A real Life Diary of Art Thursday 26 February 2015
Let there be peace without hate, with respect to mankind, free speech and a free society More information about the art of Johan van der Dong http://www.johanvanderdong.nl About Johan van der...
By: Art Channel Johan van der Dong
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Vivian James Free Speech (Speed Drawing)
A couple of day ago my boyfriend #39;s channel was taken down as an attempt to censor him. Two of his Gamergate videos were tagged as inappropriate unfairly. Fortunately youtube reviewed his channel.
By: ilenca
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Lina Ejeilat helped found the Jordanian online magazine 7iber (pronounced 'Hebber'). While the government encourages free expression in principle, many strict regulations remain, as noted by the satirical chart next to her. Art Silverman/NPR hide caption
Lina Ejeilat helped found the Jordanian online magazine 7iber (pronounced 'Hebber'). While the government encourages free expression in principle, many strict regulations remain, as noted by the satirical chart next to her.
Earlier this month, Jordan's Information Minister Mohammad Al-Momani told a conference that freedom of expression can contribute to stopping radicalization.
On the very same day, a military court in the capital Amman sentenced a man to 18 months in prison for a Facebook post that was seen as insulting a friendly country, the United Arab Emirates.
Momani spent years studying at Rice University in Houston, so he knows what Americans think of as free expression. But he sees it a little differently.
"We think to have an open space for opinion and counter-opinion, this will strengthen the value of the society," he says in an interview. "This will make the society stronger in resisting and in being immune from these terrorist and extremist ideologies. That's why we are actually keen on protecting that space and making sure there is freedom of expression, there's freedom of opinion allowed, of course, under the umbrella of the law."
The Jordanian man jailed for his Facebook post wrote, among other things, that the United Arab Emirates had a "pro-Zionist" foreign policy. The information minister defended the court's decision to jail him.
"Our laws clearly say you cannot insult a country that we have a good relationship with," he says. "His statement could have been said in a different way without insulting another country. So what he said is bad-mouthing another country that could have affected the well-being of almost a quarter of a million Jordanians working there" in the United Arab Emirates.
National Interest Trumps Free Speech
In Jordan, free expression is conditional on national interest. And the country's national interests can clash with reporters' interests on several counts.
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Is a discussion of free speech potentially traumatic? A recent panel for Smith College alumnae elicited this ominous warning when a transcript appeared in the campus newspaper: Racism/racial slurs, ableist slurs, antisemitic language, anti-Muslim/Islamophobic language, anti-immigrant language, sexist/misogynistic slurs ... .
No one on this panel, in which I participated, trafficked in slurs. So what prompted the warning?
Smith President Kathleen McCartney had joked, We're just wild and crazy, aren't we? In the transcript, crazy was replaced by (ableist slur).
One panelist mentioned the State Department had for a time banned jihad, Islamist and caliphate which the transcript flagged as anti-Muslim/Islamophobic language.
Discussing the teaching of Huckleberry Finn, I questioned the use of euphemisms such as the n-word and, in doing so, uttered that forbidden word. I described the difference between quoting a word in the context of discussing literature or prejudice and hurling it as an epithet.
On campus, I was branded a racist. McCartney apologized that some students and faculty were hurt and made to feel unsafe by my remarks.
Unsafe? These days, when students talk about threats to their safety, they're often talking about the threat of unwelcome speech and demanding protection from the emotional disturbances sparked by unsettling ideas. It's not just rape that some women on campus fear: It's discussions of rape. At Brown University, a scheduled debate between two feminists about rape culture was criticized for, as the Brown Daily Herald put it, undermining the University's mission to create a safe and supportive environment for survivors.
How did we get here? You can credit or blame progressives for this embrace of censorship.
In the 1980s, law professor Catharine MacKinnon and writer Andrea Dworkin framed pornography as an assault on women. They defined pornography as a violation of women's civil rights and championed an anti-porn ordinance that would authorize civil actions by any woman aggrieved by pornography. MacKinnon and Dworkin lost that battle, but their successors are winning the war. Their view of allegedly offensive speech as a civil rights violation has helped shape campus speech codes and nurtured progressive hostility toward free speech.
