U.S. recalls common flavoring after contamination

U.S. food regulators announced a voluntary recall on Thursday of food made with a common flavoring that could be contaminated with salmonella bacteria but did not estimate how broad the recall will be. The flavoring -- hydrolyzed vegetable protein -- is used in soups, sauces, hot dogs, snack foods, dressings and dips and is made by privately held Basic Food Flavors Inc of Las Vegas, Nevada.

"At this time there are no known illnesses associated with this contamination and obviously we'd like to keep it that way," FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told reporters in a teleconference. "The manufacturer had many first-level consignees who
obviously had individuals who had firms that they sold to who sold to the other firms," said Dr. Jeff Farrar, associate commissioner
for food safety at FDA's Office of Foods.

"We expect this to get larger over the next several days, actually several weeks," Farrar said. A handful of companies have recalled
products ranging from dips, potato chips and dressings to tofu, burritos and pasta. They include T. Marzetti, a unit of Lancaster
Colony Corp, which said on March 1 it was recalling various dips. The FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the
U.S. Agriculture Department are working with Nevada state health officials on the outbreak, Hamburg told reporters.

Farrar said officials believe the risk to consumers is very low. The FDA said it collected and analyzed samples at the Nevada
facility and confirmed the presence of Salmonella Tennessee in the company's processing equipment. The company is recalling
all hydrolyzed vegetable protein in powder and paste form that it has produced since September 17, 2009. Salmonella can cause
severe illness in the very young, very old and frail. It causes fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain and in the most vulnerable can cause a bloodstream infection and organ failure.

The FDA, CDC and USDA are currently working with Congress to overhaul U.S. food safety regulation. Deputy FDA Commission
Dr. Joshua Sharfstein said this outbreak showed why new regulatory powers were needed. "The shift in the food safety system
that we can accomplish with the food safety legislation is one toward prevention and we would like to set strong preventive standards
that keep contamination from occurring in the first place," he said.

Since 2006, the U.S. food supply has been battered by a series of high-profile foodborne outbreaks involving meat, lettuce,
peppers, peanuts and spinach. Contamination of peanuts with salmonella in 2009 forced the recall of 3,200 products and sickened
600 people. This week, the Produce Safety Project reported that food poisoning costs the United States $152 billion in health-related expenses each year. Many firms including Kellogg Co, whose company lost nearly $70 million in products from the recent peanut
recall,  and ConAgra Foods have been affected.

Reuters

Big Bang experiment may reveal dark universe

Dark matter, which scientists believe makes up 25 percent of the universe but whose existence has never been proven, could be
detected by the giant particle collider at CERN, the research center's head said. Rolf-Dieter Heuer told a news conference some
evidence for the matter may emerge even in the shorter term from mega-power particle collisions aimed at recreating conditions
at the "Big Bang" birth of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.

"We don't know what dark matter is," said Heuer, Director-General of the European Organization for Nuclear Research on the
Swiss-French border near Geneva. "Our Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could be the first machine to give us insight into the dark
universe," he said. "We are opening the door to New Physics, to a discovery period."

Astronomers and physicists say that only 5 percent of the universe is known currently, and that the invisible remainder consists of dark matter and dark energy, which make up some 25 percent and 70 percent, respectively. "If we can detect and understand dark matter,
our knowledge will expand to encompass 30 percent of the universe, a huge step forward," Heuer said.

The LHC, the world's largest scientific experiment centered in a16.78 mile oval-shaped tunnel deep underground, is presently moving
to colliding particles by the end of the month at the highest energy ever achieved.These multiple collisions at a total of 7 tera-electron
volts, or TeV, will each create mini-Big Bangs, producing data that thousands of scientists at CERN and in laboratories around the
globe will analyze. One widely publicized aim of the LHC is to try to find the theoretical particle that gave mass to the matter that spewed
out after the primeval explosion and thereby made possible the emergence of stars, planets and eventually life -- on earth and perhaps elsewhere.

The mysterious particle has been dubbed the Higgs boson after the Scottish physicist who three decades ago proposed it to explain
the origin of mass in the universe. "We know everything about this particle. The only thing we don't know is if it exists," said Heuer, a
German physicist who took over at CERN 14 months ago. "And if it does not exist, we are bound to find something that is very much
like it." Once collisions in the LHC are begun at 7 TeV, they will continue with only very brief breaks until the end of 2011, and then the machine will be shut down for a year to prepare it for years more of experiments at 14 TeV.

Reuters

"Personal" study shows gene maps can spot disease

Two studies published on Wednesday show it is possible to sequence the entire gene maps of families with inherited diseases and pinpoint the offending bit of DNA. The studies, which would not have been possible a year or two ago, are the first real delivery of the promised transformation of medical science from the Human Genome Project's mapping of the human genetic code.

