Monthly Archives: May 2012

Sangamo BioSciences And Collaborators Highlight Widening Applications Of ZFP Therapeutics® In Presentations At Major …

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RICHMOND, Calif., May 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Sangamo BioSciences, Inc. (SGMO) announced today that data from clinical, preclinical and research-stage programs focused on the development of ZFP Therapeutics for HIV/AIDS, monogenic diseases and stem cell applications, were described in twelve presentations given by Sangamo scientists and collaborators at the 15th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT). The meeting was held in Philadelphia from May 15-19, 2012.

"Sangamo's zinc finger DNA-binding protein (ZFP) technology is enabling development of new and improved gene and cell therapy approaches," said Geoff Nichol, M.B., Ch.B., Sangamo's executive vice president, research and development. "Our ZFP Nuclease (ZFN) technology provides an extremely efficient and precise process for editing any DNA sequence. This enables us to disrupt specific genes or to precisely add DNA sequences that allow a patient's own gene to be corrected and its proper function restored while preserving the natural regulation of the gene.

Sangamo has also developed technology that allows a therapeutic gene to be inserted into a specific 'safe harbor' site. Our ability to target changes to precise locations rather than randomly into the genome, avoids the challenges of traditional gene-addition approaches that can result in unintended mutations. The increased number of related presentations at this meeting demonstrates the growing adoption of ZFN-based gene editing by the field."

Presentations from Sangamo included preliminary clinical data from ongoing Phase 1 clinical trials in HIV/AIDS as well as data from preclinical and research-stage human therapeutic programs. Therapeutic areas included ZFP-based approaches for monogenic diseases such as hemophilia, hemoglobinopathies and Huntington's disease as well as adoptive T-cell therapies for oncology.

"Visibility of ZFPs in the scientific agenda at the ASGCT meeting illustrates the broad range of potential applications for ZFP Therapeutics," said Edward Lanphier, Sangamo's president and CEO. "Our technology can be used to modify any gene with singular specificity and high efficiency. As our technology functions at the DNA level, it can potentially be applied to any disease-related gene making it a versatile platform for the generation of novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment of unmet medical needs."

ZFP Therapeutics Featured at ASGCT Meeting

All abstracts for the meeting are available online at 2012 ASGCT Meeting Abstracts.

About Sangamo

Sangamo BioSciences, Inc. is focused on research and development of novel DNA-binding proteins for therapeutic gene regulation and genome editing. It has ongoing Phase 2 and Phase 1/2 clinical trials to evaluate the safety and efficacy of a novel ZFP Therapeutic for the treatment of HIV/AIDS.Sangamo's other therapeutic programs are focused on monogenic diseases, including hemophilia and hemoglobinopathies such as sickle cell anemia and beta-thalassemia, and a program in Parkinson's disease. Sangamo's core competencies enable the engineering of a class of DNA-binding proteins known as zinc finger DNA-binding proteins (ZFPs). Engineering of ZFPs that recognize a specific DNA sequence enables the creation of sequence-specific ZFP Nucleases (ZFNs) for gene modification and ZFP transcription factors (ZFP TFs) that can control gene expression and, consequently, cell function. Sangamo has entered into a strategic collaboration with Shire to develop therapeutics for hemophilia and other monogenic diseases and has established strategic partnerships with companies in non-therapeutic applications of its technology including Dow AgroSciences and Sigma-Aldrich Corporation. For more information about Sangamo, visit the company's website at http://www.sangamo.com.

ZFP Therapeutic is a registered trademark of Sangamo BioSciences, Inc. CompoZr is a registered trademark of Sigma-Aldrich Corporation.

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Sangamo BioSciences And Collaborators Highlight Widening Applications Of ZFP Therapeutics® In Presentations At Major ...

Stem cell medicine thrown umbilical rope

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Tim and Padma Vellaichamy of Parramatta have had their new born child's umbilical cord stored cryogenically for future treatment. Pictured with their as yet unnamed three week old daughter. Picture: Adam Ward Source: The Daily Telegraph

IT'S current preservation for the future regeneration - and now umbilical cord tissue is going on ice in Australia for the first time.

Usually discarded after birth, umbilical tissue from newborn babies is being collected and cryogenically frozen to be used one day for regenerative and stem cell medicine. And it doesn't just have potential for the babies involved, either. Experts say stem cells could also be used for family members who are genetically compatible.

It is hoped the cells will eventually be able to be used to repair damaged tissues and organs, with researchers investigating its uses for treating diseases like multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and diabetes, as well as for bone and cartilage repair.

Although cord blood storage has been available for many years, Cell Care Australia has added cord tissue storage in anticipation of new discoveries in the regenerative medicine field.

Cell Care Australia medical director associate professor Mark Kirkland said the storage process - already popular in the US, Europe and Southeast Asia - was long overdue for Australian shores.

"The science is developing around the world and we're really behind the rest of the world in providing parents the option to store these cells and we thought it was about time it was brought here," he said.

"It's finding a way to take what would otherwise be waste tissue and turning it into something of potential future value for not only your child but also potentially for other family members.'

Parramatta couple Tim and Padma Vellaichamy are among the first to use the service in Australia.

Mr Vellaichamy, 31, said he heard of the technology while working as a dentist in India and decided to store their daughter's cord cell tissue after birth three weeks ago.

