Apr. 26, 2013 ? The NIMS Global Research Center for Environment and Energy based on Nanomaterials Science (GREEN) and Tokyo Metropolitan University have measured the volumetric expansion of single particles of silicon accompanying the charging reaction. This finding demonstrated the importance of electrode design from the viewpoint of volumetric energy density.
The NIMS Global Research Center for Environment and Energy based on Nanomaterials Science (GREEN) and a research group at Tokyo Metropolitan University succeeded in measuring the volumetric expansion of single particles of silicon, which is a negative electrode material for lithium ion batteries, accompanying the charging reaction, and demonstrated the importance of electrode design from the viewpoint of volumetric energy density based on this finding.
A research group headed by Dr. Kiyoshi Kanamura (NIMS Special Researcher) and Dr. Kei Nishikawa (Postdoctoral Researcher) at the Global Research Center for Environment and Energy based on Nanomaterials Science (GREEN) of the National Institute for Materials Science (President: Sukekatsu Ushioda), in joint research with Tokyo Metropolitan University (President: Fumio Harashima), succeeded in measuring the volumetric expansion of single particles of silicon, which is a negative electrode material for lithium (Li) ion batteries, accompanying the charging reaction, and demonstrated the importance of electrode design from the viewpoint of volumetric energy density.
Li-ion batteries are a type of secondary cell in which a Li-containing transition metal oxide is used as the positive electrode and graphite is used as the negative electrode. Because Li-ion batteries have high energy density in comparison with other secondary cells, such as nickel-metal hydride (NIMH) batteries, etc., they are widely used as a power source for mobile electronics, and are also considered promising for electric vehicle (EV) and stationary power storage applications. At present, graphite is used as the negative electrode material, but in order to achieve higher energy density, materials which utilize the alloying reaction with lithium, represented by silicon, have attracted attention as next-generation negative electrode materials. The most important issues for practical application are elucidation of the mechanism of the large volume change which occur in the charging and discharging reactions, and control of those changes.
Researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University established the technology of a single-particle measurement system to investigate the intrinsic electrochemical properties of single particles of electrode materials for Li-ion batteries. In the present research, this system was introduced in the ultra-dry room at the NIMS Global Research Center for Environment and Energy based on Nanomaterials Science (GREEN), and was used to perform electrochemical measurements of single particles (10-20?m) of silicon, which is seen as a next-generation negative electrode material. To date, the expansion ratio, etc. of single particles of silicon had been estimated from the theoretical crystal size, and volumetric changes accompanying the charging and discharging reactions had not been evaluated quantitatively. This research result was the world's first example of successful measurement of volumetric expansion of a single particle of silicon accompanying the charging reaction.
The results of this experiment clarified the fact that the volumetric expansion of silicon in the charging reaction is larger than the value estimated theoretically. Although this is thought to be due to the formation of an amorphous phase, etc. as the alloying reaction between the lithium and silicon proceeds, further study will be necessary in order to elucidate the detailed mechanism. Standards have now been established for Li-ion batteries for electric vehicle (EV) and cellphone applications. Conventionally, evaluations of material performance had centered on energy density per unit of mass. However, volumetric energy density is increasingly considered more important than mass energy density. As the present research showed, silicon displays larger volumetric expansion than the predicted value, which results in a decrease in real energy density. Thus, this research demonstrated the importance of actual measurement of volumetric expansion in the search for candidates for next-generation battery materials.
As described above, this research showed the importance of measuring the actual volumetric energy density when adopting a material that displays volumetric changes during charging/discharging in the electrodes of Li-ion batteries. Based on this result, electrode design guidelines which also consider volumetric changes are necessary in research and development in the search for next-generation materials for Li-ion batteries.
These research results was presented at the 80th Spring Meeting of the Electrochemical Society of Japan, which was held at Tohoku University on March 29.
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Apr. 25, 2013 ? Liver fibrosis results from an excessive accumulation of tough, fibrous scar tissue and occurs in most types of chronic liver diseases. In industrialized countries, the main causes of liver injury leading to fibrosis include chronic hepatitis virus infection, excess alcohol consumption and, increasingly, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
Now, in a new study published in the journal Cell, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered that a synthetic form of vitamin D, calcipotriol (a drug already approved by the FDA for the treatment of psoriasis), deactivates the switch governing the fibrotic response in mouse liver cells, suggesting a potential new therapy for fibrotic diseases in humans.
"Because there are currently no effective drugs for liver fibrosis, we believe our findings would open a new door for treatment," says senior author Ronald M. Evans, a professor in Salk's Gene Expression Laboratory and lead researcher in the Institute's new Helmsley Center for Genomic Medicine.
The Salk study focused on a star-shaped "stellate" cell in the liver that serves as a beacon for damage. When called into action, stellate cells produce fibrotic proteins in an attempt to heal an injury. Under chronic stress, however, localized fibrosis expands, eventually leading to cirrhosis, increased risk of liver cancer, and the need for a liver transplant in advanced cases.
The Evans lab discovered a genetic switch through which vitamin D-related ligands such as calcitriol, a hormonally active form of the vitamin, can put the brakes on fibrosis. "Preclinical results suggest the 'vitamin D brake' is highly efficacious and led us to believe that the time is right to consider a trial in the context of chronic liver disease," says Evans, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and holder of the March of Dimes Chair in Molecular and Developmental Biology.
Previous studies have shown a physiologic role for vitamin D in liver function, but "it was our discovery of high levels of vitamin D receptor (VDR) in the stellate cell that led us to consider it as a possible off switch for liver fibrosis," says lead author Ning Ding, a research associate in the Gene Expression Laboratory.
"Current therapeutic approaches, which treat the symptoms of liver disease, don't stop liver fibrosis from progressing," says Michael Downes, a senior staff scientist in the Gene Expression Laboratory and co-corresponding author on the paper. "In liver diseases where the underlying cause cannot be cured, progression to cirrhosis is currently inevitable in some people. What we have discovered is that by acting on the genome, VDR can simultaneously defend against multiple fibrotic activators. This is important because many different pro-fibrotic signaling pathways converge on the genome to affect their fibrotic response."
The Salk discovery that calcipotriol counters the fibrotic response in stellate cells illuminates a potentially safer, more effective strategy capable of neutralizing multiple convergent fibrotic triggers.
The Salk scientists say that clinical trials of the vitamin D analog for the treatment of liver fibrosis are being planned. The synthetic vitamin D analog is better than natural vitamin D, they say, for a couple of reasons. First, natural vitamin D, which is found in small amounts in a few foods and produced in the body by exposure to sunlight, degrades quickly, while synthetic versions of vitamin D are less susceptible to breakdown. Second, too much natural vitamin D can cause hypercalcemia, or elevated calcium in the blood, which can lead to nausea and vomiting, frequent urination, muscle weakness and joint aches and pain. The synthetic vitamin D analog, on the other hand, produces a strong response without adding calcium to the blood.
In addition, the researchers say this new model for treating liver fibrosis may also be helpful in treating other diseases with a fibrotic component, including those of the lung, kidney and pancreas.
Other researchers on the study were Ruth T. Yu, Mara H. Sherman, Mathias Leblanc, Mingxiao He, Annette R. Atkins and Grant D. Barish, from the Salk Institute; Nanthakumar Subramaniam, Caroline Wilson, Renuka Rao, Sally Coulter and Christopher Liddle, of the University of Sydney (Australia); and Sue L. Lau , Christopher Scott and Jenny E. Gunton, of the Garvan Insitute for Medical Research (Australia).
The work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the Genentech Foundation, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation, Stand Up to Cancer and Ipsen/Biomeasure.
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A couple of weeks ago, as weak sunshine dribbled through gusty clouds, I?walked through a park at lunchtime. The grass, straggly and still damp after the long winter, was none the less playing host to numerous office workers, perched awkwardly on their coats, grimly enjoying an al fresco lunch. The British don't let a little thing like weather spoil a picnic. indeed, in hot Mediterranean climates, when everyone with any sense retreats indoors for lunch, you'll often find familiar-looking families happily taking their ease in the midday sun. nothing gets between us and the tupperware, not even sunstroke ? our commitment to the rug in defiance of all good sense is one of our most endearing national characteristics.
