McALLEN, Texas (AP) ? Federal prosecutors announced charges Thursday against four officers from a South Texas anti-drug task force who they say took thousands of dollars in bribes to guard large shipments of cocaine.
The officers ? two from the Mission police department and two Hidalgo County sheriff's deputies ? were members of the "Panama Unit," which is a joint task force between the two agencies that targets drug trafficking, according to prosecutors. Mission's police chief said one of the officers was actually part of a different task force, but a prosecutor's office official didn't immediately respond to an after-hours seeking clarification.
The case sent especially large shockwaves through the local law enforcement community because two of the officers accused are the sons of top local law enforcement officials.
None of the officers has been arraigned, but Mission police officer Alexis Rigoberto Espinoza, 29, made an initial appearance in federal court Thursday on charges of twice possessing cocaine with intent to distribute. U.S. Magistrate Judge Dorina Ramos set Espinoza's bond at $100,000 and ordered him to remain under house arrest with electronic monitoring if he should make bond. She denied his request for a court-appointed attorney.
Espinoza is the son of Hidalgo Police Chief Rodolfo "Rudy" Espinoza. He did not return calls for comment and none of the charges involve his department.
Also arrested was Mission police officer Jonathan Trevino, 29, who is the son of Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino.
Two of Lupe Trevino's deputies, Fabian Rodriguez, 28, and Gerardo Duran, 30, were also charged. All three were in custody Thursday afternoon.
Jonathan Trevino's attorney did not immediately respond to a call for comment and it wasn't known if the other two had lawyers. They were expected to appear in court Friday.
"It's been devastating to our family, devastating to the organization," said Lupe Trevino, who as sheriff has accused certain state officials of making Texas' border region sound like a war zone. He said he is cooperating fully with the federal investigation and conducting his own internal review. But he added that he also has responsibilities as a father.
"I have to support my son because he is my son. But I will make sure that the right thing is being done and I'm meeting my obligations," Trevino said. "Nothing is being covered up. I'm being very open with everything."
Trevino said the FBI came to his office around 3 p.m. Wednesday to tell him two of his deputies were targets of an investigation and that his son was, as well. He said the Panama Unit was formed more than three years ago to help Mission clean up its street-level drug crime, and that he couldn't comment on the specifics of the case because it wasn't his investigation.
Federal prosecutors say the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement department that conducts internal reviews received a tip in August about Espinoza and another task force member stealing drugs. Local police are often assigned to multi-agency task forces focusing on drug interdiction. Federal investigators set up a sting.
According to prosecutors, a confidential source working for the government told Duran in September that the drug trafficking organization he was working for needed corrupt law enforcement officers to escort drug loads. On Oct. 19, Duran and another individual escorted a load of 20 kilograms of cocaine north from McAllen to the Border Patrol checkpoint in Falfurrias about an hour away. Duran was allegedly paid $4,000, they said.
The officers earned thousands of dollars more for allegedly escorting four more cocaine shipments in November that were part of the sting operation, prosecutors contend.
The complaint said all four "utilized their positions as law enforcement personnel to escort and protect loads of narcotics." Nothing in the charging documents accuses them of stealing drugs, which was the original tip.
Mission Police Chief Martin Garza said Thursday that Jonathan Trevino was the only officer from his department assigned to the Panama Unit and that Espinoza was assigned to an ICE task force that had its own supervisor.
Garza said both officers were fired Thursday. The FBI visited his office late Wednesday afternoon to advise him of their investigation and to collect documents related to it. Garza said he cooperated fully and his department would conduct its own investigation.
If the allegations against his officers are proven, Garza said cases they worked on would have to be reviewed with the district attorney. "There's going to be a domino effect," he said.
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Associated Press writer Nomaan Merchant in Dallas contributed to this report.
___
Follow Chris Sherman on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP
Nike announced yesterday that its first Nike+ Accelerator program targeted at companies interested in leveraging Nike+ tech like the Nike Fuel Band to explore creating mobile products or services that will inspire athletes for better fitness and healthier living.
To begin in March, Nike in association with TechStars has launched the 3 month accelerator to draw 10 organisations in an effort to develop new health and athletic mobile technology by providing them with software tools and direct interaction with tech industry mentors like Nike?s Vice President of Digital Sport Stefan Olander, TechStars founder David Cohen, and Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai.
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TechStars has successfully carried out over 15 intensive, mentor-driven, 3-month accelerator programs which has raised $275 million in venture capital for its graduates in the six years they have been using this model. They will develop the program centered around the Nike+ API and SDK (Software Development Kit) to inspire innovation ?across a broad range of activity and health goals including training, coaching, gaming, data visualization and quantified self.?