The '80s and early '90s recovery movement adopted a similarly dire view of unwelcome speech. Words wound, anti-porn feminists and recovering co-dependents agreed. Self-appointed recovery experts, such as author John Bradshaw, promoted the belief that most of us are victims of abuse. They broadened the definition of abuse to include common, normal childhood experiences. From this perspective, we are all fragile and damaged by presumptively hurtful speech, and censorship looks like a moral necessity.
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By JULIUS KAIREY
If Israel were an Arab country, it would receive near-universal praise as a paragon of justice. Its robust protections of freedom of speech, along with frequent and open elections, would make it the only Arab state in which people have a real say in the operation of their government. Israel would be celebrated as the only gay-friendly state in a region of rampant anti-gay persecution. Its strict prohibition of the traditional practice of honor killings where women accused of disgracing the family name are murdered by their male relatives would be lauded as proof of its progressive and egalitarian values. And its modern capitalist economy, driven by a dynamic high-tech sector, would be the model for other Arab nations seeking to lift their people from the depths of poverty.
Of course, Israel isnt an Arab nation, and it is treated according to this double-standard. It is the worlds only majority-Jewish state, and it is surrounded by Arab theocracies, dictatorships and monarchies, each of which have gone to war in a failed bid to end its existence. And yet, Israels remarkable history of repeated triumph in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity receives little sympathy among some left-wing segments of communities across the nation.
While Israels actions are put under a microscope its every flaw magnified to the maximum possible extent its enemies are given a free pass.
It is not immediately obvious why this is so. Israels history reads like a liberal success story. The Jewish people have refused to consent to their exile from the land of Israel, perpetrated by the Romans nearly 2,000 years ago. Rather than submit to oppression and injustice, Jews returned home over the centuries. In the 19th century, this movement for national liberation, called Zionism, sought to establish a modern state in the Jewish national homeland. This place would be a refuge from the forces of bigotry and hatred a place where Jews from around the world could gather for collective security whenever their lives or livelihoods came under threat. To this day, thousands of Jews migrate to Israel annually most recently from France for safety from the resurgence of anti-Semitism.
But you will not hear any of this from Israels detractors. They subject Israel to a constant torrent of demonization, all while applying a moral standard on Israel that is applied to no other country on Earth. Zionism is equated with racism and Israel is called a terrorist state, even the moral equivalent of apartheid South Africa, a country that maintained a total and systematic separation between Whites and non-Whites. These accusations continue in total disregard of the fact that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Jews and Arabs live alongside one another in substantial numbers, vote in the same elections and serve together in the same national legislature.
While Israels actions are put under a microscope its every flaw magnified to the maximum possible extent its enemies are given a free pass. Hamas brazenly indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli cities which even the Palestinian Authority has called war crimes are either encouraged as necessary for resistance, or dismissed as insignificant. Hamas genocidal charter, which calls not just for the destruction of Israel but for the murder of Jews worldwide, is attributed to a harmless overreaction to Israels non-existent occupation of the Gaza Strip, not to be taken seriously. Where else is the threat of genocide not to be taken seriously?
So why cant Israel get a fair hearing in certain segments of campus communities and elsewhere? It comes down to Israels character.
Israels first crime is that it is a Western nation. In the minds of Israels critics, to be Western is to be suspect, especially when your country is juxtaposed with non-Western nations. Israeli actions are confused with colonialism by those who erroneously insist that, to this day, imperialism drives relations between Western and non-Western peoples. To attack Israel is to give non-Westerners a leg up in these supposedly colonial interactions.
Israels second offense is that it is pro-American. It is little surprise that Israels fiercest opponents are also militant critics of the United States. They deride Americas invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as modern-day imperialism and look forward to a day when America will be forced to relinquish its superpower status. Because Israel and America have such strong links, Israel is tarred as a mere instrument of Americas supposedly nefarious interests abroad. Bashing Israel is just their way of expressing contempt for the policies of the United States, and as such serves as an outlet for virulent anti-Americanism. They treat the Jewish State as America in the Middle East.
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The fighting in eastern Ukraine is getting worse every day and Western efforts to deter Russian intervention are having little effect, NATOs top military commander said Wednesday.
