Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak always has something interesting to say, whether it?s criticizing Apple, giving his approval for jailbreaking, or hating on patent verdicts. Last week, he spoke the Georgia Insitute of Technology, and today the video recordings have been uploaded. His comments on emerging technologies caught our eye.
When asked about what?s next, Wozniak listed off three things: ?voice recognition with an understanding what is really meant by sentences of words and language ? natural language recognition,? ?we just about have cars driving themselves too,? and ?computers approaching consciousness, becoming brains ? that?s a lot further off.? His thoughts on the last one were particularly honest and rather interesting:
I used to think that will never happen. The brain works so differently than any computer, and we don?t know how it works. We?ll never be able to do that. Computers can do the job but a brain has to figure out how to do it. No, I think computers are gonna figure out how to do it? [that's] not too far off.
That?s a both a scary and an exciting statement. I think I prefer the move towards self-driving cars, but that may just be me. Here?s the clip, including Wozniak?s take on IBM?s Watson:
It?s very clear Siri and Google Now are the stepping stones for improvements in natural language recognition all the way to conscious computers. At first it will just look like our apps and robots are predicting what we want based on patterns, but as those algorithms improve, they?ll be taking initiative on more and more useful tasks.
Wozniak still has his great sense of humor; here he is talking about his Tetris career:
Other clips include Wozniak giving advice on how to build a startup, education, and life in general. Finally, here?s the full 53-minute talk:
See also: Steve Wozniak wishes Apple was less arrogant and had released two sizes for the iPhone 5 Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak gives jailbreaking the thumbs up, wishes iTunes supported Android Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak on Samsung patent verdict: ?I hate it and I don?t agree with it?
Among the animals that are appealing "cover models" for scientific journals, lancelets don't spring readily to mind. Slender, limbless, primitive blobs that look pretty much the same end to end, lancelets "are extremely boring. I wouldn't recommend them for a home aquarium," says Enrico Nasi, adjunct senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL). Yet Nasi and his collaborators managed to land a lancelet on the cover of the Journal of Neuroscience last December. These simple chordates, they discovered, offer insight into our own biological clocks.
Nasi and his wife, MBL adjunct scientist Maria del Pilar Gomez, are interested in phototransduction, the conversion of light by light-sensitive cells into electrical signals that are sent to the brain. The lancelet, also called amphioxus, doesn't have eyes or a true brain. But what it does have in surprising abundance is melanopsin, a photopigment that is also produced by the third class of light-sensitive cells in the mammalian retina, besides the rods and cones. This third class of cells, called "intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells" (ipRGCs), were discovered in 2002 by Brown University's David Berson and colleagues. Now sometimes called "circadian receptors," they are involved in non-visual, light-dependent functions, such as adjustment of the animal's circadian rhythms.
"It seemed like colossal overkill that amphioxus have melanopsin-producing cells," Nasi says. "These animals do nothing. If you switch on a light, they dance and float to the top of the tank, and then they drop back down to the bottom. That's it for the day." But that mystery aside, Gomez and Nasi realized that studying amphioxus could help reveal the evolutionary history of the circadian receptors.
As so it has. In 2009, Gomez and Nasi isolated the animal's melanopsin-producing cells and described how they transduce light. In their recent paper, they tackled the puzzling question of why the light response of these amphioxus cells is several orders of magnitude higher than that of their more sophisticated, presumed descendents, the ipRGCs. (In mammals, the ipRGCs relay information on light and dark to the biological clock in the hypothalamus, where it is crucial for the regulation of circadian rhythms and associated control of hormonal secretion.)
By detailing how the large light response occurs in the amphioxus cells, Gomez and Nasi could relate their observations to the functional changes that may have occurred as the circadian receptors evolved and "eventually tailored their performance to the requirements of a reporter of day and night, rather than to a light sensor meant to mediate spatial vision." The light-sensing cells of amphioxus, they discovered, may be the "missing link" between the visual cells of invertebrates and the circadian receptors in our own eyes.
