Cheney Considers Heart Transplant

Ex-US vice-president says his battery-powered heart pump is a 'wondrous device', and claims he didn't mind Darth Vader jibes.Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president whose tough approach to fighting terrorism earned him the nickname Darth Vader, is facing a decision on whether to undergo a heart transplant. Cheney uses a battery-powered heart pump, controlled by a box he wears on his waistcoat, to help circulate blood around his body. He told NBC's Today Show he would have to decide at some point on a possible transplant:"I'd reached the point, after 30 years and five heart attacks, where I really needed to do something," he said of the heart pump. "It's a wondrous device; it's really a miracle of modern technology." Cheney, who was George Bush's deputy throughout his eight years in office, has a history of heart problems, suffering his first heart attack aged 37 and his most recent last year. Cheney, who turned 70 this month, has had a pacemaker implanted and has suffered irregular heartbeats. Since last year he has been keeping a relatively low profile, writing up his memoirs with the help of his daughter, Liz, at his home in Maryland. Before that he had assigned himself the role of Barack Obama's irritant-in-chief, relentlessly sniping at him over his domestic and anti-terror policies. He remains critical, albeit more mutedly so. He told NBC he still expected Obama to be a one-term president.  "He embarked on a course of action when he became president that did not have as much support as he thought it did. When he got into healthcare reform, expanding the size of government, expanding the deficit – those are all weaknesses as I look at Barack Obama," Cheney said. ~ He softened his previous caustic claims that Obama was putting the nation in danger by sweeping aside the anti-terror laws put in place by the Bush-Cheney administration after 9/11. Those included what Cheney referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques" 


Source : Guardian

Astray In Eternal Night

Woeful wraith, obscured in veils of stalking night
Once again, reliving the final fragments of a bygone dream
Too long, you have languished in this desolate place
Perdition of your soul, suffer now forevermore
With a glance that turned my heart'- blood to frost
She descended each stair with unearthly grace

The dust-ridden scent of abandoned tombs, like perfume
Awakened by an unrevealed longing, perhaps to live again
Free from the pains of mortality, the vast unknown
The frail dreams of life buried deep beneath the confinements of earth

Sleep again, restless Eidolon
Return to non-existence, tranquillity in the silence of coffins
Your eyes of misted glass
Mesmerise and who but I drawn forward
Lost in a reverie of tears

With a voice long forsaken
A promise of eternal bliss was spoken
Turning away from that aura of coldest intent
For I saw nothingness: A blackest chasm of despair
And yet I still covet thee

Evoken 
Pic : Vincos  http://vincos.it/

Golden Globes

Facebook film “The Social Network” picked up four GoldenGlobe Awards on Sunday, including Best Film drama, making it a front-runner inHollywood’s Oscar race.

“Social Network” picked up the best director award for David Fincher, best screenplay for writer Aaron Sorkin and best musical score for its music, written by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor.

The film recounts the story of the founding of social networking site Facebook, an international phenomenon with millions of users that started in a college dormitory. Accepting the Golden Globe, producer Scott Rudin called the movie “a metaphor for communication and the way we relate to each other.”

Another winner of some big awards was “The Kids Are All Right,” which featured two lesbian parents whose children search for their sperm donor father. “Kids” also picked up the award for best actress in a film comedy for its star Annette Bening, who portrayed one of the mothers in the film.

British actor Colin Firth was named best actor in a film drama for his portrayal of stuttering King George VI in “The King’s Speech,” while Natalie Portman took home the Golden Globe trophy for best actress in a drama with “Black Swan.” Paul Giamatti won the prize for best actor in a comedy film for his role as a caustic man in “Barney’s Version.”

The Golden Globe Awards, which are given out by the nearly 90 members of the HFPA, are one of the major Hollywood award shows leading to the film industry’s most-prized honors, the Oscars, which are handed out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Many film industry watchers look at the winners of Golden Globes and other honors for clues as to which films, performers, directors and writers might win Oscars. This year, “Social Network” has swept many early honors and added the Golden Globe to its cache of trophies.

In other movie honors, boxing drama “The Fighter” picked up two GoldenGlobes for Christian Bale as supporting actor portraying a drug-addicted fighter and for Melissa Leo as supporting actress playing the mother ofChristian Bale’s character.

“Toy Story 3″ was named best animated movie for what director Lee Unkrich called “”an animated movie that beat with a human heart.” And Denmark’s “In a Better World” was named best foreign language film.

Condition Upgraded To Serious

In yet another sign of significant recovery during a remarkable week, the condition of gravely wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was upgraded from critical to serious Sunday after a procedure to remove her from a ventilator was successful.

Giffords has responded from the moment she arrived at the emergency room Jan. 8, at first just squeezing a doctor’s hand. Then she raised two fingers. She opened her unbandaged eye shortly after President Obama’s bedside visit Wednesday. Then, more milestones – which doctors said were all indicative of higher cognitive function – were achieved, all with her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, at her side.

Kelly asked her to give him a thumbs-up if she could hear him. She did more than that. She slowly raised her left arm. By the end of the week, she had moved her legs and arms.

At the hospital, more than 100 people were gathered amid a sea of get-well balloons and cards when the University of Arizona put out a statement upgrading her condition.

“Oh, that’s great news,” said Jean Emrick, a 50-year resident of Tucson, as a violinist played in the background. “Tucson is such a special place, and she represents what’s the best of southern Arizona.”

