14-03-2012 22:24 I am actually here to get everybody to live much longer. Japanese yogurt LKM512 lkm512.com doubles lab mammal life. I have not tried it, Do not know what it tastes like yet there is a yogurt from Japan published at the peer reviwed journal PLoS one that more than doubles the lifespan of mice. Its possible the yogurt scientist made a drawn manga comic at youtube http://www.youtube.com that perhaps people here would appreciate. I strongly support longevity to immortality research sometimes writing at imminst.org longecity.com as treonsverdery http://www.longecity.org all the kawaii made me super sympathetic to cosplayers Any humans or humanoids that dress up as creatures might have fun at conventions carrying around the yogurt that makes mice live twice as long. New hair colors Genetically engineering peoples hair to be different colors might be cosplay. anyway there is a medical journal article at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov called Nonviral in situ green fluorescent protein labeling and culture of primary, adult human hair follicle epithelial progenitor cells. Im not linked to the author or anything, I just thought that people here might like being genetically modified organisms. phycobilins are ocean colors that can also be made a part of genetic engineering actual cosplayer is verykindwhitecat visit her video at http://www.youtube.com
Monthly Archives: March 2012
GGN: Homeless Turned Into Mobile WI-FI, Genetic Engineering to Fight Warming, DNA is Your Destiny – Video
15-03-2012 00:18 PLEASE SUBSCRIBE Please visit: http://www.ggnonline.com or http for the latest news commentary by Global Government News Please donate to GGN: http://www.paypal.com because it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. HEADLINES WITH LINKS: Can Lure of Driver's License Keep Kids in School? bit.ly DARPA wants swarms of "disposable" satellites to provide almost-live images on demand bit.ly Gingrich: Package Tracking Could Be Used To Locate Illegal Immigrants huff.to Obama administration blocks Texas voter ID law yhoo.it Turning the Homeless Into 4G Hotspots at SXSW yhoo.it Marketing to Your DNA: The Suits Want To Know More About You bit.ly How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did onforb.es New York State Set to Add All Convict DNA to Its Database nyti.ms Flu Vaccine Causes Death Of 7 Year Old Kaylynne Matten bit.ly Treating Children Whose Parents Refuse to Have Them Vaccinated bit.ly DNA database in doubt after teenager spends three months behind bars for rape in city he has never even visited because gene samples were mixed up bit.ly Critics warn that thousands of Britons could be extradited under plans for EU states to be given access to our DNA bank bit.ly Why the British are free-thinking and the Chinese love conformity: It's all in the genes claim scientists bit.ly Spanish doctors successfully perform 1st fetal lung surgery bit.ly Forget Asteroids and Volcanoes: Chemically Induced Infertility Threatens Human Race bit.ly Want to become a father? Put down ...
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GGN: Homeless Turned Into Mobile WI-FI, Genetic Engineering to Fight Warming, DNA is Your Destiny - Video
Fast-track breeding could bring a second Green Revolution
Green revolution:Fast-track breeding is beginning to develop crops that can produce more and healthier food without controversial genetic engineering.
In Zambia during the current planting season, a corn crop will go into the fields that begins the process of rapidly boosting vitamin A content by as much ten-fold helping to address a nutritional deficiency that causes 250,000-500,000 children to go blind annually, most of them in Africa and Asia. In China, Kenya, and Madagascar, also this planting season, farmers will put out a crop of Artemisia annua that yields 20 to 30 percent more of the chemical compound artemisinin, the basis for what is now the worlds standard treatment for malaria.
Both improvements are happening because of fast-track breeding technology that promises to produce a 21st-century green revolution. It is already putting more food on tables though its unclear whether it can add enough food to keep pace as the worlds human population booms to 9 billion people by 2050.
Fast-track breeding is also giving agronomists a remarkable tool for quickly adapting crops to climate change and the increasing challenges of drought, flooding, emerging diseases, and shifting agricultural zones. And it can help save lives: In the absence of prevention, half those victims of vitamin A deficiency now die shortly after going blind, according to the World Health Organization; and in 2010, lack of adequate treatment meaning artemisinin contributed to the deaths of 655,000 children from malaria.
The fast-track technology, called marker-assisted selection (MAS), or molecular breeding, takes advantage of rapid improvements in genetic sequencing, but avoids all the regulatory and political baggage of genetic engineering. Bill Freese, a science policy analyst with the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit advocacy group, calls it a perfectly acceptable tool. I dont see any food safety issue. It can be a very useful technique if its used by breeders who are working in the public interest.
Molecular breeding isnt genetic engineering, a technology that has long alarmed critics on two counts. Its methods seem outlandish taking genes from spiders and putting them in goats, or borrowing insect resistance from soil bacteria and transferring it into corn and it has also seemed to benefit a handful of agribusiness giants armed with patents, at the expense of public interest.