One was also made possible by some of the $5 billion that U.S. President Barack Obama directed to the National Institutes of Health in September from the $787 billion economic stimulus package. And in that study, the genetic researcher was himself one of the patients.
Dr. James Lupski of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston has a recessive genetic disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome.
It affects the nerves stretching from the spinal cord to the arms, legs and feet. Lupski has been experimenting on himself and his own
family for years. "We tried every other method for 25 years to find out which mutation was important," he said in a telephone interview.

"With this methodology we were able to do it. This is the first time whole genome sequencing has applied to actually find the cause
of a disease." Lupski had been taking blood samples from his grandparents, parents and siblings for years. He got close but the
research was considered too risky for funding by the National Institutes of Health. "He was only able to complete this study because
of the stimulus money that we got," said Dr. Story Landis, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Her institute designated Lupski's project for about half a million dollars of the money that Obama directed to the NIH. Lupski's team
used a gene sequencer from Carlsbad, California-based Life Technologies to read the entire DNA code in the samples from Lupski
and three of his siblings who have the syndrome, his parents and four other siblings who do not.

"It is a recessive disease and neither of my parents have the disease. Each of us who has it got one mutant allele (gene) from my
mom and one mutant allele from my dad," he said. Researchers know about 40 different genes that can cause Charcot-Marie-Tooth.
But in each family, only one of these genes is involved. The sequencing revealed a gene called SH3TC2, the researchers reported in
the New England Journal of Medicine. Other groups are already working on a drug that may affect that gene, Lupski said.

The researchers also found that family members who inherited just one faulty copy of the gene had a predisposition to carpal tunnel syndrome, in which a nerve in the wrist can get pinched. As prices are coming down on the cost of sequencing a human genome,
more such research will be possible. "We estimate that the entire effort would currently cost less than $50,000," the researchers wrote.

In a second study, Jared Roach of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and colleagues sequenced the entire genomes of a
family of four affected by two recessive genetic diseases -- Miller syndrome, which can cause facial disfigurement, and primary ciliary dyskinesia, a lung disorder that raises the risk of respiratory infections because the hairlike extension on cells called cilia fail to move properly.

"Our results demonstrate the unique value of complete genome sequencing in families," they wrote in the journal Science.
They used a sequencer made by another one of the companies exploiting genomic sequencing, Complete Genomics based
in Mountain View, California.

Reuters

Scientists find why "sunshine" vita D is crucial

Vitamin D is vital in activating human defences and low levels suffered by around half the world's population may mean their
immune systems' killer T cells are poor at fighting infection, scientists said on Sunday. The findings by Danish researchers could
help the fight against infectious diseases and global epidemics, they said, and could be particularly useful in the search for new
vaccines.

The researchers found that immune systems' killer cells, known as T cells, rely on vitamin D to become active and remain dormant and unaware of the possibility of threat from an infection or pathogen if vitamin D is lacking in the blood. "When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signaling device or 'antenna' known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D," said Carsten Geisler of Copenhagen University's department of international health, immunology and microbiology, who led the study.

"This means the T cell must have vitamin D or activation of the cell will cease. If the T cells cannot find enough vitamin D in the blood,
they won't even begin to mobilize." Scientists have known for a long time that vitamin D is important for calcium absorption, and that
there is a link between levels of the vitamin and diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis. "What we didn't realize is how crucial vitamin D is for actually activating the immune system -- which we know now," Geisler wrote in the study in the journal Nature Immunology.

Most Vitamin D is made by the body as a natural by-product of the skin's exposure to sunlight. It can also be found in fish liver oil,
eggs and fatty fish such as salmon, herring and mackerel, or taken as a supplement. Almost half of the world's population has lower
than optimal levels of vitamin D and scientists say the problem is getting worse as people spend more time indoors.

Geisler and his research team said the findings offered much needed information about the immune system and would be of
particular use when developing new vaccines. "This is important not only in fighting disease but also in dealing with anti-immune
reactions of the body and the rejection of transplanted organs," they wrote.

Active T cells multiply at an explosive rate and as well as fighting infection, can also mistakenly attack the body itself. After and
an organ transplant, for example, T cells can attack the new organ as a "foreign invader," and in autoimmune disease, hypersensitive
T cells mistake parts of the body's own cells as threats, prompting the body to attack itself. Geisler said there were no definitive
studies on the optimal daily vitamin D dose but experts recommend 25 to 50 micrograms.

Reuters

MySpace Readies Site Overhaul To Rekindle Growth

With shrinking audiences, deep layoffs and two management shake-ups, MySpace, the one-time leader in Internet social networking,
has had a rocky year. Mike Jones, who took over as co-president last month with Jason Hirschhorn, said that even within MySpace some employees have lost the will to keep fighting. "We are at the point now where we need believers," said Jones, noting that the News Corp
unit has encouraged various individuals not fully committed to the cause to leave and has hired new talent.