Happily, it looks like it's brightening up at last, but, although the sunshine does make everything taste nicer, there's no harm in seasoning proceedings with a pinch of expertise.
Pick your spot carefully
Delia Smith manages to make picnicking sound utterly joyless: "In French films," she writes in her Complete Cookery Course, "picnics are all about rivers and willow and punts. In Britain, the hot tarmac of the zoo car-park will do, or a patch of grass with four lanes of traffic on either side." Ah, the romance. If you can't find any hot tarmac, a beauty spot will work better. An American household manual from 1900 suggests ensuring a "reasonable freedom from tormenting insect life", but advises against settling in the shadow of some lofty peak, or famous cave, on the grounds that: "One does not feel too comfortable when banqueting in localities where Dame Nature has had her queer moods, and has left imprinted certain too observable evidences of her freakiness." That's my local park out then.
If you're just shouldering a few sandwiches and an Enid Blyton-esque rosy apple, then make straight for the hills, but those going all-out on catering should stick close to a friendly car park or railway station. In the event of uncertain skies, a canny picnicker will select a spot near a hospitable pub.
Travel light(ish)
Ideally, all picnics would be conducted around the capacious wicker baskets that Elizabeth David describes as having "an aura of lavish gallivantings and ancient Rolls-Royces". However,, unless you've got a vintage sports car to cart them about in, they are hopelessly impractical; better to go in what the 1908 New York Times Cookbook calls "light marching order".
Even if carrying it all in an old knapsack, real cutlery, plates and a jaunty woollen rug preferably with a waterproof back,are still a must for atmosphere. Corkscrews, bottle openers, wet wipes and a sharp knife are also useful. And mustard. You can't have a picnic without mustard.
Food and drink
Mrs Beeton suggests: "A joint of cold roast beef, a joint of cold boiled beef, 2 ribs of lamb, 2 shoulders of lamb, 4 roast fowls, 2 roast ducks, 1 ham, 1 tongue, 2 veal-and-ham pies, 2 pigeon pies, 6 medium-sized lobsters, 1 piece of collared calf's head ?" just for the meat course.
Thankfully, times have changed. Hilda Leyel, author of the magnificent 1936 work The Perfect Picnic, wisely observes that "the art of arranging meals is to choose dishes that are better cold than they would be hot". For her, this means cream of rabbit, spaghetti and truffle salad and devilled lamb with a nasturtium sauce. The modern reader should infer salads (indeed the Girls Own Paper of 1880 advises that 'a cucumber is indispensable! The picnic would not be a picnic if it were absent'), pies, cheeses and the like, but, as David says, keep things simple. "Foie gras and lobster patties ? seem to lose their fine lustre out of doors," she writes (and I sense you all nodding in agreement), before grandly conceding that "sandwiches, I rather like". Bear in mind probable temperatures: it's all very well serving pink champagne, lobster and caviar if you're Keith Floyd on a boat at the bottom of your garden, but if the food and drink is going to be sitting around, cider and a nice ripe brie will go down better.
David suggests "visiting the site of the intended picnic some days beforehand" to bury the champagne. I'm not sure I'd give White Lightning 10 minutes unattended round my way ? so if you can't keep white wine cool en route, choose something else. She suggests m?con or chianti, but I fear the art of drinking strong reds in the sun is a dying one. Frankly ale, cider ("many women like cider," Leyel helpfully observes) or good lemonade are better bets on a picnic, and, "if a liqueur is wanted, cherry brandy is a very appropriate one". Hear hear.
BOSTON (AP) ? From Boston and Washington to Russia, investigators pressed for answers Wednesday about the Muslim radicalism believed behind the Boston Marathon bombing, while more than 4,000 mourners paid tribute to an MIT police officer who authorities say was gunned down by the bombers.
Among the speakers at the memorial service in Cambridge was Vice President Joe Biden, who condemned the bombing suspects as "two twisted, perverted, cowardly, knockoff jihadis."
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was listed in fair condition as he recovered from wounds suffered during a getaway attempt. He could get the death penalty if convicted of plotting with his older brother, now dead, to set off the pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 260 on April 15. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died in a shootout with police.
The bombs were detonated by remote control, according to U.S. officials close to the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. It was not clear what the detonation device was, but the charges against Dzhokhar say he was using a cellphone moments before the blasts.
U.S. officials also said Dzhokhar has told interrogators he and his brother were angry about the U.S. wars in Muslim Afghanistan and Iraq.
After closed-door briefings on Capitol Hill with the FBI and other law enforcement officials, lawmakers said earlier this week that it appeared so far that the brothers were radicalized via the Internet instead of by direct contact with any terrorist groups, and that the older brother was the driving force in the bomb plot.
In Russia, U.S. investigators traveled to the predominantly Muslim province of Dagestan and were in contact with the brothers' parents, hoping to gain more information.
The parents, Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, plan to fly to the U.S. on Thursday, the father was quoted as telling the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. The family has said it wants to bring Tamerlan's body back to Russia.
Investigators are looking into whether Tamerlan, who spent six months in Russia's turbulent Caucasus region in 2012, was influenced by the religious extremists who have waged an insurgency against Russian forces in the area for years. The brothers have roots in Dagestan and neighboring Chechnya, but had lived in the U.S. for about a decade.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, bagpipes wailed as students, faculty and staff members and throngs of law enforcement officials paid their respects to MIT police officer Sean Collier, who was ambushed in his cruiser three days after the bombing.
The line of mourners stretched for a half-mile. They had to make their way through tight security, including metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs.
Boston native James Taylor sang "The Water is Wide" and led a sing-along of "Shower the People."
Biden told the Collier family that no child should die before his or her parents, but that, in time, the grief will lose some of its sting.
"The moment will come when the memory of Sean is triggered and you know it's going to be OK," Biden said. "When the first instinct is to get a smile on your lips before a tear to your eye."
The vice president also sounded a defiant note.
"The purpose of terror is to instill fear," he said. "You saw none of it here in Boston. Boston, you sent a powerful message to the world."
In another milestone in Boston's recovery, the area around the marathon finish line was reopened to the public, with fresh cement still drying on the repaired sidewalk. Delivery trucks made their way down Boylston Street under a heavy police presence, though some damaged stores were still closed.
"I don't think there's going to be a sense of normalcy for a while," Tom Champoux, who works nearby, said as he pointed to the boarded-up windows. "There are scars here that will be with us for a long time."
___
Associated Press writers Bridget Murphy and Bob Salsberg in Boston, Lynn Berry in Moscow, and Kimberly Dozier, Adam Goldman, Eric Tucker, Matt Apuzzo, and Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.
New York City's full-on EV taxi blitz may not come until late this year, but the metropolis is taking its first tentative steps into that electric world as of today: it's deploying the six Nissan Leaf cabs promised as part of a pilot program. The half-dozen sedans will spend a year on the road, with officials able to gague the effectiveness of EVs as taxis when they have access to both regular chargers at their home bases as well as fast chargers in Manhattan's Far West Side, Lower East Side and Union Square. Don't expect to hail an eco-friendly cab very often, though -- along with the daunting numerical odds, the Leaf drivers have more liberty than usual to turn down passengers and protect their remaining power supply. If you do happen to find yourself in the back seat, however, you'll likely get a glimpse at New York's cleaner and quieter future.
JERUSALEM (AP) ? U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel held out hope Sunday for a nonmilitary way to ending the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, but he also emphasized Washington's willingness to let Israel decide whether and when it might strike Tehran in self-defense.
Hagel, on his first visit to Israel as Pentagon chief, seemed intent on burying the image that Republican critics painted of him as insufficiently supportive of the Jewish state. That portrayal was central to a failed campaign to derail Hagel's Senate confirmation in February.