In appearances on Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon, Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Europe, gave a decidedly pessimistic account of the Ukrainian conflict. He also predicted that Russias success in destabilizing Ukraine would embolden President Vladimir Putin to sow divisions elsewhere as part of a strategy to weaken NATO politically and expand Moscows influence in the region.
With the Obama administration wrestling with the question of whether to respond more aggressively by providing arms to the Ukrainian government, Breedlove acknowledged that such a move would be a gamble. I cant tell you what is going on inside Mr. Putins head, he said, adding that U.S. officials are unsure whether sending arms to Kiev would cause Russia to back down, or escalate the war.
We have to be cognizant that if we arm the Ukrainians, it could cause positive results. It could cause negative results. But what were doing right now is not changing the results on the ground, he said during testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.
Later, during a press conference at the Pentagon, Breedlove said he has submitted formal recommendations to the White House, via his chain of command at the Pentagon, on what other measures Washington should take to push back against Moscow and its support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Although he declined to elaborate on his proposals, Breedlove said that in order to turn the tide in Ukraine, the United States and its NATO allies need to develop a more effective mix of diplomatic, military and economic tactics.
We dont want a war of grand proportions in Ukraine. We must find a diplomatic and political solution, he said. What is clear is that this is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.
Obama administration officials have said they are weighing a new round of economic sanctions against Russia as well as whether to send anti-tank missiles and other weaponry to Ukraine. Until now, Washington has limited its military assistance to non-lethal aid, such as body armor, night-vision goggles, radios and uniforms.
There is rising bipartisan support in Congress for the idea of arming the Ukrainians, with many lawmakers criticizing Obama for being too cautious. But some influential NATO allies, including Germany and France, have resisted the idea, arguing that it would only make matters worse.
We have to be absolutely straightforward to say that none of us knows what Mr. Putin will decide, Breedlove said. If we take action, many believe hell accelerate. If we take action, others believe it may raise the cost to him, and he might make another decision.
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NATO commander warns about deteriorating situation in Ukraine
Washington The top U.S. military commander in Europe said on Wednesday the situation in Ukraine was "getting worse every day" as government forces struggled against Russian-backed rebels, but he declined to say whether he favored supplying defensive weapons to Kiev.
Air Force General Philip Breedlove, the NATO supreme allied commander, said the U.S. military had a deep relationship with Ukraine even before the current conflict and had a good sense of what military assets it needed, including intelligence, communications and jamming and counter-battery.
"I've prepared my advice and passed it up through my chain of command and that is now in the process of being considered," Breedlove told Pentagon reporters during a briefing. He did not offer details of his recommendations.
Breedlove spoke amid signs that a French- and German-brokered truce may be beginning to take hold. Rebels initially spurned the ceasefire, but Reuters journalists in eastern Ukraine saw artillery being moved away from the front in some areas on Wednesday.
Asked whether providing additional military assistance to Ukraine would prompt Russian President Vladimir Putin to "up the ante," Breedlove indicated there was no way to predict.
"Let's examine what Mr. Putin has done already: Well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery. I would say that Mr. Putin has already set the ... ante very high."
Breedlove said no one could predict with any accuracy what Putin's reaction would be to tougher Western sanctions on Russia or providing Ukraine with military assistance. As a result, he said it was important to make the best judgment possible and find a way forward.
"What is clear is that right now it is not getting better, it is getting worse every day," he said.
Asked whether the situation was likely to worsen even if the U.S. and Western allies did nothing further, Breedlove said that was already happening.
"We have seen a steady escalation," he said, noting that when Russian forces initially went into eastern Ukraine they tried to conceal their presence and create "ambiguity to confuse whether they were actually in there."
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Gemalto, the Dutch maker of billions of mobile phone SIM cards, confirmed this morning that it was the target of attacks in 2010 and 2011attacks likely perpetrated by the NSA and British spy agency GCHQ. But even as the the company confirmed the hacks, it downplayed their significance, insisting that the attackers failed to get inside the network where cryptographic keys are stored that protect mobile communications.