By contrast, molecular breeding is merely a much faster and more efficient way of doing what nature and farmers have always done, by natural selection and artificial selection respectively: It takes existing genes that happen to be advantageous in a given situation and increases their frequency in a population.
In the past, farmers and breeders did it by walking around their fields and looking at individual plants or animals that seemed to have desirable traits, like greater productivity, or resistance to a particular disease. Then they went to work cross-breeding to see if they could tease out that trait and get it to appear reliably in subsequent generations. It could take decades, and success at breeding in one trait often meant bringing along some deleterious fellow traveler, or inadvertently breeding out some other essential trait.
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Fast-track breeding could bring a second Green Revolution
Combination Treatment in Mice Shows Promise for Fatal Neurological Disorder in Kids
Newswise Infants with Batten disease, a rare but fatal neurological disorder, appear healthy at birth. But within a few short years, the illness takes a heavy toll, leaving children blind, speechless and paralyzed. Most die by age 5.
There are no effective treatments for the disease, which can also strike older children. And several therapeutic approaches, evaluated in mouse models and in young children, have produced disappointing results.
But now, working in mice with the infantile form of Batten disease, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Kings College London have discovered dramatic improvements in life span and motor function by treating the animals with gene therapy and bone marrow transplants.
The results are surprising, the researchers say, because the combination therapy is far more effective than either treatment alone. Gene therapy was moderately effective in the mice, and bone marrow transplants provided no benefit, but together the two treatments created a striking synergy.
The research is reported online in the Annals of Neurology.
Until now, this disease has been refractory to every therapy that has been thrown at it, says senior author Mark Sands, PhD, professor of medicine and of genetics at the School of Medicine. The results are the most hopeful to date, and they open up a new avenue of research to find effective therapies to fight this devastating disease.
The combination therapy did not cure the disease, the scientists caution, but mice that received both treatments experienced significant, lasting benefits.
Mice that got gene therapy and a bone marrow transplant lived nearly 18.5 months, more than double the lifespan of untreated mice with the disease. (Healthy laboratory mice live about 24 months.) And for a significant portion of their lives, motor skills in mice that got both therapies were indistinguishable from those in normal, healthy mice.
While bone marrow transplants carry significant risks, especially in children, the researchers say they may be able to combine gene therapy with another treatment to achieve the same results. This same approach potentially could be used to treat other forms of Batten disease.
Batten disease is an inherited genetic disorder that strikes fewer than five of every 100,000 U.S. children but is slightly more common in northern Europe. There are several forms of the disease, diagnosed at different ages, and all are related to the inability of cells to break down and recycle proteins.
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Combination Treatment in Mice Shows Promise for Fatal Neurological Disorder in Kids
Leukemia gene mutations linked to survival odds
(Reuters) - Advances in genetic profiling are paving the way for more precise, and effective, treatment of the aggressive bone marrow cancer known as acute mylogenous leukemia, or AML, according to new research.
Two studies, published in the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, show that genetic testing can guide doctors in how best to use current therapies as well as identify new drug targets.
"As lots of studies identify new alterations in genes in leukemia and other cancers, we need to begin to understand how these alterations in DNA can predict outcomes and determine differences in treatment," said Dr. Ross Levine of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the lead author of one of the studies.
Such personalized therapy is considered the new frontier for medical practice, and hopes for its success underpin a $5.7 billion hostile bid by drugmaker Roche Holding for gene sequencing company Illumina.
The second study, from Washington University in St. Louis, found that 85 percent of bone marrow cells in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood-related disorder that can precede AML, were linked to mutations in progressive cancer.
The Sloan-Kettering study analyzed bone marrow samples from 502 AML patients for mutations in 18 genes associated with the disease. The researchers were able to categorize two-thirds of the patients into groups clearly defined by their survival chances.
The study found that high-dose chemotherapy improved the rate of survival for patients with three specific genetic mutations, compared with standard-dose chemo.
It also showed that genetic profiling makes it possible to more precisely determine which patients are most likely to have their leukemia return after treatment.
AML is typically cured in about 40 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 60, according to Levine.
"We were able to identify a very large subset of patients who need new therapies," he said. "Another set was found to do incredibly well with existing therapies, and that is very informative."
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Leukemia gene mutations linked to survival odds
Detailed Gene Scan Might Help Guide Leukemia Treatment
WEDNESDAY, March 14 (HealthDay News) -- By analyzing gene mutations in patients with acute myeloid leukemia, researchers were able to more accurately predict which ones had the best chances of going into remission, and which ones would respond well to standard treatments or needed more aggressive treatment.
Doctors from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City analyzed 18 genes from about 500 patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). AML is a cancer of the bone marrow, or the soft tissue that forms blood cells.
The patients had previously taken part in a clinical trial for a chemotherapy drug, daunorubicin, and researchers knew how everyone had fared in that study.
