WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House warned on Tuesday against expecting quick results from international talks in Geneva on Iran's nuclear program, saying the discussions are complex and technical and that economic pressures against Teheran would remain in place.
"We certainly want to make clear that no one, despite the positive signs that we've seen, no one should expect a breakthrough overnight," White House spokesman Jay Carney said at a briefing.
"Although we appreciate the recent change in tone from the Iranian government on this issue, we will be looking for specific steps that address core issues," he added.
(Reporting By Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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"At the 10,000-foot level, Quarkslab's technical argument is that it is possible to reverse-engineer Apple's encryption technology," said NSS Labs' Randy Abrams. However, the effort required "is such that you already have to be a person of extreme interest to some group somewhere in the world with a high level of technical expertise, and be worth the investment of time and effort."
Apple's iMessage instant messenger service, which has made headlines for being uncrackable by law enforcement, is not so secure after all, according to Quarkslab.
An internal document from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration published by CNET in April stated that it was impossible to intercept iMessages between two Apple devices.
"As Apple claims, there is end-to-end encryption," Quarkslab researcher Cyril Cattiaux said. "The weakness is in the key infrastructure as it is controlled by Apple they can change a key any time they want, thus read the content of our iMessages."
Further, metadata about messages is sensitive, Cattiaux pointed out -- and Apple has that metadata.
Apple insists that iMessage is not architected to let it read messages and insisted that Quarkslab discussed theoretical vulnerabilities that would require Cupertino to re-engineer the iMessage system to exploit it, something the company does not plan to do.
The Gist of Quarkslab's Findings
Quarkslab found it easy to add a fake certificate to perform a man-in-the-middle attack because there is no certificate pinning, the company said. (With certificate pinning, IT determines that only a particular certificate, or certificates digitally signed by a particular certificate, can be trusted.)
Further, the researchers' AppleID and password went through SSL communications in clear text, which would allow Apple to see the password. That means Apple -- or intelligence agencies -- could replay the password, Quarkslab said.
It also means anyone who was able to add a certificate and proxify the communications would be able to get a target's AppleID and password, gaining access to the victim's iCloud account.
If hackers can get hold of a user's password, they can do considerable harm, as Wired writer Matthew Honan discovered last year.
The iPhone Configuration Utility, which lets enterprises manage iPhones, lets IT invisibly proxify communications to and from the device, thus gaining access to personal information, Quarkslab said. Apple's PUSH notification service is another area of vulnerability.
Dispelling iMessages Myth-information
Commenting on Quarkslab's blogpost, "HG" pointed out that Apple controls all the iMessage client software and the hardware platform the software runs on, so it could push an update that sends all chats directly to law enforcement without the user knowing.
The purported invulnerability of iMessage to surveillance by law enforcement was called into question as soon as the DEA's complaint was published.
Cryptographer Matthew Green pointed out that the ability to restore iCloud backups to a new device using only the iCloud password and Apple's "iForgot" service -- which lets users recover their iCloud passwords by answering a few personal questions -- indicates iCloud data is not encrypted end to end -- and even if it is, Apple has users' passwords on file and can recover them.
"Most security professionals don't consider iMessages to be a secure medium, just like SMS is not a secure medium," Ken Pickering, director of engineering at CORE Security, told TechNewsWorld.
More Trouble Than It's Worth?
"At the 10,000-foot level, Quarkslab's technical argument is that it is possible to reverse-engineer Apple's encryption technology," Randy Abrams, a director of research at NSS Labs, told TechNewsWorld.
However, the effort required "is such that you already have to be a person of extreme interest to some group somewhere in the world with a high level of technical expertise, and be worth the investment of time and effort," he continued. "No average user, or even crook, is likely to be worth the effort."
Apple's contention, that iMessage is secure, could be because "Apple feels, and I think most would agree, that they made iMessages as secure as could reasonably be done," Abrams said.
"I'm sure Apple realizes that almost anything that can be done with software can be undone with software," Abrams continued. "At some point, a company has to say 'it's good enough' or go bankrupt attempting to attain perfection."
Apple did not respond to our request to comment for this story.