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Ferrer C., Melag?n G., del Pilar Gomez M., and Nasi E. (2012) Dissecting the Determinants of Light Sensitivity in Amphioxus Microvillar Photoreceptors: Possible Evolutionary Implications for Melanopsin Signaling. J. Neurosci. 32: 17977-17987.
del Pilar Gomez M., Angueyra J.M, and Nasi E. (2009) Light-transduction in melanopsin-expressing photoreceptors of Amphioxus. PNAS 16: 9081-9086.
Marine Biological Laboratory: http://www.mbl.edu
Thanks to Marine Biological Laboratory for this article.
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Ancestors of today?s placental mammals may never have shared the Earth with dinosaurs
New family tree suggests the predecessors of rodents, horses, and humans did not emerge until after the dino extinction
New family tree suggests the predecessors of rodents, horses, and humans did not emerge until after the dino extinction
By Erin Wayman
Web edition: February 7, 2013
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PUZZLE PIECE
Ukhaatherium nessovi (fossil shown) was one of 40 extinct mammal species that scientists used to construct a new mammal family tree. The tree indicates that modern placental mammals emerged after the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago.
Credit: Courtesy of S. Goldberg and M. Novacek/AMNH
Tyrannosaurus rex may never have had the chance to terrorize the grandfathers of rodents, rabbits or primates. A new family tree using both anatomical and genetic data indicates that the lineages of modern placental mammals ? those that give birth to well-developed young ? arose after the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago.
The new study, published in the Feb. 8 Science, adds to a debate over the emergence of a diverse group that includes whales, cats, bats, horses and humans. Since the 1990s, some scientists have concluded from family trees based largely on molecular evidence that at least some lineages of modern placental mammals originated as early as 100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. But paleontologists have been skeptical because they have found no fossils resembling these mammals that are older than 65 million years.
?What the [new] analyses do is vindicate the fossil record,? says Ken Rose, a paleontologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
But some molecular biologists aren?t as convinced. ?This paper really doesn?t add anything new to the debate,? says Olaf Bininda-Emonds of the University of Oldenburg in Germany.
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VIEW FROM THE TREE
A hypothetical ancestor of modern placental mammals (shown in an artist?s rendering) may have been a small, insect-eating creature, based on researchers? construction of a new mammal family tree.
Credit: Courtesy of Carl Buell
To build the family tree, paleontologist Maureen O?Leary of Stony Brook University in New York and colleagues began with 46 species of living mammals, including placental, marsupial and egg-laying mammals. The team also included 40 extinct species known from fossils. To determine how the species relate to one another, the researchers looked at differences in 27 genes in the living species. They also analyzed 4,541 physical traits related to bones, teeth and soft tissue in both the living and extinct mammals.
Some previous family trees had combined molecular and anatomical evidence. But in such studies the large amounts of available DNA always overshadowed the sparser anatomical data, O?Leary says. Using new measurements and published findings about the mammals, she and colleagues created the largest dataset of mammalian physical traits ever amassed, containing 10 times as much anatomical data as previous family trees had used. (The resulting database, MorphoBank, is online and freely accessible.)This gave the genetic and anatomical data equal weight in constructing the tree, she says.
Once the tree took shape, the researchers used the ages of the fossil species and where they sit in the tree to date the origin of the tree branches. The oldest fossil that grouped with the living placental mammals dates to 64.85 million years ago. ??
The timing suggests that the disappearance of the dinosaurs and changes in the post-extinction ecosystem might have opened up opportunities for placental mammals, says Jaelyn Eberle, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Colorado Boulder.
But other researchers say the new work doesn?t resolve fundamental issues of how to date the origins of placental mammals. Evolutionary biologist Mark Springer of the University of California, Riverside says using fossils to date a family tree is tricky because of convergent evolution: An extinct species, for example, might be inadvertently grouped wrongly with a living species not because they share the same common ancestor but because they independently evolved similar physical traits. ?I don?t think convergence has been effectively dealt with,? he says.
Convergent evolution is less of a problem in trees based on genetic evidence, he says. Such trees use steady mutation rates to calculate when lineages diverged from each other. Yet this method also has its drawbacks, says J. David Archibald, an evolutionary biologist at San Diego State University. For example, he says, it assumes mutation rates are constant, but researchers have found that these rates may change with time and vary by gene.