Gemalto came to this conclusion after just a weeklong investigation following a news report that the NSA and GCHQ had hacked into the firms network in 2011. The news was reported by The Intercept last week, which said the agencies had gained access to huge cache of the cryptographic keys used with its SIM cards.
The investigation into the intrusion methods described in the document and the sophisticated attacks that Gemalto detected in 2010 and 2011 give us reasonable grounds to believe that an operation by NSA and GCHQ probably happened, Gemalto wrote in a press release on Wednesday. But, the company said, The attacks against Gemalto only breached its office networks and could not have resulted in a massive theft of SIM encryption keys.
Many in the information security community ridiculed Gemalto for asserting this after such a short investigation, particularly since the NSA has been known to deploy malware and techniques capable of completely erasing any signs of an intrusion after the fact to thwart forensic discovery of a breach.
Very impressive, Gemalto had no idea of any attacks in 2010, one week ago. Now they know exactly what happened, French developer and security researcher Matt Suiche wrote on Twitter.
Chris Soghoian, chief technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union had the same reaction.
Gemalto, a company that operates in 85 countries, has figured out how to do a thorough security audit of their systems in 6 days. Remarkable, he tweeted.
The Intercept alleged in its story that the spy agencies had targeted employees of the Dutch firm, reading their siphoned emails and scouring their Facebook posts to obtain information that would let them hack employee machines. Once on Gemaltos network, The Intecept reported, the spy agencies planted backdoors and other tools to give them a persistent foothold. We believe we have their entire network, boasted the author of a government PowerPoint slide that was leaked by Snowden to journalist Glenn Greenwald.
If true, this would be a damning breach. Gemalto is one of the leading makers of SIM cards; its cards are used in part to help secure the communications of billions of customers phones around the world on AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and more than 400 other wireless carriers in 85 countries. Stealing the crypto keys would allow the spy agencies to wiretap and decipher encrypted phone communications between mobile handsets and cell towers without the assistance of telecom carriers or the oversight of a court or government.
Edward Snowden criticized the agencies for the hack in an Ask Me Anything session for Reddit on Monday. When the NSA and GCHQ compromised the security of potentially billions of phones (3g/4g encryption relies on the shared secret resident on the sim), Snowden wrote, they not only screwed the manufacturer, they screwed all of us, because the only way to address the security compromise is to recall and replace every SIM sold by Gemalto.
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Gemalto Confirms It Was Hacked But Insists the NSA Didnt Get Its Crypto Keys
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is either the face of a terrifying proto-police state or a startlingly inept bureaucracy. Either way, it needs to be reined in. On a recent family trip to Nashville, my wife, two children, ages 9 and 11, and I had our own kafkaesque brush with the TSA as we passed through security at Philadelphia International Airport, ending in the violation of my fourth amendment rights and a thorough pat-down.
In the bizarre choreography of TSA security theater, one parent is allowed to pass through a traditional metal detector while the other must pass through an Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) device. There can be no security rationale for this split-the-baby wisdom. I went through the metal detector and my wife through the AIT. As we awaited our bags at the scanner exit, one bag was singled out by a Transportation Security Officer (TSO). He pointed to an image on his screen. I called over to my wife, asking what was in the bag. It was my sons nebulizer, which he needs for occasional asthma. The bag was opened, and the TSO was apparently satisfied that, despite what he claimed was an alarming image on the monitor, the nebulizer was not a concealed explosive. I wish that wasthe end of the story.
The TSO explained that since the nebulizer was in the bag but should have been placed separately in a bin, a complete pat-down was now required. I objected to this and asked that a supervisor be summoned. The supervisor arrived and statedthat only a mandatory pat-down ofsomeonewould resolve this situation, and that this was required by procedure. Rather than miss my flight and traumatize my children, I subjected myself to a pat-down, despite the fact that I had not even packed the bag. After being poked and prodded for several minutes, I offered in my most sarcastic tone, I feel much safer now. The TSO supervisor replied with conviction, You would if it were someone elses nebulizer. The notion that a medical device erroneously left in a bag raises thea prioririsk that I am smuggling something else in my underwear is nothing less that insane. If TSA big data cannot conclude that a middle-aged dermatologist from New Jersey traveling with his family isnotlikely to be smuggling a weapon in his groin, then a lot of effort has been squandered developing TSA Risk Assessment.
