Application Update

On World Head and Neck Cancer Day (27th July), doctors from across the country urge people to stop tobacco use and adopt a healthy lifestyle as they suggest that this can prevent almost 80 percent of head and neck cancer cases in India.

According to a consolidated report of Bengaluru's National Centre for Disease Informatics and Research, head and neck cancer cases account for 30 and 10 percent of total cancers in males and females respectively between 2007 and 2011.

"Almost 80 percent of head and neck cancers are preventable since the majority of them are tobacco induced - smoke or the smokeless forms," says Tapaswini Pradhan, senior consultant for surgical oncology at the BLK Super Speciality Hospital.

(When Will They Find a Cancer Cure, Doc? | Ranjana Srivastava)

"Due to increase in alcohol consumption and tobacco, there is an alarming increase in the incidence of head and neck cancer cases over the past decade in developing countries like India," Pradhan added.

Fifty percent of head and neck cancers are oral cancers or mouth cancers, said A.K. Dewan, consultant and chief of head and neck surgical oncology at the Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute. Other major forms of head and neck cancer include lyrangial cancer (voice-box cancer), throat cancer (phyrangial cancer), paranasal sinus cancer (sinus cancer), thyroid and salivary gland cancers, Dewan explained.

To draw the world's attention to effective care and control of head and neck cancer, the International Federation of Head and NeckOncologic Societies (IFHNOS) proposed at its fifth World Congress in New York last year that July 27 be declared World Head Neck Cancer Day. The Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) also supported the move and July 27 will be observed as such from this year.

Explaining the need for a different advocacy programme for this eminently preventable disease, Dewan said that the problems in head and neck cancers are very different in the sense that they affect day-to-day life in far greater way than any other type of cancer."Head and neck cancers affect all essential functions including speech, breathing and swallowing," says Dewan.

(Alternative Therapies Risk Effectiveness of Cancer Treatment, Researchers Find)

"More importantly, in most of the cancers we do not know the reason why they are occurring but in case of head and neck cancers 80 percent of deaths are due to tobacco chewing or smoking," he said. "We also know that by cessation of tobacco chewing we can virtually prevent head and neck cancers," he emphasised.

Rakesh Dhurkhare, consultant for general and laparoscopy surgery at Gurgaon's Paras Hospitals, agreed. He said that the cancer-causing effect of tobacco goes up when it is combined with betel nut and lime.

(Patients Rarely Recognise Telltale Signs of Cancer - Study)

"Better oral hygiene, avoiding repetitive injury inside the mouth by sharp teeth and non-consumption of spicy food and alcohol can also help prevent these deadly cancers," adds Dhurkhare. He said that India's poorer states bear the maximum burnt of head and neck cancers.

The maximum cases of head and neck cancers are reported from Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh Dhurkhare pointed out. "Particularly in Assam, about 50 percent cases of all the cancers are of the head and neck region," he said.

Pradhan said that the maximum number of tongue cancers is reported from Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, followed by Goa.Besides tobacco chewing and smoking, ill-fitting dentures, which cause wounds, and some viral infections, including one caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), can result in infections and cancers of the head and neck region, Tushar Patil, medical oncologist at Pune's Columbia Asia Hospital. He said that good dental and oral hygiene, along with regular check-ups can help save many lives.Those with a family history of the infections should especially remain vigilant, Patil cautioned.

According to Pradhan, intake of more than 50 gm of alcohol per day increases the risk five- to six-fold in men and consumption of as low as 10-20 gm per day significantly increases the risk in females. "For people who consume both alcohol and tobacco, the risk increases in a multiplicative manner rather than in an additive manner," she pointed out.

According to Pradhan, a little attention to diet can also goes a long way in preventing the debilitating conditions."Deficiency of Vitamin A, C, E, beta-carotene, iron, selenium and zinc can also cause head and neck cancer," Pradhan said.

(Foods That Prevent Cancer)

High-temperature cooking which leads to loss of vitamins, especially vitamin C, should be avoided. "Fresh fruits and vegetables have a known protective effect against these cancers. Preserved meat with high content of nitrates should be avoided," Pradhan advised.
source:food.ndtv.com

On 3 June this year, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN began delivering particle collisions at an energy 63% higher than previously achieved. This week in Vienna, first physics results were presented. Here are some highlights

The European Physical Society High Energy Physics conference is taking place now in Vienna. This is the first big chance for the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to show off what they have managed to extract from the new data they have recorded since 3 June, when the LHC restarted particle collisions after a two-year break.

The new collisions are at a higher energy - 13 TeV¹ compared to the previous record of 8 TeV. Since we are bumping up against the speed-of-light barrier, this means the speed of the protons increases from 299 792 449 metres per second to 299 792 454 m/s (the speed of light is 299 792 458 m/s). An increase of only 5 m/s, which doesn’t sound terribly important. But speed is the wrong way to judge the significance of the increase. The main point of high energies in particle colliders is that they allow us to see into the heart of atoms and study the structure of matter at tiny distance scales; in a way the LHC is like a giant microscope. Turning up the energy is like turning up the power of the microscope, and we are eager to see what that might reveal.

The ‘reveal’ doesn’t all happen at once of course. As well as the energy, the amount of data is also important, and so far we only have a tiny fraction of what the LHC will deliver.
Minimum Bias

One of the first things to do is simply count the particles produced when protons collide at these new energies. These so-called “minimum bias” measurements set the stage on which all other measurements are made. They tell us what a typical collision looks like, before we start trying to select rarer and more interesting varieties.

Both ATLAS and CMS have produced results on the number of particles produced in 13 TeV collisions. The ATLAS result follows the template of our earlier results at lower energies, and shows how well (or how badly) various theoretical models predict the energy dependence of the particle multiplicity. The CMS result is a bit different. It takes advantage of a data-taking period during which their solenoidal magnet (the “S” in CMS) was off.

Having no magnet is a bad thing in general, because charged particles bend in the magnetic field, and from that bending, their momentum can be measured. No magnetic field, no momentum measurement. However, with the magnet on, very low momentum particles get bent so much that their paths curl up inside the LHC beam-pipe, and they never make it to the detector, and so never get detected at all.

With the magnet off, those tracks can be detected. We don’t know their momentum, but CMS have measured how many of them there are and what direction they are going in. All useful information for constraining the theoretical models, and understanding the environment in which the rest of LHC physics will be done.
The Ridge

Another ‘counting particles’ type of measurement is the so-called ‘ridge’, first measured by CMS very early in 7 TeV data-taking, back in 2010. This involves saving a lot of events which are not ‘average’, but in which an unusually large number of particles have been produced. Then you look at the correlations between pairs of those particles.

