Country music stars were all dressed up with somewhere to go: the Country Music Awards.
The event in Nashville, Tenn., on Wednesday night was another chance for Taylor Swift to be belle of the ball and this time she did it in a bateau-neck red gown with embroidery and a thin leather belt by Elie Saab.
But there were other stars who took this moment in the spotlight to shine — in sequins and baubles — including Jennifer Nettles, who wore a crystal-and-mirror beaded gown by Naeem Khan on the red carpet and a Georges Chakra blush-colored beaded jumpsuit onstage.
Carrie Underwood did several outfit changes. Among them: She wore a midnight-blue gown with white porcelain cherry blossoms by Theia and a short, black tuxedo-style romper by Chagoury decorated with Swarovski crystals.
Kacey Musgraves went with a short-hemline head turner, choosing a yellow handkerchief dress by Sally LaPointe for her performance. Earlier she was in a Blumarine outfit with a short dress under a long, sheer floral overlay. Kimberly Perry of The Band Perry did the short-long switch, too, in a 14-karat gold and sterling mesh mini by Rubin Singer when she was singing and a more delicate ivory-colored embroidered gown for the arrivals line.
Connie Britton did her own two-in-one turn in a Georges Hobeika gown that had a demure black-beaded collar and a slim, sexy bodice.
___
Follow Samantha Critchell and AP Fashion coverage on Twitter at @AP_Fashion and @Sam_Critchell.
Cost-effective method accurately orders DNA sequencing along entire chromosomes
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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Contact: Leila Gray leilag@uw.edu 206-685-0381 University of Washington
A major step toward improving the quality of rapid, inexpensive genome assembly
A new computational method has been shown to quickly assign, order and orient DNA sequencing information along entire chromosomes. The method may help overcome a major obstacle that has delayed progress in designing rapid, low-cost -- but still accurate -- ways to assemble genomes from scratch. Data gleaned through this new method can also validate certain types of chromosomal abnormalities in cancer, research findings indicate.
The advance was reported in Nature Biotechnology by several University of Washington scientists led by Dr. Jay Shendure, associate professor of genome sciences.
Existing technologies can quickly produce billions of "short reads" of segments of DNA at very low cost. Various approaches are currently used to put the pieces together to see how DNA segments line up to form larger stretches of the genetic code.
However, current methods produce a highly fragmented genome assembly, lacking long-range information about what sequences are near what other sequences, making further biological analysis difficult.
"Genome science has remained remarkably distant from routinely assembling genomes to the standards set by the Human Genome Project," said the researchers. They noted that the Human Genome Project tapped into many different techniques to achieve its end result. Many of these are too expensive, technically difficult, and impractical for large-scale initiatives such as the Genome 10K Project, which aims to sequence and assemble the genomes of 10,000 vertebrate species.
Members of the Shendure lab that developed what they hope will be a more scalable strategy were Joshua N. Burton, Andrew Adey, Rupali P. Patwardhan, Ruolan Qiu, and Jacob O. Kitzman.
To more completely assemble genomes, they tapped into a technology called Hi-C, which measures the three-dimensional architecture and physical territories of chromosomes within the nuclei of cells. Hi-C maps the physical interactions between regions of the chromosomes in a genome, including contact within a chromosome and with other chromosomes. The results indicate which regions tend to occur near each other within three-dimensional space in a cell's nucleus.
The researchers speculated that this interaction data, because it offers clues about the position of and distances between various regions of the chromosome, might reveal how DNA sequences are grouped and lined up along entire chromosomes. They wondered if the interaction data could show them which regions of the genome are near each other on each chromosome.
Their investigation of this possibility led them to create what they named LACHESIS (an acronym for "ligating adjacent chromatin enables scaffolding in situ"). The map of physical interactions generated by Hi-C was interpreted by the LACHESIS computational program to assign, order and orient genomic sequences into their correct position along chromosomes, including DNA positioned close to the centromere, the "pinch waist" gap in the chromosome shape.