This violation of my Fourth Amendment rights was based either on misguided policy or intended strictly as a punitive measure to remind people to properly sort their items at screening. In either scenario, the TSA emerges as a profound threat to the civil liberties of all Americans.
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
If a Transportation Security Officer, claiming a very Nuremberg responsibility of following procedure, had his hand in my crotch against my will with no probable cause, then a reasonable person should conclude that my Fourth Amendment rights have been violated. Whether from malice or bureaucratic ineptness, this intrusion must be stopped. There is no end to the slippery slope of following procedure. Procedure can expand to include a strip search, body cavity probe, or invasion of home, vehicle, and private data. Unchecked, procedure will inevitably expand to include warrantless searches on highways, trains, and buses.
The following must occur:
First, the TSA, after nearly 15 years of operation, must present concrete evidence that its methods meaningfully contribute to public safety in a way that cannot be achieved by less intrusive means. Can the fleet of AIT scanners and army of mall cops employed by the TSA truly prevent a determined attack? Rather than preventing terrorism, this standing federal army deployed against the American people makes us less safe and undermines our core values. If the TSA cannot meet this threshold then airport security should immediately be returned to the hands of private contractors with intelligent standards to be developed by a new government agency.
Second, a determined legal challenge must be mounted to the TSA. A 1973 ruling (U.S. vs Davis) classifiesairport screenings as administrative searches and notes that a search should be no more intrusive or intensive than necessary, in light of current technology, to detect weapons or explosives, confined in good faith to that purpose, and passengers may avoid the search by electing not to fly. The TSAs intrusive pat-downs and privacy-violating AITs, coupled with a lack of evidence for the effectiveness of these methods in deterring terrorism, do not meet the criteria demanded by U.S. vs Davis. Furthermore, the TSA must be barred from extending its reach into other modes of travel, as its overreaching moniker implies it is set to do. A future in which we are told that we can avoid search by electing not to drive or ride a train or even walk must be avoided.
Third, we must place our elected representatives to Congress on notice that erosion of our civil liberties in the name of security will not be tolerated. Only candidates who pledge to defend the privacy of Americans in the face of overreach by government agencies should be supported for election.
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The TSA Has Fallen So Far It Represents a Threat to American Liberties
Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull is not well-known today, but he is one of the Founding Sons who transformed the nation and the Constitution before, during, and after the Civil War. He wrote the Thirteenth Amendment, the first Freedmens Bureau Bill, and the Civil Rights Act. He sponsored the first federal statutes which actually freed slaves. As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and later as a civil rights attorney, he did more to protect Second Amendment rightsincluding taking a test case to the U.S. Supreme Court (Presser v. Illinois)than did any other lawyer or legislator in the century after Jefferson and Madison.
Trumbull has been the subject of three biographies, the last of which was published four decades ago, but he has never been the subject of a legal biography. So in a new article(just submitted to law reviews), I provide the first legal biography of Lyman Trumbull. Like Jonathan Bingham, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner,and Salmon P. Chase, Trumbull led the legal fight against slavery and the incidents of slavery, such as disarmament and arbitrary captivity. These Founding Sons transformed and improved the American constitutional order created by the Founding Fathers.
Lyman Trumbulls role as a Second Amendment champion was somewhat accidental, for he was not a gun guy; he didnt carry a gun for protection, even when traveling, and his preferred sports were sailing and croquet. The reason that he ended up doing so much for Second Amendment was that during public career of 1840-96 he was always an ardent champion of the working man. In congressional statutes and in court cases, he defended Second Amendment rights because those rights were necessary for the working man to resist oppression by the wealthyfor the freedmen in the Reconstructed South to protect themselves from de facto re-enslavement, and for the immigrant laborers of the industrial North to defend their rights to organize and protest.
