'Carmageddon': LAPD thanks celebrities for Twitter help

The Los Angeles Police Department announced on Friday that more than 30 celebrities responded to the department's call to send out tweets urging resident to avoid the 405 Freeway when it is closed this weekend during "Carmageddon."

The department said in a statement that when added together, the celebrities who participated had more than 100 million followers on the social media service. It's unclear how many of those followers are overlaps, however, and exactly how many people the messages reached.

The 405 Freeway will be closed through the Sepulveda Pass beginning Friday night and through Monday morning because of a widening project that requires the demolition of the Mulholland Bridge.

The LAPD listed some of the memorable celebrity tweets:

--Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) “Stay away from the 405 Fwy the weekend of July 16 & 17, it will be closed btwn the 10 Fwy and 101 Fwy North & South!”

--Rob Corddry (@robcorddry) , “LAPD asked me to warn you to avoid the 405 Fwy July on 16-17. But I'm not going to. Matter of fact, come to my party @ the LAX exit Sat!”

--Conan O’Brien (@ConanOBrien) t“The LAPD asked me to warn you to avoid the 405 Fwy on July 16 & 17, or else the red light photo of me driving in a satin slip goes viral.”

-- Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) “LAPD askd me 2tweet: 405fwy btwn 10 & 101 will b closed July16-17. In xchange I would like a free pass on that stoplight tickt IT WAS YELLOW.”

-- William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) “LA friends, the 405 closes this weekend in what surely will be Carmageddon Remember also that @TheCaptainsTV airs on @EpixHD on 7/22!”

--Adam Levine @ adamlevine I think I want to throw a tailgate party for Carmageddon. Meet me at the 405 tomorrow. Let's party.

-- KevinSmith @ThatKevinSmithLOS ANGELES! The end is nigh! #Carmageddon is upon us! On Sat/Sunday, avoid the 405 Btw the 10 and 101 like you'd avoid a Kevin Smith film!

--christina applegate @1capplegate Maybe the old dude who predicted end of days meant CARMAGEDDON! And for that I say bravo old crazy guy!

--Ryan Seacrest @RyanSeacrest Wait, what!? There's stuff to do in LA that doesn't require a car? #nobodywalksinla http://on.fb.me/qeAOPF #carmageddon

SBI says its net interest margin betters to 3.6%

KOLKATA: The State Bank of India is weighing several combinations to raise Rs 20,000 crore for the next three years while its net interest margin improved to 3.6% for the quarter, exceeding its expectation by 10 basis points . The country's largest lender has so far failed to get the government's clearance for the proposed rights issue of Rs 20,000 crore. 

SBI has preferred this option over other instruments since early 2010 as it did not want to dilute the government's stake but is now forced to look at other options. The bank's capital raising issue may be discussed at a special board meeting on August 6, which will be addressed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. Speaking at a Ficci event here, SBI chairman Pratip Chaudhuri said: 

"The government is committed to SBI and acknowledged its contribution towards nation building." He expects to complete fund raising by March 2012. The bank will soon place three separate fund-raising structures with the government for its consent. Mr Chaudhuri said the bank is also open to a combination of rights issue plus private placement of equity, or even rights issue plus a FPO. 

The SBI chairman said the bank needs Rs 47,000 crore to support business growth in the next three years and Rs 20,000 crore out of this requirement will be raised from the market. He said SBI looks to plough back Rs 9,000 crore from profit every year till 2014. SBI expects to restore "normal profit" from the third quarter. 

The bank will need to continue with making high provisions in the first quarter too as per RBI guidelines. Yet, Mr Chaudhuri said the Q1 profit would be better backed by a better interest rate margin. "Our margin would be 3.6%, more than our guidance of 3.5% for the first quarter. This could offset the impact of higher provisioning," he said.

Space Toilet Gives Astronauts Smelly Time in Orbit

HOUSTON –  Even soaring high above Earth on a high-tech space station doesn't excuse astronauts from the most mundane household chores … especially when you're dealing with a smelly space toilet.

The 10 astronauts on the International Space Station today (July 13) tackled the daunting chore of unpacking tons of supplies delivered by NASA's shuttle Atlantis this week. But one station crewmember, NASA astronaut Ron Garan, had a more pressing duty: fixing the space station's zero gravity potty.

Earlier this week, the station crew reported a foul odor coming from one of the orbiting lab's toilets. After some tinkering, the astronauts and Mission Control began to suspect that air bubbles had clogged up some of the $90 million orbital commode's delicate plumbing. [Space Toilet Technique: NASA's How-To Video]

Today, Garan, fresh off a 6 1/2-hour outing yesterday that marked the final spacewalk ever to be performed during a NASA shuttle mission, swapped his spacewalking gear for plumbing tools.