Doctors decided to upgrade her condition because a tracheotomy done a day earlier was uneventful, hospital spokeswoman Katie Riley said. A feeding tube was also put in Saturday.

Giffords and 18 others were shot when a gunman opened fire at an event she was hosting outside a supermarket in her hometown. Six people died.

A week after the shootings, more details emerged about a victim who police said became distraught and was arrested during a town hall meeting Saturday evening.

James Eric Fuller, a self-described liberal and military veteran, started ranting at the end of the program. He took a picture of a local Tea Party leader and yelled, “You’re dead,” before calling others in the church “whores,” police said.

Deputies called a doctor and decided he should be taken to a hospital for a mental evaluation, Pima County sheriff’s spokesman Jason Ogan said.

The man Fuller is accused of threatening, Tucson Tea Party co-founder Trent Humphries, said he was worried about the threat and the dozens of other angry e-mails he has received.

Source :AP

BP Wins Australian Exploration Permits

BP awarded four permits to drill off the South Australia coast ~ • Minister says BP must show it 'has learned the lessons from Deepwater Horizon'  BP has been given its first-ever oil exploration permits off the Australian coast, but the government warned on Monday that the London-based energy group will have to demonstrate higher safety standards than it had applied in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster before it is allowed to drill. ~ BP holds stakes in the Northwest Shelf and Gorgon natural gas fields in Western Australia state but has never before applied for its own offshore exploration permits in Australia.  Resources and energy minister Martin Ferguson announced on Monday that BP has been awarded four of seven offshore exploration permits approved by the government as part of an annual tender process. BP will be allowed to explore to depths exceeding 15,000 feet (4,600 metres) off the coast of South Australia state. The other three permits awarded to Australian companies Woodside Energy, Riverina Energy and Finder No. 4 are off Western Australia. Oil companies are facing increased scrutiny in the United States after an explosion and spill at BP's Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers on 20 April last year and caused massive environmental damage to the US coast. "The permits awarded to BP follow an extensive assessment and due diligence process that examined the technical and financial competence of BP to undertake the proposed work programme in accordance with the stringent requirements of Australian legislation," Ferguson said in a statement. "Additional conditions have also been attached to these permits, emphasising the need for oil field best practice behaviour by the operator," he added. "This reinforces BP's undertaking, given as part of the assessment process, to fully integrate lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon incident into its systems and processes."

In Vivo Imaging of Early Stage Apoptosis

Bioluminescence imaging (BLI) is a powerful methodology that has been developed over the last decade as a tool for the understanding of biological processes as they occur in living organisms. Recently, this non-invasive technology has evolved into a potentially more valuable.

Abstract

In vivo imaging of apoptosis in a preclinical setting in anticancer drug development could provide remarkable advantages in terms of translational medicine. So far, several imaging technologies with different probes have been used to achieve this goal. Here we describe a bioluminescence imaging approach that uses a new formulation of Z-DEVD-aminoluciferin, a caspase 3/7 substrate, to monitor in vivo apoptosis in tumor cells engineered to express luciferase. Upon apoptosis induction, Z-DEVD-aminoluciferin is cleaved by caspase 3/7 releasing aminoluciferin that is now free to react with luciferase generating measurable light. Thus, the activation of caspase 3/7 can be measured by quantifying the bioluminescent signal. Using this approach, we have been able to monitor caspase-3 activation and subsequent apoptosis induction after camptothecin and temozolomide treatment on xenograft mouse models of colon cancer and glioblastoma, respectively. Treated mice showed more than 2-fold induction of Z-DEVD-aminoluciferin luminescent signal when compared to the untreated group. Combining D-luciferin that measures the total tumor burden, with Z-DEVD-aminoluciferin that assesses apoptosis induction via caspase activation, Scabini et al confirmed that it is possible to follow non-invasively tumor growth inhibition and induction of apoptosis after treatment in the same animal over time. Moreover, here we have proved that following early apoptosis induction by caspase 3 activation is a good biomarker that accurately predicts tumor growth inhibition by anti-cancer drugs in engineered colon cancer and glioblastoma cell lines and in their respective mouse xenograft models.

Published 20 December 2010 

Melted Snowballs

Here it's been snowing heavily since yesterday evening.
Winter is my favorite season? Well...It used to be ...but my days in college added a hectic jolt to all the throbbing sensations.Quite a nostalgia winter became.I find it hard to organize all the bitter memories of recent years;images mostly colored in snow white.Days i've walked alone in despair,drown in my desolate thoughts.A rigid apathy utterly paralyzed the slightest actions.
How life passed me by,so relentless.Those days will never come back.
It's snowing outside;It ought to be a beautiful day.
Pedram

Stereotaxis Expands Catheter Partnership

 

Image-guided interventional surgery firm Stereotaxis said it has extended an exclusive worldwide distribution agreement with the supplier of its magnetic ablation catheters through 2015.

As part of the extension, Stereotaxis' strategic partner has agreed to pursue an expanded indication -- the treatment of atrial fibrillation -- for the magnetic-irrigated catheter in the U.S., according to the St. Louis-based company. In addition, both firms have agreed to expand the product offering covered by the deal to include a next-generation irrigated magnetic catheter, which will include technological advances from both companies, Stereotaxis said.

The deal also covers further submissions for regulatory approval in new markets, such as Asia, for mutually agreed magnetic catheters, the company said. The exclusive distribution agreement for these products will expire at various later dates.