The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday passed a measure to waive fees for producers who shoot television pilots on location in the city.
The measure, which comes after years of declining pilot production in L.A., was first authored last year by Eric Garcetti, who in his recent campaign for mayor promised to find ways to stem runaway production and improve the environment for movie and TV production.
Garcetti is expected to sign the measure into law within a week and it should take effect soon after.
"Our economy is my top priority" said Garcetti, "and the entertainment industry generates more than 500,000 jobs in L.A. Focusing on TV pilots not only supports a key part of the industry, it can lead to a huge long-term dividend if a series gets picked up."
The production of TV pilots in Los Angeles, as tracked by Film L.A., has fallen from 2006-2007 when 82 percent were shot in the city to about 52 percent in the most recent pilot season. Studies have shown that there is a direct link between where a pilot is shot and where the show is ultimately produced, so grabbing pilot activity is crucial to keeping the jobs in Los Angeles.
In urging passage, L.A. City Councilman Paul Krekorian told his fellow council members: ""When production leaves Los Angeles, the loser is not the big studio, the loser is not the famous producer, the loser is not the A-list actor. The loser is the person who gets up early in the morning, drives to work in a pick-up truck in order to serve as a carpenter on a set, or the person who has been working their entire career as an electrician in the film industry, or the seamstress, or the other below-the-line workers or other middle class workers who don't travel to Vancouver or to New Mexico or New York to go with a production. Those are the people who don't work when we don't have production here in Los Angeles.
This is another step by Garcetti, who in late September appointed former TV Academy president and Hollywood executive Tom Sherak as his film czar, to work to stem runaway production and lobby Sacramento legislators to increase and extend the current $100 million annual allocation of tax incentives to keep movie and TV jobs in California.
Contact: Emily Walker emily.walker@monash.edu 61-399-034-844 Monash University
Scientists have combined cutting edge computer modelling with pharmacology and medicinal chemistry to reveal new insights into how the body interacts with novel drug treatments, in research that could lead to the creation of drugs that are more targeted and with fewer side effects.
In a paper published today in Nature, researchers from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) were part of an international team who investigated alternative drug recognition sites on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) - the largest and most important family of receptor proteins in the human body.
GPCRs play a role in virtually every biological process and most diseases, including neuropsychiatric disorders, cardiovascular disease, obesity and diabetes, inflammation and cancer. Almost half of all current medications available use GPCRs to achieve their therapeutic effect.
The new research into how GPCRs work at the molecular level has unlocked vital insights into how drugs interact with this therapeutically relevant receptor family.
Professor Arthur Christopoulos from MIPS said it was hoped the research would lead to the creation of drugs that are more targeted, and with fewer side effects.
"This study has cracked the secret of how a new class of drug molecule, which we have been studying for some time now, actually binds to a GPCR and changes the protein's structure to achieve its unique molecular effect," Professor Christopoulos said.
"This research can explain the behaviour of such drugs at the molecular level and facilitate structure-based design for new and more potent drugs."
By starting with a known crystal structure of a GPCR as a template, the team used computer simulations to map how different drugs and the receptor can "find" each other, and how they change their shape and orientation as they interact. Importantly, the predictions made by the computer simulations were validated by new biological experiments and by the rational design of a more potent molecule that targets the GPCR.
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The research was conducted by the teams of Professors Arthur Christopoulos and Patrick Sexton, who lead the Drug Discovery Biology (DDB) program at MIPS, Professor Jonathan Baell, from the Medicinal Chemistry program at MIPS, and their collaborators from D. E. Shaw Research and Columbia University, New York.
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New discovery in quest for better drugs
Public release date: 13-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Emily Walker emily.walker@monash.edu 61-399-034-844 Monash University
Scientists have combined cutting edge computer modelling with pharmacology and medicinal chemistry to reveal new insights into how the body interacts with novel drug treatments, in research that could lead to the creation of drugs that are more targeted and with fewer side effects.
In a paper published today in Nature, researchers from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) were part of an international team who investigated alternative drug recognition sites on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) - the largest and most important family of receptor proteins in the human body.
GPCRs play a role in virtually every biological process and most diseases, including neuropsychiatric disorders, cardiovascular disease, obesity and diabetes, inflammation and cancer. Almost half of all current medications available use GPCRs to achieve their therapeutic effect.
The new research into how GPCRs work at the molecular level has unlocked vital insights into how drugs interact with this therapeutically relevant receptor family.
Professor Arthur Christopoulos from MIPS said it was hoped the research would lead to the creation of drugs that are more targeted, and with fewer side effects.