Salk scientists expand the genetic code of mammals to control protein activity in neurons with light
Public release date: 16-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Kat Kearney kkearney@salk.edu 619-296-8455 Salk Institute
A new technique allows researchers to activate proteins in the brain by shining an LED light on them
LA JOLLA, CA----With the flick of a light switch, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies can change the shape of a protein in the brain of a mouse, turning on the protein at the precise moment they want. This allows the scientists to observe the exact effect of the protein's activation. The new method, described in the October 16 issue of the journal Neuron, relies on specially engineered amino acids----the molecules that make up proteins----and light from an LED. Now that it has been shown to work, the technique can be adapted to give researchers control of a wide variety of other proteins in the brain to study their functions.
"What we are now able to do is not only control neuronal activity, but control a specific protein within a neuron," says senior study author Lei Wang, an associate professor in Salk's Jack H. Skirball Center for Chemical Biology and Proteomics and holder of the Frederick B. Rentschler Developmental Chair.
If a scientist wants to know what set of neurons in the brain is responsible for a particular action or behavior, being able to turn the neurons on and off at will gives the researcher a targeted way to test the neurons' effects. Likewise, if they want to know the role of a certain protein inside the cells, the ability to activate or inactivate the protein of interest is key to studying its biology.
Over the past decade, researchers have developed a handful of ways of activating or inactivating neurons using light, as part of the burgeoning field of so-called optogenetics. In optogenetic experiments, mice are genetically engineered to have a light-sensitive channel from algae integrated into their neurons. When exposed to light, the channel opens or closes, changing the flow of molecules into the neuron and altering its ability to pass an electrochemical message through the brain. Using such optogenetic approaches, scientists can pick and choose which neurons in the brain they want turned on or off at any given time and observe the resulting change in the engineered mice.
"There's no question that this is a great way to control neuronal activity, by borrowing light-responsive channels or pumps from other organisms and putting them in neurons," says Wang. "But rather than put a stranger into neurons, we wanted to control the activity of proteins native to neurons."
To make proteins respond to light, Wang's team harnessed a photo-responsive amino acid, called Cmn, which has a large chemical structure. When a pulse of light shines on the molecule, Cmn's bulky side chain breaks off, leaving cysteine, a smaller amino acid. Wang's group realized that if a single Cmn was integrated into the right place in the structure of a protein, the drastic change in the amino acid's size could activate or inactivate the entire protein.
To test their idea, Wang and his colleagues engineered new versions of a potassium channel in neurons, adding Cmn to their sequence.
"Basically the idea was that when you put this amino acid in the pore of the channel, the bulky side chain entirely blocks the passage of ions through the channel," explains Ji-Yong Kang, a graduate student who works in Wang's group, and first author of the new paper. "Then, when the bond in the amino acid breaks in response to light, the channel is opened up."
The method worked in isolated cells: After trial and error, the scientists found the ideal spot in the channel to put Cmn, so that the channel was initially blocked, but opened when light shone on it. They were able to measure the change to the channel's properties by recording the electrical current that flowed through the cells before and after exposure to light.
But to apply the technique to living mice, Wang and his colleagues needed to change the animals' genetic code---- the built-in instructions that cells use to produce proteins based on gene sequences. The normal genetic code doesn't contain information on Cmn, so simply injecting Cmn amino acids into mice wouldn't lead to the molecules being integrated into proteins. In the past, the Wang group and others have expanded the genetic codes of isolated cells of simple organisms like bacteria, or yeast, inserting instructions for a new amino acid. But the approach had never been successful in mammals. Through a combination of techniques and new tricks, however, Wang's team was able to provide embryonic mice with the instructions for the new amino acid, Cmn. With the help from Salk Professor Dennis O'Leary and his research associate Daichi Kawaguchi, they then integrated the new Cmn-containing channel into the brains of the developing mice, and showed that by shining light on the brain tissue they could force the channel open, altering patterns of neuron activity. It was not only a first for expanding the genetic code of mammals, but also for protein control.
At the surface, the new approach has the same result as optogenetic approaches to studying the brain----neurons are silenced at a precise time in response to light. But Wang's method can now be used to study a whole cadre of different proteins in neurons. Aside from being used to open and close channels or pores that let ions flow in and out of brain cells, Cmn could be used to optically regulate protein modifications and protein-protein interactions.
"We can pinpoint exactly which protein, or even which part of a protein, is crucial for the functioning of targeted neurons," says Wang. "If you want to study something like the mechanism of memory formation, it's not always just a matter of finding what neurons are responsible, but what molecules within those neurons are critical."