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Nike is accepting applications for the accelerator program now, with the course intended to run ?from March until June. Upon completion of ?the program, graduates will be able to showcase their Nike+-inspired tech to investors, and will also get to spend 2 days ?in the field?- one day at Nike?s World Headquarters in Portland, Oregon, and another in Silicon Valley.
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Nike+ creates athletic fitness hardware and software for self-enrichment purposes, like the Fuel Band, Nike Sportwatch GPS, and the Nike+ fitness tracker app for iOS and Android. Products conceptualised at this accelerator will have a similar focus sports, coaching, and exercise.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) ? Elephant and Rhino poaching surged to record levels in 2011 and an increase in illegal tiger hunting makes the species' extinction a real near-term threat with only about 3,200 of the big cats left in the wild, according to a report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund.
The report, launched Wednesday, found that illicit trade in wildlife is worth at least $19 billion a year with organized criminals viewing it as high profit and low risk because governments don't give it a high enough priority and haven't implemented an effective response.
Germany's U.N. Ambassador Peter Wittig, who hosted the launch, said strong demand and high prices for rhino horn and elephant ivory in particular have spurred poaching, which is an organized crime.
"2011 was the highest year on record for elephant poaching: ivory estimated to weigh more than 23 metric tons ? a figure that represents 2,500 elephants ? was confiscated in 2011," Wittig said. "And the illegal poaching of rhinos surged to a record high in 2011, with a final death toll of 448 rhinos in southern Africa alone."
He said this trend continued in 2012, with ivory prices up to $1,000 a pound and rhino horns up to approximately $30,000 per pound.
Wittig stressed that it isn't only rhinos and elephants that are at risk.
"There may be as few as 3,200 wild tigers left in the world ? and the increase in poaching makes extinction of tiger species a very real threat," he said.
According to the report, although illicit wildlife trafficking has a well-documented link to other forms of illegal trafficking, the financing of rebel groups, corruption and money laundering, "the issue is primarily seen as an environmental issue, which puts it low on governments' agendas."
They also called for governments to be held accountable for enforcing regulations on wildlife, including imposing sanctions where necessary, and a campaign to reduce demand for endangered species.
The World Wildlife Fund, known as WWF, and TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, called on governments to recognize the threat to their sovereignty posed by illegal wildlife trafficking and treat the crime "equally and in coordination with efforts to halt other forms of illegal trafficking, corruption and money laundering."
"Wildlife crime has escalated alarmingly in the past decade," said Jim Leape, director general of WWF International. "It is driven by global crime syndicates, and so we need a concentrated global response."
He said communities, often the world's poorest, lose the most from the illicit trade because families that depend on natural resources are losing their livelihoods while criminal gangs and corrupt officials rake in profits.
The report was produced for WWF by Dalberg Global Development Advisors, a strategic consulting firm that says it "works to raise living standards in developing countries and address global issues such as climate change."
Dec. 12, 2012 ? Researchers at The Open University have devised a new method to understand the processes that happen when atoms cool which could lead to new materials for superconducting power grids and widespread use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
In a paper, "Bilayers of Rydberg atoms as a quantum simulator for unconventional superconductors" just published in Physical Review Letters, Dr Jim Hague and Dr Calum McCormick at The Open University's Department of Physical Sciences describe a new method to understand the cooling of atoms, which is to simulate a superconductor using a "quantum simulator" (a kind of bespoke quantum computer for examining specific problems) rather than a supercomputer.
The researchers found that just such a simulator can be built to examine atoms cooled to just a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. The atoms are controlled using laser beams which enhance the electrical forces between the atoms, which are usually weak and unimportant. These forces mimic the physics of the superconductor, and the proposed simulator includes far more physical detail than ever before.
"The problem is that up to now nobody knew how to build such a material because physics of the best superconductors are extremely difficult to understand," said Dr Hague. "By studying the atoms in the quantum simulator, we expect that it will be possible to make major progress in unravelling the underlying theory of these fascinating materials. A superconductor (a material with no electrical resistance) operating close to room temperature would offer potentially revolutionary technology."
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Journal Reference:
J. Hague, C. MacCormick. Bilayers of Rydberg Atoms as a Quantum Simulator for Unconventional Superconductors. Physical Review Letters, 2012; 109 (22) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.223001
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Automated design for drug discoveryPublic release date: 12-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Roddy Isles r.isles@dundee.ac.uk 44-013-823-84910 University of Dundee
A system of 'automated design' for new drugs could help develop the complex therapies needed for many medical conditions while also improving drug safety and efficiency, new research from the University of Dundee has shown.