In the new analysis, the scientists used the latest gene-sequencing technology to determine what mutations were present in the cancer cells of the patients, and whether the presence of those mutations predicted how well people did.
They found that certain combinations of mutations were associated with both better or worse chances of survival, and that those genetic predictors could be used to determine whether patients would respond to the standard dose of daunorubicin or whether they should receive a higher, more aggressive dose of the drug.
Currently, some cancer hospitals already do a limited genetic analysis in leukemia patients to look for three mutations that are associated with a low or high risk of relapse, experts explained.
But about 60 percent of people fall into the intermediate category, said senior study author Dr. Ross Levine, an associate member in the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Sloan-Kettering. That leaves oncologists with a lot of uncertainty about how aggressively to treat those patients and what to tell them about their prognosis.
"If you know patients have a high chance of cure, you would pursue a standard therapeutic route," Levine said. "If you have a patient with a low chance of cure, you might consider more aggressive or investigational therapies."
Using the information from the more extensive analysis, about half of the patients who were in the intermediate risk could be put into a low- or high-risk category, Levine said.
"What we found was by studying the DNA of patients with leukemia and classifying all 500 patients, you could identify a set of mutations, which allows us to more accurately separate those at high risk of relapse, at intermediate risk of relapse and at low risk of relapse," Levine said. "Specifically, risk stratification with more extensive mutational profiling better predicts outcome than current classification schema."
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Detailed Gene Scan Might Help Guide Leukemia Treatment
Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?
Early Earth may have had too much water for life to take hold. Conditions for life may have been better on Mars, which had dry spots. Cycles of water and drying may have been needed to give the molecular building blocks for life a chemical toehold.
Given the same raw materials, Mars would have been a better host for life to arise than Earth, which some scientists believe was too flooded for the chemistry of life to gain a toehold.
Without at least occasional dry land, the chemistry needed to get life started doesnt work very well because the molecules to support genetics, such as RNA, are chemically unstable in many ways, particularly in water.
PHOTOS: Weirdest Mars Craters
That raises a problem, because life, at least as we know it today, seems to require water.
"How is it possible that the chemicals that we now have supporting modern life, which is so unstable in water, could have arisen in water?" biochemist Steven Benner, head of the Foundation For Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainsville, Fla., told Discovery News.
The answer could be that life evolved in places that occasionally dried out.
"You can get RNA and its building blocks to be stable in an Earth-like environment, provided you put them into some environment that is deficient in water," Benner said, pointing to a place like Death Valley, where there is intermittent rainfall to provide organic compounds from the atmosphere as well as cycles of dryness.
"If you get building blocks for RNA, you get genetics and you're off to the races. You've got life," Benner said.
But there's a catch.
Juicers, Trippers, and Crocodiles: The Dangerous World of Underground Chemistry | DISCOVER
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Nobody dreams of growing up and landing a low-paying job in New Jersey making chemicals used in shampoos and hair gels. And on those long, tedious days back in 1991 when a 24-year-old lab technician named Patrick Arnold stood alone in a room stirring thickening agents into smelly vats of goo, there was plenty of time to reflect on the twists of fate that had condemned him to work in a place where nothing interesting ever happened, in a job that was just going nowhere.
It took months to find the way out, but the path was there in front of him all along. Arnold was an avid weight lifter, cursed with an average build that had long ago stopped cooperating with his efforts to get bigger. Even so, every night after work he would head to one of several gyms where he pumped iron and talked shop with other muscleheads. The conversation would often turn to anabolic steroids. Arnold had majored in chemistry at the University of New Haven, and those weight-room discussions got him thinking.
One afternoon after starting the days reactions at work, Arnold marched down the hall to the chemistry library on his floor and looked up the molecular structures of the steroids mentioned in his muscle magazines. Anabolic steroids, which are essentially synthetic testosterone, had only just been declared controlled substances, so there was still an awful lot of information available about them.
It wasnt long before it hit him: I hate my job, Im sitting here, Ive got a labI can try making some of these things myself. No one will even know what the hell Im doing. Arnold added the steroid precursors he would need to the regular list of laboratory chemicals he ordered through the company, and nobody was the wiser.
Progress was slow at first. Often he would set out to make a product that he knew should form a crystalline structure, only to end up with a sticky oil stuck to a flask. To Arnold that residue was like a flashing caution sign, an indication that potentially toxic impurities and leftover reactants had failed to separate from the brew. But over time he became expert at using solvents to wash the impurities and reactants away, and his compounds increasingly came to form translucent, icelike crystals that indicated a high level of purity...
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Juicers, Trippers, and Crocodiles: The Dangerous World of Underground Chemistry | DISCOVER
Chemistry Students Prepare No Bake Cookies as Project
Hamburg High School's chemistry classes recently participated in an experiment accompanied by an interesting project.