Although the new study has provoked controversy, some critics are open to changing their opinions. ?I think Cretaceous placentals are distinctly possible and out there to find,? Bininda-Emonds says. ?I?m also willing to say that if the paleontologists find nothing of the sort in the next 20 to 30 years and haven?t left some big obvious clumps of rock unturned, then I?ll switch camps and say we need to re-examine our [molecular] models.?
Suggested Reading
R. Ehrenberg. Evolutionary genetic relationships coming into focus. Science News Online, March 9, 2010. [Go to]
T. Hesman Saey. Just warm enough. Science News. Vol. 179, January 1, 2011, p. 15. Available online: [Go to]
A. Maxmen. Twice upon a time. Science News. Vol. 173, March 8, 2008, p. 154. Available online: [Go to]
S. Milius. Mammal size maxed out after dinos? demise. Science News Online, November 25, 2010. [Go to]
Why Indeed and its one of the key questions we are always asked?
?How can outsourcing our key ?people? processes really help the business??
?Surely this should be an area we keep in-house??
As many of you know trying to find just the right person to fit into your team is no easy task, not only must they be able to perform the duties to the best possible standard, they also have to fit in with the many different personalities already in the office and of course be the right fit for your employer brand.
Our answer is simple?
Outsource your key issue areas within HR and Talent Management and it will save you time, money and stress AND will help you drive efficiencies and better your business in so many ways:
Your cost per hire will be trimmed
Your knowledge base, resources, insight and knowhow will increase
You will inject knowledge that you don?t currently possess in your business for niche HR and Talent Management areas
Ultimately using a consultant that knows your market inside out saves you money, as you don?t have to pay them to learn about your business and will have the right contacts.
Good corporate recruitment is about taking a long-term approach and creating an attractive employer brand and candidate experience.
Good recruiting is not just about knowing your industry and the ?movers and shakers? within it (of course that is a part) Good recruiting is about really understanding your business and the champions it needs to keep it growing.
So how do you chose?
Think about what your business really needs when choosing a partner to work with on HR and Recruitment. ?Ask yourself what you want to achieve and if the providers you are speaking to really can fit your mould and offer you a tailored solution that will work with your business model.? Do they have access to the right contacts in the right business communities? What are the added benefits to using their services?
Outsourcing is always a viable method of recruiting and retaining employees, as long as it?s a solution you really need, a solution you are prepared to commit to and something that you will be able to give time to for delivery. ?These solutions aren?t always able to make an immediate impact, any solution worth its weight in gold will take time to set up and roll out, but once set up you will reap the benefits commercially and as an employer of choice for potential employees.
You must make sure you really want the solution and don?t base the decision solely on cost as it may not be the deal-maker that you need, much more importantly is the need to understand what you need from your HR strategy and longer term goals. ?Getting testimonials will help to support you in your decisions and speaking to the clients of a potential provider also assists.
Outsourcing can really help, if you are ready for it? by going through the process of evaluating your needs you can better define how this will work but be aware the answer may not be outsourcing at all. You may simply need assistance in smaller niche areas of our business that will grow in-time into an outsourced solution.
Check out our free checklist for evaluating your outsourcing needs by contacting us on 020 3538 5311.? Keep a look out for our new download page on our website coming soon where you will be able to get all the free resources you need !
If you liked this? great? for more useful?Blogs?read on or check out our page?@HRREV?or join the?HR Revolution?
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People? We are the most amazing things on this planet and how we interact with each other through work, rest and play changes depending on who we are, where we are and who with are with. By understanding how and why things tick, why we get on better with some more than others, and how by looking at the way we deal with people on a daily basis in a more positive light, whether we manage them, work with them, interact as a colleague, a mentor, a teacher, a boss or an employee we can really start living a much more insightful and amazing life! You get what you put into any relationship? by seeing the positive?s in people and bringing the best out in them you can really make it worthwhile!
BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) - Six-figure bids are expected when a rare 148-year-old baseball card discovered at a rural Maine yard sale is auctioned.
Saco River Auction Co. in Biddeford is holding an auction Wednesday that includes a card depicting the Brooklyn Atlantics amateur baseball club.
The card isn't the same as a modern-day baseball card, which became common in the 1880s. Rather, it's an original photograph from 1865 mounted on a card, showing nine players and a manager.