In an interview with reporters on his flight from Washington, Hagel said the United States and Israel see "exactly the same" threat from Iran, which he described as a toxic combination of nuclear ambition and support for terrorism.
But he acknowledged differences on when it may reach the point of requiring U.S. or Israeli military action.
Hagel stressed repeatedly that Israel has a sovereign right to decide for itself whether it must attack Iran. He made no mention of the possibility that an Israeli attack would draw the U.S. into the conflict and lead to a wider regional war.
"Israel will make the decision that Israel must make to protect itself, to defend itself," Hagel said as he began a weeklong tour of the Middle East.
Also Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was in Istanbul, where he urged Turkey to speed up and cement an American-brokered rapprochement with Israel. On a trip to Israel last month, President Barack Obama secured a pledge from Turkish and Israeli leaders to normalize ties that broke down after a 2010 Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
Hagel said international penalties are taking a heavy toll on Iran, though he said no one can be sure that economic coercion will compel Iran to change course.
Referring to sanctions and diplomacy, Hagel said, "these other tracks do have some time to continue to try to influence the outcome in Iran."
Hagel acknowledged that while Israel and the U.S. share a commitment to ensuring that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon, there "may well be some differences" between the two allies on the question of when Iran's leaders might decide to go for a bomb.
"When you back down into the specifics of the timing of when and if Iran decides to pursue a nuclear weapon, there may well be some differences," he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tends to see more urgency, reflecting in part the fact that certain Iranian technological advances toward a nuclear weapon could put the program beyond the ability of the Israeli military to destroy it with airstrikes. U.S. forces have greater reach.
Hagel's first order of business upon arrival in Jerusalem was a guided tour of the Yad Vashem Holocaust history museum. He participated in a ceremony at the Hall of Remembrance and wrote an inscription in the guest book at a memorial for the 1.5 million Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust.
"There is no more poignant, more touching, more effective way to tell the story than this reality, as painful as it is, but it is a reality," he said after completing his visit. "It did happen, and we must prepare our future generations ... for a clear understanding that we must never allow this to happen again."
In his remarks while en route to Israel, Hagel repeatedly emphasized Israel's right of self-defense and stressed that military force ? by implication, Israeli or American ? remains an option of last resort.
"In dealing with Iran, every option must be on the table," he said.
During his two-day visit to Israel, Hagel was expected to further discuss a U.S. arms deal that would provide Israel with missiles for its fighter aircraft, plus KC-135 refueling planes that could be used in a long-range strike on a country such as Iran, as well as V-22 Osprey transport planes. He called the proposed sale a "very clear signal" to Iran.
"The bottom line is, Iran is a threat ? a real threat," he said.
Iran asserts that its nuclear program is designed entirely for nonmilitary purposes.
Yiftah Shapir, a military analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies think tank in Tel Aviv, said Hagel appeared eager to present a steady-as-she-goes attitude following his Senate confirmation battle.
"He's here to say, 'Folks, nothing has changed. We are still with you,'" Shapir said. "The goal is to deliver a relaxing message and to project business as usual."
Hagel suggested he holds hope that Iran's presidential election in June might change the trajectory of its nuclear drive.
After his talks in Israel, Hagel planned stops in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Each is an important American ally in the Middle East, and each is worried by Syria's civil war.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are part of a $10 billion proposed U.S. arms sale that includes Israel. The UAE would get about 26 F-16 fighters and it and Saudi Arabia would get advanced air-launched missiles.
___
Associated Press writer Aron Heller contributed to this report.
College students in Boston were dancing in the streets Friday night after a week of turmoil.
The fatal bombings at the Boston Marathon on Monday locked down many higher education institutions in the Boston metro area, forcing them to cancel classes.
Just as colleges began to recover from the attack, a Thursday night shooting on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus left one officer dead. One of the bombing suspects was killed in a shoot-out with police a short time later, and a subsequent manhunt for remaining bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev put schools back on lockdown Friday.
When police captured Tsarnaev Friday evening, it was a relief for all Bostonians, including college students.
It wasn't long before students filled the streets in celebration.
CNN's Poppy Harlow estimated about 400 Northeastern University students gathered outside to celebrate:
"We've all been watching the TV, the computer, the live updates since the beginning of this whole thing," Myles Marcus, a student at Berklee College of Music, told CNN. "I just feel relieved. I feel like I can go back to school now and know that I'm safe."
Hundreds of students also gathered outside Simmons College not far from Fenway Park, Reuters reported.
Videos uploaded to YouTube showed crowds of college students singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and cheering for the Boston Police Department, chanting "BPD! BPD!"
Zach Tucker, an Emerson College student, told the Boston Globe they were simply appreciative of the job police have done.
"Sometimes college students have a somewhat contentious relationship with police, and you see none of that tonight," Tucker said.
Students shared photos from Boston of the crowds waving American flags.
The spontaneous celebrations were reminiscent of 2011 when college students poured into Boston Common waving American flags after Osama bin Laden was killed.
Lindsay Kupser, also a student at Berklee, told the CBC it was "relieving" to be able to freely go outside.
"I don't feel fearful anymore, that's the biggest thing," Kupser said.
In the last few years there has been a quantum leap in prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment. The problem is, many patients don?t know about it?and neither do their doctors. Studies have shown that it can take 10-15 years for new technologies to reach doctors and change their methods. Men with prostate cancer can?t wait! They don?t have to?the breakthroughs in prostate cancer care are here and available today.
An elevated?PSA?doesn?t necessarily mean you have cancer. Nor should it automatically trigger a biopsy. The presence of cancer cells doesn?t always mean you need a radical?prostatectomy?or radiation therapy. In fact, the opposite is true. Most men with prostate cancer?up to 85 percent?don?t require such radical interventions, yet most of them end up getting surgery or radiation anyway.
Based on the very latest medical knowledge and technologies, here?s a safer, leading-edge approach to take after tests show you have an elevated?PSA?level.
Step 1: Ask your doctor for a DRE (digital rectal exam) to feel for any irregularities, bumps, or elevations, and an ultrasound to measure prostate size. Then?
Step 2: If there is a possible prostate infection, treat with antibiotics. Then?
Step 3: Get a second?PSA?test. There are a number of factors that can skew?PSA?numbers, so it?s important to repeat the test. If again elevated, then?
Step 4: Obtain an Advanced Prostate MRI from a center that has the 3.0 Tesla machine. This is a breakthrough technology that is 85-90% accurate in identifying a cancer mass, even small masses of 5 millimeters. Then?
Step 5: Consider getting a Color Doppler Ultrasound test if there?s a center near you that offers it. This test can show you a high-resolution image and pinpoint where cancer is present. If cancer is found, your urologist will then be able to perform a more accurate, targeted biopsy. Then?
Step 6: If possible, try to obtain a targeted biopsy instead of the typical blind biopsy. Doctors knowledgeable about the advanced prostate MRI and Color Doppler Ultrasound will know about the benefits of a targeted biopsy. Rather than taking random samples as is usually done, your doctor will now be able to guide the biopsy needle to the most suspicious areas, greatly increasing the chance of obtaining highly reliable results. Then?
Step 7: If the targeted biopsy reveals cancer, ask if it would be helpful to obtain a second pathology analysis from a different center or institution. You have nothing to lose from doing this, and labs do make mistakes. Then?
Step 8: Join a prostate cancer support group, where you can obtain valuable information from a?patient?s?point of view. Sometimes these men are better informed about the newest technologies and treatments than doctors. Also, do your own research, searching the?internet?for information about tests, treatments, benefits, and risks. Then?
Step 9: Collect your data and have all your test results and dates in a single table so you can track changes over time. Discuss your results with your doctor and ask as many questions as you need. You?ll want to know what treatment your doctor suggests for your type of cancer. If he recommends surgery or radiation therapy, ask if you may speak with the surgeon or radiologist. Then?