Chemistry instructor Rose Hamilton created an experiment for the students to make cookies in the lab. Students made no-bake cookies in class, and they were required to make a dozen cookies from scratch for homework.
The students were given guidelines on how to make the cookies at home. They had to make the cookies from scratch, and the students were required to have pictures taken of them while they were making the cookies. The students then presented the cookies to their class, along with the recipe they had chosen.
According to Mrs. Hamilton, the experiment allowed the classes to work with limiting reactants, those factors that limit the amount of other reactants that can combine to produce the desired product. In the "cookie lab," the students were given a bag of sugar with an unknown amount and a recipe. The students had to determine how much sugar, or limiting reactant, they had and then calculate how much of each of the other ingredients they needed in order to make the "perfect cookie."
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Chemistry Students Prepare No Bake Cookies as Project
The Chemistry Club creates half day networking master classes to meet demand
The Chemistry Club, a leading independent organisation serving the technology sector, has today announced that it will run a series of half-day intensive networking master classes in the UK. They are aimed at senior executives are set to launch later this year and have been co-created with leading industry trainers.
London (PRWEB UK) 15 March 2012
The Chemistry Club aims to cover every aspect of face-to-face networking as well as creating a simulated networking event to help delegates practice their new found skills. The half day master classes will offer a condensed version the full day master class and cover all key areas of networking including; how to develop confidence in your ability to connect with people you dont know, how to start, sustain and finish conversations, combating nervousness, and learning how to prepare for events. Understanding how to present information about yourself, how to make a lasting impression, and improving your self-projection will also be covered.
The master class will cost 1100 + VAT and to ensure all attendees gain maximum value from the programme, number of delegates at each session will be kept to a minimum. Every individual who attends one of the companys half-day courses can also take advantage of follow-on telephone support.
About The Chemistry Club
The Chemistry Club is a leading organisation serving the technology industry. The business was established in 1999 and holds a series of business-to-business events, executive coaching, special briefings, and networking master classes in the Central London area. The company run by Mark Simon is known for its networking events which have enabled people to meet and share their opinions in a neutral environment. For more information, please refer to The Chemistry Club website at http://www.networkingmasterclass.com/
Ross Hall FTI Consulting 020 7269 9334 Email Information
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The Chemistry Club creates half day networking master classes to meet demand
Biotechnology screencast session 4 – Video
12-03-2012 12:07 In this session Mr. Workman describes three main types of cloning. 1) Gene cloning, 2) Reproductive cloning, & 3) Therapeutic cloning. Horticultural plant cloning, natural and induced twinning and somatic cell nuclear transfer are types of reproductive cloning processes discussed. This ScreenCast was recorded with Camtasia software and uploaded to YouTube thereafter .
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Biotechnology screencast session 4 - Video
RBCC Closes Deal with Game Changing Biotech Firm
NOKOMIS, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
With the global demand for biotechnology solutions to mounting health concerns growing every day, Rainbow Coral Corp. (OTCBB: RBCC.OB - News) has been working hard to deliver the kinds of breakthroughs that doctors, scientists, and researchers the world over are begging for.
Today, Rainbow BioSciences, the biotech division of Rainbow Coral Corp. (OTCBB: RBCC.OB - News) announced that it has signed a deal to acquire an interest in the cutting-edge biotech firm Nano3D Biosciences, Inc. (n3D). One of the hottest emerging biotech developers in the world, n3D is producing new tools that could challenge long-held assumptions about healthcareand change lives in the process.
The agreement is the culmination of months of work and negotiations. N3D is a terrific fit with RBCCs aggressive focus on company growth. The companys new breakthrough cell-culturing technology, the Bio-Assembler, is fully commercialized already. RBCCs participation will provide n3D with the funds for marketing and distributing the Bio-Assembler to new markets as cellular research in the biotech sector explodes around the globe.
The acquisition has RBCC well-positioned to participate in the potentially dramatic upside that many bioscience companies realize at this stage. N3Ds Bio-Assembler could be poised to revolutionize the way stem cell research and the study of other living tissues is conducted worldwide, with the potential to ultimately reduce the development timeline for new life-saving drug therapies.
For more information on Rainbow BioSciences, RBCCs biotechnology division, please visit http://www.rainbowbiosciences.com/investors.
Rainbow BioSciences will develop new medical and research technology innovations to compete alongside companies such as Cell Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTIC - News), Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ: BIIB - News), Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT - News) and Elan Corp. (NYSE: ELN - News).
About Rainbow BioSciences
Rainbow BioSciences, LLC, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rainbow Coral Corp. (OTCBB: RBCC.OB - News). The company continually seeks out new partnerships with biotechnology developers to deliver profitable new medical technologies and innovations. For more information on our growth-oriented business initiatives, please visit our website at [www.RainbowBioSciences.com]. For investment information and performance data on the company, please visit http://www.RainbowBioSciences.com/investors.