The Library of Congress says it's aware of only two copies of the photo. The other is in the institution's collection.
The auction house says a man found the card inside an old photo album he bought while antique picking in the small town of Baileyville on the Canadian border.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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One more big name coming?
??DPS: Dan Patrick says one more big name beyond Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun is yet to drop in the latest PED scandal rocking Major League Baseball.
Y!: MLB investigating Braun's tie to PED ring
Yahoo!: Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun, who beat a positive PED test on procedural grounds last year, was named in records from the Miami clinic that allegedly supplied Alex Rodriguez.
Contact: John Wallace wallacej@vcu.edu 804-628-1550 Virginia Commonwealth University
Laboratory experiments conducted by scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center suggest that a novel combination of the drugs ibrutinib and bortezomib could potentially be an effective new therapy for several forms of blood cancer, including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).
The study, published in the British Journal of Hematology, showed that the experimental drug combination killed cancer cells through a form of cell suicide known as apoptosis, but was relatively non-toxic to normal, healthy cells. Ibrutinib is a new agent that inhibits the B-cell receptor (BCR) signaling complex, which plays an important role in the survival of malignant B-cells. It has shown very promising initial results in the treatment of patients with B-cell malignancies, including chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), DLBCL and MCL. The synergistic interaction of the two drugs proved lethal even to lymphoma cells that had become resistant to bortezomib, when used alone.
"Bortezomib is currently used to treat MCL and multiple myeloma, but, unfortunately, many patients develop resistance to the drug," says the study's principle investigator Steven Grant, M.D., Shirley Carter Olsson and Sture Gordon Olsson Chair in Oncology Research, associate director for translational research, program co-leader of Developmental Therapeutics and Cancer Cell Signaling research member at VCU Massey Cancer Center. "We are hopeful that this combination therapy may circumvent such resistance and eventually help fill an urgent need for more effective therapies for patients with these uncommon blood disorders."
With cultured DLBCL and MCL cells in laboratory experiments spearheaded by Girija Dasmahapatra, Ph.D., lead author of the study's manuscript and instructor in the Department of Internal Medicine at VCU School of Medicine, the scientists found that ibrutinib blocked several molecular pathways that the cancer cells use for growth and survival. When ibrutinib was combined with bortezomib, the scientists observed a high level of synergism between the two drugs that resulted in profound cell death due to DNA damage, culminating in apoptosis. The research findings suggest that the effectiveness of the combination therapy against bortezomib-resistant lymphoma cells may stem from ibrutinib's ability to block signaling pathways used by the cancer cells to survive bortezomib exposure.
Specifically, exposure of DLBCL and MCL cells to ibrutinib blocked the cancer-promoting NF-?B, AKT and ERK1/2 signaling pathways. These signaling pathways provide cells with the ability to adapt to otherwise harmful environmental stimuli by transmitting messages from receptors located at the cell's surface to proteins within the cell that trigger a variety of biological processes. In particular, NF-?B, AKT and ERK1/2 have been shown to carry out many functions that allow cancer cells to survive and proliferate. Significantly, each of these pathways has been implicated in the development of resistance to proteasome inhibitors such as bortezomib.
"We have provided a framework for understanding how an agent like ibrutinib might be employed to enhance the activity of an established anti-cancer agent like bortezomib," says Grant. "We are currently working with representatives from the pharmaceutical industry and the National Cancer Institute to develop a new treatment strategy in which ibrutinib will be combined with proteasome inhibitors like bortezomib for the treatment of patients with lymphomas and potentially other blood cancers."
###
Grant and Dasmahapatra collaborated on this study with Hiral Patel and Tri Nguyen, Ph.D., from the Department of Internal Medicine at VCU School of Medicine; Paul Dent, Ph.D., Universal Corporation Distinguished Professor for Cancer Cell Signaling, vice chair of the department of neurosurgery and member of the Developmental Therapeutics research program at VCU Massey; and Richard I. Fisher, M.D., and Jonathan Friedberg, M.D., from the James T. Wilmot Cancer Center at the University of Rochester.
This research was supported by National Institutes of Health grants CA63753, CA93738 and CA100866; Lymphoma SPORE award 1P50 CA130805; award R6059-06 from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America; the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation; Myeloma Spore grant P50CA142509; the V Foundation; and, in part, by funding from VCU Massey Cancer Center's NIH-NCI Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA016059.