The researchers combined their new approach with other cheap and widely used sequencing methods to generate chromosome-scale assemblies of the human, mouse and fruit fly genomes. The researchers were able to cluster nearly all scaffolds -- collections of short DNA segments whose position relative to each other is unknown -- into groups that corresponded to individual chromosomes.
They then ordered and oriented the scaffolds assigned to each chromosome group, and validated their results by comparing them to the high-quality reference genomes for these species that were generated by the Human Genome Project. In the case of human genomes, they achieved 98 percent accuracy in assigning tens of thousands of sequences of contiguous DNA to chromosome groups and 99 percent accuracy in ordering and orienting these sequences within chromosome groups.
"We think the method may fundamentally change how we approach the assembly of new genomes with next-generation sequencing technologies," noted Shendure.
While he and his team cite many areas in which the computational and experimental methods can be improved, the approach is an important step in his lab's long-term goal to facilitate the assembly, for a variety of species, of low-cost, high-quality genomes that meet the rigorous standards set by the Human Genome Project.
###
The research was supported by grants HG006283 and T32HG000035 from the National Human Genome Research Institute, and graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation.
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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.
Cost-effective method accurately orders DNA sequencing along entire chromosomes
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Leila Gray leilag@uw.edu 206-685-0381 University of Washington
A major step toward improving the quality of rapid, inexpensive genome assembly
A new computational method has been shown to quickly assign, order and orient DNA sequencing information along entire chromosomes. The method may help overcome a major obstacle that has delayed progress in designing rapid, low-cost -- but still accurate -- ways to assemble genomes from scratch. Data gleaned through this new method can also validate certain types of chromosomal abnormalities in cancer, research findings indicate.
The advance was reported in Nature Biotechnology by several University of Washington scientists led by Dr. Jay Shendure, associate professor of genome sciences.
Existing technologies can quickly produce billions of "short reads" of segments of DNA at very low cost. Various approaches are currently used to put the pieces together to see how DNA segments line up to form larger stretches of the genetic code.
However, current methods produce a highly fragmented genome assembly, lacking long-range information about what sequences are near what other sequences, making further biological analysis difficult.
"Genome science has remained remarkably distant from routinely assembling genomes to the standards set by the Human Genome Project," said the researchers. They noted that the Human Genome Project tapped into many different techniques to achieve its end result. Many of these are too expensive, technically difficult, and impractical for large-scale initiatives such as the Genome 10K Project, which aims to sequence and assemble the genomes of 10,000 vertebrate species.
Members of the Shendure lab that developed what they hope will be a more scalable strategy were Joshua N. Burton, Andrew Adey, Rupali P. Patwardhan, Ruolan Qiu, and Jacob O. Kitzman.
To more completely assemble genomes, they tapped into a technology called Hi-C, which measures the three-dimensional architecture and physical territories of chromosomes within the nuclei of cells. Hi-C maps the physical interactions between regions of the chromosomes in a genome, including contact within a chromosome and with other chromosomes. The results indicate which regions tend to occur near each other within three-dimensional space in a cell's nucleus.
The researchers speculated that this interaction data, because it offers clues about the position of and distances between various regions of the chromosome, might reveal how DNA sequences are grouped and lined up along entire chromosomes. They wondered if the interaction data could show them which regions of the genome are near each other on each chromosome.
Their investigation of this possibility led them to create what they named LACHESIS (an acronym for "ligating adjacent chromatin enables scaffolding in situ"). The map of physical interactions generated by Hi-C was interpreted by the LACHESIS computational program to assign, order and orient genomic sequences into their correct position along chromosomes, including DNA positioned close to the centromere, the "pinch waist" gap in the chromosome shape.
The researchers combined their new approach with other cheap and widely used sequencing methods to generate chromosome-scale assemblies of the human, mouse and fruit fly genomes. The researchers were able to cluster nearly all scaffolds -- collections of short DNA segments whose position relative to each other is unknown -- into groups that corresponded to individual chromosomes.