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RBCC Closes Deal with Game Changing Biotech Firm
Fielding questions about climate change
Public release date: 14-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Clea Desjardins clea.desjardins@concordia.ca 514-848-2424 x5068 Concordia University
This press release is available in French.
Montreal -- Canada defines itself as a nation that stretches from coast to coast to coast. But can we keep those coasts healthy in the face of climate change? Yves Glinas, associate professor in Concordia's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has found the solution in a surprising element: iron.
In a study published in Nature, Glinas along with Concordia PhD candidate Karine Lalonde and graduate Alexandre Ouellet, as well as McGill colleague Alfonso Mucci studies the chemical makeup of sediment samples from around the world ocean to show how iron oxides remove carbon dioxide from our atmosphere.
"People around the planet are fighting to reduce the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere in the hopes of reducing climate change. But when it comes to getting rid of the CO2 that's already there, nature herself plays an important role," Glinas explains. CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and safely trapped on the ocean floor through a natural reaction that fixes the molecule to organic carbon on the surface of large bodies of water.
How exactly does that fixation process work? "For well over a decade, the scientific community has held onto the hypothesis that tiny clay minerals were responsible for preserving that specific fraction of organic carbon once it had sunk to the seabed," explains Mucci, whose related research was picked as one of the top 10 Scientific Discoveries of the year by Qubec Science. Through careful analysis of sediments from all over the world, Glinas and his team found that iron oxides were in fact responsible for trapping one fifth of all the organic carbon deposited on the ocean floor.
With this new knowledge comes increased concern: iron oxides are turning into what might be termed endangered molecules. As their name suggests, iron oxides can only form in the presence of oxygen, meaning that a well-oxygenated coastal ecosystem is necessary for the iron oxides to do their work in helping to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But there has been a worrying decrease in dissolved oxygen concentrations found in certain coastal environments and this trend is expanding. Locations once teeming with life are slowly becoming what are known as "dead zones" in which oxygen levels in the surface sediment are becoming increasingly depleted. That familiar culprit, man-made pollution, is behind the change.
Major rivers regularly discharge pollutants from agricultural fertilizers and human waste directly into lake and coastal environments, leading to a greater abundance of plankton. These living organisms are killed off at a greater rate and more organic carbon is sinking to the bottom waters, causing even greater consumption of dissolved oxygen. This makes the problem of low dissolved oxygen levels even worse. If the amount of oxygen in an aquatic environment decreases beyond a certain point, iron oxides stop being produced, thus robbing that environment of a large fraction of its natural ability to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
But there is hope. "This study also represents an indirect plea towards reducing the quantities of fertilizers and other nutrient-rich contaminants discharged in aquatic systems" explains Lalonde, who Glinas credits with much of the work behind this elemental study. She hopes that better understanding the iron-organic carbon stabilizing mechanism could "eventually lead to new ways of increasing the rate of organic carbon burial in sediments."
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Fielding questions about climate change
"Grey's Anatomy," Live and Singing
Grey's Anatomy
Several members of the "Grey's Anatomy" cast will sing at Royce Hall on Sunday, March 18.
When"Grey's Anatomy" first debuted back in 2005, it was presented as a medical drama. Stories of a hospital, and the people who work there, and love there, and the patients they love and treat.
It wasn't sold as a musical extravaganza a la "Smash" or "Glee"or, yep,"CopRock"(c'mon -- "Cop Rock"! Miss that show). But history, and thousands of CD racks, tell the further story; "Grey's" is very much associated with the pleasures of song, both via its best-selling soundtracks and the tunes the characters have actually sung on the show itself.
Now several cast members will be gathering together at Royce Hall on Sunday,March 18.They won't be in their scrubs (at least we expect not); they'll be gussied up and ready to belt a few showstoppers. "Grey's Anatomy:The Songs Beneath the Show"won't round up nearly every member in the large, multi-year cast, but look at the stellar performers set to show:Jessica Capshaw, Sandra Oh, and Sara Ramirez, who we wish would be singing somewhere in our immediate vicinity nearly every hour of the day.
Several other actors are set to show, and here's the reason why:They'll be raising money for TheActors Fund, which is a really good and important fund to support, least of all because we live in an actor-heavy community. The reasons are manifold.
The VIPticket is $250, and that nets you a few nice additionals beyond the performance, like a cast Q&A.
Follow NBCLA for the latest LA news, events and entertainment: Twitter: @NBCLA // Facebook: NBCLA
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"Grey's Anatomy," Live and Singing
Anatomy Of A Dunk Clip: Gerald Green
Photo by Crossett Library Bennington College on Flickr
I cant stop watching this Gerald Green dunk from five days ago in a game against the Houston Rockets:
Theres simply no question that its a great dunk, just as impressive as Blake Griffins shoryukenof Kendrick Perkins, but different. In fact, these two dunks expose the dual nature of the dunk itself: on one hand, it can be a tremendously physical, assaultive act and on the other hand it can be fluid and quasi-balletic. In much the way that some running backs crush linemen to get yardage while others juke and spin their way up the field, so some dunkers smash and others soar.