The 'Moneyball' approach taken by the research team utilises the principles of advanced statistical and data analysis which have seen to be increasingly influential in areas as varied as sport, finance and in forecasting the recent US Presidential election.
As more complex drugs are needed to treat more complicated problems - particularly in areas such as neuroscience, infectious diseases and cancer - the task facing biologists and chemists is daunting. However, researchers at the College of Life Sciences at Dundee, in collaboration with partners in North America, have shown that an automated computational process analysing huge amounts of existing data could provide a valuable new tool in drug discovery.
The innovative approach taken by the research team mimics the creative process of human chemists, where drug molecules are steadily improved through successive cycles of design and selection.
"One of the things that makes drug discovery so hard is that you're trying to improve several different properties at the same time," said Professor Andrew Hopkins, Chair of Medicinal Informatics at Dundee. "Evolution is a mechanism than can be applied to solving these kinds of optimisation problems, and the iterative process of adaption and selection of hundreds of thousand of possible solutions can be simulated in a computer.
"We have effectively proved the concept of automated design of new compounds, showing that by using algorithms to process massive amounts of data we can tackle problems of huge complexity. The system solves the design problem by using computational evolution to mimic the design process of human chemists but running it on a very large scale."
The research is published in the journal Nature. The research team's work is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
Drugs have to be able to deliver their primary effects and not present adverse side effects or toxicity that render them unsafe. But for complex conditions drugs also have to be designed to hit multiple targets. Designing drugs to this kind of multi-target profile is a complex and exceedingly difficult task for medicinal chemistry.
Professor Hopkins and colleagues developed an automated adaptive design approach that can mimic the creative, iterative process of medicinal chemists by using computational evolution of large numbers of compounds. They initially used it to look at an existing drug, Donepezil, which is used in treating Alzheimer's Disease.
"Professor Sir James Black, the Nobel Laureate and former Chancellor of the University, proposed that 'the most fruitful basis for the discovery of a new drug is to start with an old drug' and we followed that advice," said Professor Hopkins.
"We took the structure of Donepezil as a starting point and from there the system evolved its structure, computationally, over many generations to a variety of different profiles across a range of drug targets. The predicted profiles were then tested experimentally and we found that 75% of them were confirmed to be correct.
"This proof of concept shows that we could make significant advances in discovering and designing complex drugs, which could lead to improvements in safety and efficacy, while also potentially reducing the cost of drug discovery, which is a high-risk and expensive process."
Professor Hopkins said improvements in data capture and management were key to developing the research.
"Just a few years ago this would not have been possible because we need the existing drug data to build on and it was not held in a way that it could be analysed like this. But there have been significant developments, aided by groups like ChEMBL in Cambridge, who are funded by The Wellcome Trust, in making drug design data available in a format computers can process. What we have found particularly exciting is the way the algorithm has been able to learn from the human experience of drug design and mimic it on a massive scale to solve complex design problems."
This phenomenon is reflected in the name of a new spin out company which has been formed to commercialise the technology ex scientia which is the Latin for "from knowledge".
###
Roddy Isles
Head of Press
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN.
TEL: 01382 384910
MOBILE: 07800 581902
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE - No. 1 IN THE UK, TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENT EXPERIENCE SURVEY 2012
The University of Dundee is a Scottish Registered Charity, No. SC015096
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Automated design for drug discoveryPublic release date: 12-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Roddy Isles r.isles@dundee.ac.uk 44-013-823-84910 University of Dundee
A system of 'automated design' for new drugs could help develop the complex therapies needed for many medical conditions while also improving drug safety and efficiency, new research from the University of Dundee has shown.
The 'Moneyball' approach taken by the research team utilises the principles of advanced statistical and data analysis which have seen to be increasingly influential in areas as varied as sport, finance and in forecasting the recent US Presidential election.
As more complex drugs are needed to treat more complicated problems - particularly in areas such as neuroscience, infectious diseases and cancer - the task facing biologists and chemists is daunting. However, researchers at the College of Life Sciences at Dundee, in collaboration with partners in North America, have shown that an automated computational process analysing huge amounts of existing data could provide a valuable new tool in drug discovery.
The innovative approach taken by the research team mimics the creative process of human chemists, where drug molecules are steadily improved through successive cycles of design and selection.
"One of the things that makes drug discovery so hard is that you're trying to improve several different properties at the same time," said Professor Andrew Hopkins, Chair of Medicinal Informatics at Dundee. "Evolution is a mechanism than can be applied to solving these kinds of optimisation problems, and the iterative process of adaption and selection of hundreds of thousand of possible solutions can be simulated in a computer.
