Baseball briefs

* Buck Martinez was hired as manager of the Toronto Blue Jaysafter spending the last 14 seasons analyzing the team's performanceon television. Martinez, a catcher for the Blue Jays from 1981-86,has been the team's color commentator since 1987. Martinez is thelatest to go directly from a team's broadcast booth to the dugout.Larry Dierker won three division titles since being hired inHouston, and Arizona hired analyst Bob Brenly last month to replaceBuck Showalter. Dierker and Brenly also had no managing experiencebefore being hired.

Martinez takes over a team that went 83-79, finishing third inthe AL East in 2000. The Blue Jays nucleus of Carlos Delgado, TonyBatista, Raul …

Ducks Bounce Back With Victory Over Wild

ANAHEIM, Calif. - Coming off their first regulation loss of the season, the Anaheim Ducks showed they're resilient.

Goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere, who made 24 saves in Anaheim's 3-2 victory over Minnesota on Sunday night, was pleased to see the Ducks quickly get back to earning points.

"Good teams find ways to bounce back," Giguere said. "Obviously you can't win them all and you can't be successful all the time. But when you're not, it's important to come back the next game and play hard.

"It was important to start this homestand on the right foot and we responded very well."

The Ducks' season-opening run of 16 games without a defeat in regulation ended …

UN: staff came under fire in Sri Lanka 'safe zone'

Dozens of U.N. workers and their relatives spent a terrifying night huddling in hastily built bunkers as artillery fire pounded a civilian "safe zone" in Sri Lanka's war-wracked north, according to an internal U.N. memo.

The memo, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, said the artillery shells killed nine civilians in a nearby bunker and were apparently fired by government forces.

The military denied the charge and President Mahinda Rajapaksa renewed the government's pledge not to launch attacks in the refuge as it fought to crush the Tamil Tiger rebels and end the country's 25-year-old civil war.

As concern mounted for the …

Jocks, nerds a style item

NEW YORK Richard Martin is curator of "Jocks and Nerds," a NewYork City fashion exhibit that celebrates and spoofs 20th centurymen.

Mannequins have been transformed into rebels, workers, cowboys,military men, hunters, sportsmen, Joe College, businessmen, men abouttown and dandies, as well as jocks and nerds.

"Someone can be a businessman five days a week, but on Saturdayhe puts on his safari jacket and becomes the Ernest Hemingway ofGreat Neck," said Martin. "At night, he goes to a downtown club andbecomes a rebel."

Or perhaps a jock - depicted in photographs of SylvesterStallone as "Rocky," a reclining Jim Palmer pitching Jockeyunderwear, and a comic …

Ligand Detection and Discrimination by Spatial Relocalization: A Kinase-Phosphatase Segregation Model of TCR Activation

ABSTRACT

We develop a model of tyrosine phosphorylation and activation of the T-cell receptor (TCR) by localization to regions of close membrane-membrane proximity (close contact) that physically exclude tyrosine phosphatases such as CD45. Phosphatase exclusion generates regions of low phosphatase and high kinase activity and thus our model provides a framework to examine the kinetic segregation model of TCR activation. We incorporate a sequence of activation steps modeling the construction of the signalosome with a final sequestered, or high-stability, signaling state. The residence time of unbound TCRs in tyrosine kinase-rich domains is shown to be too short for accumulation of …

Autopsies on 5 brothers found slain in Germany point to suffocation

Autopsy results point to suffocation as the likely cause of death for five brothers believed to have been slain by their mentally disturbed mother, a prosecutor said Thursday.

Autopsy results indicated the boys had been given sleeping pills and then suffocated, said Uwe Wick, a prosecutor in the northern port city of Kiel. Their 31-year-old mother, who has not been identified, is suspected of killing them, he said.

"We have charged her with five counts of murder, but in an instance of complete lack of full mental capacities," Wick said, meaning that she could not be held responsible for her actions.

He said the woman has been committed …

News in Brief

CAR CRASHES INTO BUILDING

A 19-year-old woman is facing multiple misdemeanor charges in a crash that injured six people early Friday on the Northwest Side. Chicago Police said Glynis Jones, of the 1700 block of North McVicker, was in the front passenger seat of a car when she got into an argument with the driver and grabbed the steering wheel, causing the car to crash into a building at 4041 W. North Ave. Jones is charged with five counts of simple battery and one count each of reckless conduct and criminal damage to property, police said. …