But what keeps me coming back to this particular dunk again and again is not precisely the dunk itself, but rather the totality of the clip. The above clip illustrates why a great in-game dunk clip is the gift that keeps on giving. Let me take you back, as I often seem to do, to Greek tragedy. A huge part of the way the plays of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus work is through the tension between the audiences understanding of the play and the characters inability to understand the play from within it. For example, we as the audience know that Oedipus has killed his father and married his mother but he does not, and so our enjoyment of the play comes from Oedipus understanding gradually reaching the same level as our own.
In the flow of the game, Greens dunk is barely comprehensible. It happens so fast that were left only with the understanding that something kind of incredible just happened. As we watch the replay, or watch the clip again and again on YouTube, we can now see it and know whats going to happen and so we get to enjoy the blossoming understanding of those who are just reacting to the moment. As you watch it again, take a look at the setup as the break evolves with MarShon Brooks leading it:
This is a pretty typical two-on-one fast break. Brooks sees Green coming up the other side of the floor and makes the smart play by throwing it up for him. At this point, were already expecting a dunktheres a clear path to the basket and Green is a terrific leaperbut most of the time this results in a straightforward two-handed dunk or, more likely, a basic one-handed jam.
But instead, Green jumps higher than really seems possible and delivers the windmill, turning this picayune fast break into something incredible. Take a moment to appreciate these two stills, which are separated by only a frame:
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Anatomy Of A Dunk Clip: Gerald Green
Anatomy of Shonda Rhimes, the Busiest Woman in Hollywood
Ellen Pompeo, Shonda Rhimes, Kate Walsh
Shonda Rhimes truly is a busy lady. Not only does she executive-produce two shows on the air Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice but her new political drama Scandal premieres next month, and she's got a period piece in contention at ABC. And while there's speculation her load could lighten should Grey's or Private fail to be renewed, Rhimes assures us that's not likely. TVGuide.com caught up with the showrunner for an uncensored look at everything on her plate, including actors' contracts, Private's move to Tuesdays and her upcoming projects.
You have two shows on the air with a third premiering next month and a fourth in development. What does a typical day look like? Shonda Rhimes: It's busy, but oddly enough, with Grey's in Season 8, Private in Season 5, and Scandal wrapped for the season, I feel like I've learned my job well enough that I hope that's it not too taxing. It's mentally taxing, but somehow I feel like I've finally figured it out and hit a stride where everything clicks the way it should.
At the beginning of this production year on Grey's, there was some uncertainty about which actors would be continuing. How did it feel heading into what could have been the final season of Grey's Anatomy, or did you not even think of it that way? Rhimes: No, the network has not allowed me to think of it as being the final season of Grey's Anatomy. That wasn't even a concern for me. I know that Grey's is going to live on past this season. So whether or not I feel like it could, it's going to.
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Will the next season be similar to what we've seen the last eight years or are you planning any major changes? Rhimes: Honestly, I really don't know. I feel committed to staying with the show as long as it feels interesting. I have some interesting ideas.
Was it difficult writing episodes not knowing who might or might not be returning? Or did you just charge ahead like you would during a normal season? Rhimes: No, we definitely didn't approach it the way I approach a normal season. But I like the challenge and that's been one of the things that's always been fun about getting to do this show; trying to figure out what the next challenge is going to be every season. This season the challenge was that we didn't know how the season was going to end. So in a way, it forced us to be creative in a different way. You want to keep it fresh after eight years and we were able to do that because we had this new problem to contend with.
The biggest question, obviously, is Ellen Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey. Do you have a back-up plan should they decide not to return? Rhimes: I can't even begin to address that concept.
There are a lot of major milestones coming up, things fans have been waiting a long time for. First, the McMansion. How long have you been waiting for that moment when it would finally be finished? Rhimes: I don't know if it's as big a moment for me as it's turned out to be for the fans. There were many times where we were like, "Oh, we should finish the house now." And it felt like we don't want to spend time dealing with the story of the house. There was a lot of that in some veins and then there were some moments in which it just didn't feel quite right. It does feel right to deal with it and talk about it and have it be done at the end of Season 8 when Meredith is graduating from being a resident.