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Stem cell medicine thrown umbilical rope

Chelmsford group helps support medical care program

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Tuan Win graduated from Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire last year and hes hoping to move on to medical school. A native of Vietnam, Win came to the United States in 2000, wracked with polio and facing an uncertain future. He joined hundreds of other children from Southeast Asia who have come to America over the years, courtesy of Child Medical Connection.

Changing the lives of hundreds of Vietnamese children has been a decade-and-a-half obsession for Joe Bodanza, who has volunteered his own time and resources to support children with serious medical needs for treatment at Shriners Hospital in Springfield.

Binders and folders occupy Bodanzas bookshelves, each holding photos of Vietnamese kids once distorted by polio, warped by scoliosis, or covered with burns and tumors, all kids supported by his self-made organization, Child Medical Connection. Thanks to financial assistance from donors, including Chelmsford resident Roland Van Liew and the Van Liew Family Foundation, the agency continues to enhance lives.

At age 7 Bodanza contracted polio and so understands the diseases hardships. With no family of his own, Bodanza surrounds himself with his Vietnamese children who refer to him as Mr. Joe.

I want no money. What I have, I share with my kids. I sleep in a chair, I have coffee, thats all I need, said Bodanza. My needs are very simple. People come first. Those who dont have, come first.

It all started after Bodanza retired from the state Department of Education at age 58, and he ran a small business with his partner, a Vietnamese man, creating restaurant placemats. They traveled to Vietnam twice in 1995 where Bodanza witnessed the cultural negligence of children with disabilities. According to Bodanza, in Vietnam the handicapped are considered cursed and often shunned from society.

People in Vietnam avoid a person who is handicapped and theyre considered a bad luck person People believe bad luck is contagious so they avoid the family, the child and all the people in the house as bad luck people, said Bodanza.

Bodanza retuned with a personal mission: To bring home a youngster, Phuc (Peter) Nguyen, for polio treatment. Nguyens one-year treatment for his severe spinal curvature was $500,000.

I knew nothing, said Bodanza about the challenging process of bringing Nguyen overseas. I had more rejections for people coming here than you would believe. Kids with polio coming here were rejected.

Word spread of Bodanzas work in Vietnamese communities and on his second trip back more than 100 people appeared at his hotel room. Maxing out his credit cards, depleting his retirement income and a small $1,600 monthly state pension, Bodanza was going into debt bringing the children to America for treatment. After being advised to incorporate his work as charity, Bodanza founded the nonprofit Child Medical Connection, with the help of a pro bono lawyer. The move enabled him to receive more donations. He made three trips back to Vietnam between 1996 and 1997.

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Chelmsford group helps support medical care program

U.S. Senator addresses UPike medical school graduates

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One well-known U.S. senator and Kentucky native came to the mountains to speak to medical school graduates. Some might say he could relate more to these students as he has not always been involved solely in politics.

Sen. Rand Paul (R) had uplifting words for the University of Pikevilles School of Osteopathic Medicine graduates.

Paul encouraged the young doctors to overcome the obstacles of becoming a physician, such as caring too little, too much and even challenging the norm when necessary.

Don't let them tell you it can't be done, think outside the box, said Paul. Be your own man, or your own woman.

This was the senators first commencement speech and he said it was special to speak to medical school graduates as he is a doctor.

I still remember those young, heady days when I was first becoming a physician and what they have to look forward to and what the community has to look forward to having these young doctors in their region of the mountains, said Paul.

Paul said this was a new experience and he admitted he was nervous.

I was a bit nervous, even though I have now given thousands of speeches, said Paul. Particularly, because this is a little bit different than the red meat and potatoes of politics.

Paul said the speech was more about his experiences in medicine and what the graduates should expect and how they choose their path.

This is the first class to graduate since the college became a university. UPIKE President Paul Patton says his speech hit home.

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U.S. Senator addresses UPike medical school graduates

80 to graduate today from SIU Medical School

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Springfields Southern Illinois University School of Medicine has no Nobel Prize winners on its faculty, and its research budget is small compared with larger and older medical schools.

Those conventional measures of prestige, however, overlook a quality that puts SIU close to the top nationwide in fulfilling the social mission of medical education, according to Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan, who will speak today at the schools commencement exercises at Sangamon Auditorium.

Theyve done a fabulous job in delivering on that to the population, to the citizenry, in terms of training excellent physicians for their geographic area, said Mullan, a pediatrician from Washington, D.C.

Mullans 2010 study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, ranked SIU 15th out of 140 medical schools, and ahead of all others in Illinois, when it comes to social mission.

The study measured performance on what Mullan defined as the basic purpose of medical schools: to educate physicians to care for the national population.

The rankings were based on the percentage of graduates who enter primary care specialties, those working in rural or other areas with shortages of health professionals, and those who are African-American, Hispanic or American Indian.

Mullan, 69, received his medical degree from the University of Chicago and worked early in his career at a New Mexico community clinic as part of the National Health Service Corps.

He currently is professor of medicine and health policy at George Washington University School of Medicine.

Mullan said medical schools such as SIU, as well as Morehouse College, Meharry Medical College and Howard University the top three finishers, respectively, in the study often dont receive the attention they deserve from publications such as U.S. News and World Report.

He is working on a follow-up study that will explain in detail why six of the top-performing schools, including SIU, did so well.