Earlier this year, President Obama announced the multi-billion dollar Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, a ten-year project to map the activity of the human brain. Creating new ways to study the molecules in the brain, such as using light-responsive amino acids to study neuronal proteins, will be key to moving forward on this initiative and similar efforts to understand the brain, says Wang. His lab is now working to develop ways to not only activate proteins, but inactive them using light-sensitive amino acids, and applying the technique to proteins other than Kir2.1.
###
Other researchers on the study were Daichi Kawaguchi, Irene Coin, Zheng Xiang, Dennis D. M. O'Leary the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and Paul A. Slesinger of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The work was supported a Salk Innovation Grant, a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Commission, and grants from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies:
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is one of the world's preeminent basic research institutions, where internationally renowned faculty probe fundamental life science questions in a unique, collaborative, and creative environment. Focused both on discovery and on mentoring future generations of researchers, Salk scientists make groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of cancer, aging, Alzheimer's, diabetes and infectious diseases by studying neuroscience, genetics, cell and plant biology, and related disciplines.
Faculty achievements have been recognized with numerous honors, including Nobel Prizes and memberships in the National Academy of Sciences. Founded in 1960 by polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, M.D., the Institute is an independent nonprofit organization and architectural landmark.
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Salk scientists expand the genetic code of mammals to control protein activity in neurons with light
Public release date: 16-Oct-2013 [
| E-mail
| Share
]
Contact: Kat Kearney kkearney@salk.edu 619-296-8455 Salk Institute
A new technique allows researchers to activate proteins in the brain by shining an LED light on them
LA JOLLA, CA----With the flick of a light switch, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies can change the shape of a protein in the brain of a mouse, turning on the protein at the precise moment they want. This allows the scientists to observe the exact effect of the protein's activation. The new method, described in the October 16 issue of the journal Neuron, relies on specially engineered amino acids----the molecules that make up proteins----and light from an LED. Now that it has been shown to work, the technique can be adapted to give researchers control of a wide variety of other proteins in the brain to study their functions.
"What we are now able to do is not only control neuronal activity, but control a specific protein within a neuron," says senior study author Lei Wang, an associate professor in Salk's Jack H. Skirball Center for Chemical Biology and Proteomics and holder of the Frederick B. Rentschler Developmental Chair.
If a scientist wants to know what set of neurons in the brain is responsible for a particular action or behavior, being able to turn the neurons on and off at will gives the researcher a targeted way to test the neurons' effects. Likewise, if they want to know the role of a certain protein inside the cells, the ability to activate or inactivate the protein of interest is key to studying its biology.
Over the past decade, researchers have developed a handful of ways of activating or inactivating neurons using light, as part of the burgeoning field of so-called optogenetics. In optogenetic experiments, mice are genetically engineered to have a light-sensitive channel from algae integrated into their neurons. When exposed to light, the channel opens or closes, changing the flow of molecules into the neuron and altering its ability to pass an electrochemical message through the brain. Using such optogenetic approaches, scientists can pick and choose which neurons in the brain they want turned on or off at any given time and observe the resulting change in the engineered mice.
"There's no question that this is a great way to control neuronal activity, by borrowing light-responsive channels or pumps from other organisms and putting them in neurons," says Wang. "But rather than put a stranger into neurons, we wanted to control the activity of proteins native to neurons."
To make proteins respond to light, Wang's team harnessed a photo-responsive amino acid, called Cmn, which has a large chemical structure. When a pulse of light shines on the molecule, Cmn's bulky side chain breaks off, leaving cysteine, a smaller amino acid. Wang's group realized that if a single Cmn was integrated into the right place in the structure of a protein, the drastic change in the amino acid's size could activate or inactivate the entire protein.
To test their idea, Wang and his colleagues engineered new versions of a potassium channel in neurons, adding Cmn to their sequence.
"Basically the idea was that when you put this amino acid in the pore of the channel, the bulky side chain entirely blocks the passage of ions through the channel," explains Ji-Yong Kang, a graduate student who works in Wang's group, and first author of the new paper. "Then, when the bond in the amino acid breaks in response to light, the channel is opened up."