"We have effectively proved the concept of automated design of new compounds, showing that by using algorithms to process massive amounts of data we can tackle problems of huge complexity. The system solves the design problem by using computational evolution to mimic the design process of human chemists but running it on a very large scale."
The research is published in the journal Nature. The research team's work is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
Drugs have to be able to deliver their primary effects and not present adverse side effects or toxicity that render them unsafe. But for complex conditions drugs also have to be designed to hit multiple targets. Designing drugs to this kind of multi-target profile is a complex and exceedingly difficult task for medicinal chemistry.
Professor Hopkins and colleagues developed an automated adaptive design approach that can mimic the creative, iterative process of medicinal chemists by using computational evolution of large numbers of compounds. They initially used it to look at an existing drug, Donepezil, which is used in treating Alzheimer's Disease.
"Professor Sir James Black, the Nobel Laureate and former Chancellor of the University, proposed that 'the most fruitful basis for the discovery of a new drug is to start with an old drug' and we followed that advice," said Professor Hopkins.
"We took the structure of Donepezil as a starting point and from there the system evolved its structure, computationally, over many generations to a variety of different profiles across a range of drug targets. The predicted profiles were then tested experimentally and we found that 75% of them were confirmed to be correct.
"This proof of concept shows that we could make significant advances in discovering and designing complex drugs, which could lead to improvements in safety and efficacy, while also potentially reducing the cost of drug discovery, which is a high-risk and expensive process."
Professor Hopkins said improvements in data capture and management were key to developing the research.
"Just a few years ago this would not have been possible because we need the existing drug data to build on and it was not held in a way that it could be analysed like this. But there have been significant developments, aided by groups like ChEMBL in Cambridge, who are funded by The Wellcome Trust, in making drug design data available in a format computers can process. What we have found particularly exciting is the way the algorithm has been able to learn from the human experience of drug design and mimic it on a massive scale to solve complex design problems."
This phenomenon is reflected in the name of a new spin out company which has been formed to commercialise the technology ex scientia which is the Latin for "from knowledge".
###
Roddy Isles
Head of Press
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN.
TEL: 01382 384910
MOBILE: 07800 581902
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE - No. 1 IN THE UK, TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENT EXPERIENCE SURVEY 2012
The University of Dundee is a Scottish Registered Charity, No. SC015096
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. ? The Kansas City Royals acquired former All-Star James Shields and fellow right-hander Wade Davis from the Tampa Bay Rays on Sunday night for outfielder Wil Myers and a package of minor league prospects.
Kansas City has been working all offseason to shore up a starting rotation that has been abysmal for years, re-signing Jeremy Guthrie and acquiring Ervin Santana from the Los Angeles Angels. But the trade for Shields and Davis represents the most aggressive move yet under general manager Dayton Moore, who believes the Royals are primed to contend as early as this season.
"We have to start winning games at the major league level, and the way you develop a winning culture is by winning major league games," Moore said. "It's time for us to start winning at the major league level."
The blockbuster deal essentially means the Royals are mortgaging part of their future to start winning in the present.
Along with giving up Myers, widely voted the minor leagues' top player last season, the Royals also traded away right-hander Jake Odorizzi, who would have competed for a spot in the Kansas City rotation this season. Left-hander Mike Montgomery and third baseman Patrick Leonard also are headed to the Rays, while the Royals will receive a player to be named or cash.
"When you can acquire a pitcher like James Shields and Wade Davis, we have to do it, because that's what we've committed to our team ? we've committed to our organization," Moore said. "It's important that we start winning games."
Shields was an All-Star two years ago for Tampa Bay, when he went 16-12 with a 2.82 ERA and finished third in the American League Cy Young Award voting. He was 15-10 with a 3.52 ERA in 33 starts last season, when he pitched 227 2-3 innings.
The only other pitchers to log at least 200 innings in six straight seasons are the Jays' Mark Buehrle, San Francisco's Matt Cain, Yankees left-hander CC Sabathia and the Tigers ace Justin Verlander.
Davis made 64 starts for Tampa Bay from 2009-11 before transitioning to the bullpen last season, where he went 3-0 with a 2.43 ERA. He'll likely get a look at returning to the rotation in Kansas City.
The jewel of the deal for Tampa Bay is Myers, who will turn 22 on Monday. The power-hitting outfielder batted .314 with 37 homers and 109 RBIs in 134 games split between Northwest Arkansas and Triple-A Omaha, and eventually could help provide some protection in the batting order for Rays star Evan Longoria.
Odorizzi was 15-5 with a 3.03 ERA for Northwest Arkansas and Omaha before making two starts for the Royals in September, while Montgomery ? once a highly prized prospect ? struggled to a 5-12 mark with a 6.07 ERA at the same two stops.