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80 to graduate today from SIU Medical School

Stewartsville resident leaves corporate sector for medical school

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When Gianna Casini, 36, graduates from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, she will have her most staunch supporter at her side her 4-year-old daughter, Domenica. The Stewartsville resident came to medicine through a more circuitous route. Following her graduation from Marist College with a B.A. in Communications, Gianna spent five years in the telecom sector and earned her Masters Certificate in Project Management from Stevens Institute of Technology in 2001. But, for Gianna, the corporate world held no match for a career in which she could work in direct service of others. As a volunteer in the endoscopy unit at St. Peters University Hospital, Gianna solidified her interest in studying medicine, completed her post-baccalaureate course work at Rutgers University, and enrolled in UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in 2008 when Domenica was just 6-months-old.

Juggling medical school and motherhood is no easy task, and Gianna achieves her goal on May 23 with the help of a formidable network, including her husband and parents. This support has enabled her to be entirely focused and dedicated to her numerous hours of studying, clerkship responsibilities and extracurricular commitments.

With their support, Gianna was able to receive the honor of being elected to the Gold Humanism Honor Society (GHHS), being recognized as an exemplar of compassionate patient care, empathy, altruism and outstanding interpersonal interactions with peers, house staff, faculty, staff and members of the community. In addition to her excellent performance in the classroom and in her clerkships, Gianna has earned recognition for her research in multiple sclerosis. She was awarded Best Abstract in the radiology/imaging category by the American Medical Association (AMA) for its medical student research symposium, and was selected to give a podium presentation of her research at the AMA Medical Student Section interim meeting in San Diego, CA in 2010. She was also selected by the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) to present her poster at the AANs 2010 annual meeting in Toronto, Canada.

After her transitional year at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Pennsylvania, Gianna will be returning to Robert Wood Johnson for her Anesthesia Residency in 2013.

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Stewartsville resident leaves corporate sector for medical school

Dr. Mao's Wellness Living: Exercising Tips For Increasing Longevity

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Posted May. 20, 2012, 9:01 am Dr. Mao Shing Ni

Courtesy Photo

Aging is an inevitable part of life, but you can age gracefully and maintain a healthy, active lifestyle well into your later years. Staying active and exercising regularly are the foundations for living a long and healthy life. It is no surprise that caged animals have more health problems and a shorter life span than free-range animals. Humans are no different! Research shows that the more active humans are, the longer they tend to live. Being lazy can actually shorten our life, so get moving!

Getting Started

If you are not already on an exercise regime or if you have a busy schedule, getting started on a work-out schedule can seem like a daunting task. However, there are many chances to exercise throughout the day without having to devote a block of time to one particular gym or class. Try taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking your car several blocks away from your destination, or even sweeping your floor with a broom instead of a vacuum. Every bit of physical exercise adds up and can get your muscles working!

Work-Out For Your Bones

As people age, their bones can become brittle and lose calcium, leading to the development of osteoporosis. The majority of the population of the age of 70 can be affected by this condition, but the good news is that it can be prevented, or for those already suffering, treated. No matter how much additional calcium and vitamin D people take, without activities that exert weight on the bones, it will prove useless. This doesnt mean you have to become a weight lifter, however; moderate weight-bearing exercises such as walking are sufficient to help restore calcium to the bones.

Make It Social

Even if you start an exercise regime, you arent going to stick with it if you dont enjoy the activity, and consistency is key. Try to find exercises that interest you or that you can use as a bonding activity with your family or friends. A water aerobics class can be a great and fun way to incorporate a work-out during the warmer months, while still providing proper resistance for your bones and an excellent cardiovascular exercise for your heart. If you need help relaxing during your week, try a Tai Chi or Qi Gong class to reduce stress and enhance your circulation while providing a gentle exercise for your body.

Enjoy A Ride

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Dr. Mao's Wellness Living: Exercising Tips For Increasing Longevity

Integrative Medicine Part III – Humanism In Medical Care

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Have you ever thought that the doctor wasnt listening to you? Didnt seem to understand what was important to you? Was talking in medical speak but not in a language you could understand? That he or she gave bad news to you and left you hanging as to what to do next? Unfortunately, these are all too common.

Medical advances such as new drugs, imaging devices, operating room technology and others are coming rapidly and greatly expanding what can be done for patients. But concurrently it also seems to many that medicine is so technologically focused that the age old art of humanism has become a legend. What the doctor needs to remember is that you are a human with the needs of a human; the doctor needs humanism.

The University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine hosted a Health and Wellness Conference recently to celebrate the Centers 20th anniversary. One plenary session was given by Thomas Scalea, MD, professor and director of the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. The Shock Trauma Center is arguably the best trauma center in the country if not the world. It admits only those 3-5% of trauma patients with the most extensive injury yet survival consistently exceeds 95-97%. Credit this to the States emergency transportation system and the Shock Trauma Centers exquisite teamwork, the well trained staff and the best of technology. As Dr. Scalea noted, the Shock Trauma Center is perhaps the zenith of technologic prowess.

But, he reminded the audience that the patient also needs the provider to be humanistic. He gave some examples. Here are some that I remember from his talk, sprinkled occasionally with my own thoughts.

When you enter the room, sit down and talk with your patient. Be at their eye level, not an imposing figure hovering over the bed.