The CMS measurement first showed a surprising ‘ridge’, indicating an increased probability of emitting particles at a similar azimuthal angle (perpendicular to the beams) even when the angle along the beam (the rapidity) was very different. This kind of correlation has been seen as evidence that a sort of plasma, or liquid, of quarks and gluons has been formed, and are undergoing some kind of “collective flow”... essentially following each other around. Such an effect is expected (and seen) in heavy ion collisions, but very unexpected in proton-proton collisions. ATLAS confirms the CMS result (and now at higher energy), and in the meantime a wide variety of alternate theoretical explanations have arisen.

The question now is whether new measurements can help us reject some of the those explanations, and perhaps zoom in on the correct one. If quarks and gluons really show collective flow in these collisions, that is a big surprise. Like the recent pentaquark results from LHCb, it’s an example of the puzzling and rich phenomenology of the strong interaction. The ATLAS summary of this result is here, with the detailed write up here.
Jets

Jets of hadrons are produced when quarks and gluons smash into each other at short distances. The shorter the distance, the higher the energy of the jet. In fact measurements of jets give us our first glimpse of this really short distance physics, the reason we went for higher energies in the first place.

The first ATLAS jet measurement at 13 TeV was released for this conference; so far it only covers the range of jet energies that we’ve covered before, but it shows that, as expected, these jets are produced much more frequently in 13 TeV collisions than at 7 or 8 TeV, and illustrates the potential of these measurements as we get more data.



There are more results coming, and things are happening so quickly that I have probably missed some good ones here already. ATLAS is in a frenzy of reviewing and approving preliminary results at the moment and I would assume that CMS, LHCb and ALICE are in a similar state. Apologies to colleagues, especially on those other experiments, if I have missed your favourite highlight - it wasn’t deliberate and it may well feature on these pages soon anyway.

In short, there’s a lot going on at the moment. And the best is definitely still to come, with updates on the top quark, W, Z and Higgs boson production and (my current favourite) the question as to whether this bump will be seen again in the new data or not?
Tera electron Volts - the energy an electron would acquire accelerated through 13 trillion volts of electrical potential.
Jon Butterworth’s book Smashing Physics is available as “Most Wanted Particle” in Canada & the US. He is also on Twitter.
source:http://www.theguardian.com

Users left unamused as social media company replaces content subject to takedown notices with ‘tweet withheld’ messages, allowing 10 days to appeal

Twitter has begun to honour takedown requests from users complaining their jokes have been lifted wholesale and shared by others, passing them off as their own.

Certain tweets have begun to be replaced with copyright notices and a message saying “tweet withheld”. The blocked tweets offer users the chance to “learn more” via a link to Twitter’s policy on DMCA takedown notices.

A statement on Twitter’s policy page asserts:

    Twitter will respond to reports of alleged copyright infringement, such as allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted image as a profile photo, header photo, or background, allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted video or image uploaded through our media hosting services, or Tweets containing links to allegedly infringing materials.

Users who are subject to DMCA takedown notices have 10 days in which to appeal, according to Twitter. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a US legislation targeting the avoidance of digital rights management that protects copyrighted work.

In the US, the law is assessed on a central four tenets which comprise fair use: the purpose and character of use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and the effect of the use on the potential market.

Twitter says that it will make a “good faith effort” to contact those whose content is removed under copyright claims, and the claims will be passed on to ChillingEffects.com, a database of online removal requests.

It appears Twitter’s policy of removing tweets that have been reported for copyright infringement is a new development in the past few days. The social network has always had rules around copyright, but these appear to be the first instances of users being referred to as “original authors” and “copyright holders”, as well as the removal of tweets for this reason.

The Verge website reported that one freelance writer, Olga Lexell, had tweeted about the DMCA takedown request she filed after the content of her tweet was taken without credit.

    I simply explained to Twitter that as a freelance writer I make my living writing jokes (and I use some of my tweets to test out jokes in my other writing). I then explained that as such, the jokes are my intellectual property, and that the users in question did not have my permission to repost them without giving me credit.

Plenty of Twitter accounts, with thousands of followers, many similar to each other, comprise solely of lifted jokes and media. Some accounts have even joined together to form businesses, and the owners are making a lot of money.

Tweet theft and content appropriated without credit has been happening since the dawn of the social network. In 2013, a minister from South Carolina, Sammy Rhodes, who became famous for his witty tweets, was found to be lifting them from famous comedians. Even comedians themselves, including British star Keith Chegwin, have been found to have copied.
source:http://www.theguardian.com

More than 1,000 experts and leading robotics researchers sign open letter warning of military artificial intelligence arms race

Over 1,000 high-profile artificial intelligence experts and leading researchers have signed an open letter warning of a “military artificial intelligence arms race” and calling for a ban on “offensive autonomous weapons”.

The letter, presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was signed by Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Google DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis and professor Stephen Hawking along with 1,000 AI and robotics researchers.

The letter states: “AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of [autonomous weapons] is – practically if not legally – feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.”

The authors argue that AI can be used to make the battlefield a safer place for military personnel, but that offensive weapons that operate on their own would lower the threshold of going to battle and result in greater loss of human life.

Should one military power start developing systems capable of selecting targets and operating autonomously without direct human control, it would start an arms race similar to the one for the atom bomb, the authors argue.Unlike nuclear weapons, however, AI requires no specific hard-to-create materials and will be difficult to monitor.

“The endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting,” said the authors.

Toby Walsh, professor of AI at the University of New South Wales said: “We need to make a decision today that will shape our future and determine whether we follow a path of good. We support the call by a number of different humanitarian organisations for a UN ban on offensive autonomous weapons, similar to the recent ban on blinding lasers.”

Musk and Hawking have warned that AI is “our biggest existential threat” and that the development of full AI could “spell the end of the human race”. But others, including Wozniak have recently changed their minds on AI, with the Apple co-founder saying that robots would be good for humans, making them like the “family pet and taken care of all the time”.

