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Wednesday, October 29, 2014

IMIG 2014: Dr. Robert Weinberg speaks on Cancer Stem Cell Targeting Therapies


Dr. Weinberg focused on the importance of cancer stem cells in mesothelioma. The concept of a stem cell origin of cancer was first described over fifty years ago as a small subset of cells capable of re-initiating a clonal tumor, and there is evidence for both a stem cell origin of mesothelioma, and a stem cell population in the mesothelioma tumor microenvironment. These cells play an essential role in the invasion-metastasis cascade, they are risk to conventional chemotherapy, and are believed to underlie resistance and relapse in mesothelioma. Click here for a summary of the latest information on cancer stem cells in mesothelioma.

Click here to watch Dr. Weinberg’s Presentation
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For Marijuana, a Second Wave of Votes to Legalize

Today's post was shared by The New York Times and comes from www.nytimes.com


KEIZER, Ore. — Two years after voters in Colorado and Washington State broke the ice as the first states to legalize sales of recreational marijuana to adults, residents of Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., will vote next week on ballot measures patterned on those of the two pioneers. People on both sides of the issue say these initiatives could determine whether there will be a national tide of legalization.
A changing political landscape has weakened anti-marijuana efforts. As the libertarian movement in the Republican Party has gained force, with leaders like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, supporting decriminalization of marijuana and others going even further, an anchor of the conservative opposition to legalization has eroded.
And Democrats have found that supporting legalization — once an invitation to be labeled soft on crime — no longer carries the risk it once did, as public discussion of prison overcrowding and law enforcement budgets has reframed the issue.



National groups that have long advocated legalization have provided labor and money, along with help from a legal marijuana industry that did not exist in 2012. The old antidrug coalition has struggled to find traction and money. Supporters of legalization have outdone opponents’ fund-raising here in Oregon by more than 25 to 1, and in Alaska by about 9 to 1.
“The support coalition is definitely broader, and the opposition has splintered,” said Corey Cook, an...
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H&M Bans India’s Super Spinning After Report of Child Labor

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.bloomberg.com

Hennes & Mauritz AB (HMB) will blacklist a spinning mill in southern India after a report claimed five manufacturers there use child labor and subjected workers, mostly women and girls, to “appalling” working conditions.

H&M will ban suppliers from using products made by Tamil Nadu-based Super Spinning Mills Ltd. (SSPM), the Stockholm-based company said today. A Bangladeshi supplier has used yarn produced at the mill, though H&M doesn’t have a direct business agreement, spokeswoman Lena Enocson Almroth said in an e-mail. Super was “unwilling to cooperate with H&M in a transparent way.”

The decision follows a report by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, or SOMO, and the India Committee of the Netherlands which said workers face labor conditions “that amount to forced labor in the export-oriented southern Indian textile industry.” The report, which was compiled using a mixture of desk research and interviews on the ground with workers, covers five mills, including Super.

“This report is totally false,” Super Spinning Mills’ Managing Director A.S. Thirumoorthy said by phone from his office in Coimbatore in southern India. “Buyers from H&M and Decathlon regularly come and audit our facilities.”

The mill complies with all Indian...
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Cuomo’s and Christie’s Shifts on Ebola Are Criticized as Politics, Not Science

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com



Shifting stances and a lack of clear standards from the governors of New York and New Jersey over their Ebola quarantine policy left critics and even some allies questioning on Monday whether the two men had fully worked through the details before they announced it.
In New York, local health officials said on Monday that they had not yet received any details of the three-day-old Ebola quarantine policy they are charged with enforcing.
In New Jersey, requests for such specifics were met with six sentences from a Friday news release.
Govs. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Friday that they were imposing their strict new mandatory quarantine because standards from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been inadequate.
But on Monday, faced with criticism from the nurse who had been detained in Newark as the test case of the new quarantine, Mr. Christie said the C.D.C. — not New Jersey — had been responsible for hospitalizing her and giving her the Ebola test in the first place.
By Monday, the White House, the United Nations secretary general and civil-liberties groups, with varying degrees of anger, were accusing Mr. Christie and Mr. Cuomo of putting politics ahead of science, at the risk of deterring health care workers needed to treat the disease at its origin in Africa.
The governors, who recently appeared side by side to declare their resolve to protect the region from the threat of terrorism, said on Friday...
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Frustration building over lack of details on N.J. Ebola plan