Speak to the patient in clear English; not in medical speak. Medical speak is for your convenience and is a way of obfuscating but not communicating.

Expect to repeat what you say tomorrow and again the next day again; your patient needs to hear it repeatedly. Dont be annoyed they forgot it all by tomorrow morning.

If you have bad news to deliver hold the patients hand. Touch has a lot of power. I would add here, when you must give bad news, be clear. The patient has already guessed his situation so dont try to avoid the truth and be sure to then immediately explain what you propose as next steps. As a medical oncologist, I learned that this was absolutely essential. Dont let this part wait for another day. Your patient needs to hear it right now so they can begin to focus not just on the bad news but on the hope of a new treatment or whatever plans you propose for the future, even if that means hospice.

When you visit your patient dont just talk, listen. Listen hard and long. Dr. Scalea described a trainee getting behind him and looking across his shoulder at the patient. When Dr. Scalea asked why he took that position, the resident responded that he wanted to see what Dr. Scalea saw. Im not looking, Im listening was the answer. Of course, listening also includes observing the patients body language including facial movements.

Be sure what you tell the patient or family is clear. It needs to be in direct every day speech. He told of going to tell a mother that her son had died. The resident who had been working with him asked if he could be the one to deliver the bad news. Sure, Ill just sit to the side. The resident used a lot of words about how injured her son had been, how they had tried to save him in the operating room, etc. and then stood up to leave. Wait, said Dr. Scalea. He went over, sat down, and holding her two hands said, Do you realize that your son has died? She had not. It is critical to be clear.

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Integrative Medicine Part III – Humanism In Medical Care

I’ll take mine with a shot of immortality

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Every few months scientists inform us that something we have been doing for years will either kill us or make us live forever. According to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, coffee extends your life. Drink six or more cups per day, and you have a 10 to 15 percent lower risk of death.

I love coffee. I drink so much that, if this study is to be believed, I am functionally immortal.

It is reassuring to hear that something you do may extend your life. Usually longevity requires uncomfortable concessions like push-ups or kale. "To get back my youth," Oscar Wilde wrote, "I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable." Thats how I feel. But coffee I can do.

You dont drink coffee because you like it. You drink it because at some point you found yourself surrounded by bright-eyed, bushy-tailed people who had never met a morning they disliked, and you were expected to engage with them. Who are these people, you asked. Havent they read all the studies about how staying up late is an indicator of higher mental functions?

Then coffee came along.

If coffee were a religion, Id be high enough in the ranks of believers to be entitled to a strange hat. You can tell because of my jittery hands and use of exclamation points.

Maybe coffee is something of a religion. Coffee has its temples in airports, on street corners, even small household altars. Worshipers of Starbucks and of Independent Coffee Shops squint mistrustfully at each other. Coffee has rituals the grinding, the dripping, the brewing, the mysterious hissing and ritual exclamations ("Not before Ive had my coffee!"). There are heretics ("Ive switched to tea") and evangelists ("Have you tried Black Blood of the Earth? Its for people who like coffee but wish it contained more coffee!") and all kinds of different approaches.

And now we hear it leads to eternal life.

That was the only logical next step.

Alexandra Petri writes The Washington Posts ComPost blog, a lighter take on the news and issues of the day, and she contributes to the Posts editorial page.

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I’ll take mine with a shot of immortality

Popsmacked!: Pop’s brave new world of immortality

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I can see it now: Hologram Elvis thin, commanding, perpetually youthful descending on a concert stage for a world tour that would surpass anything he ever embarked on in real life.

Thank you, thank you veramuch. Doughnuts? Not for me, thanks.

And Michael Jackson, healthy at last, running through his massive catalogue of hits with an energy and resolve he could never muster in the sad years before his death no Propofol required.

Ditto for Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison and a raft of other expired-before-their-time pop stars for whom the demands of fame trounced their natural talent.

Make yourselves at home, dudes theres plenty of heroin and booze in the green room. Oh wait, youre not real.

Welcome to the future, evidenced by the Christ-like resurrection of dead rapper Tupac Shakur as a two-dimensional, yet fully functional hologram at last months Coachella festival in California, the latest bid by the music industry to save itself from a case of built-in obsolescence.

Its a sad story, as original stadium bands like the Beach Boys and Rolling Stones limp along with fading resolve Its our 50th anniversary (cough cough)while the auto-tuned, lipsyncing acts of today would be lucky to fill a phone booth.

The concert industry is dying, baby, and except for warm weather festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo noncorporate extravaganzas that span generations no one holds much hope for the future of live performances on an epic scale.

Music, once the vanguard of popular culture, has splintered damn you, internet into a thousand tiny niches at the exact moment rock has indulged in an endless retro loop, making bands with the clout to fill big stadiums few and far between.

The good news is, with the invention of the hologram, it no longer matters, because the glory days can continue forever, unburdened by egos, sickness, squandered talent, even death.

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Popsmacked!: Pop’s brave new world of immortality

Perspective: With a shot of immortality

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Every few months scientists inform us that something we have been doing for years will either kill us or make us live forever. According to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, coffee extends your life. Drink six or more cups per day, and you have a 10 to 15 percent lower risk of death.

I love coffee. I drink so much that, if this study is to be believed, I am functionally immortal.