The method worked in isolated cells: After trial and error, the scientists found the ideal spot in the channel to put Cmn, so that the channel was initially blocked, but opened when light shone on it. They were able to measure the change to the channel's properties by recording the electrical current that flowed through the cells before and after exposure to light.
But to apply the technique to living mice, Wang and his colleagues needed to change the animals' genetic code---- the built-in instructions that cells use to produce proteins based on gene sequences. The normal genetic code doesn't contain information on Cmn, so simply injecting Cmn amino acids into mice wouldn't lead to the molecules being integrated into proteins. In the past, the Wang group and others have expanded the genetic codes of isolated cells of simple organisms like bacteria, or yeast, inserting instructions for a new amino acid. But the approach had never been successful in mammals. Through a combination of techniques and new tricks, however, Wang's team was able to provide embryonic mice with the instructions for the new amino acid, Cmn. With the help from Salk Professor Dennis O'Leary and his research associate Daichi Kawaguchi, they then integrated the new Cmn-containing channel into the brains of the developing mice, and showed that by shining light on the brain tissue they could force the channel open, altering patterns of neuron activity. It was not only a first for expanding the genetic code of mammals, but also for protein control.
At the surface, the new approach has the same result as optogenetic approaches to studying the brain----neurons are silenced at a precise time in response to light. But Wang's method can now be used to study a whole cadre of different proteins in neurons. Aside from being used to open and close channels or pores that let ions flow in and out of brain cells, Cmn could be used to optically regulate protein modifications and protein-protein interactions.
"We can pinpoint exactly which protein, or even which part of a protein, is crucial for the functioning of targeted neurons," says Wang. "If you want to study something like the mechanism of memory formation, it's not always just a matter of finding what neurons are responsible, but what molecules within those neurons are critical."
Earlier this year, President Obama announced the multi-billion dollar Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, a ten-year project to map the activity of the human brain. Creating new ways to study the molecules in the brain, such as using light-responsive amino acids to study neuronal proteins, will be key to moving forward on this initiative and similar efforts to understand the brain, says Wang. His lab is now working to develop ways to not only activate proteins, but inactive them using light-sensitive amino acids, and applying the technique to proteins other than Kir2.1.
###
Other researchers on the study were Daichi Kawaguchi, Irene Coin, Zheng Xiang, Dennis D. M. O'Leary the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and Paul A. Slesinger of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The work was supported a Salk Innovation Grant, a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Commission, and grants from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies:
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is one of the world's preeminent basic research institutions, where internationally renowned faculty probe fundamental life science questions in a unique, collaborative, and creative environment. Focused both on discovery and on mentoring future generations of researchers, Salk scientists make groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of cancer, aging, Alzheimer's, diabetes and infectious diseases by studying neuroscience, genetics, cell and plant biology, and related disciplines.
Faculty achievements have been recognized with numerous honors, including Nobel Prizes and memberships in the National Academy of Sciences. Founded in 1960 by polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, M.D., the Institute is an independent nonprofit organization and architectural landmark.
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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.
Environmental groups are fighting to stop the leveling of 154 acres of coast redwoods and Douglas firs to make way for grapevines.
Courtesy Friends of the Gualala River
Environmental groups are fighting to stop the leveling of 154 acres of coast redwoods and Douglas firs to make way for grapevines.
Courtesy Friends of the Gualala River
In the California wine mecca of Sonoma County, climate change is pitting redwood lovers against red wine lovers.
This Friday morning, a coalition of environmental groups are in a Santa Rosa, Calif., courtroom fighting to stop a Spanish-owned winery from leveling 154 acres of coast redwoods and Douglas firs to make way for grapevines.
Redwoods only grow in the relatively cool coastal region of Northern California and southern Oregon. Parts of this range, such as northwestern Sonoma County, have become increasingly coveted by winemakers.
Chris Poehlmann, president of a small organization called Friends of the Gualala River, says the wine industry is creeping toward the coast as California's interior valleys heat up and consumers show preferences for cooler-weather grapes like pinot noir.
"Inexorably, the wine industry is looking for new places to plant vineyards," says Poehlmann, whose group is among the plaintiffs.
California's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire, approved the redwood-clearing project in May 2012.
"So we sued them," says Dave Jordan, the legal liaison for the Sierra Club's Redwood Chapter, another of the plaintiffs. The Center for Biological Diversity is the third plaintiff.