The full manuscript of this study is available online at:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjh.12206/abstract;jsessionid=D5165E95BC0631E5D3EAA2F6888ABC45.d01t02
News directors: Broadcast access to VCU Massey Cancer Center experts is available through VideoLink ReadyCam. ReadyCam transmits video and audio via fiber optics through a system that is routed to your newsroom. To schedule a live or taped interview, contact John Wallace, (804) 628-1550.
About VCU Massey Cancer Center:
VCU Massey Cancer Center is one of only 67 National Cancer Institute-designated institutions in the country that leads and shapes America's cancer research efforts. Working with all kinds of cancers, the Center conducts basic, translational and clinical cancer research, provides state-of-the-art treatments and clinical trials, and promotes cancer prevention and education. Since 1974, Massey has served as an internationally recognized center of excellence. It has one of the largest offerings of clinical trials in Virginia and serves patients in Richmond and in four satellite locations. Its 1,000 researchers, clinicians and staff members are dedicated to improving the quality of human life by developing and delivering effective means to prevent, control and ultimately to cure cancer. Visit Massey online at www.massey.vcu.edu or call 877-4-MASSEY for more information.
About VCU and the VCU Medical Center:
Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located in downtown Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 31,000 students in 222 degree and certificate programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-six of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU's 13 schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools of Virginia Commonwealth University compose the VCU Medical Center, one of the nation's leading academic medical centers. For more, see www.vcu.edu.
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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.
Contact: John Wallace wallacej@vcu.edu 804-628-1550 Virginia Commonwealth University
Laboratory experiments conducted by scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center suggest that a novel combination of the drugs ibrutinib and bortezomib could potentially be an effective new therapy for several forms of blood cancer, including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).
The study, published in the British Journal of Hematology, showed that the experimental drug combination killed cancer cells through a form of cell suicide known as apoptosis, but was relatively non-toxic to normal, healthy cells. Ibrutinib is a new agent that inhibits the B-cell receptor (BCR) signaling complex, which plays an important role in the survival of malignant B-cells. It has shown very promising initial results in the treatment of patients with B-cell malignancies, including chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), DLBCL and MCL. The synergistic interaction of the two drugs proved lethal even to lymphoma cells that had become resistant to bortezomib, when used alone.
"Bortezomib is currently used to treat MCL and multiple myeloma, but, unfortunately, many patients develop resistance to the drug," says the study's principle investigator Steven Grant, M.D., Shirley Carter Olsson and Sture Gordon Olsson Chair in Oncology Research, associate director for translational research, program co-leader of Developmental Therapeutics and Cancer Cell Signaling research member at VCU Massey Cancer Center. "We are hopeful that this combination therapy may circumvent such resistance and eventually help fill an urgent need for more effective therapies for patients with these uncommon blood disorders."
With cultured DLBCL and MCL cells in laboratory experiments spearheaded by Girija Dasmahapatra, Ph.D., lead author of the study's manuscript and instructor in the Department of Internal Medicine at VCU School of Medicine, the scientists found that ibrutinib blocked several molecular pathways that the cancer cells use for growth and survival. When ibrutinib was combined with bortezomib, the scientists observed a high level of synergism between the two drugs that resulted in profound cell death due to DNA damage, culminating in apoptosis. The research findings suggest that the effectiveness of the combination therapy against bortezomib-resistant lymphoma cells may stem from ibrutinib's ability to block signaling pathways used by the cancer cells to survive bortezomib exposure.
Specifically, exposure of DLBCL and MCL cells to ibrutinib blocked the cancer-promoting NF-?B, AKT and ERK1/2 signaling pathways. These signaling pathways provide cells with the ability to adapt to otherwise harmful environmental stimuli by transmitting messages from receptors located at the cell's surface to proteins within the cell that trigger a variety of biological processes. In particular, NF-?B, AKT and ERK1/2 have been shown to carry out many functions that allow cancer cells to survive and proliferate. Significantly, each of these pathways has been implicated in the development of resistance to proteasome inhibitors such as bortezomib.