"It's not easy to give up prospects," Moore said. "What we do is just focus on making our team the very best we can. We focus on making our team the best we can make it, and let (manager) Ned (Yost) and the coaching staff and the rest of the players go out and compete, and see how we match up."
If you can identify the meaning of the word "prospered" within a passage, chances are you know more vocabulary than most American high school seniors.
The results of the national standardized vocabulary tests are in, and the scores are troubling -- but not unexpected -- experts say. Average performance on the U.S. Education Department's national exams was mostly stagnant at low levels between 2009 and 2011, and the highest performers lost ground during that time.
"We should be worried about this," said Cornelia Orr, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board. "It's not any more of a crisis than we've been seeing in reading."
On Thursday, the National Center for Education Statistics, the U.S. Education Department's research arm, released the vocabulary scores for fourth- and eighth-grade students on the 2009 and 2011 reading comprehension exams administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This is the first time the results of a separate scale for vocabulary questions on the national reading comprehension test have been released. NAEP is considered the "gold standard" of standardized testing, since stakes are low for children and since the tests are designed by the federal government, which has no skin in the game in terms of how states perform. (The release also included 12th grade scores for only 2009, since that exam is only given every four years).
On average, fourth-graders scored 218 out of a total of 500 points, and eighth-graders scored 265. The top-performing fourth-graders (in the 90th percentile) only netted a 266; in eighth-grade, these students got a 311; and in 12th grade, they scored at 334.
"There is the expectation that students would know all of the words that were assessed," Orr said. "The lower the percentage of students who get these questions correct means they do not know enough."
Fourth-graders were tested on words like created, spread, clenched, outraged, puzzled and striking. Eighth-graders were expected to know anecdotes, edible, replicate, specialty, laden and permeated. High school seniors were asked about prospered, capitalize, articulate, proactive, mitigate and delusion. As NCES described it, these words are used in written language across a variety of content areas.
The results are particularly concerning, some say, as most states begin implementing the Common Core standards in language arts. The learning standards represent higher goals for what kids should know, and are supposed to result in a sustained focus on less material (rather than a general focus on too much material). The standards also push a significant amount of early reading of informational texts. "What's troubling is that we haven't moved the needle more on vocabulary," said Sharon Darling, president of the National Center for Family Literacy. "With the upcoming Common Core standards, it's going to be a steep hill to climb."
The results are also vexing because early vocabulary skills have long been a divider between rich and poor kids before they even step foot in the classroom: a seminal study in 1995 found that children whose families were on welfare heard on average 616 words per hour, while children from wealthier families heard 2,153 words per hour. These results, Darling said, have been shown to last into adulthood.
And apparently, schools aren't helping to narrow that gap. "There's quite a bit written on vocabulary and the best way to teach it -- unfortunately we're not seeing it go into the classroom," said Margaret McKeown, a learning research professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education. "For the younger kids, teachers are using as vocabulary words words that kids already know."
While eighth-graders who performed at lower levels than their peers in 2009 scored higher in 2011, fourth- and eighth-graders at the top of the performance curve actually scored lower in 2011 than in 2009. Top scores in fourth grade declined from 269 to 266, and from 314 to 311 in eighth grade. "We're losing at the top," said Mark Schneider, the former NCES commissioner who is now a vice president at the American Institutes of Research. "What's happened is that where there's been changing in scores, it's gone down at the two top tiers. It's very disappointing because we're not getting the kinds of gains we need at the top in a global economy."
The exams didn't test for rote definitions, instead checking to see if students understood words' meanings within passages. NCES designed the vocabulary scoring to be compatible with overall reading scores, and found the two to be closely linked. NCES commissioner Jack Buckley said a significant amount of the variance in reading scores can be attributed to differences in vocabulary abilities. That's important because historically, while students have gained in math over time, reading scores have been notoriously flat and hard to change. "We know how to teach math -- it's a school-based skill," Schneider said. "We've had a really hard time in trying to teach language arts, because vocabulary and reading are things that are wired into students before they even set foot into a classroom."
Darling said the results underscore a need for more emphasis on making sure kids learn vocabulary at home. "We need to look outside what teachers can do and look at out-of-school time in a new way," she said. "We need to look at activities that are fun and engaging."
While it's hard to interpret trends between only two administrations of one test, researchers point out that only in Pennsylvania did fourth-grade students score higher in 2011 than in 2009. Overall, most states stagnated, but average students in Arkansas, Indiana and Iowa did worse in 2011 than in 2009.
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Public release date: 12-Dec-2012
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