At a UN conference in Geneva in April discussing the future of weaponry, including so-called “killer robots”, the UK opposed a ban on the development of autonomous weapons, despite calls from various pressure groups, including the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.
source:http://www.theguardian.com

From using password managers to checking urls, best practices revealed in new study

Cybersecurity experts aren’t like you or I, and now we have the evidence to prove it. Researchers at Google interviewed more than 200 experts to find out what security practices they actually carry out online, and then spoke to almost 300 non-experts to find out how they differ.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the security experts practice what they preach – or, at least, they tell Google they do. They’re more likely to use two-factor authentication, to install software updates, and avoid visiting shady websites. Even for practices that are subject to healthy debate within the security community, actions speak louder than words: the experts are more likely to run anti-virus software and to use password managers than non-experts.

So what do the experts do? And, perhaps more importantly, what are the modern-day superstitions we can all stop doing to save time?

1) Yes, you do want to install updates

“Update all the software and firmware to fix any possible vulnerability.” “Patch, patch, patch.” The experts are clear: never turn down a security update. The researchers found that not only was installing updates the most commonly cited practice that experts do to keep safe online, it was also the largest difference between experts and non-experts: 35% of the former mentioned it, while only 2% of the latter. And a further 2% of experts also mentioned turning on automatic updates as one of the top three things they do, something no non-expert mentioned.

Non-experts, however, were worried that the updates could themselves lead to an infection: “Automatic software updates are not safe in my opinion, since it can be abused to update malicious content,” said one. And they were also worried that the updates would lead to new problems, with one saying that “there are often bugs in these updates initially”.

Software updates are usually the only way to combat actual security vulnerabilities – those bugs in software that let malicious attackers do things they shouldn’t. For instance, the recent Adobe flash vulnerabilities opened a user’s computer up to hacking if they continued using the software: until patches were issued, there was little option but to simply stop using Flash to stay safe online.

2) Use antivirus software – but don’t bank on it

Antivirus packages have a bad rap. For years, the software had a reputation for slowing down computers with added cruft, foisting pricy support packages on desperate users, and not really doing much to actually protect the computers in the first place. But despite all that, a majority of experts said they use the software.

However, antivirus software was vastly more favoured by non-experts than experts, and barely 60% of the experts actually used it. Users in the know said that “AV is simple to use, but less effective than installing updates,” and that the software “is good at detecting everyday/common malware. But nothing that’s slightly sophisticated”. In contrast, 70% of non-experts thought the advice to use AV software was likely to be “very effective”, and more than 80% of them had it installed.

So, while you shouldn’t uninstall your AV software, don’t get lulled into a false sense of security about it. Oh, and like everything else, always install the updates.

3) Keep your passwords unique

Password security online is frequently summed up as “strong, unique passwords” – but it turns out one part of that might be more important than the other. Non-experts tend to focus on the strong part, with 30% of them picking that as one of their top three tips against 18% of the experts; conversely, 25% of the experts pick “unique”, against 15% of the normal users.

It’s easy to see why. Using a strong password (that is, one that uses a good mixture of case, letters, numbers and symbols, as well as steering clear of dictionary words) requires a one-off feat of memory, and can feel very much like the sort of security procedure one should carry out, while avoiding password reuse is an ongoing hassle, requiring a new password for every site.

But in practice, most people are unlikely to face a brute-force attempt to break into their account by simply guessing their password, and even if they do, it doesn’t take much to render such an attack unsuccessful. But most people are likely to be the user of at least one service which gets hacked, as Adobe, Playstation and Ashley Madison users have all learned to their disadvantage. Having a unique password can prevent that misfortune compounding.

4) Use a password manager

How do you remember all those unique passwords? Password managers, such as 1Password, Lastpass and Keepass solve that problem. They are used by more than three times as many experts than non-experts, and experts are four times more likely to name them as one of the most important things they do online. The researchers cite one expert as saying that “’password managers change the whole calculus, because they make it possible to have both strong and unique passwords”.

Yet only 18% of non-experts thought the advice to use a password manager was “very effective”, and some even explicitly said they don’t trust them. Their reasoning is that password managers can be hacked, and that if other software has bugs and flaws, who can guarantee the same problems won’t apply to managers? In those worries, the users are backed-up by a team from Microsoft, who reported in 2014 that users should rely on easily-memorised passwords rather than managers.

But the security experts are clear: despite their concerns, using password managers is better than not. In fact, some of them even recommend writing the most valuable passwords down on paper. As one says, “malware can’t read a piece of paper”. But the number of experts actually writing down passwords was still lower than the number of non-experts.

As a rule of thumb, if you can remember all your passwords, you’re doing it wrong. Over half the non-experts claimed to remember every password, while just 17% of the experts said the same.

5) Use two-factor authentication

Perhaps because of companies such as Google or Twitter being increasingly pushy about trying to encourage users to switch to two-factor authentication (2FA) – where a password is backed up by a code linked to a specific mobile phone – almost two-thirds of non-experts say they use the security system on their accounts. Those rates still lag behind the experts, but the high numbers suggest that the message is getting through.

At the same time, the non-experts over-state the benefit of 2FA, especially when compared to the less flashy practice of using a password manager. More than four in five non-experts said they thought it was effective, compared to just 32% for password managers.

6) Visit secure websites, even if you don’t recognise them

Non-experts tend to claim that they keep safe by only visiting websites they already know about: “Visiting websites you’ve heard of doesn’t mean they are completely safe, but there is a higher chance of this,” explains one. But they might be exaggerating slightly: while 21% of non-experts said that not visiting unknown websites was an important safety practice, only 7% of them claimed to never visit unknown websites.

Even though 32% of experts said they “rarely” visit unknown websites, the more important piece of advice – and the one where the experts differed from the non-experts – was to check for HTTPS, the secure connection protocol, when visiting an untrusted website. In fact, it was the third most mentioned security practice amongst experts.

7) Do as I say, not as I do

But not everything security experts do is something to be followed. Despite recommending that users not click links on emails from unknown sources – a way to avoid phishing emails as well as targeted malware – the researchers themselves admit to doing so. “I do all the time,” one said, laughing, “but I tell my mother not to.” Another admitted that the advice is given more for simplicity’s sake than because it’s the best thing to do: “I never really found a way of giving more precise advice for people who are not technical on what is really safe and what is not.”

The hot air balloon that is Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination continues to head for the stratosphere, with one weekend poll showing that he is not only the leading contender but has nearly doubled his support among Republican voters in the past two weeks. It is tempting to say that Mr Trump’s policies are as lacking in substance as his hairdo. That is true in the sense that he seems to have absolutely no idea how he would execute them were he to achieve office. But, aside from that defect, the proposals he has been putting forward either do not greatly differ from those of his more mainstream rivals, or tend to be somewhat more liberal than they are. He does not differ in essence from most of the rest of the field on immigration, global warming, or equal marriage. He does differ from most in that he opposes cuts in social security, Medicare and Medicaid, and although he wants Obamacare repealed, he believes in some form of universal healthcare. He continues to forthrightly describe the Iraq war as a disaster, while most of the other contenders have tried to avoid or obfuscate that issue.