Step 10: Consider getting a second opinion. Your urologist is most likely a surgeon, so it?s natural for him to have a surgical point of view. Be sure to find out if there are alternatives to surgery or radiation therapy you should consider such as?cryotherapy, high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), or laser therapy. Then?
Step 11: Decide on your treatment based on all your test results and the knowledge you?ve gained. Congratulate yourself for taking an active role in your present and future health, and for making decisions that are well informed and based on the most up-do-date information available.
?
Note: I am not just a doctor giving advice. I?m also a patient. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2011 and directed toward surgery or radiation, but after undergoing the newest-available tests and conducting dozens of interviews with top doctors, I learned that my test -results did not warrant invasive treatment. I could actually see my cancer! It is modest in size, in a safe location, and there is no sign of spread. I am enrolled in active surveillance, repeating the tests and meeting with my doctor regularly. My prostate cancer remains under excellent control without medications.
?
Learn more about the revolutionary new tests and treatment options, the medical centers that offer them, and resources and answers for men diagnosed with prostate cancer in?Prostate Cancer Breakthroughs: New Tests, New Treatments, Better Options (2013), by Jay Cohen MD.
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* * * * *
Dr. Cohen is a nationally esteemed medical practitioner and researcher, a university professor, author of eight health books and more than a hundred medical articles, and an expert on medication safety and nutrition. His newest book,?Prostate Cancer Breakthroughs: New Tests, New Treatments, Better Options (2013), is the only book that takes readers step-by-step through the evaluation process, informing men how to obtain the new, breakthrough tests and treatments that can help tens of thousands of men avoid unneeded surgery or radiation.
Roy Halladay had another strong outing and the Phillies' bats finally came alive in an 8-2 win over the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday night.
The game was called after 6? innings because of rain.
The Phils out-hit the Cards, 10-2, in snapping a four-game losing streak.
The Phillies are now 7-10. St. Louis is 9-7.
The attendance at Citizens Bank Park was 34,092.
Starting pitching report Halladay followed up eight innings of one-run ball against lowly Miami with seven innings of two-run ball against a much more formidable Cardinals lineup. Halladay allowed just two hits, both solo homers. He walked two and struck out six. Halladay?s fastball reached 92 mph, a good sign, but his ball-to-strike ratio was not good. He threw 50 balls and 59 strikes for 109 pitches. He threw a first-pitch strike to just 11 of 25 hitters.
The Phillies had struggled against left-handed pitching, hitting just .131 (11 for 84) with four extra-base hits, coming into the game. But they had no trouble with St. Louis lefty Jaime Garcia, who allowed nine hits and eight runs in three innings. Four of the runs that Garcia allowed were unearned after a first-inning error. The Phils had four extra-base hits against Garcia.
At the plate The Phils avoided the ignominy of becoming the first team since 1920 to go without a walk for five straight games when Chase Utley drew a base on balls in the first inning. The Phils had two walks for the game.
Jimmy Rollins, John Mayberry Jr., Ben Revere and Humberto Quintero all had two hits apiece. Quintero drove in two runs. Michael Young ran his hitting streak to 10 straight games.
The Phils were 6 for 11 with runners in scoring position.
In the field Lifelong infielder Freddy Galvis started his second game in left field and made two big catches, one on a long run and a slide, in the fourth inning. Centerfielder Revere made a diving catch in the sixth.
Former Phillie Ty Wigginton made a two-out error at third base for the Cardinals. It opened the door for four unearned runs in the first inning. Wigginton made eight errors in 22 games at third base for the Phils last season.
Health check Ryan Howard had some soreness in his groin and did not start against the lefty Garcia, which was convenient because Howard is 0 for 15 with eight strikeouts against lefties this season. Howard is day-to-day.
Domonic Brown missed his second straight start with a sore back. Manager Charlie Manuel said Brown could return on Saturday night.
Carlos Ruiz was hit by a pitch on the left wrist while playing in an extended spring training game in Florida on Friday. An X-ray was negative. Ruiz's suspension will end a week from Sunday when the Phillies are in New York.
Up next Cliff Lee (2-0, 1.52) and Lance Lynn (2-0, 5.40) are the pitchers Saturday night at 7:05 p.m.
The Phils have not named a starter to replace John Lannan on Monday. That is Jonathan Pettibone?s day to pitch at Triple A. Pettibone has struggled in his first two starts, but he is on the 40-man roster, which could make him a candidate for the spot start. B.J. Rosenberg and Tyler Cloyd are also on the 40-man roster and could be possibilities. Adam Morgan is considered the Phils? most advanced minor-league pitching prospect, but he would have to work on short rest Monday. It?s possible Morgan could be in the picture when he?s on regular rest. This is all speculation as Phillies officials have not tipped their hand on how they will fill Monday?s start.
Apr. 19, 2013 ? Scientists have revealed how a bacterial enzyme has evolved an energy-efficient method to move long distances along DNA. The findings, published in Science, present further insight into the coupling of chemical and mechanical energy by a class of enzymes called helicases, a widely-distributed group of proteins, which in human cells are implicated in some cancers.
The new helicase mechanism discovered in this study, led by researchers from the University of Bristol and the Technische Universit?t Dresden in Germany, may help resolve some of the unexplained roles for helicases in human biology, and in turn help researchers to develop future technological or medical applications.
A commonly held view of DNA helicases is that they move along DNA and "unzip" the double helix to produce single strands of DNA for repair or copying. This process requires mechanical work, so enzyme movement must be coupled to consumption of the chemical fuel ATP. These enzymes are thus often considered as molecular motors.
In the new work, Ralf Seidel and his team at the Technische Universit?t Dresden developed a microscope that can stretch single DNA molecules whilst at the same time observe the movement of single fluorescently-labelled helicases. In parallel, the Bristol researchers in the DNA-Protein Interactions Unit used millisecond-resolution fluorescence spectroscopy to reveal dynamic changes in protein conformation and the kinetics of ATP consumption.
The team studied a helicase found in bacteria that moves along viral (bacteriophage) DNA. The work demonstrated that, surprisingly, the enzyme only consumed ATP at the start of the reaction in order to change conformation. Thereafter long-range movement along the DNA was driven by thermal motion; in other words by collisions with the surrounding water molecules. This produces a characteristic one-dimensional "random walk" (see picture), where the protein is just as likely to move backwards as forwards.
Mark Szczelkun, Professor of Biochemistry from the University's School of Biochemistry and one of the senior authors of the study, said: "This enzyme uses the energy from ATP to force a change in protein conformation rather than to unwind DNA. The movement on DNA thereafter doesn't require an energy input from ATP. Although movement is random, it occurs very rapidly and the enzyme can cover long distances on DNA faster than many ATP-driven motors. This can be thought of as a more energy-efficient way to move along DNA and we suggest that this mechanism may be used in other genetic processes, such as DNA repair."
The work in Bristol has been funded by the Wellcome Trust through a programme grant to Professor Mark Szczelkun from the School of Biochemistry.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Bristol.
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Journal Reference:
F. W. Schwarz, J. Toth, K. van Aelst, G. Cui, S. Clausing, M. D. Szczelkun, R. Seidel. The Helicase-Like Domains of Type III Restriction Enzymes Trigger Long-Range Diffusion Along DNA. Science, 2013; 340 (6130): 353 DOI: 10.1126/science.1231122
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
MAKHACHKALA, Russia (Reuters) - A man who identified himself as the father of two brothers suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings said on Friday he believed his sons had been framed and pleaded with police to spare his younger son who was still on the run. U.S. police said they killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and were conducting a massive search for his brother and suspected accomplice, Dzhokhar, 19, on Friday after the bombings killed three people and wounded 176. ...
Apr. 19, 2013 ? A major Nordic research project involving researchers from the University of Copenhagen has, for the first time ever, mapped the use of alternative treatment among multiple sclerosis patients -- knowledge which is important for patients with chronic disease and the way in which society meets them.