"This study has cracked the secret of how a new class of drug molecule, which we have been studying for some time now, actually binds to a GPCR and changes the protein's structure to achieve its unique molecular effect," Professor Christopoulos said.
"This research can explain the behaviour of such drugs at the molecular level and facilitate structure-based design for new and more potent drugs."
By starting with a known crystal structure of a GPCR as a template, the team used computer simulations to map how different drugs and the receptor can "find" each other, and how they change their shape and orientation as they interact. Importantly, the predictions made by the computer simulations were validated by new biological experiments and by the rational design of a more potent molecule that targets the GPCR.
###
The research was conducted by the teams of Professors Arthur Christopoulos and Patrick Sexton, who lead the Drug Discovery Biology (DDB) program at MIPS, Professor Jonathan Baell, from the Medicinal Chemistry program at MIPS, and their collaborators from D. E. Shaw Research and Columbia University, New York.
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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.
The Hague (AFP) - Dutch police have arrested several airport workers at Amsterdam's Schiphol who allegedly picked up cocaine packages stashed aboard planes arriving from Latin America, a gendarme spokesman said on Tuesday.
A total of 15 people have been arrested since July, seven of them employed by the same company at Schiphol, spokesman Robert van Kapel told AFP, declining to name the company.
"Further arrests are not excluded," he added.
The men, aged 23 to 65, are Dutch, Turkish and Colombian citizens, he said.
They were arrested in raids on homes in and around Amsterdam.
Van Kapel said "tens-of-kilos" of cocaine had been hidden on flights from Central and South America, but he declined to say where on the planes the drugs were stashed.
"The flights were never put in danger as a result," he added, saying the investigation was ongoing.
The 15 men are to face charges of drug smuggling and some also face illegal weapons charges, Van Kapel said.
Last year Dutch authorities arrested 12 airport workers suspected of helping to smuggle cocaine from the Caribbean.
In March last year, gendarmes at Schiphol confiscated 300 kilos of cocaine from South and Central America with an estimated street value of 12 million euros ($16 million).
The haul was one of the largest in recent years at the airport.
Schiphol is Europe's fourth-busiest airport with between 120,000 to 140,000 passengers passing through daily.
BARUERI, Brazil -- Fabio Maldonado won two consecutive fights in the UFC for the first time after his split decision victory over Joey Beltran at UFC Fight Night 29, and he believes that is enough for him to face a higher-ranked opponent next.
"I would like to fight Chael Sonnen, who I’m a big fan of, or James Te Huna, who is a great striker," Maldonado told the media on Wednesday. "Many people think that Chael Sonnen is a bad match-up for me, that he would take me down, but I believe I could beat him. I believe I can beat him. And against Te Huna, I’m a better striker and I can do well against him."
Maldonado is 3-3 in the UFC, but he said his UFC record should be 5-1 since he disagrees with the judges in his decision losses to Kyle Kingsbury and Igor Pokrajac.
"I’m far from being a champion, far from the title shot, but I’m getting better," he said. "I could have done better today. (Beltran) was happy just to get beaten. He wasn’t fighting, and he thinks he won? Are you crazy? You did nothing, man. It was not a beat down, but you didn’t win it. Do you think you’re going to knock me out by kneeing my thigh?"
"MMA is a mix of styles, but you can’t score points if you’re holding your opponents close to the fence," he continued. "It’s a mistake from the judges. My only loss in the UFC was to Glover Teixeira. I didn’t lose the other fights. I know I still have a lot to improve, but Glover was the only one who defeated me in the UFC."
After a 15-minute brawl with Beltran, Maldonado revealed he hid a knee injury to fight in Barueri, Sao Paulo.
"I tried to hide it. I even used makeup to hide an injury in my right knee," he said. "My team wanted me to pull off the card, but I wanted to fight here."
HTC's newest phone, the 5.9-inch HTC One Max, includes a fingerprint scanner -- although unlike the one in Apple's latest iPhone, it's located on the back of the device.
The HTC One Max will go on sale globally later this month and is the company's latest attempt to revive its smartphone business. The Android handset is essentially a larger version of HTC's critically acclaimed One flagship phone, with otherwise similar specs.
Unlike the HTC One, the One Max can be locked or unlocked with a touch on its fingerprint scanner. The scanner can also be used to launch up to three favorite apps, each triggered by a different finger, HTC said Monday.