They then ordered and oriented the scaffolds assigned to each chromosome group, and validated their results by comparing them to the high-quality reference genomes for these species that were generated by the Human Genome Project. In the case of human genomes, they achieved 98 percent accuracy in assigning tens of thousands of sequences of contiguous DNA to chromosome groups and 99 percent accuracy in ordering and orienting these sequences within chromosome groups.
"We think the method may fundamentally change how we approach the assembly of new genomes with next-generation sequencing technologies," noted Shendure.
While he and his team cite many areas in which the computational and experimental methods can be improved, the approach is an important step in his lab's long-term goal to facilitate the assembly, for a variety of species, of low-cost, high-quality genomes that meet the rigorous standards set by the Human Genome Project.
###
The research was supported by grants HG006283 and T32HG000035 from the National Human Genome Research Institute, and graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation.
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Share
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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.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sometimes the best isn't good enough: Most American fourth and eighth graders still lack basic skills in math and science despite record high scores on a national exam.
Yes, today's students are doing better than those who came before them. But the improvements have come at a snail's pace.
The 2013 Nation's Report Card released Thursday finds that the vast majority of the students still are not demonstrating solid academic performance in either math or reading. Stubborn gaps persist between the performances of white children and their Hispanic and African-American counterparts, who scored much lower.
Overall, just 42 percent of fourth graders and 35 percent of eighth graders scored at or above the proficient level in math. In reading, 35 percent of fourth graders and 36 percent of eighth graders hit that mark.
Still, as state and federal policies evolve in the post-No Child Left Behind era, the nation's school kids are doing better today on the test than they did in the early 1990s, when such tracking started, with more improvement in math than in reading. Students of all races have shown improvement over the years.
The results come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which is given every two years to a sample of fourth and eighth graders.
This year's results, compared to results in 2011, show average incremental gains of about one or two points on a 500-point scale in math and reading in both grades, although the one-point gain in fourth grade reading was not considered statistically significant.
"Every two years, the gains tend to be small, but over the long run, they stack up," said Jack Buckley, commissioner of the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics.
Buckley said he was "heartened" by some of the results, "but there are also some areas where I'd hoped to see improvement where we didn't."
Today, President W. Bush's landmark education law No Child Left Behind, which sought to close achievement gaps among racial groups and have every student doing math and reading at grade level by 2014, has essentially been dismantled.
After Congress failed to update the law before it was due for renewal in 2007, President Barack Obama allowed states to get waivers from it if they showed they have their own plans to prepare students. Most states took him up on the offer.
Meanwhile, a majority of states are rolling out Common Core State Standards with the goal of better preparing the nation's students for college or a job. The states-led standards establish benchmarks for reading and math and replace goals that varied widely from state.
Academic scholars have long debated what effects the law and other state-led reforms have had on test scores.
This year, Tennessee and the District of Columbia, which have both launched high-profile efforts to strengthen education by improving teacher evaluations and by other measures, showed across-the-board growth on the test compared to 2011, likely stoking more debate. Only the Defense Department schools also saw gains in both grade levels and subjects.
In Hawaii, which has also seen a concentrated effort to improve teaching quality, scores also increased with the exception of fourth grade reading. In Iowa and Washington state, scores increased except in 8th grade math.
Specifically pointing to Tennessee, Hawaii and D.C., Education Secretary Arne Duncan said on a conference call with reporters that many of the changes seen in these states were "very, very difficult and courageous" and appear to have had an impact.
Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said the biggest problem revealed in the results is the large gap that exists between the performances of students of different races.
There was a 26-point gap, for example, between how white and African American 4th graders performed on the math section. In eighth grade reading, white students outperformed Hispanic students by 21 points.
"We still have a situation where you have kids that are left behind. They aren't given the same instruction. They aren't given the same expectations as other kids," Minnich said. He said it's time for "doubling down and making sure the gaps get smaller."