Some people thought that Trumbull was inconsistent; he changed political parties five times. (Democrat, Anti-Nebraska Democrat, Republican, Liberal Republican, Democrat, Populist.) He cast his first presidential vote for Democrat Martin Van Buren in 1836 because Trumbull and Van Buren were both against big government. At the end of Trumbulls career, in the 1890s, he was allied with socialists; he wrote the platform for the Peoples Party (Populists), and he joined with Clarence Darrow to bring to the U.S. Supreme Court a habeas corpus petition on behalf of the labor leader Eugene Debsafter Debs had been sent to prison for violating a federal court injunction by leading a national railroad strike.
To Trumbull, there was no contradiction. The fight in the Debscase was for theright of workers to withhold their laborthe same cause for which Trumbull had fought as a young attorney Illinois, where he became the states leading anti-slavery lawyer. Although Illinois had banned slave imports, there was still slavery for the descendants of the slaves who were held by descendants of the French settlers who had lived in Illinois at the time when Illinois was acquired by the United States. Trumbull ended the old French slavery by winning the 1845 caseJarrot v. Jarrotin the Illinois Supreme Court.
In the words of Clarence Darrow (Trumbulls co-counsel in theDebscase) Trumbulldevoted his life to to creating a fair chance for the poor who toil for a living in this world. Lyman Trumbull was an outstanding lawyer, a superb legislator, and a great American. He inspires me, and I hope that he may do the same for you.
David Kopel is Research Director, Independence Institute, Denver, Colorado; Associate Policy Analyst, Cato Institute, Washington, D.C; and Adjunct professor of advanced constitutional law, Denver University, Sturm College of Law. He is author of 15 books and 90 scholarly journal articles.
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Volokh Conspiracy: Lyman Trumbull: The anti-slavery and pro-Second Amendment Senator and lawyer
Best Argument I Ever Heard For Bitcoin - Roger Ver #39;s View
When you count the bitcoin geniuses, be sure to count Roger Ver! This article proves it! Talk about a cogent argument! In the first exhibit of evidence, he P...
By: BackToConstitution
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Best Argument I Ever Heard For Bitcoin - Roger Ver's View - Video
Shopify crypto currency integration - dopecoin - dogecoin - bitcoin - litecoin - nxt
In less than four minutes we show you how to enable crypto currency acceptance in your shopify online store. That #39;s how easy it is to integrate! Good luck. Why would you? Because it will bring...
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Shopify crypto currency integration - dopecoin - dogecoin - bitcoin - litecoin - nxt - Video
The Bitcoin Success Story - Millionaires With Digital Currency
By: Patrick Moore
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The Bitcoin Success Story - Millionaires With Digital Currency - Video
The non-group stargazer comet as seen by SOHO. (Credit: NASA)
Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com @BednarChuck
An unusual comet was spotted by the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) as it travelled near the sun late last week, and unlike most other comets that make such a voyage, this one actually lived to tell the tale.
According to the US space agency, these types of comets are known as sungrazers and typically evaporate in the intense sunlight. However, this recently spotted comet made it to within 2.2 million miles of the sun and was actually able to survive the journey intact.
[STORY: Sungrazing comet: wrong place, wrong time]
Thats not the only thing about the comet that caught NASAs attention, though. Not only was it a sungrazer, it is what is known as a non-group comet, meaning that it does not belong to any known family of comets. The majority of comets observed by SOHO are members of the Kreutz family, all of which had separated from the same giant comet centuries ago.
Comet me bro!
Theres a half-decent chance that ground observers might be able to detect it in the coming weeks, explained Karl Battams, a solar scientist at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC. But its also possible that events during its trip around, the sun will cause it to die fairly fast.
Since it first launched in 1995, SOHO has discovered 2,875 comets, making it the pre-eminent comet-locating spacecraft of all time, according to NASA. However, it observed only a handful of non-group comets (such as this new one) each year, the agency added.
The Sungrazer Project explains that these types of comets have been observed for hundreds of years, dating back at least to the late 1880s. There is no formal definition of what a sungrazing comet is, and to date no comet has ever been seen hitting the photosphere (or solar surface). The closest sungrazers typically come pass within 50,000 kilometers of the sun.
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February 25, 2015 - Major Arena Soccer League (MASL) Comets Complete Regular Season MASL-terpiece
2/25/15 - The Missouri Comets put an exclamation point on their perfect season with a 17-1 rout of the Tacoma Stars, finishing the regular season 20-0.