The need for faith speaks to the scope of the challenge facing MySpace. With competition from booming social networks like
Facebook and Twitter, and Google Inc jumping into the fray, MySpace hopes to become the first social network to regain its mass
appeal. At the company's Beverly Hills headquarters on Monday, Jones and Hirschhorn outlined their plan for the first time since taking
the reins as co-presidents. They pulled the curtain back on a new version of the site that will be rolled out in installments over coming
weeks and months.

The new site recasts MySpace more strongly around its music and media content, with features such as the ability to listen to a music playlist based on songs that other MySpace users are sharing in their stream of updates. The goal is to spur growth among new users
and to lure back users that have departed, says Hirschhorn. "We do not want to stay at 100 million (users) or 120 million. We want to
grow to 200 million or 300 million," Hirschhorn said, though he declined to give a time frame for achieving those numbers.

MySpace had 119.6 million unique visitors worldwide in January 2010, down 7.4 percent year-over-year (though up from its November
low of 108.1 million), according to ComScore. While those seem like respectable numbers, Facebook says it now counts 400 million
active users. Hirschhorn, a former executive with Viacom Inc's MTV Networks, joined MySpace in April 2009 as chief product officer, part
of a new management team that brought in Jones as COO and Owen Van Natta as CEO. Less than 10 months later, Van Natta is gone,
due to what a source close to the company said was a personality conflict among the trio. Van Natta couldn't be reached for comment.

The two new co-presidents would not comment on the shake-up, but said the revamp of the site now being introduced is in keeping
with the strategy all three executives devised over the past 11 months, including the August 2009 acquisition of Internet music sharing service iLike. Analysts say building on MySpace's strength in music and entertainment is a sensible strategy, though some wonder
whether the company will be able to create a unique offering amid a raft of rivals with similar goals, from Yahoo Inc, and music-service Pandora to Facebook. And they warn comebacks are rare in the Web business.

"When you look at the other social networks that have faltered, they end up being a special play for a particular culture," said Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at Web consulting firm Altimeter Group. He cited Friendster, a social networking pioneer that lost ground to Facebook
and MySpace and now caters to users in Southeast Asia. One of the immediate challenges facing the two new presidents is replacing the three-year, $900 million search advertising deal with Google that expires in August 2010. The drop-off in MySpace traffic already has resulted in the company receiving lower-than-expected payments from Google, and analysts say any new deal will be on far less favorable terms.

Jones, who has led negotiations with Google, would not comment on whether MySpace would need to alter its cost structure if the next search deal yields less revenue. But he was confident MySpace wouldn't have trouble finding a partner or partners, interested in selling
ads to its audience. Some analysts also wonder whether MySpace, which News Corp acquired for $580 million in 2005, might be better
off on its own as it vies with companies focused strictly on the Web business, many of which are privately-held and under less pressure
from shareholders to deliver quarterly results.

"For many Internet companies, the most important thing is to be able to be adapt and be quick to move in a rapidly changing market, and sometimes that could be impeded by being part of a larger company," Ryan Jacob, of the Jacob Internet Fund said on Tuesday. The Jacob Internet Fund does not own News Corp shares. However, Jacob said that the financial support News Corp provides, and the doors it can open to partnerships, could prove helpful to a company trying to rebuild its business. Hirschhorn said MySpace was under no pressure to meet financial goals at the expense of long term strategy. "We're a business, this isn't Unicef. Of course we're focused on monetization," said Hirschhorn. News Corp's priority was improving MySpace and rebuilding its audience. "If we don't improve this product there's not
going to be anything  at the end of the road," he said.

Bbiz

NFL signs mobile phone deal with Verizon Wireless

The NFL has signed a four-year agreement with Verizon Wireless to show live games and highlights on mobile phones in a deal
U.S. media reported was worth $720 million. "We are looking forward to working with Verizon Wireless to deliver our fans the most
extensive experience on mobile phones," said NFL senior vice president of media strategy Brian Rolapp in a statement.

"Our fans have an insatiable appetite for football and we will be able to keep them connected wherever they are on game day but also throughout the year." The NFL and Verizon declined to comment on the financial terms but the Wall Street Journal said the deal, which includes a rights fee as well as advertising spending, was worth $720 million. The deal makes the communications company the official wireless provider for the league and boosts the number of games that can be viewed on mobile devices.

Under the agreement, which replaces the NFL's previous deal with Sprint Nextel Corp, Thursday and Sunday night games from NBC and coverage from the league-owned NFL Network channel and the Red Zone channel will be broadcast. The content will be available primarily
on 3G but Verizon plans to have the faster 4G available in 25 to 30 markets in 2010 and in virtually all its 3G-covered areas in the U.S. by
the end of 2013, the company said. Verizon's live coverage will begin with the NFL draft next month.

Reuters