The groups filed suit in June 2012 on the grounds that state officials violated California's environmental protection laws by approving the plan.
Redwoods are considered among the most spectacular of all trees. The biggest trees on Earth by height, redwoods can stand more than 350 feet tall. Some are more than 2,000 years old.
However, the redwoods at the center of this conflict are not old-growth trees. The area was clear-cut more than 50 years ago, and most of the redwoods on the site are less than 100 feet tall. Which is why Sam Singer argues: "There are no forests [on this site]."
Singer is a spokesman for Artesa Vineyards and Winery, which is owned by the Spanish Codorniu Group and which first proposed the development project in 2001. Singer says that the two old-growth redwood trees on the property will be spared.
But the thousands of trees slated for removal are between 50 and 80 feet tall, according to Poehlmann. He says the trees provide wildlife habitat and stabilize the soil against erosion, which has been a major problem for streams in the area that once harbored runs of salmon and steelhead trout.
Coast redwood trees stand at Muir Woods National Monument in Mill Valley, Calif. Redwoods are the biggest trees on Earth by height — they can grow more than 350 feet tall. But their range is quite limited: They only grow along the coast of Northern California and southern Oregon.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Coast redwood trees stand at Muir Woods National Monument in Mill Valley, Calif. Redwoods are the biggest trees on Earth by height — they can grow more than 350 feet tall. But their range is quite limited: They only grow along the coast of Northern California and southern Oregon.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The project planners have even estimated this timber to represent 1.25 million board feet of "merchantable" lumber.
Dennis Hall, a higher official with CalFire, says his department's approval of Artesa's project in 2012 came only after a lengthy review process found that it would not significantly damage the environment.
"We did an [environmental impact report] for the project," Hall says. "It was an extreme and exhaustive analysis of potential impacts to the environment." The report deemed most of these potential impacts to be "less-than-significant."
Still, Poehlmann feels CalFire has been too lenient on proposals by developers to level trees. "They are acting as if they are actually the 'department of deforestation,' " he says.
The tensions go beyond this case: Friends of the Gualala River and the Sierra Club's Redwood Chapter have gone to court several times in the past decade to successfully stop timberland conversion projects proposed by winery groups and which had been approved by the state. Among these fights was the battle to save the so-called Preservation Ranch, a 19,000-acre parcel that developers planned to partially deforest and replant with vines. Earlier this year, the developer sold the property to The Conservation Fund.
But from 1979 to 2006, 25 conversions of forest to agriculture occurred in Sonoma County at an average rate of 21 acres per year, according to county officials.
At least a few tree-clearing projects have occurred without permission. High-profile winemaker Paul Hobbs didn't bother getting a permit before he leveled 8 acres of redwoods in 2011 with plans to plant wine grapes. He remains a superstar winemaker and was tagged earlier this year by Forbes as "The Steve Jobs of Wine."
And it's not just redwoods that are at stake as vineyards expand their terrain. California's oaks aren't subject to the same environmental protections as more commercially valuable species like redwoods and Douglas fir, according to CalFire's Hall. And Northern California's oak forest, near the coast as well as inland, is being lost at fast rates to vineyard expansions, says Adina Merenlender, an environmental biologist with the University of California, Berkeley.
Merenlender says oak trees tend to be overlooked by the general public, which is more easily impressed by redwoods. Yet oak forests, she says, provide habitat for vastly more species than do redwood forests.
Sara Cummings with the Sonoma Vintners, a wine industry trade group, says new vineyards are usually planted within what she calls the region's "agricultural footprint" — land that is already designated by county planners as "agricultural." Moreover, she says, more than half the county's wine growers are members of the California Sustainable Winegrowing Program.
But Merenlender is concerned about future expansion into land not previously farmed.
"We're already seeing a lot of acquisition of coastal lands," she says. "Investments are moving north and west, toward the coast."
The issue, it seems, is a global one. A 2013 study predicted that global warming will cause a dramatic shift in the world's wine regions. The report warns that wilderness areas in British Columbia and remote regions of China — one of the world's fastest-growing winemaking regions — may become increasingly coveted by the industry.
"But at least we'll have plenty of wine to drink, "Poehlmann quips, "while we bemoan the fact that our forests are all used up."
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