Leo Gibson scored the first four and the last three goals of the game and finished with a league record 12 points (eight goals, four assists). Danny Waltman allowed a season-low one goal to improve to 17-0, breaking Jesus Flores's old record of 16 wins set last year.
The Comets won their division by seven games over the Milwaukee Wave and won their games by an average margin of 7.2 goals per game. The Comets scored a league-high 12 goals per game and had the fourth best defense, allowing 4.8 goals per game. The Comets were number one on the power play, converting 63.27% of opportunities and their penalty killing unit was fourth best at 72.97%.
Gibson led the league in goals (48) and set records for assists (45) and points (93). Vahid Assadpour finished fourth with 61 points and Bryan Perez was 12th with 44 points. From the back, John Sosa (3rd), Brian Harris (4th), Alain Matingou (6th) and Andre Braithwaite (12th) finished among the league leaders in scoring by defenders.
In their three biggest challenges, the Comets rallied from 5-2 down to beat the Milwaukee Wave 9-7 on November 15. On New Year's Eve the Comets allowed the Wave to tie the game with less than one second left and in overtime a Bato Radoncic shot was stopped by an intentional Sosa handball, but the Wave failed to score on the penalty shootout and the Comets eventually won the game on shootouts. On January 25 the Monterrey Flash held a 7-6 lead until Missouri tied the game with 17 seconds left and won in overtime.
Going back to their tenure in the MISL, the Comets have won 25 straight regular season games.
MASL Team of the Week
GK - Danny Waltman, Missouri Comets
This is Waltman's first team of the week selection this season. The Comets finished the season 20-0 and Waltman played a total of 1006:45 minutes this season and broke the record for most wins in a season (17) in which he recorded a total of 236 saves, 10 of them on Sunday. He allowed only one goal against the Tacoma Stars and has a .744 save percentage.
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Bengaluru, Feb 25, 2015, dhns:
Two courses of stem cell therapy have helped Ashok Kumar, 59, who suffered from tremors and rigidity due to Parkinsons disease, recover completely, much to the joy of his family.
The man was brought inside my cabin in a wheelchair. He was unable to even sit on the chair without support. Today, he walks independently. Stem cell therapy has made it possible for him, said Dr Naseem Sadiq, Director, Plexus Neuro and Stem Cell Research Centre, who began treating Kumar in October, last year.
Previously, medication and surgical procedure were the only treatment option for Parkinsons disease. Medication in the long-term often lacks effectiveness and may cause side effects, while surgery is not always feasible. Lately, stem cell therapy has turned out to be a boon for patients with Parkinsons, Dr Sadiq said.
Kumar is among the few who have benefited from stem cell therapy. However, though the State has been reporting an increase in the number of registered stem cell donors, it is far behind sufficient as the genetic match between donor and recipient could be anywhere between one in 10,000 and one in two million, according to experts.
Speaking to Deccan Herald, Raghu Rajgopal, co-founder, Datri, a registry for stem cell donation, said, The response we get from Karnataka when we conduct stem cell camps is great. We see a lot of people and registering with us.
As many as 6,000 people have registered from the State under the Datri registry. A total of 72,000 people have registered across the country. In Kerala, 11,000 have signed up, the highest so far, he said.
Among the common myths are that by donating stem cells one turns infertile and weak, have increased chances of cancer and also that there would be excess loss of blood, he said.
According to studies, over one lakh people are diagnosed with Leukemia (blood cancer) and other blood disorders every year in India.
The Indian Council of Medical Research has predicted that by the end of 2015, Leukemia cases will reach an estimated 1,17,649 and 1,32,574 by 2020. Stem cell therapy is a widely used treatment mechanism for Leukemia.
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Newswise STRATFORD Paola Leone, PhD, the director of the Cell and Gene Therapy Center and a professor of Cell Biology at the Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine (RowanSOM), has been awarded a three-year, $477,000 grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to develop a stem cell-based therapy for Canavan disease, a rare but devastating neurological disorder in children that typically takes a childs life by age 10.
