NASA ending most activities with Russia

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By Laura Smith-Spark, CNN

updated 11:53 AM EDT, Thu April 3, 2014

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(CNN) -- NASA is suspending much of its work with Russia in light of its actions in Ukraine but said it will continue to collaborate with Russia's space agency on International Space Station operations.

The decision by the U.S. space agency to halt "the majority of its ongoing engagements" with Russia's Roscosmos comes amid heightened tensions sparked by Russia's annexation last month of Ukraine's southern Crimea region.

A statement sent out by NASA on Wednesday said the U.S. space agency was acting "given Russia's ongoing violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

But, the statement said, it will continue to work with Roscosmos to "maintain safe and continuous operation of the International Space Station."

In 2011, NASA retired its space shuttle fleet, its only means of getting to and from the station. Now, Russian Soyuz capsules ferry U.S. astronauts and cosmonauts, together with supplies that can fit in the smaller craft.

In its statement, NASA appealed for more funding from Congress to help it resume manned American space flights.

"NASA is laser focused on a plan to return human spaceflight launches to American soil, and end our reliance on Russia to get into space," it said.

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NASA ending most activities with Russia

NASA suspends relations with Russia, but Putin holds all the cards (+video)

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NASA has suspended certain activities with Russia. But the space station is exempt, and the rift highlights that, for the next few years, the US can't send astronauts into space without Russia.

The International Space Station, long a symbol of international cooperation in space even among former adversaries, could become the next pressure point as the US tries to raise the stakes for Moscow after Russia's takeover and annexation of Crimea.

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On Wednesday, Michael O'Brien, NASA's associate administrator for international and interagency relations issued a memo to the agency's staff suspending bilateral contacts with Russia unless a specific activity has been given an exemption.

"This suspension includes NASA travel to Russia and visits by Russian Government representatives to NASA facilities, bilateral meetings, email, and teleconferences or videoconferences." wrote Mr. O'Brien. A copy of the memo was posted on the website SpaceRef.com.

Bilateral contacts related to the operation of the space station are exempt, as are meetings held outside of Russia that involved additional countries such as those that might be include the participation of the station's other main partners, Canada, Europe, and Japan.

NASA's move is something of a diplomatic Post-it note; the two countries' space programs aren't engaged in many bilateral activities. Indeed, should operation of the space station come directly into play, the US and the other partners have the most to lose.

They have the heaviest investment in the $150 billion orbiting outpost, and they cannot get into space without Russia, which has served as America's taxi service for delivering and retrieving US crew members from the space station, as well as delivering cargo to the station.

So far, the Ukraine crisis has not interrupted US-Russia cooperation on the space station. But with the issuance of NASA's memo Wednesday, the question everyone is waiting to see answered is how Russian President Vladimir Putin responds.

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NASA suspends relations with Russia, but Putin holds all the cards (+video)

Department of Internal Medicine – Molecular Medicine

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Wednesday, February 19, 2014 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. BSEB 272 Guest Speaker - Dr. Joseph Miano University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry "Regulatory Control of Smooth Muscle Cell Phenotypes" Wednesday, January 15, 2014 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. BSEB East Lecture Hall Research Grand Rounds - Dr. Cam Patterson University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Wednesday, November 20, 2013 4:00 p.m. BRC 109 Guest speaker, Dr. Depei Liu, will present "Protective Roles of SIRT1 in vascular diseases" Friday, November 15, 2013 12:00 p.m. BSEB 276 Guest speaker, Dr. Ingrid Fleming, will present "The AMPK: homeostasis angiogenesis and mircroRNA"

Friday, October 18, 2013 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Dr. Yue Wu - Research Data Presentation Zhaoyu Liu - Journal Club Friday, October 11, 2013 4:00 - 5:00 p.m BSEB 306D Dr. Kate Coughlan - Research Data Presentation

Wednesday, October 9, 2013 12:15 - 1:00 p.m. BSEB East Lecture Hall Guest speaker, Dr. Joseph Loscalzo, will present "Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension: Newer Concepts in Pathobiology and Treatment" Friday, September 20, 2013 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Dr. Ouyang Changhan - Research Data Presentation Dr. Kate Coughlan - Journal Club

Friday, September 13, 2013 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Dr. Wencheng Zhang - Research Data Presentation Friday, September 6, 2013 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Dr. Xiaoyan Dai - Research Data Presentation Dr. Hairong Xu - Journal Club

Friday, August 30, 2013 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Dr. Qilong Wang - Research Data Presentation Dr. Changhan Ouyang - Journal Club Friday, August 9, 2013 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Dr. Huaiping Zhu- Research Data Presentation Dr. Ping Song- Journal Club Friday, June 28, 2013 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Zhaoyu Liu- Research Data Presentation Friday, June 23, 2013 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. BSEB 276 Dr. Ramani Ramchandran from the University of Wisconsin will present "EV2 Transcriptional Regulation During Cardiac Progenitor Cell Development" Friday, June 21, 2013 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Dr. Qiongxin Wang- Research Data Presentation Monday, June 17, 2013 9:00 - 10:15 a.m. BSEB 276 Dr. David Weber from the University of South Alabama will present "Reactive Oxygen Species Regulation of Vascular Remodeling During Stenosis" Friday, June 7, 2013 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Dr. Cate Moriasi- Research Data Presentation Friday, May 7, 2013 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Dr. Kate Coughlan- Research Data Presentation

Friday, May 3, 2013 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Dr. Hairong Xu- Research Data Presentation

Wednesday, May 1, 2013 9:00 a.m. BSEB 272 Dr. Patrice Delafontaine of Tulane University will present "Angiotensin II: Novel Effects on Skeletal Muscle"

Friday, April 26, 2013 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Braxton Nottingham- Research Data Presentation

Friday, April 19, 2013 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. BSEB 306D Dr. Changhan Ouyang- Research Data Presentation

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Department of Internal Medicine - Molecular Medicine

Cancer and the Goldilocks Effect

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Newswise Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found that too little or too much of an enzyme called SRPK1 promotes cancer by disrupting a regulatory event critical for many fundamental cellular processes, including proliferation.