People with multiple sclerosis (MS) often use alternative treatments such as dietary supplements, acupuncture and herbal medicine to facilitate their lives with this chronic disease. This is the result of a new study of how MS patients use both conventional and alternative treatments which has been carried out by researchers from five Nordic countries. The results have been published in two scientific journals, the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health and Autoimmune Diseases.
"What we see is that patients do not usually use alternative treatments for treating symptoms, but as a preventative and strengthening element," says Lasse Skovgaard, industrial PhD candidate from the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences and the Danish Multiple Sclerosis Society, who has been involved in conducting the questionnaire-based study among 3,800 people with MS in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland.
Multiple sclerosis is a chronic disease which attacks the central nervous system, and which can lead to a loss of mobility and sight. Denmark is one of the countries with the highest incidence of the disease worldwide, with approx. 12,500 MS patients. At the same time, the number of MS patients in the West is increasing, posing considerable challenges in respect of treatment, prevention and rehabilitation.
Access to knowledge bank
Together with researchers from the five other Nordic countries, Lasse Skovgaard has spent three years gathering the new data, and he is delighted at what it offers: "Within the field of health research, it is often a question of studying the extent to which a particular type of drug affects a particular symptom. However, it is equally as important to look at how people with a chronic disease, for example, use different treatments to cope with their situation. Here, MS patients offer valuable experience. Their experiences constitute a knowledge bank which we must access and learn from," he says.
Lasse Skovgaard draws attention to the significance of this new knowledge because, if people with chronic disease are better able to manage their lives, it can potentially save society large sums of money.
"There is a lot of talk about 'self-care competence', in other words patients helping themselves to get their lives to function. Here, many people with a chronic disease find they benefit from using alternative treatments, so we should not ignore this possibility," says Lasse Skovgaard.
At the same time, he emphasises that knowing more about why patients choose particular treatments is important in relation to improving patient safety because of the possible risks involved in combining conventional and alternative medicine.
Growing use of alternative treatments
According to the latest Health and Sickness Study from the Danish National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) in 2010, one in four Danes say that they have tried one or more types of alternative treatments within the past twelve months. Among MS patients, the use of alternative medicine has been growing steadily over the past fifteen years. In the researchers' latest study, more than half of the respondents say that they either combine conventional and alternative medicine or only use alternative medicine.
"We cannot ignore the fact that people with chronic disease use alternative treatments to a considerable extent, and that many of them seem to benefit from doing so. It doesn't help to only judge this from a medical point of view or say that alternative treatments are nonsense -- rather, we must try to understand it," says Lasse Skovgaard.
Highly qualified women top the list
The study shows that, among MS patients using alternative treatments, there is a significantly bigger proportion of people with a high level of education compared to those who do not use alternative treatments. There is also a larger proportion of highly paid people and of younger women.
"Some critics are of the opinion that when alternative treatments are so popular, it is because they appeal to na?ve people looking for a miraculous cure. But our results indicate that it is primarily the well-educated segment that is subscribing to alternative treatments. And that using alternative treatments is part of a lifestyle choice," says Lasse Skovgaard.
He hopes that the new knowledge will improve communication regarding how the chronically ill use alternative treatments in combination with conventional medicine:
"We see that so many people are combining conventional medicine with alternative treatment that it should be taken seriously by the health service. Until now, there hasn't been much focus on the doctor-patient dialogue in relation to the alternative methods used by the chronically ill to manage their lives," says Lasse Skovgaard. He says that the research group is continuing to analyse the results and, among other things, is conducting several interview studies based on the results of the questionnaires. The interview studies will, for example, provide additional knowledge on how patients perceive the risks associated with using alternative medicine and explore why some patients turn their backs completely on conventional medicine.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Copenhagen.
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Journal Reference:
L. Skovgaard, P. H. Nicolajsen, E. Pedersen, M. Kant, S. Fredrikson, M. Verhoef, D. Meyrowitsch. Differences between users and non-users of complementary and alternative medicine among people with multiple sclerosis in Denmark: A comparison of descriptive characteristics. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 2013; DOI: 10.1177/1403494813481646
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Advice for when it's just you and your wallet in a foxhole
When someone joins the military, there are generally a lot of reasons that factor into the decision. People tend to sign up because they love their country or want to experience adventure, or feel the need to test their mettle. Or they see it as a way to pay for their education or eventually advance into a solid career.
People join for a chance at a good future, but nobody really joins the military for the money. According to GoArmy.com, a private in the Army who's in service for about four months to two years can expect to make $18,194 a year. A staff sergeant in the Army for six years will pull in $35,226.
It's tough enough worrying that you might become target practice from some rogue dissident, without also having to fret that by joining the armed forces, you're about to embark on a life lurching from paycheck to paycheck. So with that in mind, if you're thinking of signing up or you have a spouse or son or daughter who is joining, here are a few financial issues to consider at the outset.
[Read: 5 Financial Challenges for Veterans and Military Families.]
Save for retirement now. The military offers retirement benefits, but the only people who benefit are those who serve at least 20 years, says Joseph Montanaro, a certified financial planner practitioner with USAA, the financial services company that specializes in helping the military. He adds, "Only about 15 percent of those who enter the service actually make it to retirement."
On that note, Levi Newman, senior author for the Veterans United Network, a hub for military news and advice, says one of the smartest things a young service member can do is invest in the Thrift Savings Plan, a defined contribution plan for members of the military and federal employees.
There are a lot of nuances in paying your taxes. When you pay Uncle Sam, there are a certain benefits and differences between a civilian's life and yours that you'll want to be aware of, which is why the tax-preparation software TurboTax just debuted TurboTax Military Edition. As the software will point out, if you're serving in a combat zone, your income received during that time is exempt from federal taxes.
If a military member is called to active duty and it causes financial pain, and that military member needs to raid his or her IRA, that military member can waive the 10 percent penalty tax for an early withdrawal. Reservists might be able to deduct the cost and maintenance of uniforms if they aren't allowed to wear them when off duty, and on and on the nuances go.
When you're overseas, spending and managing money gets even more difficult. With any luck, you'll have a family member who can help you, and if not, even in the most far-flung lands, you'll probably have occasional Internet access. But the more far-flung you go, the more difficult buying anything becomes, even for the military, which is how Aaron Negherbon came to start TroopsDirect in 2010.
After seeing how grateful a longtime buddy serving in Afghanistan was to get a 45-pound care package from him, Negherbon, who has never served in the military, started a service that collects donations and uses the money to buy and transport supplies to American soldiers who need them badly but can't get packages quickly due to the military's red tape.
[Read: How to Prepare Your Finances for Military Deployment.]
"A soldier can whip out a credit card, and go to [sites like] Amazon or U.S. Cavalry and buy what they need, and they'll be shipped to their APO [Army Post Office], but when you're a grunt making $20,000 a year, you shouldn't have to spend $200 on a good pair of decent boots."
Which may well happen if you're serving somewhere like Iraq or Afghanistan. You won't be rich, and you will be serving in a war zone, where safe shopping malls will likely be in short supply.
You will be a target of predatory lenders. The bad guys aren't always the ones shooting at you. Sometimes the bad guys are the nice folks who just want to help. All they ask is that if you can't pay them back in a couple of weeks, you give them your life savings or maybe your car.
Payday loan stores are barred from having military members as customers, ever since the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act was passed. Even so, not all states have the legislation to enforce the law properly, according to a 2012 report by the Navy Times. In general, con artists and shady lending companies know you may be struggling financially, and they will do their best to cater to you.
That is why Holly Petraeus, wife of former CIA director and retired general David Petraeus and assistant director for Servicemember Affairs for the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, turned up at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, on April 10. According to local media, she was there expressly to educate troops about predatory lending practices that are aimed squarely at military members and their families.
She told her audience that many of the loans designed for the military have annual percentage rates that range from 85 to 400 percent, and that, "the No. 1 cause for service members losing their security clearance is for financial reasons."