If this were all, Mr Trump could be described as average in the field and better than some. But it is his coruscating style that has propelled him into the spotlight. He insults his party rivals with abandon. He slaps meanly at a Republican elder such as Senator John McCain. He describes Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. He makes up tall stories about facing physical danger on the border with Mexico. He repeatedly fails to explain his views in any coherent way or fluffs his lines at press conferences. And yet bluster carries him through, and the great ego trip rolls on, seemingly delighting a significant number of core Republican voters, although it alienates others and his appeal outside the party is limited.

He celebrates his own wealth, his alleged appeal to beautiful women, and his years throwing up mediocre buildings in American cities as if these were unalloyed credentials for running a great nation facing great problems. In so doing he has tapped into a section of the electorate that is fearful of demographic and cultural change, sees the America it thinks it knows slipping away, and has lost faith in conventional politics. It looks for scapegoats, wants its prejudices confirmed and yearns for a Mr Fixit who can make everything right again. Whether it thinks Mr Trump could ever actually be the president is uncertain. But in the meantime he satisfies certain emotional needs.

Unfortunately for the Republican party, and to the advantage of the Democrats, there are other effects. In the highly unlikely event of him winning the nomination, he would be almost bound to lose the election, because the “silent majority” that he claims to represent has dwindled in size in the days since Richard Nixon coined the term to refer to the then much larger number of white working-class and lower-middle-class voters. But, if spurned, Mr Trump might run as a third-party candidate, splitting the Republican vote as Ross Perot did in 1992 and 1996.

At a more fundamental level, he threatens to show up the central weakness of the modern Republican party, which is that it needs to draw on two contradictory constituencies – that older one, anxious about immigration, sexual matters, abortion, and “ordinary” jobs; and a new, younger, and more ethnically diverse population, familiar with the altered economic landscape of recent years. The difficulty is clearest when the party tries to appeal both to voters who want immigration cut and to recent immigrants themselves.

That is why Republican politicians usually speak with forked tongue as they deal with these issues. But Mr Trump does not speak with a forked tongue. For every voter he pleases with his uncomplicated rhetoric, he is likely to lose one who might otherwise have rallied to the Republican cause. These problems have not much impeded Republicans in local or state fights, because they can tailor their campaigning to particular circumstances. But they are disabling when they have to craft a national message in a presidential contest. That contributes to the American political gridlock, pitting an activist president against obstinate Republican lawmakers. The only way out of this impasse would be for the Republican party to make its peace with the new America. A contender like Donald Trump can only hinder such a development, leaving the party stranded in the contradictions from which it must escape if American politics is ever to work properly again.
source:http://www.theguardian.com

President Obama’s visits to Kenya and Ethiopia can be justified as policy by the dreadful state of South Sudan, which borders both countries, but it is hard to escape the thought that he had personal reasons for wanting to visit Kenya, his father’s homeland, while still president. However, though joyfully received, he has not been an uncritical guest. His criticisms of the flaws of Kenyan society have been plain and well aimed. His attack on the scourge of FGM was quite without diplomatic circumlocution. “There’s no excuse for sexual assault or domestic violence; there’s no reason that young girls should suffer genital mutilation … These traditions may go back centuries; they have no place in the 21st century,” he said. This was a message that Kenya was ready to hear. Less so his advocacy of human rights for gay people. But he showed more courage than most spiritual leaders can muster when it came to telling an African audience news they don’t want to hear about the wrongness of homophobia.

The tremendous energy, ingenuity and optimism visible in Africa is often betrayed by the quality of the continent’s leaders, whose energy is directed to self-enrichment and whose optimism to supposing they can get away with it. It is not just Mr Obama’s views on women, nor his probity, that he might commend to Africa: there is also his willingness to resign when his term is up and his taste for fighting free and fair elections. We have come a long way since the enthusiasm that attended Bill Clinton’s visit to Africa in 1995, when the talk was all of a “new generation” of African leaders, committed to democracy and clean government.

Nowhere has the cycle of optimism and disillusionment run faster or further downward than in South Sudan, whose independence four years ago seemed like a triumph of Mr Obama’s Africa policy. Within two years the two leaders of the independence movement had started a civil war of astonishing horror and cruelty, which has produced two million refugees and persists unabated. It cannot even be blamed on Christian/Muslim tensions as the earlier war against the mostly Muslim north can be. Both sides in this war are notionally Christian.

Stopping the war there may be an achievement beyond Mr Obama, or anyone else. The oil reserves in the provinces most fiercely fought over are just too tempting to the utterly ruthless men who lead the opposing sides. But it is clearly a part of his purpose in Ethiopia to do what little he can. There is talk of sanctions and an arms embargo, neither of which seem to hold out much hope – arms will always find a way to oil wars, and sanctions will no doubt hurt civilians most. If the suffering of civilians could halt a war, South Sudan would by now have earned a millennium of peace.

All this will involve pragmatic cooperation with some nasty regimes, among them the Ethiopian one which is hosting the president. But that kind of engagement is unavoidable and morally defensible if things are to change. America’s power is weakening in Africa, just as the rest of the west’s has done. China is now an alternative market and source of investment, one which has no scruples about human rights. The effects of climate change are adding to human cruelty and encouraging it. Mr Obama’s message, and his example, may have a more lasting effect than the spectacle and popular rejoicing that greeted him.
source:http://www.theguardian.com

A HASIDIC girl from Brooklyn, New York, wrote a clever poem that spread like wildfire online and became a hit after it was posted on a wall in London.

Chanie Gorkin, in eleventh grade at the all-girls Lubavitch high school Beth Rivkah in Crown Heights, jotted down the lines for a class assignment last year and then published it on PoetryNation.com.

What happened next is remarkable.


Zachery Stephenson, the events manager at the Nambucca bar on Holloway Road in North London had tacked the poem on a wall, after his cousin in New York had forwarded it in response to a negative Facebook post, US ABC News reports.

There it was seen by Ronnie Joice, who was feeling a “bit worn out” after a day of meetings about a prospective job.

The poem, which at first appears to be a bleak outlook on a bad day, contains a surprise. The ending instructs the reader to go back and re-read from the bottom to the top, which completely reverses its meaning.