The findings are published in the current online issue of Molecular Cell.

The family of SRPK kinases was first discovered by Xiang-Dong Fu, PhD, professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego in 1994. In 2012, Fu and colleagues uncovered that SPRK1 was a key signal transducer devoted to regulating alternative pre-mRNA splicing, a process that allows a single gene to produce multiple mRNA isoforms, which in many cases encode functionally distinct proteins. In this pathway, SRPK1 was a downstream target of Akt, also known as protein kinase B. Akt- activated SRPK1 moves to the nucleus to induce its targeted splicing factors.

In their latest paper, Fu and colleagues report that SRPK1 was found to act as a tumor suppressor because when ablated or removed from mouse embryonic fibroblasts, unwanted cell transformation occurred. Unexpectedly, when SRPK1 was overexpressed in mouse cells, tumor development also happened.

To my knowledge, this is the first time it has been shown that a signal kinase behaves as a tumor suppressor or a promoter, depending upon its abundance in the same cell said Fu. The point is that too much or too little are both bad.

Such contrary phenomena are due to a surprising role of SRPK1 in regulating the activity of Akt via a specific Akt phosphatase discovered earlier by Alexandra C. Newton, PhD, professor of pharmacology at UC San Diego. The Akt phosphatase cannot find Akt when there is too little SRPK1 to assist, and the phosphatase is tied up when there is too much SRPK1. In both cases, the result is a dampening of Akt inactivation.

As Akt plays a key role in many cellular processes, such as glucose metabolism, apoptosis, proliferation and all key aspects of tumor development, the elucidated mechanism provides a critical insight into tumorigenesis in humans. Indeed, compared to normal cells, many tumors show SRPK1 overexpression while others display reduced expression.

The findings may have future therapeutic implications, but Fu said the challenges remain daunting. Most tumors show SRPK1 overexpression, so it may be possible to treat certain cancers with a specific SRPK1 inhibitor. This has been already demonstrated by others. But suppressing a cancer not related to SRPK1 overexpression could actually stimulate that cancer.

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Cancer and the Goldilocks Effect

Get ready for the 'brain-net'

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Physicist Michio Kaku isn't afraid of scientific frontiers, whether it's the super-subatomic world of string theory or the mind-bogglingly big world of the accelerating universe. In books and on TV, he's delved into the physics of the impossible and the physics of the future.

Kaku's latest focus is a real stretch: It's the scientific frontier that sits between your temples. In his latest book, "The Future of the Mind," Kaku surveys the burgeoning field of neuroscience. You might think the subject is out of a string theorist's usual comfort zone, but his breezy, science-fictiony style wins the day. "The Future of the Mind" has been on The New York Times' best-seller list for the past month.

In preparation for our talk-show gig on "Virtually Speaking Science," Kaku fielded some questions about the far-out future of the mind. Here's an edited transcript of the Q&A:

Alan Boyle: The first thing a person might ask is, 'What's a string theorist doing writing about neuroscience?'

Michio Kaku: "Well, ever since I was a child, I've been fascinated by the brain, by the mind. When I was a child, I used to do experiments on telepathy and telekinesis and recording memories. Eventually, I concluded that all of that was bunk. However, now I'm a physicist, and using physics, we can now probe the brain in detail that was unimaginable just a few years ago.

"We've learned more about the brain over the past decade than in all the rest of human history, and it's from physics that we have all the instruments with which we can trace blood flow in the brain, and actually see thoughts ricocheting like a ping-pong ball.

"Telepathy ... telekinesis ... recording memories, uploading memories ... even photographing a dream: All of that is now possible because of advanced physics."

Q: One of the concepts that you put forward in the book is the idea of a 'brain-net,' which will connect people directly, brain to brain. How do you envision that working, and when might we see the beginnings of the brain-net?

A: "The Internet will eventually be replaced by a brain-net, in which we can experience emotions, memories and sensations. Of course, teenagers are going to go crazy on Facebook they'll share the memory of their first kiss, their first date, the senior prom. All those emotions and hormones will be pumping away, on Facebook!

"The first steps in this direction were taken just last year. For the first time in history, a memory was recorded. It was recorded in a mouse. Next, we'll do it for primates. The short-term goal is to create a 'brain pacemaker' for Alzheimer's patients, so they can push a button and they'll know who they are and where they live. And beyond that well, maybe we'll be able to upload a vacation that we never had."

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Get ready for the 'brain-net'

Thousands Throng India’s Dharamsala to Seek Knowledge from Dalai Lama on Medicine Buddha Empowerment – Video

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Thousands Throng India #39;s Dharamsala to Seek Knowledge from Dalai Lama on Medicine Buddha Empowerment
Thousands throng the main Buddhist temple in India #39;s northern hill town of Dharamsala to attend the teaching of Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama and ...

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Thousands Throng India's Dharamsala to Seek Knowledge from Dalai Lama on Medicine Buddha Empowerment - Video