It is reassuring to hear that something you do may extend your life. Usually longevity requires uncomfortable concessions like push-ups or kale. To get back my youth, Oscar Wilde wrote, I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. Thats how I feel. But coffee I can do.

You dont drink coffee because you like it. You drink it because at some point you found yourself surrounded by bright-eyed, bushy-tailed people who had never met a morning they disliked, and you were expected to engage with them. Who are these people, you asked. Havent they read all the studies about how staying up late is an indicator of higher mental functions?

Then coffee came along.

If coffee were a religion, Id be high enough in the ranks of believers to be entitled to a strange hat. You can tell because of my jittery hands and use of exclamation points.

Maybe coffee is something of a religion. Coffee has its temples in airports, on street corners, even small household altars. Worshipers of Starbucks and of Independent Coffee Shops squint mistrustfully at each other. Coffee has rituals the grinding, the dripping, the brewing, the mysterious hissing - and ritual exclamations (Not before Ive had my coffee!). There are heretics (Ive switched to tea) and evangelists (Have you tried Black Blood of the Earth? Its for people who like coffee but wish it contained more coffee!) and all kinds of different approaches.

And now we hear it leads to eternal life.

That was the only logical next step.

Excerpt from:
Perspective: With a shot of immortality

Nigeria: Chelsea, Bayern Battle for Immortality

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Thirty two teams started the battle for glory from September last year. Now, however, the journey has been reduced to the final two-Bayern Munich and Chelsea. Today, both clubs will battle it out for Europe's top club football honour. Football fans, bookmakers and pundits have all predicted an all Spanish final between Barcelona and Real Madrid but Chelsea and Bayern Munich staged upsets in the semi finals by knocking out the two Spanish giants.

Today's final will take place at the Allianz Arena, Bayern Munich's home ground where the winner will enter into the folklore of football legends while the loser will be left wondering what they will do to conquer Europe someday. The loser today would end up with a second loss in the Champions League final. Bayern Munich is aiming for its fifth Champions League trophy while Chelsea is gunning for a first ever Champions League crown.

The last time these two sides met was in the quarter finals of the Champions League in 2004/2005 season where Chelsea knocked out Bayern Munich by winning 6-5 on aggregate.

Bayern Munich has the luxury of playing the Champions League final in front of their home fans. They will be hoping on ending the season on a high after losing the league and Cup to Borrusia Dortmund, they have already faced an English team already in the competition when they played newly crowned English champions Manchester City with each side winning their home game 2-0.

Bayern has a decent record against English sides in the Champions league. They have played 35 matches, won 13, lost 10 and drew 12. Bayern is playing its fourth Champions League final in 13 years. Bayern fans were left heartbroken in the 1999 finals in Nou Camp when they had one hand already on the trophy but two injury time goals handed Man United the trophy.

They bounced back in the 2001 edition beating Valencia in the finals via penalties. Two years ago they lost to Inter Milan in the finals and will be looking to win this one on their home ground making it the fourth time in history that a club will be playing the finals in its home and the first in this modern era (Real Madrid in 1956/57, Inter Milan in 1964/65 and Roma in 1983/84).

Bayern Munich will be without the services of David Alaba, Holger Badstuber and Luiz Gustavo even though its manager Jupp Heynckes will likely have Mario Gomez, Arjen Robben, Franck Ribry, Toni Kroos, Daniel van Buyten, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Philipp Lahm, Jrme Boateng and possibly Thomas Mller in his starting lineup, with Manuel Neuer in goal. The Germans will probably go for a three man attack of Gomez, Ribery and Robben.

Bayern's strength lies on their wing play with Ribery and Robben doing damages on the wings. Ashley Cole and Bosingwa will have their hands full containing the duo. Mario Gomez is the second highest goal scorer in the Champions league with 12 goals and need a hattrick to overtake Lionel Messi who has 14 strikes.

Jupp Heynckes will be gunning for his second Champions League crown after leading Real Madrid to the title in 1998. Bayern winger Ribery insists his side will not take the threat of Chelsea very lightly which he believes is tactically superior to Barcelona. "When it comes to the game, Barcelona is stronger," Ribery said. But if you look at organisation, tactics, and set pieces, then Chelsea is better.

In the semi-final, Chelsea played like they had to against a team like Barcelona, and in Munich they will take a defensive approach, with a well-organised and compact team. It will be very hard for us. Also, former Bayern captain and legend Stefan Effenberg believes Bastian Schweinsteiger must step up to the occasion for Bayern to have a good chance of beating Chelsea as the over reliance on Robben and Ribery is becoming too predictable. "There is a lot of hope resting on Schweinsteiger's shoulders and he cannot buy any more time. He must play well now," Effenberg stated

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Nigeria: Chelsea, Bayern Battle for Immortality

Hudson has good chemistry with Ross, Wilson

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ByChris Girandola/Special to MLB.com|05/20/12 3:00 PM ET

ST. PETERSBURG -- David Ross was behind the plate on Sunday as the battery mate for Tim Hudson for good reason.

For one, it allowed Brian McCann a chance to rest after the 28-year-old catcher played six consecutive days and 11 of the past 12 games.

It also gave Hudson another chance to connect with Ross. The two combined to go 8-5 as a duo last season.

"They have a pretty good history, a really good history," manager Fredi Gonzalez said.

Ross started Hudson's May 9 start in which the 36-year-old right-hander made his season debut and tossed just 73 pitches over seven innings in a 1-0 loss to the Cubs.