"We have provided a framework for understanding how an agent like ibrutinib might be employed to enhance the activity of an established anti-cancer agent like bortezomib," says Grant. "We are currently working with representatives from the pharmaceutical industry and the National Cancer Institute to develop a new treatment strategy in which ibrutinib will be combined with proteasome inhibitors like bortezomib for the treatment of patients with lymphomas and potentially other blood cancers."
###
Grant and Dasmahapatra collaborated on this study with Hiral Patel and Tri Nguyen, Ph.D., from the Department of Internal Medicine at VCU School of Medicine; Paul Dent, Ph.D., Universal Corporation Distinguished Professor for Cancer Cell Signaling, vice chair of the department of neurosurgery and member of the Developmental Therapeutics research program at VCU Massey; and Richard I. Fisher, M.D., and Jonathan Friedberg, M.D., from the James T. Wilmot Cancer Center at the University of Rochester.
This research was supported by National Institutes of Health grants CA63753, CA93738 and CA100866; Lymphoma SPORE award 1P50 CA130805; award R6059-06 from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America; the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation; Myeloma Spore grant P50CA142509; the V Foundation; and, in part, by funding from VCU Massey Cancer Center's NIH-NCI Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA016059.
The full manuscript of this study is available online at:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjh.12206/abstract;jsessionid=D5165E95BC0631E5D3EAA2F6888ABC45.d01t02
News directors: Broadcast access to VCU Massey Cancer Center experts is available through VideoLink ReadyCam. ReadyCam transmits video and audio via fiber optics through a system that is routed to your newsroom. To schedule a live or taped interview, contact John Wallace, (804) 628-1550.
About VCU Massey Cancer Center:
VCU Massey Cancer Center is one of only 67 National Cancer Institute-designated institutions in the country that leads and shapes America's cancer research efforts. Working with all kinds of cancers, the Center conducts basic, translational and clinical cancer research, provides state-of-the-art treatments and clinical trials, and promotes cancer prevention and education. Since 1974, Massey has served as an internationally recognized center of excellence. It has one of the largest offerings of clinical trials in Virginia and serves patients in Richmond and in four satellite locations. Its 1,000 researchers, clinicians and staff members are dedicated to improving the quality of human life by developing and delivering effective means to prevent, control and ultimately to cure cancer. Visit Massey online at www.massey.vcu.edu or call 877-4-MASSEY for more information.
About VCU and the VCU Medical Center:
Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located in downtown Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 31,000 students in 222 degree and certificate programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-six of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU's 13 schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools of Virginia Commonwealth University compose the VCU Medical Center, one of the nation's leading academic medical centers. For more, see www.vcu.edu.
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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.
SANAA, Yemen (AP) ? A ship seized by Yemeni authorities last month carried a wide variety of Iranian-made weapons, Yemen's Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
They included material for bombs and suicide belts, explosives, Katyusha rockets, surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and large amounts of ammunition.
In a statement, the ministry detailed contents of the Iranian ship seized in Yemen's territorial waters in mid-January. It described contents as "large, diverse and dangerous" weapons that also included night vision binoculars and goggles, remote devices, circuits, wires and rifle silencers.
Yemen state TV showed Interior Minister Abdel-Qader Kahtan and top military officials inspecting the ship, named Jihan 1, docked at Aden port in southern Yemen.
In Washington, U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, "this is obviously extremely troubling." She added, "we commend the Yemenis on their interdiction's success."
The Yemeni news agency reported that Yemen's coast guard intercepted the ship in an operation coordinated with the U.S. Navy. It said that the vessel's eight crew members were Yemenis.
Yemen has recently witnessed several cases of illegal arms shipments through its porous shores on the Red and Arabian seas.
Yemen is home to an active branch of al-Qaida, which staged several failed or foiled attacks on U.S. territory over the past several years. Washington considers al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula as the terror group's most dangerous branch.
Yemen's government, backed by the U.S., has carried out a wide offensive against al-Qaida strongholds in the south, driving militants out of cities and towns. The militants retaliated with a series of assassinations of top military and security officials in addition to deadly suicide attacks in the capital and in the south.
At the same time, U.S. drone strikes have killed scores of suspected al-Qaida militants.
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Public release date: 6-Feb-2013
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