Today's post is shared from northjersey.com/
Governor Christie is forcefully defending New Jersey’s mandatory quarantine policy for travelers or health workers who have come in contact with Ebola patients in West Africa, saying other states, the military and even a Nobel laureate are on his side, as a fierce national debate has ensued over how to best protect Americans from the disease.
Yet four days after he and the governor of New York announced the 21-day quarantine for high-risk travelers, neither Christie nor state health officials have offered details about how this will be accomplished.
If people are quarantined at home, can their families stay with them and still go out? If they are alone at home, is someone going to bring them food? What about high-risk travelers who are passing through the airport in Newark — should they be allowed to continue to their destination?
Those and many other questions remain unanswered — Christie officials said specifics about how the mandate will be enforced are “internal documents” and are not public.
What’s more, some of the agencies that are supposed to be enforcing the plan say they are uncertain about protocols because no policies have been presented. There is growing frustration, officials said. The Port Authority, for...
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Antares Rocket, Bound for Space Station, Explodes



Last evening an unmanned Antares rocket blew up at launch at Wallops Space Flight Center. No injuries were reported. Actually the rocket failed a few seconds after launch and the The Range Safety Officer detonated the on board explosives to destruct the rocket before it deviated into a populated area. When I toured the launch site about 18 months ago I brought this question up to the Orbital officials which is the private company managing the rocket and the payload destined to to the International Space Station (ISS). Safety is a major concern for NASA and Orbital and last evening's events proved it. By the way, the rocket is an old Russian based vehicle with huge amount of  power. 

 Today's post is shared from nytimes.com/
An unmanned cargo rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station exploded seconds after liftoff Tuesday night.
The Antares rocket, carrying 5,055 pounds of supplies, science experiments and equipment, lifted off on schedule at 6:22 p.m. from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in eastern Virginia.
But soon after it rose into the sky, there was a flash of an explosion. “The ascent stopped,” Frank L. Culbertson Jr., the executive vice president of Orbital Sciences Corporation, the maker of the rocket, said during a news conference Tuesday. “There was some disassembly of the first stage, it looked like, and then it fell to earth.”
No one was injured.
Orbital, based in Dulles, Va., first launched a 14-story-high Antares rocket on its maiden flight in April last year. It then conducted a demonstration flight to the space station to show NASA the capabilities of the rocket and the cargo spacecraft. Then came two more flights carrying cargo to the space station, part of a program in which NASA has hired private companies to ferry cargo to the space station. Tuesday’s launch would have been the third of eight cargo missions under a $1.9 billion contract.
Orbital will lead an investigation. Mr. Culbertson said the company would not launch another Antares rocket until it had identified and corrected the problem.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., of Hawthorne, Calif., known as SpaceX, has successfully flown four cargo missions to the space...
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Kaci Hickox Won't Follow Maine Ebola Quarantine Rule, Lawyer Says

PHOTO: Kaci Hickox is pictured in this undated image provided by the University of Texas at Arlington.
Today's post is shared from abcnews.go.com/
Kaci Hickox, the nurse who was quarantined at a New Jersey hospital despite exhibiting no Ebola symptoms after arriving from West Africa, won't follow the quarantine imposed by Maine officials, her attorney said tonight.
"Going forward she does not intend to abide by the quarantine imposed by Maine officials because she is not a risk to others," her attorney Steven Hyman said. "She is asymptomatic and under all the protocols cannot be deemed a medical risk of being contagious to anyone."
Hickox will abide by all the self-monitoring requirements of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state of Maine, Hyman said.
Maine requires that health care workers such as Hickox who return to the state from West Africa will remain under a 21-day home quarantine, with their condition actively monitored, Gov. Paul R. LePage said in a statement.
"We will help make sure the health care worker has everything to make this time as comfortable as possible," he said.
Hickox left University Hospital in Newark Monday afternoon and was taken to Maine, where she lives.
Hickox, 29, was the first person forced into New Jersey's mandatory quarantine after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport Friday. She had previously treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone for Doctors Without Borders, but never registered a...
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