Duncan said too many African-American and Hispanic children start kindergarten a year or two behind and that early childhood programs are key to leveling the playing field. Duncan and Obama have lobbied for congressional passage of a preschool-for-all program.
This test specifically looked at the performance of American children, but the results from other recent assessments and studies have shown American children and adults scoring below peers in many other countries.
The exam was given this year to about 377,000 fourth graders and 342,000 eighth graders in public and private schools. However, state-specific numbers are only from public schools.
In math, students were asked to answer questions about topics such as geometry, algebra and measurement. In reading, students were told to read passages and recall details or interpret them.
Among the other results:
—More boys than girls scored at or above the proficient level for both grades in math. In reading, more girls than boys scored at or above that mark.
—Twenty-five out of the 52 states or jurisdictions measured had a higher average score in 2013 than in 2011 in at least one subject and grade.
—Five states had a lower score than two years ago in at least one subject and grade: Massachusetts, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota.
—Hispanic students were the only racial or ethnic group that saw improvements in math scores in both fourth and eighth grades; Asian/Pacific Islanders students had the highest percentage of students performing at or above the proficient level in both math and reading.
Completely fed up with paparazzi harassment, Kristen Bell ran into a group of aggressive photogs at LAX Airport, and claims she had to hide in the bathroom until her ride came for her in order to escape their pictures and questions.
The photographers reportedly chased the 33-year-old out of her hiding place when she made her exit, and Perez Hilton only made matters worse, by posting about the incident directly to her on Twitter. After he uploaded the photos of her during the situation at the airport on his website, Hilton stated that he cared about nothing more than her safety, and respect for her private space.
He also tweeted to her, writing, “@IMKristenBell Kristen Bell Begs The Paparazzi To Stop Flashing Her At LAX!”
Kristen fired back at the gossip reporter, tweeting, “@PerezHilton and yet the only reason they continue to harass is because your site & others buy the pictures :(”
NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Twitter went on sale to the public for the first time Thursday, instantly leaping more than 70 percent above their offering price in a dazzling debut that exceeded even Wall Street's lofty hopes.
By the closing bell, the social network that reinvented global communication in 140-character bursts was valued at $31 billion — nearly as much as Yahoo Inc., an Internet icon from another era, and just below Kraft Foods, the grocery conglomerate founded more than a century ago.
The stock's sizzling performance seemed to affirm the bright prospects for Internet companies, especially those focused on mobile users. And it could invite more entrepreneurs to consider IPOs, which lost their luster after Facebook's first appearance on the Nasdaq was marred by glitches.
In Silicon Valley, the IPO produced another crop of millionaires and billionaires, some of whom are sure to fund a new generation of startups.
Twitter, which has never turned a profit in the seven years since it was founded, worked hard to temper expectations ahead of the IPO, but all that was swiftly forgotten when the market opened.
Still, most analysts don't expect the company to be profitable until 2015. Investors will be watching closely to see whether Twitter was worth the premium price.
Thursday's stock surge was "really not as important as you might think," said Kevin Landis, a portfolio manager with Firsthand Funds, which owns shares in Twitter. "What really matters is where the stock is going to be in six months, 12 months."
The most anticipated initial public offering of the year was carefully orchestrated to avoid the dysfunction that surrounded Facebook's IPO.
Trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "TWTR," shares opened at $45.10, 73 percent above their initial offering price.
In the first few hours, the stock jumped as high as $50.09. Most of those gains held throughout the day, with Twitter closing at $44.90, despite a broader market decline.
The narrow price range indicated that people felt it was "pretty fairly priced," said JJ Kinahan, chief strategist at TD Ameritrade.
The price spike "clearly shows that demand exceeds the supply of shares," said Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter.
Earlier in the day, Twitter gave a few users rather than executives the opportunity to ring the NYSE's opening bell. The users included actor Patrick Stewart, who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in "Star Trek: The Next Generation"; Vivienne Harr, a 9-year-old girl who ran a lemonade stand for a year to raise money to end child slavery; and Cheryl Fiandaca of the Boston Police Department.