"That's the great thing about spaceflight," said station astronaut Mike Fossum, who served as Garan's spacewalk partner. "One day you're outside spacewalking, doing the most outrageous things the humans have ever done. The next day you're fixing toilets and unpacking boxes." [Historic Photos: Final Spacewalk of NASA's Shuttle Era]

For his part, Fossum spent the day moving supply containers out of a bus-size cargo pod delivered to the station earlier this week by the four astronauts flying aboard Atlantis. The flight is NASA's final shuttle mission before the agency retires the 30-year program later this year.

"It's all in the life of an astronaut," Chris Edelen, lead space station flight director, told reporters in a news briefing today.

The station toilet was left alone yesterday while the astronauts completed their spacewalk, and the crewmembers since reported that the unpleasant smell appeared to go away on its own. Still, the station crew took the opportunity to replace some older parts in the space toilet, especially since they're playing host to Atlantis' four-astronaut crew.

"We want to be good hosts and have a toilet there that works," Edelen said, adding that the system is now fully operational. "We even invited the shuttle crewmembers to use it if they need to."

The station actually has two space toilets available for its crew's convenience. One potty is on the Russian side, in the Zvezda service module, with the other based in the U.S. segment. There is also atoilet on the space shuttle, and depending on the situation, shuttle crews sometimes continue to use the facilities on the orbiter, even as they are docked to the orbiting complex.

And, just like toilets here on Earth, they require maintenance every so often.

According to Ed Van Cise, the station's Expedition 28 lead flight director, the station facilities need to be serviced approximately once a week to replace consumables, such as its solid waste container (urine on the station is recycled into drinkable water).

From a hardware standpoint, the urine hose requires the most frequent maintenance, needing to be switched approximately once a month, Van Cise said. Larger components have a longer lifespan, with maintenance required ranging from once every 70 days to once every year and a half.

Atlantis launched into orbit on July 8 and is flying a 13-day mission to the International Space Station. The shuttle is scheduled to land at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Florida on July 21, marking the official end of the agency's 30-year space shuttle program.

To commemorate the final flight, Mission Control has been sending some extra special wakeup calls to the Atlantis crew. This morning, astronauts got a wakeup call from singer Elton John, who dedicated his song "Rocket Man" to the spaceflyers.

NASA is retiring its orbiter fleet to focus on deep space exploration missions, such as to an asteroid or Mars.

HIV treatment as prevention called winning approach

The strategy of giving a cocktail of anti-HIV drugs to prevent the spread of the infection should be expanded immediately worldwide, a Canadian HIV researcher says in a medical journal commentary.

Studies suggest that a combination of antiviral drugs known as highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) helps treat HIV and also prevents its transmission, by reducing how infectious someone is.

In Taiwan, British Columbia and San Francisco, the treatment as prevention approach has been associated with declining numbers of new HIV diagnoses.

Dr. Julio Montaner of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver calls treatment as prevention "a double hat-trick" in Thursday's online issue of The Lancet.

The first hat-trick is preventing death, illness and transmission. The second is how it works to prevent transmission between mother and child, sexual partners and injection drug users, he said in an interview.

"The evidence is in: treatment is prevention," Montaner wrote.

"Treatment dramatically prevents morbidity and mortality, HIV transmission, and tuberculosis. Furthermore, treatment prevents HIV transmission in [mother-to-child], sexual, and injection drug use settings; indeed, a very welcome double hat-trick. The challenge remains to optimize the impact of this valuable intervention. Failure to do so is not an option."

Treatment reduces new infections

Current HIV treatment reduces the level of HIV in the blood to undetectable levels, thus improving the health of HIV-positive individuals. At the same time, the treatment decreases the level of HIV in sexual fluids to undetectable levels, thereby reducing the likelihood of HIV transmission by over 90 per cent.

In May, an International AIDS Society workshop in Vancouver concluded that treatment as prevention has progressed from "a testable hypothesis to an urgent implementation priority."

But for 10 years, there has been a tension between those advocating to pursue every question before implementing treatment as prevention and those advocating for research to done as part of implementation, the editorial said.

Meanwhile in June, UNAIDS pushed world leaders to commit to a target of treating 15 million people by 2015.

"We need political leadership to assure that 15 million by 2015 is actually delivered," Montaner said.

He will be attending next week's International AIDS Society conference in Rome, where more findings on the prevention as treatment approach will be presented.