Mr Joice was so taken with the clever poem, he photographed and posted it to Twitter, which resulted in thousands of shares on social media.

The uplifting poem — ironically titled “Worst Day Ever?” — has since been translated into multiple languages, including Hebrew, Chinese and Russian. Her father, Baruch Gorkin, posted some of the translations to his Facebook page.

Chanie’s brother, Shimon Gorkin, proudly posted: “That’s my sister!”


Chanie’s mother, Dena Gorkin, confirmed to ABC News that her daughter wrote the poem. She also said Chanie was away at summer camp and unavailable for comment, but Mrs Gorkin has been telling her daughter about the reaction to the poem and “she’s quite overwhelmed.”


“One of the major tenets of Hasidic philosophy is that the mind rules over the heart, that we are able to channel our emotions to the positive ... that there is God in everything, and it is part of our mission in life to look for the good, and to find it and to spread it,” Mrs Gorkin said.

So, when Chanie was given the assignment to write about her worst day ever, she used her writing skills to turn the question around.

The Worst Day Ever, by Chanie Gorkin

Today was the absolute worst day ever
And don’t try to convince me that
There’s something good in every day
Because, when you take a closer look,
This world is a pretty evil place.
Even if
Some goodness does shine through once in a while
Satisfaction and happiness don’t last.
And it’s not true that
It’s all in the mind and heart
Because
True happiness can be attained
Only if one’s surroundings are good
It’s not true that good exists
I’m sure you can agree that
The reality
Creates
My attitude
It’s all beyond my control
And you’ll never in a million years hear me say
Today was a very good day
Now read it from bottom to top, the other way,
And see what I really feel about my day.
Additional reporting by Network Writers

source : http://www.news.com.au

In her diary entry for 11 March 1968, Barbara Castle noted with an attempt at nonchalance: “The Daily Express has an incredible feature article: Why Barbara is King of the Castle.” She continued, “Frank Allaun [a backbench MP] popped up to me in the dining room in the House to tell me that at more than one meeting recently … my name has seriously been canvassed for PM.”

In June that year, 850 women workers at Ford began a strike for equal pay. The abortion act had become law. Second-wave feminism was beginning to lodge in the popular imagination. Equal pay legislation, Spare Rib and divorce reform were just around the corner. A woman leader of the Labour party, it seemed, was surely the next step.

Nearly 50 years on, the UK’s biggest and oldest mainstream progressive party has still not elected a woman leader. Women – Margaret Beckett, in the months after John Smith’s death, and Harriet Harman now – are OK to stand in as sensible, effective, interim leaders. But elected? Not a chance. Yet within seven years of the suggestion that Castle could be the pioneer, the Conservatives had elected Margaret Thatcher. Why Thatcher, and why not Castle?

Come to that, why Nicola Sturgeon and Natalie Bennett in the 2015 general election? Why do new parties that have progressive agendas understand that women leaders can bring a humanity and engagement to the dry old bloke atmosphere of Westminster. Yet Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall are cringingly quizzed about their weight, fertility and fashion choices, and the implication from one of the other camps that they might not be tough enough for the five years ahead. “Startlingly retro” Cooper called it. There are other ways of putting it.

Writing a biography of Barbara Castle, it struck me as inarguable that her failure to make it to the top was partly an everyday tale of luck. Timing and chance shape political destinies. But 1968 was also the peak of her popularity. Within a year, she had destroyed her standing and undermined – almost fatally – her own political legacy.

After the Thatcher assault on trade union rights, many people would say that Castle’s attempt to reform union law, In Place of Strife, was a courageous attempt to meet the challenge posed by strikes and industrial disruption, which in the end played a big part in exiling Labour from power.

It is also clear now that Castle’s politics were feminine in a way that she – who only ever described herself as a feminist when it seemed to offer some advantage – never considered. Well before she trespassed on the trade unions’ right to self-regulation, she had affronted millions of men by introducing the breathalyser to stop them killing other people, and demanding that they avoid killing themselves by wearing seat belts. She had a blithe disregard for the pay differentials in a way that ate into generations of carefully guarded privilege. A party that was still predominantly about trade union representation in parliament would never have let Castle become leader.

Anecdotally, that hypermasculine legacy lingers in other parties with close ties to the old industrial left. Germany’s SPD, for example, remains a strongly male preserve. And if there is a pattern to where women break through to lead long-established parties of the left, as Ségolène Royal did briefly in France, it has been as an emergency response that triumphs over old hostilities.

It was a sense of crisis that propelled Thatcher into the leadership of the Conservatives. In a party where she was one of only seven Tory women among 270 men, she alone had the nerve to challenge the orthodoxy and appeal to a panic-stricken demand for something completely different.

That was only part of the story. Thatcher herself used to pretend it was as much of a surprise to her as it had been to most observers. But that was one of the fictions she employed in order to disguise how confident she was in her own abilities.

As the first volume of Charles Moore’s biography makes clear, it was Thatcher’s radicalism that mattered, not her gender, which was fortunate since the knights of the shires referred to the contest as “the filly against the gelding”. What they saw in her, along with her good legs, was the guts to make the country great again. They were in a mess. She dared to offer something completely different.

This is not only a political phenomenon. It’s evident in the corporate world, as two recent studies have shown. In crisis? Send for a woman. Boards appoint women to lead when the share price is on the floor, financial crisis looms or a predator lurks.

Maybe it’s because crisis puts a priority on traditionally feminine strengths of team-building and people management skills that generate the confidence to tackle problems. Or maybe it’s just that the male candidates look at the balance sheet and say, nah, not this time. It often doesn’t turn out well, so they call it the glass cliff. Thatcher stepped off it and prospered, but for eight wobbly years it was a close-run thing. In the corporate sphere, women like Xerox’s Anne Mulcahy who turned the firm from junk share to investment status in three short years, have done it too.

But the great example is the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. It was she who had the courage to challenge Helmut Kohl after a scandal over party funding threatened to engulf the CDU in the late 1990s. She wrote an opinion piece for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung demanding change and said Kohl, her mentor and boss, was an “old warhorse” incapable of the new leadership the challenge demanded. She was party chairman within the year.

It’s a bit late for Cooper to reinvent herself as an aggressive iconoclast ready to challenge party orthodoxy now, and Kendall, who has made it her stock in trade, could scarcely be said to have prospered by it. But there is no one on the planet who thinks that one more heave will return Labour to office.