You will at least have many advocates trying to keep you and your money together. It isn't only Petraeus on the move, of course, who it should be noted was also promoting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's website for service members. There are numerous organizations throughout the country that exist to help the military, such as VeteransPlus, which offers financial literacy and education programs to the armed forces.
[See 50 Smart Money Moves to Make Now]
There are also many retail businesses that offer discounts to members of the military; the site Military.com has a discounts page that features a comprehensive list of them. Just know that by enlisting in the Army, Navy, Marines or what have you, you will constantly be in a tug-of-war against people who want to empty your pockets with high-interest loans and advocates looking out for you.
As Negherbon says, "You join your country to serve your country. You don't join it to get rich."
Apr. 18, 2013 ? A new report on the potential effects of climate change on NOAA's Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary uses existing observations and science-based expectations to identify how climate change could affect habitats, plants and animals within the sanctuary and adjacent coastal areas.
It also outlines new management recommendations for the sanctuary, and sanctuary officials called it the first step toward addressing them.
They also said the report issued by the sanctuary, Climate Change and the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary: Interpreting Potential Futures, will provide a foundation of information and identify key issues facing the sanctuary.
"Climate change poses an increasingly grave threat to the health of the ocean, and its impacts will be felt in marine protected areas like the Olympic Coast sanctuary," said Carol Bernthal, sanctuary superintendent. "This report begins our work to develop management strategies that will help us anticipate potential challenges and adapt to the changing marine environment through sound science, public outreach, and partnerships."
According to the report, climate change could affect the sanctuary through increases in sea level; extreme weather events such as winds, waves, and storms; and coastal erosion from those events. The report also says the region may experience an increase in ocean acidity and water temperature, as well as more extreme weather patterns, including Pacific Northwest regional rainfall increases triggering 100-year magnitude floods.
Prepared and edited by Washington Sea Grant and sanctuary staff, the new climate report is the outcome of more than a year of intensive collaboration among subject matter experts representing 27 agencies, organizations and academic institutions.
The authors also made recommendations for future action for sanctuary management, including focus on public education, information gathering, and policy and management strategies. Scientists, educators, natural resource managers, and communicators will continue to work together to outline regional next steps forward.
The two-day crash in the price of gold is one of the most devastating asset sell-offs ever witnessed on Wall Street, right up there with the stock market crash of 1987. What makes it that much worse is no one is exactly sure why it happened.
And until investors get some answers, the selling may continue, they say.
"Unless you have a catalyst, 'cheap' gets a lot cheaper during a crash in price expectations," said Keith McCullough of Hedgeye Risk Management. "Old Wall calls it 'catching a falling knife' for a reason."
Gold posted its biggest two-day dollar drop ever and its biggest percentage drop since 1980 when the carnage settled Monday. Prices rebounded slightly in early trading Tuesday. It's now down 26 percent from its 2011 high.
"We are running out of superlatives to attach to the gold price move since last Friday," Nomura analyst Tyler Broda wrote in a note to clients. "The rarity of a move like this is notable."
Read More:Gold May Head 'Much Lower': Broda
It seems like every trader on Wall Street has a theory for the move. Most commonly cited are fears of central bank selling (especially Cyprus), exchange-traded funds liquidation, global deflation setting in, a weak yen strengthening the dollar, and mysterious hedge funds blowing up from margin calls.
"The major holders of gold other than the U.S. (i.e., the EU and England) need gold to support their economies and banks," said Sean Egan of Egan-Jones research. "A little selling has a major impact on supply and feeds price declines and follow-on selling." But the Cyprus theory has yet to be proven. Reportedly, there is an internal debate still raging inside Cyprus to sell gold to pay its growing bailout tab, but they have not sold any gold yet.
Many say there may not be a fundamental reason to pinpoint for the bullion crash. After all, the metal has no fundamentals like cash flows or dividends, so it is only worth what others are willing to pay for it. After a 13-year run, perhaps it was time for other assets like Treasurys and high-yielding stocks to gain favor among the safe-haven crowd.
"Commodities trade even more technically than other assets since it's futures driven," said Enis Taner, global macro editor for RiskReversal.com. The crash "was technical more than anything in my view."
Taner points to the $1,530 to $1,550 area for gold, which was support for the metal for almost two years. Once it broke below that, the rush for the exits started.
And that's where a new facet of this trade, which was not around in 1980, may have thrown fuel on the fire: ETFs. They give the average Joe access to the gold futures market and these less sophisticated investors may not have the same pain threshold or capital as institutional investors.
Read More:Mark Fisher: Gold Bulls Should Love This
The SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), the most popular gold ETF, traded 150 million shares during the two-day slam, more than the total volume of the previous 16 days. This smacks of panic selling.
"The gold market metrics are in uncharted territory," said David Greenberg of Greenberg Capital. "The GLD effects on gold in a panic sell-off have never been tested."
History has shown that once gold enters a bear market (20 percent off high), it keeps going lower by another 14 percent on average, according to data going back to 1975 crunched by Bespoke Investment Group. That would put the metal well below $1,300.
"While no one of these explanations may be sufficient to explain a 20 percent move, collectively they all matter," said Robert Savage, chief strategist at FX Concepts and previous director of FX macro sales at Goldman Sachs. "Gold is unlikely to bounce much?it's a heavy metal after all?with the larger medium term risk of $1,100."
Toronto Raptors and Boston Celtics players observe a moment of silence for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings before an NBA basketball game in Toronto, Wednesday April 17, 2013. (AP photo/The Canadian Press, Frank Gunn)
Toronto Raptors and Boston Celtics players observe a moment of silence for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings before an NBA basketball game in Toronto, Wednesday April 17, 2013. (AP photo/The Canadian Press, Frank Gunn)
TORONTO (AP) ? With Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" playing over the loudspeakers and scores of Toronto Raptors fans showing their support, the Boston Celtics returned to the court for their first game since the bombing attack at the Boston Marathon.
The Celtics gathered with the Raptors at midcourt to observe a moment of silence in honor of the victims prior to Wednesday night's regular-season finale.
Diamond's classic hit, long associated with Boston's beloved Red Sox, played as the Celtics' starters were introduced, and a message on the stadium scoreboards read, "Tonight we are all Boston fans." In the stands opposite the Toronto bench, three female fans held up a sign that read, "Send Boston Love."
The Celtics wore a black stripe on their jerseys as they played for the first time since twin blasts near the marathon's finish line on Monday left three people dead and more than 170 injured.
Celtics coach Doc Rivers said the tragedy has touched people everywhere.
"I don't think you have to be a basketball player or anything," Rivers said. "You don't have to be from Boston, or from the United States. When something like that happens it has an effect on everyone because it threatens our safety and our freedom to gather as a group, and that's part of what makes us human. Every time something like that happens, it threatens that. That's the sad part of it."
Rivers lives in downtown Boston, not far from where the bombs were detonated, and was on his way home when the attacks happened.
"I witnessed panic, which you don't ever want to see," Rivers said. "And then I witnessed some great things, too. I witnessed a lot of people taking charge of their city and I thought that was awesome."
Boston's home game Tuesday against the Indiana Pacers was canceled following the bombings, meaning the next time the Celtics play at home will be in their first round playoff series against the New York Knicks.
"Being basketball players and representing Boston, we definitely want to go out there and give the people something to cheer about," guard Courtney Lee said. "Even though you can't replace losses and you can't replace injuries and whatnot, we definitely want to give those people something to take their mind off it."
Rivers said he's been touched by the way other cities have shown their unity with Boston. Baseball fans at Yankee Stadium sang "Sweet Caroline" during Tuesday's game, while the Chicago Tribune featured the logos of Boston's main sports teams.
"That was beautiful, that was awesome," Rivers said of the Tribune's image. "On 9-11 it was similar, you saw the Yankees-Red Sox hats. Don't get me wrong, we still hate each other in sports but not in life. You can separate the two things. I think all the big cities do a great job of showing that ? that we're with you, and we're against you. It's a neat little thing."