Catch up on Grey's Anatomy with our episode recaps
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Anatomy of Shonda Rhimes, the Busiest Woman in Hollywood
Anti-aging Medicine Part 2 – Video
17-01-2012 13:58 drkathymaupin.com
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Anti-aging Medicine Part 2 - Video
Ottawa researchers to lead world-first clinical trial of stem cell therapy for septic shock
Public release date: 15-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jennifer Ganton jganton@ohri.ca 613-798-5555 x73325 Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
A team of researchers from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) and the University of Ottawa (uOttawa) has been awarded $367,000 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and $75,000 from the Stem Cell Network to lead the first clinical trial in the world of a stem cell therapy for septic shock. This deadly condition occurs when an infection spreads throughout the body and over-activates the immune system, resulting in severe organ damage and death in 30 to 40 per cent of cases. Septic shock accounts for 20 per cent of all Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admissions in Canada and costs $4 billion annually. Under the leadership of Dr. Lauralyn McIntyre, this new "Phase I" trial will test the experimental therapy in up to 15 patients with septic shock at The Ottawa Hospital's ICU.
The treatment involves mesenchymal stem cells, also called mesenchymal stromal cells or MSCs. Like other stem cells, they can give rise to a variety of more specialized cells and tissues and can help repair and regenerate damaged organs. They also have a unique ability to modify the body's immune response and enhance the clearance of infectious organisms. They can be found in adult bone marrow and other tissues, as well as umbilical cord blood, and they seem to be easily transplantable between people, because they are more able to avoid immune rejection.
There has been a great deal of interest in using MSCs to treat disease, with most research so far focused on heart disease, stroke, inflammatory bowel disease and blood cancers. Hundreds of patients with these diseases have already been treated with MSCs through clinical trials, with results suggesting that these cells are safe in these patients, and have promising signs of effectiveness. MSCs are still considered experimental however, and have not been approved by Health Canada as a standard therapy for any disease.
In recent years, a number of animal studies have suggested that MSCs may also be able to help treat septic shock. For example, a recent study by Dr. Duncan Stewart, CEO and Scientific Director of OHRI (and also a co-investigator on the new clinical trial) showed that treatment with these cells can triple survival in a mouse model of this condition.
"Mesenchymal stem cell therapy appears promising in animal studies, but it will require many years of clinical trials involving hundreds of patients to know if it is safe and effective," said Dr. Lauralyn McIntyre, a Scientist at the OHRI, ICU Physician at The Ottawa Hospital, Assistant Professor of Medicine at uOttawa and a New Investigator with CIHR and Canadian Blood Services. "This trial is a first step, but it is a very exciting first step."
As with all "Phase I" trials, the main goal of this study is to evaluate the safety of the therapy and determine the best dose for future studies. The 15 patients in the treatment group will receive standard treatments (such as fluids, antibiotics and blood pressure control), plus a planned intravenous dose of 0.3 to 3 million MSCs per kg of body weight. The MSCs will be obtained from the bone marrow of healthy donors and purified in the OHRI's Good Manufacturing Practice Laboratory in the Sprott Centre for Stem Cell Research. The researchers also plan to evaluate 24 similar septic shock patients who will receive standard treatments only (no MSCs). All patients will be rigorously monitored for side effects, and blood samples will be taken at specific time points to monitor the cells and their activity. This trial will not be randomized or blinded and it will not include enough patients to reliably determine if the therapy is effective. It will be conducted under the supervision of Health Canada and the Ottawa Hospital Research Ethics Board, and will have to be approved by both of these organizations before commencing.
"The OHRI is rapidly becoming known as a leader in conducting world-first clinical trials with innovative therapies such as stem cells," said Dr. Duncan Stewart, CEO and Scientific Director of OHRI, Vice-President of Research at The Ottawa Hospital and Professor of Medicine at uOttawa. "This research is truly pushing the boundaries of medical science forward, and is providing the citizens of Ottawa with access to promising new therapies."
"The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is very pleased to support this clinical trial," said Dr. Jean Rouleau, Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health. "The work of Dr. McIntyre and her colleagues will not only add to our growing knowledge of the benefits of stem-cell therapies, but will hopefully lead to treatments that can help save the lives of patients where currently, our treatment options are less than optimal."
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Ottawa researchers to lead world-first clinical trial of stem cell therapy for septic shock
Bioheart and Ageless Partner to Advance Stem Cell Field With Laboratory Training Programs
SUNRISE, Fla., March 15, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bioheart, Inc. (BHRT.OB) announced today that it has successfully conducted a laboratory training course in partnership with the Ageless Regenerative Institute, an organization dedicated to the standardization of cell regenerative medicine. The attendees participated in hands on, in depth training in laboratory practices in stem cell science.
"We had students from all over the world attend this first course including physicians, laboratory technicians and students," said Mike Tomas, Bioheart's President and CEO. "Bioheart is pleased to be able to share our 13 years of experience in stem cell research and help expand this growing life science field."
The course included cell culture techniques and quality control testing such as flow cytometry and gram stain. In addition, participants learned how to work in a cleanroom operating according to FDA cGMP standards, regulations used in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, food and medical devices. Aseptic techniques were also taught as well as cleanroom gowning, environmental monitoring and maintenance.