The phone has a 5.9-inch 1080p HD screen, a quad-core 1.7 GHz processor from Qualcomm, and 2GB of RAM. The front-facing camera has a resolution of 2.1 megapixels, while the 4 megapixel rear-facing camera uses HTC's UltraPixel design, which the company says uses a larger image sensor to offer better low-light performance.
Talk time on the WCDMA version of the phone can reach 25 hours on its 3300 mAh battery. The One Max also has a microSD card slot for expandable memory, a feature not found in the U.S. version of the HTC One. It will be on sale in 16GB and 32 GB versions.
The HTC One Max arrives just a month after Samsung unveiled its own large-screen phone, the Galaxy Note 3. The Note 3 has a slightly smaller screen than the One Max, at 5.7 inches, with a 13-megapixel camera rear-facing camera, 3GB of RAM, and a 3,200 mAh battery.
HTC and its Korean rival have been sparring on product strategy, and both have previously launched smaller versions of their flagship phones. In HTC's case, it was called the HTC One mini and unveiled in July.
Despite positive reviews for its phones, HTC has been struggling to lift its earnings. Earlier this month, it posted a loss of about $101 million in its third quarter.
Family and friends begin to clap as Bride Sarah Nagy holds her father's hand as they wait for Reverend Charles Knerem to begin her wedding ceremony on Oct. 12, in Strongsville, Ohio.
By Simon Moya-Smith, Staff Writer, NBC News
A terminally ill man from Ohio was able to give his daughter away at her wedding Saturday — with the assistance of an all-volunteer hospital caravan.
Lying in a gurney and connected to a portable ventilator and heart monitor, Scott Nagy, 56, who suffers from metastatic urethral cancer, was transported by ambulance from University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center in Cleveland to First Lutheran Church in Strongsville, nurse practitioner Jacky Uljanic, who helped organize the event, told NBC News.
"The planning had to be pretty strategic," she said. "It took probably about three weeks to get everything together."
Uljanic said two paramedics had volunteered their time as well as their ambulance to take Nagy to the wedding. Other volunteers included a nurse, an additional nurse practitioner and a doctor who followed the ambulance to the church.
"When we walked in with him at the church there were tissues to faces," she said. "The entire congregation started clapping."
Uljanic said Nagy was able to stay for the entire wedding and even had a little extra time after to pose with family and friends in the church parking lot.
Janice Guhl, director of media and public relations with University Hospital Seidman Cancer Center, lauded the staff for their willingness to volunteer.
"The nurses really rallied and were able to take him to the church," she told NBC News.
Alicia Reale, media relations manager with Seidman, said the nurses even had scheduled a barber to visit the hospital to groom Nagy's beard and cut his hair.
John Kuntz / The Plain Dealer via Landov
Scott Nagy's wife Jean pins the corsage to her husband's jacket before the start of their daughter's wedding ceremony at First Lutheran Church in Strongsville, Ohio, on Oct. 12. University Hospital sent a medical team along with Scott who is bound to his bed. The ambulance ride to the church was donated by Physicians Medical Transport.
“I think it went so far as they helped to get sheets for his gurney that would match the wedding colors," Reale said.
Nagy, who was first diagnosed with the deadly disease last November, has been at Seidman's intensive care unit since August and has undergone chemotherapy, Uljanic said.
Scott’s wife, Jean, told NBC News that she was sharing texts with her husband before he arrived at the church and that she was grateful for the efforts of the volunteer hospital personnel.
“I was just teary eyed most of the day,” she said.
Jean added that the family had rented a big screen and a projector so that her husband could give the ceremonial toast from his hospital room.
She said his toast included well wishes to the newlyweds as well as an encouragement to the wedding revelers.
“He wanted to make sure everyone had enough to drink and enough to eat and dance as much as they could – to have a good time,” Jean said.
Uljanic said it was Nagy's goal to survive long enough to attend his daughter's wedding, which was originally scheduled for next year, but moved up in March, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
"He was very thankful we could make this happen for him," she said.
I still think that this is one of my favorite physics problems. Why? Why not. First, it’s just a cool event. But other than that, the physics is both simple and complicated at the same time. The simple part is that there are essentially only two forces acting on Felix as he falls to the ground. There is the air resistance force and the gravitational force. The complicated part of this problem is the fact that the air resistance force depends on both the density of air and the speed of the jumper. Really the only way to model the motion in this case is to create a numerical calculation with a computer.
I’ve looked at many different aspects of this Red Bull Stratos jump. Here are a few of my favorite posts on the subject.
Rhett Allain is an Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University. He enjoys teaching and talking about physics. Sometimes he takes things apart and can't put them back together.
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