McCann caught Hudson in his last start on May 15, when Hudson allowed two runs over seven innings in the Braves' 6-2 win over the Reds.

With Jack Wilson making the start at shortstop, Gonzalez somewhat joked that Hudson also had a personal shortstop.

"I like it like this because you play [Tyler Pastornicky] and you develop him," Gonzalez said. "You play Jack, you give Tyler a breather, keep Jack fresh. And you know you're going to get a lot of ground balls with Huddy. It's a good mix."

ST. PETERSBURG -- Chipper Jones was out of the lineup once again on Sunday because of a bruise on his left calf. Manager Fredi Gonzalez did not sound too optimistic about Jones' chances for playing on Monday when the Braves begin a four-game series against the Reds in Cincinnati.

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Hudson has good chemistry with Ross, Wilson

'Chemistry of Tears' review: Where the silver swan will carry us

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THE CHEMISTRY OF TEARS Peter Carey Knopf $26, 240 pages

Peter Carey's "The Chemistry of Tears" is a short novel that bristles with ideas. A meditation on grief, it also rambles freely through the history of technology, making reference to Charles Babbage (father of the computer), Karl Benz (father of the internal combustion engine), and an automaton that impressed Mark Twain and would make the title character in "Hugo" wet his pants.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill provides an oppressive backdrop to one-half of the story, and bankruptcy through reckless stock trading shadows the other half. The two main characters, racked with pain over the death or illness of the person closest to them, are assisted in their obsessions by mechanically adroit zealots who use their grief against them. Horology and the construction of automata are described in precise detail, and the plot has a clockwork precision that's chillingly inventive and maybe wound a quarter-turn too tight.

The frame Carey chooses to contain his cabinet of wonders is a sturdy and familiar one: parallel chapters that tell an overlapping story. Catherine Gehrig is a buttoned-tight conservator at a London museum who finds out on the first page that her married lover, her colleague and "secret darling" is dead. Unhinged with grief, she's given a special project by her boss, the one man who knows her secret: reconstruct a 19th-century automaton, a silver swan that picks up fish and then cranes its neck before swallowing them.

Gehrig begins reading the notebooks of Henry Brandling, who commissioned the swan as a gift for his gravely ill son. Brandling's story is presented in counterpoint to Gehrig's, but of course she falls through the wormholes and identifies with a man who tries to use a mechanical marvel to assuage his grief. Their stories merge in places and jump the tracks when Brandling's project is hijacked by a mysterious German inventor and Gehrig's efforts at rebuilding the swan are complicated by an assistant who gets stuck in the oily current between obsessiveness and insanity.

Luckily for the unwary reader, Carey is a master novelist capable of pulling all this together with a casual brio. You don't win two Booker Prizes by being indecisive about where you're going with your narrative, and the open-ended conclusion can be read as a commentary on where these machines we've created are carrying us. It's a question as modern as artificial intelligence or oil pouring out of an uncapped well in the Gulf of Mexico. Creating a lifelike machine to do our bidding or to ease our pain as a counterweight to the dehumanization of industrialization is one thing. Making an automaton as a work of art is something else. Twain saw in the silver swan "a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes." Gehrig's swan finally "bent its snakelike neck, then darted, and every single human held its breath."

Reading: Carey reads from "The Chemistry of Tears" at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 S.W. Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton.

-- Jeff Baker

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'Chemistry of Tears' review: Where the silver swan will carry us

'The Chemistry of Tears': the mournful mechanics of a broken heart

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'The Chemistry of Tears'

by Peter Carey

Knopf, 230 pp., $26

Time may not be enough to heal all wounds in Peter Carey's heartbreaking novel about what happens when "the other woman" must mourn the loss of her forbidden lover, "The Chemistry of Tears."

At the center of this profoundly detailed study of love and grief is the "oddly elegant" Catherine Gehrig, a 40-something conservator at London's Swinburne Museum (a fictional museum a bit like Seattle's Museum of History & Industry) who specializes in horology, the science of timekeeping. She works in a world of "clocks and watches, automata and other wind-up engines" among "scholars, priests, repairers, sand-paperers, scientists, plumbers, mechanics train-spotters really."

The first female horologist in the Swinburne's history, her sense of being set apart is only heightened by the fact that for 13 years, she's been having an affair with the museum's head curator of metals, Matthew Tindall, "one of those physically graceful disheveled beauties my country does produce so very well."

Matthew is 10 years Catherine's elder. He's also married with kids, so their romance has blossomed in the darkness of total secrecy. But now Matthew has died, and since no one seems to know how close he and Catherine were, she only finds out about it at work one day.

Like a stopped clock, her heart becomes stuck in the past, with memories of Matthew flooding her daydreams. But there is hope for consolation.

She discovers that one person may be aware of the connection between her and Matthew, Head Curator for Horology Eric Croft, "the master of all that ticked and tocked," a specialist in fanciful Oriental music boxes with movable buildings and beasts on them that the British exported to China in the 18th century. Eric was a close friend of Matthew's for years.

To help distract her, the sly Eric gives Catherine a special project to work on: A box of mysterious mechanical pieces that look to be parts from a 19th-century automaton, in this case a bird with moving parts. She must bring the bird back to life, while her own is at a standstill.