Twitter raised $1.8 billion Wednesday night when it sold 70 million shares to select investors for $26 each. But the huge first-day pop left some analysts wondering whether the company could have raised more. Had Twitter priced the stock at $30, for instance, the company would have taken away $2.1 billion. At $35, it would have reaped nearly $2.5 billion. That's a lot for a company that's never made a profit and had revenue of just $317 million last year.
If the price stays this high, or goes even higher, shareholders will no doubt be happy. But the money that they might make from any stock sale doesn't go to the company.
Named after the sound of a chirping bird, Twitter's origins date back to 2005, when creators Noah Glass and Evan Williams were trying to get people to sign up for Odeo, a podcasting service they created. Odeo didn't make it.
By early 2006, Glass and fellow Odeo programmer Jack Dorsey began work on a new project: teaming with co-worker Christopher "Biz" Stone on a way to corral text messages typically sent over a phone.
It was Glass who came up with the original name Twttr. The two vowels were added later. The first tweets were sent on March 21, 2006.
By 2007, Twitter was incorporated with Dorsey as the original CEO and Williams as chairman. Dorsey and Williams would eventually swap roles. Both remain major shareholders, though neither runs the company. Glass, meanwhile, was effectively erased from Twitter's history, writes New York Times reporter Nick Bilton in "Hatching Twitter: A true story of money, power, friendship, and betrayal."
Since those early days, the site has attracted world leaders, religious figures and celebrities, along with CEOs, businesses and countless marketers and self-promoters.
The company avoided the trouble that plagued Facebook's high-profile debut, which suffered technical glitches that had lasting consequences. On that first day, Facebook closed just 23 cents above its $38 IPO price and later fell much lower. The stock needed more than a year to climb back above $38.
The Securities and Exchange Commission later fined Nasdaq $10 million, the largest fine ever levied against an exchange.
Those problems likely led Twitter to the NYSE.
At its IPO price, Twitter was valued at roughly 28 times its projected 2013 revenue — $650 million based on its current growth rate. In comparison, Facebook trades at about 16 times its projected 2013 revenue, according to analyst forecasts from FactSet.
Google Inc. meanwhile, is trading at about 7 times its net revenue, the figure Wall Street follows that excludes ad commissions.
Research firm Outsell Inc. puts Twitter's fundamental value at about half of the IPO price, said analyst Ken Doctor. That figure is based on factors such as revenue and revenue growth.
"That's not unusual," Doctor said. "Especially for tech companies. You are betting on a big future."
As a newly public company, one of Twitter's biggest challenges will be to generate more revenue outside the U.S.
More than three-quarters of Twitter's 232 million users are outside the U.S. But only 26 percent of Twitter's revenue comes from abroad. The company has said that it plans to hire more sales representatives in countries such as Australia, Brazil and Ireland.
Twitter shares entered a declining market. Wall Street had its worst day since August as traders worried that the Federal Reserve could cut back on its economic stimulus.
Investors grew concerned about a surprisingly strong report on U.S. economic growth in the third quarter, which led many to believe the Fed could start pulling back as soon as next month, earlier than many anticipated.
After 33 record-high closes this year, an increasing number of investors believe the stock market has become frothy and is ready for a pullback.
___
AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco and AP Markets Writer Ken Sweet in New York contributed to this story.
Checking some items off her to-do list, Jennifer Garner stepped out in Santa Monica on Thursday (November 7).
Accompanied by her adorable son Samuel Affleck, the "Elektra" actress rocked a casual ensemble as she ran a few errands.
Miss Garner recently wrapped up on the set of her upcoming film "Imagine."
Per the synopsis, "Imagine" is about "an old letter written to him by John Lennon and Yoko Ono inspires an aging musician to live life differently, and he sets out to reconnect with his biological son."
Starring alongside side Jennifer are A-list stars including Al Pacino, Josh Peck and Brian Smith. The film is slated to hit theaters in 2014.
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