Even the Raptors' media relations staff found a way to pay their respects to Boston. The cards marking seating assignments on press row Wednesday bore an image of two soldiers standing over floral tributes to the tragedy, with '(hashtag)Boston' printed at the bottom.
DREAM and Sage Bionetworks tap the wisdom of the crowd to impact breast cancer prognosisPublic release date: 17-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Regina Warmoth warmoth@sagebase.org 206-667-2102 Sage Bionetworks
Two new reports issuing in Science Translational Medicine (STM) today showcase the potential of teams of scientists working together to solve increasingly complex medical problems. The results demonstrate that better predictors of breast cancer progression than those currently available can be rapidly evolved by running open Big Data Challenges such as The Sage Bionetworks/DREAM Breast Cancer Prognosis Challenge (BCC).
In breast cancer, a key undertaking is determining those patients whose disease is most likely to progress rapidly and therefore tailor the best course of treatment for them. Currently oncologists are using gene-expression based assays such as MammaPrint and Oncotype Dx, that are based on 10 year old science, and both do better with breast cancer risk prediction than models based only on clinical data.
Dr. Stephen Friend, the Founder of Sage Bionetworks and one of the organizers of the BCC reflects, Ten years ago, members of our research group used gene expression profiling to build one of the first breast cancer predictors. Mammaprint and Oncotype Dx were developed off of that but further improvement seems to have stalled. We wondered if running a Challenge like BCC would motivate lots ofdifferent groups to tackle this problem, some working collaboratively, and if that might be more fruitful than the current go it alone single researcher approach.
To push the envelope on all the innovations that could be incorporated into the BCC, Sage partnered with the DREAM Project, a visionary distributed systems biology group that has run 24 successful open computational challenges over the last five years.
DREAMs founder and leader, Dr. Gustavo Stolovitzky saw the BCC as an opportunity to, refocus our efforts to create a collaborative research environment that fosters a complementary way of doing science, which accelerates the pace of discovery with the goal of contributing to a faster reduction of suffering due to disease. This seems to me like an ethical imperative.
The goal of the BCC was to build a computational model that accurately predicts breast cancer survival. To do this, participants of the Challenge used genomic and clinical information from 2000 women diagnosed with breast cancer (the METABRIC data set). They accessed this data on Synapse, Sage Bionetworks open compute platform for data sharing and analysis: Google donated cloud-based standardized virtual machines that each participant used to train their models against the data. Individual participants and/or teams submitted their computational models to Synapse as open source code made viewable to all: their models were assessed against a hidden dataset and their scores were reported on a real-time leaderboard. The combination of immediate feedback and code-sharing allowed participants to improve their leaderboard ranking by adjusting their own models or by borrowing the code of others to forge new models.
Throughout the July-October 2012 model-training phase, a crowd of 350 players from 35 countries across the globe joined the Challenge and submitted a total of 1700 computational models for scoring. The winning model was determined by scoring the predictive accuracy of players models against a newly generated data set: for this, the Avon Foundation For Women funded the generation of gene expression and copy number data as well as collection of corresponding clinical information from 180 breast cancer patients. Finally, the BCC organizers recognized that the basic science community might be most energized to participate if the Challenge prize were not money but the invitation to publish an article about the winning model in a top tier journal. The editors of STM saw the unique opportunity to run their own experiment on how to structure the peer-review process for competition-based crowdsourcing studies such as the BCC. Todays issue of STM features not only the winners article (the BCC Challenge prize) and a report from the BCC organizers on the Challenges conception, execution and insights -- STM also chose to highlight the BCC with an Editorial Summary and an iconic cover of Rosie the Riveter, intended to symbolize the power of women and their data to transform health.
Quipped Challenge participant Richard Savage (MRC Fellow in Biostatistics at the University of Warwick) on the prospect of winning the opportunity to publish in STM, This is huge and a genuinely new way to do some great science. I really think the organizers are onto something with this.
The winner turned out not to be a breast cancer doctor, or even a breast cancer researcher: the winning team (Attractor Metagenes) hails from Professor Dimitris Anastassious laboratory at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science. Anastassiou, now a member of the Columbia Initiative in Systems Biology, funded this research from his own inventors research allocation of patent royalties related to his previous work on digital television, which is now used in all DVDs and TV broadcasting systems worldwide. Working with two of his Ph.D. students, they developed the winning model underpinned by so-called attractor metagenes, gene signatures that they had identified as behaving similarly in multiple cancer types. They refer to attractor metagenes as bioinformatic hallmarks of cancer: Remarks Professor Anastassiou, We had discovered these pan-cancer gene signatures previously, and so we hypothesized that they play important roles in cancer in general. The BCC allowed us to prove that they are indeed highly prognostic at least in breast cancer. Indeed, the winning models predictive accuracy for breast cancer survival outperformed the best 60 models of a pre-competition group of expert programmers and bested current clinical standards. He is now excited with the prospect of collaborating with medical researchers to make good use of these signatures of cancer for potential use in diagnostic, prognostic and eventually therapeutic productsapplicable in multiple cancer types.
Based on the success of the BCC, Sage Bionetworks and DREAM announced earlier this year that they would merge to run open science computational Challenges which foster the broader collaboration of the research community and provide a meaningful impact to both discovery and clinical research. Their merger provides a collaborative framework that will bring the ideals of open science one step closer to reality.
The BCC demonstrated the wisdom of the crowd to develop predictive models but also highlighted that the value of those models is limited by the questions being posed and by the data being utilized. Even as the BCC reports in this weeks issue of STM, Sage Bionetworks and DREAM are announcing five DREAM8 Challenges at Sages 4th Commons Congress taking place in San Francisco and working with the Avon Foundation For Women, Susan G. Komen, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation to develop the next BCC which will start by mobilizing breast cancer patients to donate their data to drive the solving of a clinically relevant question inbreast cancer with the potential to transform patient treatment.
###
ABOUT THE DREAM PROJECT
The Dialogue on Reverse Engineering Assessment and Methods Project (DREAM Project), founded in 2006 by Andrea Califano (Columbia University) and Gustavo Stolovitzky (IBM), was originally conceived as an initiative to advance thenascent field of network biology through the organization of Challenges on network reconstruction and pathway inference. Since the first set of network inference challenges of 2007 (DREAM2) the concept of using collaborative-competitions as a vehicle to carry on a meaningful dialogue in the computational biology community has evolved significantly. In 2012, thelast DREAM7 project featured four powerful challenges of which one was on network biology and the other three dealt with three important problems in translational medicine. With the experience gathered by the launching of 24successful challenges over the past five years, the Challenge concept has reached a status of legitimacy and maturity. The DREAM Challenges have brought rigor in the process of verification of computational methods, have enabled the democratization of different kinds of biological data, and have facilitated the collaboration of dozens of research teams. This success has triggered considerable interest by different government institutions and private organizations in working with DREAM to engage distributed teams to solve tough computational problems in biomedical research.
ABOUT SAGE BIONETWORKS
Sage Bionetworks is a nonprofit biomedical research organization, founded in 2009, with a vision to promote innovations in personalized medicine by enabling acommunity-based approach to scientific inquiries and discoveries. Sage Bionetworks strives to activate patients and to incentivize scientists, funders and researchers to work in fundamentally new ways in order to shape research, accelerate access to knowledge and transform human health. It is located on the campus of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington and is supported through a portfolio of philanthropic donations, competitive research grants, and commercial partnerships. More information is availableat www.sagebase.ort.