This is only a guess, but all the evidence tells us that however progressive their policies, old parties of the left are in the grip of creaky, outdated institutional structures – too easily dominated by men, too hostile to women – to create a culture that encourages women to flourish. Labour needs radicalism, innovation, a sense of excitement, a different style of engagement. Just the moment to send for a woman.
source:http://www.theguardian.com

Property porn. Want some? I know you love to hate this stuff. “A new level of luxury living has arrived in the heart of London,” reads the marketing mush for the promised Aykon Tower, a 50-storey freak erection on the south side of the Thames that doesn’t actually exist except as a sky-scraping stack of “off-plan” sales and its architect’s glistening CGIs. Its blurb breathes that the so-called “Jenga Tower” will provide “the ultimate in branded living experiences”, with “lavish interiors designed by Versace Home”. Fancy a bedsit there for £700,000? Something larger for £4m? Too late, the prices of what’s left have just gone up.
Come see London's latest luxury housing venture – where a car space is £50,000
Read more

This is the type of thing that makes people loathe London and makes an awful lot of Londoners feel ill. Most Aykon advance sales have been to the overseas super-rich who have (metaphorically) slapped vast wads of cash into estate agents’ hands and expect to see fat returns even before the 360 Versace pads for private purchase have become real. What’s in all this for everyone else?

Well, there is something, actually. Also promised as part of the deal negotiated with Labour-run Lambeth council before it granted the Aykon’s developer planning consent are 90 dwellings that residents of Lambeth who aren’t filthy rich will be able to afford. Of these, 38 will be for “shared ownership”, the form of “affordable” home designed for households on middling London incomes who can’t afford to buy outright. The other 52, of which 21 are family-sized, will be for rent levels well below local market rates – not as low as traditional social housing, but at least within the realm of sanity and still coverable by housing benefit.

Some will say this isn’t good enough. They will variously complain that Lambeth should have driven a harder bargain, that the 90 “affordable” homes aren’t “affordable” enough, and that the “planning gain” they represent isn’t worth the aesthetic pain another giant Thames-side tower will inflict. They will be outraged that the Aykon’s 20% minority of relatively cheap homes will be served by a separate “poor door” and their inhabitants barred from the swimming pool, roof garden, cinema and other exclusive amenities to be provided for the rich folk next door.

    Off-plan sales to the rich help fund housebuilding when the industry is still emerging from a credit crunch-shaped hole

Yes, it’s sickening. Yes, things shouldn’t be this way. And, yes, those objections may have some force. But do you want those 90 homes or don’t you? And if you don’t, what have you to say to the 90 Lambeth households you’d deprive? If you were running a London borough whose lower-middle classes are being steadily priced out and whose poorest have effectively formed a queue for social housing that stretches right around the block, where would you find the land and the money to help them with? Were you London’s mayor, what would you do to make things better?

Here are some miserable things to think about. Housing activists and mayoral hopefuls of the left call for an end to “off-plan” sales and promise bans on “poor doors”. They join the popular cry against “rich foreign investors,” saying that their filthy lucre jacks up prices and that they won’t even live in their speculator eyries, being casually content to ”buy to leave”.

Not so fast. Off-plan sales to the rich, be they from Hammersmith or Hong Kong, help fund London housebuilding when the industry is still emerging from a credit crunch-shaped hole. Private housing schemes, be they spectacular or small, have generated about one-third of the affordable homes of all kinds built in London in recent years, according to the Greater London Authority. “Poor doors” are often desired by the housing associations that build the flats behind them because it holds down their cost, making them that bit more affordable.

Steepling “prime central” inflation is seen by market analysts as only one driver among several pushing London house prices up, but as pretty confined in its effects. Posh estate agent Savills thinks there’s a lot less “buy to leave” than some politicians would have you believe. After all, why would you let a bunch of flats stand empty when you can make money by letting them?

Where London’s many housing problems are concerned, there’s a lot more rhetoric than realism. People call for statutory rent regulation, a land value tax, more freedom for boroughs to borrow money to build, increased grant funding from the Treasury, fiercer council tax penalties on empty homes and larger compulsory purchase powers. Don’t hold your breath. Only national government can provide such things and the current one is not that way inclined. That is despite even London’s Tories, Boris Johnson included, and its big businesses favouring of much of the above and, by the way, regarding David Cameron’s plan to extend the right to buy to housing association tenants as a recipe for catastrophe.

The realism that’s required is not the type that dignifies subservience to an absurd status quo, but the variety that recognises the predicaments faced by London boroughs who want to help their less wealthy residents get better housed: predicaments that also await whoever succeeds Boris Johnson at the helm of City Hall after the mayoral election next May.

We all know what we want: more and better homes for Londoners on low and middle incomes; a bigger, cheaper and better-run private rented sector; a settlement of the tensions between conservation and development, one relating to historic buildings and council-owned estates alike, that serves the best interest of the city as whole. The next mayor and the boroughs he or she will work with will have limited assets and powers for working towards those goals. There will be exacting dilemmas and uncomfortable compromises. Progress will not come easily. The best mayoral candidate will be one who sees all this, and tailors policy accordingly.
source:http://www.theguardian.com

A bat found inside a Silverton home has tested positive for rabies according to county health officials.

The bat, which was tested July 20, is the fifth bat to test positive for rabies in Oregon this year, but the first in Marion County since 2012.

There are simple steps homeowners can take to safely handle or avoid a rabid bat.

“If it’s outside and no one’s touched it, leave it alone. Make sure your dogs and cats stay away from it,” said Richard Sherman, Program Supervisor for Environmental Health at the Marion County Health Department.

“If its flying around and it came in at night because its chasing an insect, leave the window open and it’ll probably fly right back out and you’re fine. If you find it lying around in the daytime or flopping around, I’d be more concerned.”

Seeing a bat on the ground in the daytime can be a sign that it’s sick, according to a Marion County Health Department press release.

Animals and pets usually acquire rabies by attempting to eat a rabid bat or coming into contact with its saliva. If a pet has come into contact with a bat, contact your veterinarian.

The health department recommends that homeowners vaccinate their pets against rabies and keep away from wildlife, including feeding wildlife. Homeowners should also seal openings into houses, barns, sheds, and screen chimneys so bats cannot roost there.

If you find a bat that may be rabid, call the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife at (866) 968-2600 to report its location.
source : http://www.statesmanjournal.com

OKLAHOMA CITY – Officials are warning livestock owners of the dangers associated with rabies.