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'The Chemistry of Tears': the mournful mechanics of a broken heart

An Aubrey de Grey Video AMA Gathering Questions at Reddit

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One of the many popular and distinct online communities that make up Reddit is IAmA ("I am a"), which runs verified question and answer sessions (AMAs, or "ask me anything") with all sorts of folk in interesting positions, with interesting jobs, or who are just plain interesting. You might consider it the crowdsourced, irreverent, collaborative offspring of chat shows, radio call-in programs, and the last ten years of online bulletin board evolution - this is what the kids do nowadays in place of turning on the TV or radio. In any case, I somehow entirely missed noting that a video AMA for Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Foundation has been running at Reddit to accumulate questions these past few days. Most AMAs are real-time posting sessions, but in this case the most upvoted questions will be passed on to de Grey to be answered in a video which will then be posted back to the community:

Aubrey de Grey is a leading scientist in the field of biomedical gerontology, the quest to develop true medical control of aging.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey

Dr. de Grey wrote in this week and mentioned that he had been urged on several occasions in the past few months to do an AMA. There was a lot of interest in the possibility that he could do his AMA as a video reply to a selection of representative questions, in the way that Richard Dawkins did some time ago ... We'll take your top ten best questions for Aubrey de Grey and send them to him later this week to be answered on video.

Once you get past the lowest common denominator popular communities - Reddit really doesn't work well unless you create an account and start ruthlessly pruning what you see - Reddit is a fairly pro-longevity, pro-biotechnology, and pro-science community, supportive of the goal of extending the healthy human life span through medical science, and the sooner the better. It has been pleasant to see that emerging ever more readily in the online communities of the past ten years.

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

Old Calorie Restricted Rats Act Younger Than Their Peers

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No great surprise here, given that calorie restriction in mammals slows almost all measures of aging investigated to date: "Long-term caloric restriction (CR) has been reported to extend the life spans, delay the onset and decrease the incidence of a broad spectrum of age-associated diseases. However, its effect on rat explorative behaviour is still unclear. In the present study, a number of behavioural measures were continuously monitored in 3-, 12-, 24-25-, 28-29- and 35-44-month-old male Wistar rats that were fed either ad libitum or placed on a caloric restricted diet. A gradual decline in locomotor activity of the ad libitum fed rats has been determined during aging in the open field test. In the CR groups, 3-month-old rats exhibited lower levels of exploratory behavior, compared to rats on the control diet. 24-25-month-old CR rats exhibited higher levels of exploratory behaviour, compared to ad libitum fed animals of the same age. Chronic dietary restriction nullified the age-dependent decline in locomotor activity and explorative behaviour of rats."

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22590739

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

A Brief Layperson's Tour of the Philosophy of Nonexistence

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It is taken as a tenet around here that involuntary death is a bad thing, and the process of getting to be dead despite your own wishes on the matter is arguably worse - it involves a great deal of ongoing suffering and pain as the body progressively fails. Greatly diminishing the incidence of death is one aim of the longevity science movement, achieved through the elimination of degenerative aging, the greatest cause of death. Can we say why being dead is bad, however? That is supposedly a harder job than declaring suffering to be bad and worthy of amelioration - though most philosophers fail to consider the economic costs of destruction, and in the end it should all come down to "I've decided I don't like it, and so I'll work towards doing something about it through progress in medical science." Reasons beyond personal choice are unnecessary, but here is a brief tour of some of the philosophy of death and nonexistence: "We all believe that death is bad. But why is death bad? In thinking about this question, I am simply going to assume that the death of my body is the end of my existence as a person. But if death is my end, how can it be bad for me to die? After all, once I'm dead, I don't exist. If I don't exist, how can being dead be bad for me? ... there's a puzzle raised by the Roman philosopher Lucretius, who thought it a mistake to find the prospect of my death upsetting. Yes, as the deprivation account points out, after death we can't enjoy life's pleasures. But wait a minute, says Lucretius. The time after I die isn't the only period during which I won't exist. What about the period before my birth? If nonexistence is so bad, shouldn't I be upset by the eternity of nonexistence before I was born? But that's silly, right? Nobody is upset about that. So, he concludes, it doesn't make any sense to be upset about the eternity of nonexistence after you die, either. It isn't clear how best to reply to Lucretius. One option, presumably, is to agree that we really do need to treat those two eternities of nonexistence on a par, but to insist that our prebirth nonexistence was worse than we thought. Alternatively, we might insist that there's an asymmetry that explains why we should care about the one period but not the other. But what is that difference? Perhaps this: When I die, I have lost my life. In contrast, during the eternity before my birth, although I'm not alive, I have not lost anything. You can't lose what you never had. So what's worse about death is the loss."