Canavan disease is a fatal, inherited disease caused by a mutation in the aspartaocylase gene, Dr. Leone explained. The disease is characterized by progressive and severe brain atrophy that manifests in delayed development, developmental regression, microcephaly, spasticity, seizures, visual impairment and short life expectancy. There, currently, is no treatment or cure for Canavan disease.
Under Dr. Leones direction, a team of RowanSOM researchers and students will examine the potential of stem cells for the treatment of Canavan disease in an animal model. This new study will build on the research teams preliminary data that demonstrated the successful engraftment of stem cells in animal models.
Our project will generate pre-clinical data to support the development of a stem-cell based therapy for Canavan disease, Dr. Leone said. It will also provide an important opportunity for a new generation of clinical researchers. Both undergraduate and graduate students will participate in this project, providing them with valuable experience to work with an extremely promising therapeutic intervention.
The symptoms of Canavan disease usually appear within the first six months of a childs life. The disease is caused by a genetic mutation that stops cells, called oligodendrocytes, from developing myelin, the fatty substance that coats the nerves in the brain. Without the protective myelin covering, the nerves do not form properly, causing the brain to atrophy. The preliminary research that Dr. Leone conducted showed that the engraftment of stem cells promoted significant recovery of the myelin sheath surrounding the nerves.
Our research represents a significant departure from other studies that have focused solely on strategies to augment the loss of the aspartaocylase function that is highly reduced in the brains of these patients, Dr. Leone said. We believe that any strategy seeking to treat Canavan must include a way to restore the myelin development that is disrupted in children with this disease.
This research is supported by the NINDS of the National Institutes of Health, under grant number 1R15NS088763-01A1.
Journalists wishing to speak with Dr. Leone, should contact Jerry Carey, Rowan University Media and Public Relations at 856-566-6171 or at careyge@rowan.edu.
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Rowan Researcher Targets Stem Cell-Based Therapy for Rare Childhood Disease
Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) on Wednesday announced the launch of department of regenerative medicine, which will offer services based on stem cell therapy.
Some of the services that will be offered in the department include diabetic foot, scleroderma that involves hardening of skin etc.
The regenerative medicine department will focus on development of diagnostic and therapeutic concepts and their implementation in various disease conditions, said head of regenerative department, Kanakabhushanam.
The doctors said all the therapies offered at the new centre are approved by institutional Committee for Stem Cell Research and Therapy (ICSCRT) and registered with Clinical Trials Registry-India (CTRI).
Already, since September, 2014, the regenerative medicine centre has been treating close to six patients who have diabetic foot. In future, the department will take up research in delayed non-union of fractures and even diabetic neuropathy, a common condition among diabetics wherein nerves get damaged.
MD and CEO, KIMS Hospital, B. Bhaskar Rao, former NIMS Director Kakarla Subba Rao and other top doctors from the hospital were present.
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Newswise LA JOLLA, CA February 25, 2015 A new study led by researchers at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the University of California (UC), San Diego School of Medicine shows that certain stem cell culture methods are associated with increased DNA mutations. The study points researchers toward safer and more robust methods of growing stem cells to treat disease and injury.
This is about quality control; were making sure these cells are safe and effective, said Jeanne Loring, a professor of developmental neurobiology at TSRI and senior author of the study with Louise Laurent, assistant professor at UC San Diego.
Laurent added, The processes used to maintain and expand stem cell cultures for cell replacement therapies needs to be improved, and the resulting cells carefully tested before use.
The findings were published February 25 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
Growing Stem Cells
Because these human stem cells, called "pluripotent stem cells," can differentiate into many types of cells, they could be key to reversing degenerative diseases, such as Parkinsons disease, or repairing injured tissue, such as cardiac muscle after a heart attack. Stem cells are relatively rare in the body, however, so researchers must culture them in dishes.
While all cells run the risk of mutating when they divide, previous research from Loring and her colleagues suggested that stem cell culturing may select for mutations that favor faster cell growth and are sometimes associated with tumors.
Most changes will not compromise the safety of the cells for therapy, but we need to monitor the cultures so that we know what sorts of changes take place, said the papers first author Ibon Garitaonandia, a postdoctoral researcher working in Lorings lab at the time of the study.
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