

Chen said that BRD4 likely prevents other molecules from recognizing the hyperactive NF-kappa B in the nucleus and marking it for degradation.

"This is an example of how epigenetic regulators and NF-kappa B may one day be targeted for the treatment of cancer," he said.

Researchers from Illinois biochemistry professor Satish Nair's laboratory and from the laboratory of James Bradner at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute contributed to this study.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/genes/~3/gX3-B62y22w/130520095320.htm

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Nora Ephron Quotes To Get You Through A Breakup (PHOTOS)

The late Nora Ephron put her keen knack for observation to use in essays, novels and beloved screenplays (think "When Harry Met Sally," "Sleepless in Seattle," and more).

But as far as we're concerned, Ephron, who died in June 2012, was at her best whe writing about the heartbreak -- and the eventual healing -- that comes after a split. (It's not for nothing that Ephron served as HuffPost Divorce's editor-at-large.)

To celebrate Ephron's birthday on May 19, we've compiled six of our favorite quotes from the late writer on nursing a broken heart. Scroll down to read them all, then share your favorite quote from Ephron -- whether it's from a movie or a book -- in the comments.

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Also on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/19/nora-ephron-quotes-_n_3294898.html

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