When you think about protecting your animals from rabies, you might imagine shots for your dogs or cats.

However, officials with the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry are warning livestock owners about the disease.

Rabies is usually spread through a bite, but patients can also be exposed through contact with saliva or nervous tissue.

In Oklahoma, the disease is more common in livestock, but may not always be recognized.

In carnivores, experts say you may notice aggressive behavior. However, the symptoms are much different in horses, cattle and other livestock.

In those cases, symptoms include loss of appetite, limb paralysis, abdominal straining or difficulty swallowing.

“As we move toward show season, Oklahoma youth will be having daily contact with livestock that are susceptible,” said Justin Roach, ODAFF staff veterinarian. “That’s why it is important for all owners to properly vaccinate their animals and prevent the spread of this disease.”
source : http://kfor.com

British actress Kate Winslet struggled to accept her fuller figure during her youth because the women in her life failed to promote a positive attitude toward body image.

The star has famously embraced her curves throughout her career, but she admits it was something she had to learn on her own as she was only exposed to “damaging” comments about women’s bodies as a child, reports UsMagazine.com.

During a thrill-seeking trip with adventurer Bear Grylls on his series “Running Wild With Bear Grylls,” she explains, “When I grew up, I never heard positive reinforcement about body image from any female in my life. I only heard negatives. That’s very damaging, because then you’re programmed as a young woman to immediately scrutinize yourself and how you look.”

Winslet’s childhood experiences have made the actress more conscious of how her daughter, Mia, views her own body and she actively encourages the 14 year old to admire her own figure.

She says, “I stand in front of the mirror and say to Mia, ‘We are so lucky we have a shape. We’re so lucky we’re curvy. We’re so lucky we’ve got good bums.’ And she’ll say, ‘Mummy, I know, thank God.’”

Winslet’s “Running Wild With Bear Grylls” episode airs on Monday night.
Oh, and take a look at Winslet recreate a famous scene from “Titanic” on the side of a mountain below.

The NS5A replication complex inhibitor Daclatasvir (Daklinza), has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Bristol-Myers Squibb Company announced Friday. The approval was for treatment of patients with difficult-to-treat genotype 3 hepatitis C (HCV), in combination with sofosbuvir (Sovaldi), a viral NS5B polymerase blocker.

Daclatasvir is the first chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 3 treatment to feature a 12-week, once-daily, all-oral dose regimen. Sofosbuvir, developed by Gilead Sciences, was approved by the FDA. in 2013, and Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Daclatasvir, is already approved in Europe and other regions.

Chris Boerner, Head of U.S. Commercial, Bristol-Myers Squibb, said:

    “The U.S. approval of Daklinza means that chronic HCV genotype 3 patients may now complete treatment in just 12 weeks with an all-oral, once-daily regimen. We believe this Daklinza-based regimen may be a solution to improving the standard of care for these patients. This approval is the result of many years of partnership with the HCV community to address the complexities of genotype 3, and an important achievement in our ongoing Daklinza development program, which focuses on patients that are most challenging to treat.”

US cost information for daclatasvir is not yet available, although sofosbuvir is fairly expensive on it’s own, retailing for around $84,000 per course of treatment.

Approval was based on the Phase III ALLY-3 clinical trial. This trial involved 152 patients with chronic HCV genotype 3 infection and compensated liver disease.

In the trial, the Daklinza plus sofosbuvir regimen demonstrated cures, defined as sustained virologic response rates 12 weeks after completing therapy (SVR12), in 90% of treatment-naïve and 86% of treatment-experienced chronic HCV genotype 3 patients. SVR12 rates were higher (96%) in genotype 3 patients without cirrhosis, regardless of treatment history.

In the more difficult-to-treat patients with cirrhosis, SVR12 rates were reduced (63%). These SVR12 rates were achieved with 12 weeks of therapy without the use of ribavirin.

David R. Nelson, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Director, UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and Assistant Vice President of Research for the University of Florida, said:

    “The treatment landscape for HCV has radically evolved in recent years, and while we have achieved impressive SVR12 rates in genotype 1, genotype 3 still represents a clinical challenge. Not only are genotype 3 patients more complicated to manage, but the aggressive nature of their disease means there is a greater urgency to treat them. Daklinza in combination with sofosbuvir gives healthcare providers a new option to achieve a high overall SVR12 rate in this difficult-to-treat patient population.”

Daclatasvir inhibits the HCV nonstructural protein NS5A. Recent research suggests that it targets two steps of the viral replication process, enabling rapid decline of HCV RNA.
source : reliawire.com

The Toronto Blue Jays have reportedly acquired shortstop Troy Tulowitzki from the Colorado Rockies, Fox Sports Ken Rosenthal tweeted just before 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday. The Blue Jays will send back shortstop Jose Reyes and minor league players, who have yet to be named.

The Blue Jays also acquired reliever LaTroy Hawkins in the deal, according to Rosenthal.
source:http://news.nationalpost.com

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea on Monday fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea and warned of "merciless strikes" against its enemies as allies Seoul and Washington launched annual military drills Pyongyang claims are preparation for a northward invasion.
North Korea regularly conducts such test firings of missiles, rockets and artillery, and they are often timed to express the country's dissatisfaction with actions by Washington and Seoul. Monday was the start of military drills that will run until the end of April.

Early Monday morning, two missiles launched from North Korea's west coast flew about 500 kilometres (310miles) before landing in waters off the east coast, according to South Korea's Defence Ministry. Spokesman Kim Min-seok called the launches an "armed protest" against the South Korea-U.S. drills and a challenge to peace on the Korean Peninsula.


The annual U.S.-South Korean military drills inevitably lead to angry North Korean rhetoric, although the allies say they are purely defensive. The North's rhetoric is meant to show its people that a tough leadership is confronting what its propaganda portrays as outside hostility, but analysts also believe the drills infuriate because they cost Pyongyang precious resources by forcing the country to respond with its own drills and launches.

"The only means to cope with the aggression and war by the U.S. imperialists and their followers is neither dialogue nor peace. They should be dealt with only by merciless strikes," an unidentified spokesman for the North Korean military's general staff said in a statement carried by state media.
He said the U.S.-South Korean drills are aimed at conquering the North's capital, Pyongyang, and removing its leadership.

During the 2013 drills, tension rose amid North Korean rhetoric that included vows of nuclear strikes on Washington and Seoul.
The rival Koreas earlier this year floated the possibility of holding what would be the third summit between their leaders since the countries were divided 70 years ago. But they have been at odds in recent weeks over terms, and prospects seem dim.