Future courses are open to physicians, laboratory technicians and students. After graduating the course, attendees are prepared to pursue research and careers in the field of stem cells and regenerative medicine. For more information about the course, contact info@agelessregen.com.
About Bioheart, Inc.
Bioheart is committed to maintaining its leading position within the cardiovascular sector of the cell technology industry delivering cell therapies and biologics that help address congestive heart failure, lower limb ischemia, chronic heart ischemia, acute myocardial infarctions and other issues. Bioheart's goals are to cause damaged tissue to be regenerated, when possible, and to improve a patient's quality of life and reduce health care costs and hospitalizations.
Specific to biotechnology, Bioheart is focused on the discovery, development and, subject to regulatory approval, commercialization of autologous cell therapies for the treatment of chronic and acute heart damage and peripheral vascular disease. Its leading product, MyoCell, is a clinical muscle-derived cell therapy designed to populate regions of scar tissue within a patient's heart with new living cells for the purpose of improving cardiac function in chronic heart failure patients. For more information on Bioheart, visit http://www.bioheartinc.com.
About Ageless Regenerative Institute, LLC
The Ageless Regenerative Institute (ARI) is an organization dedicated to the standardization of cell regenerative medicine. The Institute promotes the development of evidence-based standards of excellence in the therapeutic use of adipose-derived stem cells through education, advocacy, and research. ARI has a highly experienced management team with experience in setting up full scale cGMP stem cell manufacturing facilities, stem cell product development & enhancement, developing point-of-care cell production systems, developing culture expanded stem cell production systems, FDA compliance, directing clinical & preclinical studies with multiple cell types for multiple indications, and more. ARI has successfully treated hundreds of patients utilizing these cellular therapies demonstrating both safety and efficacy. For more information about regenerative medicine please visit http://www.agelessregen.com.
Forward-Looking Statements: Except for historical matters contained herein, statements made in this press release are forward-looking statements. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, words such as "may," "will," "to," "plan," "expect," "believe," "anticipate," "intend," "could," "would," "estimate," or "continue" or the negative other variations thereof or comparable terminology are intended to identify forward-looking statements.
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Bioheart and Ageless Partner to Advance Stem Cell Field With Laboratory Training Programs
Washington Center for Pain Management Begins Enrollment in United States Stem Cell Therapy Study in Subjects With …
EDMONDS, Wash., March 14, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Washington Center for Pain Management is participating in a nationwide FDA-cleared adult stem cell study testing novel treatment for chronic low back pain and has enrolled its first patient. The study will test the use of Mesenchymal Precursor Cells (MPCs) adult stem cells derived from bone marrow that will be directly injected into the lumbar disc. The minimally invasive procedure may offer an alternative to back surgery for eligible patients with chronic pain from degenerative discs.
An estimated 30 million people in the United States suffer from back pain. Degenerative disc disease is the most common cause of low-back pain, which develops with the gradual loss of a material called proteoglycan, which cushions the bones of the spine and enables normal motion.
Most patients with low-back pain respond to physical therapy and medications, but in advanced cases, artificial disc replacement or spinal fusion -- removal of the degenerated discs and the fusion of the bones of the spine -- is necessary. However, these surgeries often are not entirely effective.
"Millions of Americans are debilitated by chronic low back pain," says Dr Hyun Joong Hong MD, the lead investigator at The Washington Center for Pain Management. "This promising therapy is at the cutting edge of medical science and has the potential to create a paradigm shift in our approach to minimally invasive solutions to this disease."
Researchers will enroll approximately 100 study participants. About fifteen participants will be enrolled at The Washington Center for Pain Management and the rest at 11 other medical centers throughout the United States. The trial is scheduled to last for three years.
Washington Center for Pain Management is enrolling study participants suffering from moderate low-back pain for a minimum of six months and whose condition has not responded to other, conventional treatments.
Once enrolled, patients are randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups:
Patients will receive a single injection of their assigned test agent directly into the center of the target discs within their spine and will be monitored for safety. Patients will also be monitored using imaging to identify any changes in their disease condition or disease progression. Use of pain medications, self-reports of pain, subsequent surgical interventions and assessments of disability, quality of life, productivity and activity will be evaluated. Repair of the disc and reduction of chronic back pain will be assessed in each patient.
Promising results have been observed in prior research using animal models when stem cells were investigated for the repair of damaged spine discs. The cells were well tolerated in these study animals.
This study is sponsored by Mesoblast Limited, a world leader in the development of biologic products for the broad field of regenerative medicine. Mesoblast has the worldwide exclusive rights to a series of patents and technologies developed over more than 10 years relating to the identification, extraction, culture and uses of adult Mesenchymal Precursor Cells (MPCs). The MPCs are derived from young adult donors' bone marrow and are immune tolerant.
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Washington Center for Pain Management Begins Enrollment in United States Stem Cell Therapy Study in Subjects With ...