Media Contacts:
Stephen Friend
Sage Bionetworks
Tel: 206-667-2101
Email: friend@sagebase.eu
Dimitris Anastassiou
Columbia University
Tel: 201-658-9913
Email: da8@columbia.edu
Karyn Margolis
Avon Foundation for Women
Tel: 212-282-5666
Email: Karyn.margolis@avonfoundation.org
Jennifer Anderson
Communications Officer
Science Press Package
AAAS Office of Public Programs
Phone: 202-326-6466
Twitter: @scipak
Tumblr: http://scipak.tumblr.com/
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DREAM and Sage Bionetworks tap the wisdom of the crowd to impact breast cancer prognosisPublic release date: 17-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Regina Warmoth warmoth@sagebase.org 206-667-2102 Sage Bionetworks
Two new reports issuing in Science Translational Medicine (STM) today showcase the potential of teams of scientists working together to solve increasingly complex medical problems. The results demonstrate that better predictors of breast cancer progression than those currently available can be rapidly evolved by running open Big Data Challenges such as The Sage Bionetworks/DREAM Breast Cancer Prognosis Challenge (BCC).
In breast cancer, a key undertaking is determining those patients whose disease is most likely to progress rapidly and therefore tailor the best course of treatment for them. Currently oncologists are using gene-expression based assays such as MammaPrint and Oncotype Dx, that are based on 10 year old science, and both do better with breast cancer risk prediction than models based only on clinical data.
Dr. Stephen Friend, the Founder of Sage Bionetworks and one of the organizers of the BCC reflects, Ten years ago, members of our research group used gene expression profiling to build one of the first breast cancer predictors. Mammaprint and Oncotype Dx were developed off of that but further improvement seems to have stalled. We wondered if running a Challenge like BCC would motivate lots ofdifferent groups to tackle this problem, some working collaboratively, and if that might be more fruitful than the current go it alone single researcher approach.
To push the envelope on all the innovations that could be incorporated into the BCC, Sage partnered with the DREAM Project, a visionary distributed systems biology group that has run 24 successful open computational challenges over the last five years.
DREAMs founder and leader, Dr. Gustavo Stolovitzky saw the BCC as an opportunity to, refocus our efforts to create a collaborative research environment that fosters a complementary way of doing science, which accelerates the pace of discovery with the goal of contributing to a faster reduction of suffering due to disease. This seems to me like an ethical imperative.
The goal of the BCC was to build a computational model that accurately predicts breast cancer survival. To do this, participants of the Challenge used genomic and clinical information from 2000 women diagnosed with breast cancer (the METABRIC data set). They accessed this data on Synapse, Sage Bionetworks open compute platform for data sharing and analysis: Google donated cloud-based standardized virtual machines that each participant used to train their models against the data. Individual participants and/or teams submitted their computational models to Synapse as open source code made viewable to all: their models were assessed against a hidden dataset and their scores were reported on a real-time leaderboard. The combination of immediate feedback and code-sharing allowed participants to improve their leaderboard ranking by adjusting their own models or by borrowing the code of others to forge new models.
Throughout the July-October 2012 model-training phase, a crowd of 350 players from 35 countries across the globe joined the Challenge and submitted a total of 1700 computational models for scoring. The winning model was determined by scoring the predictive accuracy of players models against a newly generated data set: for this, the Avon Foundation For Women funded the generation of gene expression and copy number data as well as collection of corresponding clinical information from 180 breast cancer patients. Finally, the BCC organizers recognized that the basic science community might be most energized to participate if the Challenge prize were not money but the invitation to publish an article about the winning model in a top tier journal. The editors of STM saw the unique opportunity to run their own experiment on how to structure the peer-review process for competition-based crowdsourcing studies such as the BCC. Todays issue of STM features not only the winners article (the BCC Challenge prize) and a report from the BCC organizers on the Challenges conception, execution and insights -- STM also chose to highlight the BCC with an Editorial Summary and an iconic cover of Rosie the Riveter, intended to symbolize the power of women and their data to transform health.
Quipped Challenge participant Richard Savage (MRC Fellow in Biostatistics at the University of Warwick) on the prospect of winning the opportunity to publish in STM, This is huge and a genuinely new way to do some great science. I really think the organizers are onto something with this.
The winner turned out not to be a breast cancer doctor, or even a breast cancer researcher: the winning team (Attractor Metagenes) hails from Professor Dimitris Anastassious laboratory at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science. Anastassiou, now a member of the Columbia Initiative in Systems Biology, funded this research from his own inventors research allocation of patent royalties related to his previous work on digital television, which is now used in all DVDs and TV broadcasting systems worldwide. Working with two of his Ph.D. students, they developed the winning model underpinned by so-called attractor metagenes, gene signatures that they had identified as behaving similarly in multiple cancer types. They refer to attractor metagenes as bioinformatic hallmarks of cancer: Remarks Professor Anastassiou, We had discovered these pan-cancer gene signatures previously, and so we hypothesized that they play important roles in cancer in general. The BCC allowed us to prove that they are indeed highly prognostic at least in breast cancer. Indeed, the winning models predictive accuracy for breast cancer survival outperformed the best 60 models of a pre-competition group of expert programmers and bested current clinical standards. He is now excited with the prospect of collaborating with medical researchers to make good use of these signatures of cancer for potential use in diagnostic, prognostic and eventually therapeutic productsapplicable in multiple cancer types.
Based on the success of the BCC, Sage Bionetworks and DREAM announced earlier this year that they would merge to run open science computational Challenges which foster the broader collaboration of the research community and provide a meaningful impact to both discovery and clinical research. Their merger provides a collaborative framework that will bring the ideals of open science one step closer to reality.
The BCC demonstrated the wisdom of the crowd to develop predictive models but also highlighted that the value of those models is limited by the questions being posed and by the data being utilized. Even as the BCC reports in this weeks issue of STM, Sage Bionetworks and DREAM are announcing five DREAM8 Challenges at Sages 4th Commons Congress taking place in San Francisco and working with the Avon Foundation For Women, Susan G. Komen, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation to develop the next BCC which will start by mobilizing breast cancer patients to donate their data to drive the solving of a clinically relevant question inbreast cancer with the potential to transform patient treatment.
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ABOUT THE DREAM PROJECT
The Dialogue on Reverse Engineering Assessment and Methods Project (DREAM Project), founded in 2006 by Andrea Califano (Columbia University) and Gustavo Stolovitzky (IBM), was originally conceived as an initiative to advance thenascent field of network biology through the organization of Challenges on network reconstruction and pathway inference. Since the first set of network inference challenges of 2007 (DREAM2) the concept of using collaborative-competitions as a vehicle to carry on a meaningful dialogue in the computational biology community has evolved significantly. In 2012, thelast DREAM7 project featured four powerful challenges of which one was on network biology and the other three dealt with three important problems in translational medicine. With the experience gathered by the launching of 24successful challenges over the past five years, the Challenge concept has reached a status of legitimacy and maturity. The DREAM Challenges have brought rigor in the process of verification of computational methods, have enabled the democratization of different kinds of biological data, and have facilitated the collaboration of dozens of research teams. This success has triggered considerable interest by different government institutions and private organizations in working with DREAM to engage distributed teams to solve tough computational problems in biomedical research.
ABOUT SAGE BIONETWORKS
Sage Bionetworks is a nonprofit biomedical research organization, founded in 2009, with a vision to promote innovations in personalized medicine by enabling acommunity-based approach to scientific inquiries and discoveries. Sage Bionetworks strives to activate patients and to incentivize scientists, funders and researchers to work in fundamentally new ways in order to shape research, accelerate access to knowledge and transform human health. It is located on the campus of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington and is supported through a portfolio of philanthropic donations, competitive research grants, and commercial partnerships. More information is availableat www.sagebase.ort.
Media Contacts:
Stephen Friend
Sage Bionetworks
Tel: 206-667-2101
Email: friend@sagebase.eu
Dimitris Anastassiou
Columbia University
Tel: 201-658-9913
Email: da8@columbia.edu
Karyn Margolis
Avon Foundation for Women
Tel: 212-282-5666
Email: Karyn.margolis@avonfoundation.org
Jennifer Anderson
Communications Officer
Science Press Package
AAAS Office of Public Programs
Phone: 202-326-6466
Twitter: @scipak
Tumblr: http://scipak.tumblr.com/
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Public release date: 17-Apr-2013
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