North Korea separately told the U.S. that it was willing to impose a temporary moratorium on its nuclear tests if Washington cancels the joint military drills with South Korea. But the U.S. rejected the overture, calling it an "implicit threat."

North Korea last year conducted an unusually large number of missile and other weapons tests, drawing protests from South Korea. The North still proposed a set of measures that it said would lower tensions, but South Korea rebuffed them, saying the North must first take steps toward nuclear disarmament.
The Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. About 28,500 American soldiers are deployed in South Korea as deterrence against potential aggression from North Korea.
source : http://www.ctvnews.ca/world

GAZA, Gaza Strip -- Gaza residents said Sunday they fear growing isolation and more hardships after an Egyptian court declared the territory's ruling Hamas a terrorist organization. Some blamed the Islamic militant Hamas while others said Egypt is being unreasonable.
Hamas called for protests against the Egyptian government and issued angry statements, but did not offer a way out of the crisis. Salah Bardaweel, a Hamas spokesman, alleged Sunday that Egypt has become a "direct agent" of Israeli interests.
Hamas urged Saudi Arabia to press Egypt to open the Gaza-Egypt border. Egypt's president met Sunday with the new Saudi king.

Saturday's court ruling signalled Egypt's growing hostility toward Hamas, an offshoot of the region-wide Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt has blamed Hamas for violence in the country's restive Sinai Peninsula, a charge Hamas denies.

Hamas seized Gaza by force in 2007, and the territory's borders have been largely sealed by Israel and Egypt since then. Egypt intensified the blockade after its military toppled a Hamas-friendly government in Cairo in 2013.

In recent months, Egyptian soldiers have destroyed virtually all smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border. In October, they began razing parts of the Egyptian town of Rafah on the border with Gaza. Residents near the border said homes are still being dynamited or bulldozed at a steady pace, with the latest explosion heard Sunday afternoon.

The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, Gaza's main gateway to the world, mostly has been closed since October. This year, it was only open for two days, leaving thousands unable to get out of the territory, including Muslim pilgrims and students at foreign universities. The tunnel closures have put an end to the smuggling of cheap fuel and cement from Egypt, further hurting a crippled Gaza economy and driving up unemployment. Cigarette prices have tripled.

Some in Gaza blamed Hamas, saying it's time the militant group moderate or hand over control to the Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, from whom it seized Gaza.
"Hamas is taking us hostage for the sake of its own interest," university graduate Ahmed Tiri said. Hamas rules Gaza with an iron grip, and such criticism is relatively rare.

Last year, Abbas and Hamas reached a deal under which an Abbas-led government would take over in Gaza. However, the agreement was never implemented, with both sides unwilling to compromise. As a result, reconstruction of Gaza after last year's Israel-Hamas war has stalled.
Walid Abu Hassouna, a barber, said he expects Egypt to tighten the closure of Gaza. "If they could deprive us of the air we breathe, they would do it," he said.

Some said Hamas should negotiate with Egypt to improve the lives of Gaza's 1.8 million people.
Hamas was inflexible for too long and must seek Arab mediators to appeal to Egypt, Gaza analyst Akram Attallah said.
"Hamas did not move. It was like waiting for something from the heavens to resolve the issue," he said. He said the group also made a mistake by acting as a mouthpiece of the Brotherhood.

THERE are superhumans walking among us with rare genetic mutations that could be worth billions.

While their mutations won’t make them a valid candidate for the X-Men anytime soon, they still play a vital role in helping the human race.

Imagine cutting your finger or putting your hand on top of a hotplate and feeling nothing.

This is the reality for 34-year-old Steven Pete who has a quirk in his genes that makes him immune to feeling pain.

Only a few dozen people on Earth possess this condition, which is why it took doctors months diagnose.

He was just a baby when he almost chewed off his own tongue because he was impervious to the agony a normal child would feel.

“That was a giant red flag,” he told Bloomberg.

After extensive examinations, it was discovered his congenital insensitivity to pain was the result of two mutations that came from each of his parents.

Timothy Dreyer is also blessed with a rare condition that he shares with close to 100 people around the world.

While he can feel pain, the 25-year-old can sustain immense impacts to his body thanks to the density of his bones.

Similar to Mr Pete, his condition was also diagnosed when he was child after his parents took him to the doctor due to a sudden facial paralysis.

Following a series of X-rays, it was revealed he had a condition known as sclerosteosis — a genetic disorder characterised by overgrowth of the bones.


Global development lead for biopharmaceutical company Amgen, Andreas Grauer, said with the industry actively pooling resources for the purpose of researching genetic irregularities, people such as Mr Pete and Mr Dreyer were welcomed subjects.

“[They are] a gift from nature,” he said.

“It is our obligation to turn it into something useful.”

Mr Dreyer’s mutation is of specific interest to Amgen because it has been working hard to find a counter to osteoporosis — a medical condition in which the bones become brittle and fragile from loss of tissue.

Researchers discovered the reason Mr Dreyer has abnormally thick bones is because his body lacks a protein that inhibits the growth.

This got researchers thinking if they created a drug that mimics the protein blocking effect, they would be able encourage bone regrowth for those suffering osteoporosis.

To test the theory, the biopharmaceutical company administered a prototype drug to mice and found it did help gain mineral density in bones.

Since 2006, the company has also been running two human trails with the findings expected to be released next year.


Until then, they will continue to work with the likes of Mr Dreyer to improve on treatment options.

“There are thousands of people suffering from osteoporosis, so developing a treatment for them is great,” Mr Dreyer said.

“That being said, I do think it would be nice if they could help us out now that they understand our disease and are able to use it for their treatments.”

Small Canadian biotech Xenon Pharmaceuticals has been shifting its focus more toward the condition help by Mr Pete.

More than a decade ago, the company tracked down the gene responsible for the mutation and discovered it regulates a pathway in the body called the Nav 1.7 sodium ion channel.

The promise of the research would be to create a new type of painkiller that doesn’t hold the same addictive properties or negative side effects found with other drugs on the market.

While the drug could have massive benefits in pain relief, Mr Pete believes it would have to be properly regulated to avoid complications he has faced in life because of his condition.

Mr Pete admits to living with constant anxiety as he would be unaware of an illness he has contracted if its main symptom is pain.

Despite this, he said is more than happy to offer his body to science.

“Before a lot of us participated in these projects, very little about pain itself was known,” he said.

source articel : www.news.com.au