Link: http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Death-Bad-for-You-/131818/

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

A Brief Layperson’s Tour of the Philosophy of Nonexistence

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It is taken as a tenet around here that involuntary death is a bad thing, and the process of getting to be dead despite your own wishes on the matter is arguably worse - it involves a great deal of ongoing suffering and pain as the body progressively fails. Greatly diminishing the incidence of death is one aim of the longevity science movement, achieved through the elimination of degenerative aging, the greatest cause of death. Can we say why being dead is bad, however? That is supposedly a harder job than declaring suffering to be bad and worthy of amelioration - though most philosophers fail to consider the economic costs of destruction, and in the end it should all come down to "I've decided I don't like it, and so I'll work towards doing something about it through progress in medical science." Reasons beyond personal choice are unnecessary, but here is a brief tour of some of the philosophy of death and nonexistence: "We all believe that death is bad. But why is death bad? In thinking about this question, I am simply going to assume that the death of my body is the end of my existence as a person. But if death is my end, how can it be bad for me to die? After all, once I'm dead, I don't exist. If I don't exist, how can being dead be bad for me? ... there's a puzzle raised by the Roman philosopher Lucretius, who thought it a mistake to find the prospect of my death upsetting. Yes, as the deprivation account points out, after death we can't enjoy life's pleasures. But wait a minute, says Lucretius. The time after I die isn't the only period during which I won't exist. What about the period before my birth? If nonexistence is so bad, shouldn't I be upset by the eternity of nonexistence before I was born? But that's silly, right? Nobody is upset about that. So, he concludes, it doesn't make any sense to be upset about the eternity of nonexistence after you die, either. It isn't clear how best to reply to Lucretius. One option, presumably, is to agree that we really do need to treat those two eternities of nonexistence on a par, but to insist that our prebirth nonexistence was worse than we thought. Alternatively, we might insist that there's an asymmetry that explains why we should care about the one period but not the other. But what is that difference? Perhaps this: When I die, I have lost my life. In contrast, during the eternity before my birth, although I'm not alive, I have not lost anything. You can't lose what you never had. So what's worse about death is the loss."

Link: http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Death-Bad-for-You-/131818/

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

The Maintenance Gap

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Much of the mainstream aging research community has little interest in building therapies for aging, being focused on investigation only - though, fortunately, this situation is changing rapidly these days. The past stigma associated with public discussion of treating and ultimately preventing aging has largely evaporated within the scientific world.

Among those researchers who are interested in therapies for aging, most are focused on the slow boat of metabolic alteration: work that will have comparatively little pay-off even if successful, but which fits more readily into established research programs and the prejudices of research funding institutions.

The principal downside of metabolic alteration strategies, from my point of view, is that even if successful they cannot produce any significant longevity benefit in a person already old. All it can do is slow down aging by a modest amount - which isn't terribly useful those already aged and damaged. Even under the most optimistic estimates it will take another twenty years and many billions of dollars to see the evolution of a robust market in commercially available human metabolic enhancements to slow aging. It is a challenging field of research, and progress to date has been slow even in this era of rapid advances in biotechnology.

There is another disadvantage, which is illustrated by the different degrees to which life span is enhanced by similar strategies applied in mice versus humans. It is taken for granted in the literature, and thus probably not emphasized to the degree it should be, that an extension of life by 50% in mice based on some genetic or metabolic alteration - such as calorie restriction or growth hormone knockout - is probably not going to map to a similar extension of life in humans. If humans could achieve that sort of life extension through simply eating well and eating less or being growth hormone mutants, we'd have known about it by now. Consider Laron dwarfism, for example, or the generation after generation of practitioners of various degrees of calorie restriction that exist in many cultures.

With an eye to this second disadvantage, I'll point out an open access paper that considers the evolution of aging from the point of view of the maintenance gap. This is the gap between the cost of maintenance required to keep an organism from aging and the resources actually devoted to maintenance - both of which are subject to evolutionary selection pressures, which operate to maximize success in genetic propagation rather than the comfort or longevity of individual members of a species. The paper was published last year, but showed up in a recent issue of Biogerontology.

The maintenance gap: a new theoretical perspective on the evolution of aging

One of the prevailing theories of aging, the disposable soma theory, views aging as the result of the accumulation of damage through imperfect maintenance. Aging, then, is explained from an evolutionary perspective by asserting that this lack of maintenance exists because the required resources are better invested in reproduction. However, the amount of maintenance necessary to prevent aging, 'maintenance requirement' has so far been largely neglected and has certainly not been considered from an evolutionary perspective. To our knowledge we are the first to do so, and arrive at the conclusion that all maintenance requirement needs an evolutionary explanation.

Increases in maintenance requirement can only be selected for if these are linked with either higher fecundity or better capabilities to cope with environmental challenges to the integrity of the organism. Several observations are suggestive of the latter kind of trade-off, the existence of which leads to the inevitable conclusion that the level of maintenance requirement is in principle unbound. Even the allocation of all available resources to maintenance could be unable to stop aging in some organisms.

This has major implications for our understanding of the aging process on both the evolutionary and the mechanistic level. It means that the expected effect of measures to reallocate resources to maintenance from reproduction may be small in some species. We need to have an idea of how much maintenance is necessary in the first place. Our explorations of how natural selection is expected to act on the maintenance requirement provides the first step in understanding this.

The point to take away from this argument is that we should expect to find a broad variation between species in their response to similar forms of metabolic and genetic alteration aimed at extending life span. So far, that is what is seen, with we humans having the short end of the stick - though obviously there is an ocean of data yet to be obtained on this topic. On the whole, though, it seems like one more slowly building argument for the research community to focus on repair-based strategies for treating aging: build biotechnologies that are explicitly designed to repair forms of biological damage that existing repair systems either cannot handle or handle too slowly. SENS is the most obvious example, though I expect other, competing repair-focused visions to emerge in the years ahead as the SENS Foundation obtains further scientific support and promising research results.

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm