MFA Spokesperson: Israel strongly condemns North Korea's nuclear test, and joins the international community in expressing the grave danger that this act poses to regional stability and international peace and security.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea nuclear test, together with its ballistic missile launch in December 2012, is part of its extensive ongoing nuclear and missile programs. These reflect North Korea's negative role in the region and raise grave concerns regarding proliferation of nuclear and ballistic technologies.
These actions by the DPRK, in violation of its international obligations, must be met with a swift response by the international community. A clear message must be sent to the DPRK and to other countries, that such activities are unacceptable and cannot be tolerated.
Feb. 13, 2013 ? The experimental drug selumetinib may allow some patients with advanced thyroid cancer to overcome resistance to radioiodine (RAI), the most effective therapy for the disease, according to new research from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Published in the Feb. 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the study offers new hope for patients with a disease that can have a poor prognosis. An estimated 56,000 new cases of thyroid cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, and that number is on the rise, according to the National Cancer Institute. About 5 percent of these patients will eventually develop distant metastatic disease, and the ten-year survival rate for patients with metastatic tumors that fail to respond to RAI is approximately 10 percent.
According to James A. Fagin, MD, Memorial Sloan-Kettering's Endocrinology Service Chief and senior author on the study, many trials have tested strategies for overcoming RAI resistance in metastatic thyroid cancers, but none have been successful. Previous studies have shown that a cell's ability to absorb RAI is controlled by the MAPK pathway, so Dr. Fagin and his colleagues examined whether selumetinib, an MAPK inhibitor, could reverse RAI resistance by inhibiting the signaling of genetic mutations in this pathway. The approach proved effective, especially in patients with thyroid cancers that contain a mutation in the RAS gene -- a component of the MAPK pathway.
"Blocking this key pathway increased the uptake of iodine, making radioiodine treatment potentially effective once again," said Fagin, who led this research in cells and in mice.
Following a five-day low-iodine diet, researchers administered selumetinib to 20 patients with tumors resistant to radioiodine. After four weeks, patients underwent a diagnostic scan that measured how much RAI their tumors would absorb. In eight patients, including all five with an NRAS gene mutation, selumetinib increased iodine uptake enough to allow patients to undergo RAI therapy.
Following RAI, five patients had confirmed partial responses and three had stable disease. In seven of the eight patients, outcomes remained unchanged during six months of follow-up. All eight patients had a decreased level of serum thyroglobulin -- a protein in the blood used to screen for advanced thyroid cancer -- and none experienced serious side effects from selumetinib.
"An advantage of this therapeutic strategy is that only a short course of drug therapy is required to elicit a significant clinical effect," Fagin said, adding that "the initial results show promise for RAS-mutant disease, but the hope is that a larger trial will shed light on whether selumetinib can be effective for a broader range of advanced thyroid cancer subtypes."
Memorial Sloan-Kettering will lead the international, multicenter phase III clinical trial of selumetinib later this year. The trial, which will be sponsored by AstraZeneca, will enroll patients who have recently had their thyroid gland removed -- a procedure known as total thyroidectomy -- due to thyroid cancer that has spread to nearby tissue or lymph nodes.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Alan L. Ho, Ravinder K. Grewal, Rebecca Leboeuf, Eric J. Sherman, David G. Pfister, Desiree Deandreis, Keith S. Pentlow, Pat B. Zanzonico, Sofia Haque, Somali Gavane, Ronald A. Ghossein, Julio C. Ricarte-Filho, Jos? M. Dom?nguez, Ronglai Shen, R. Michael Tuttle, Steve M. Larson, James A. Fagin. Selumetinib-Enhanced Radioiodine Uptake in Advanced Thyroid Cancer. New England Journal of Medicine, 2013; 368 (7): 623 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1209288
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.
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Kenyan presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta has asked for his trial on crimes against humanity charges to be delayed to allow time to prepare his defence given prosecutors' late disclosure of evidence, his lawyers said on Thursday.
Kenyatta, a former finance minister, is accused at the International Criminal Court (ICC) of orchestrating bloody clashes in which 1,200 people died and thousands were uprooted from their homes after disputed elections in December 2007.
While his lawyers said a trial delay was needed to let them respond to evidence disclosed at the last minute by prosecutors, many analysts say Kenyatta would benefit if the trial were postponed until well after the March 4 presidential election.
Speaking at a hearing in The Hague, they said that stalling by ICC prosecutors had left them with only a hazy idea of the charges Kenyatta and his co-accused faced.
"Let us investigate these allegations properly," said Steven Kay, the British barrister representing Kenyatta. "I have not even been able to read the evidence."
Kenyatta, who followed the hearing by video link from Kenya, spoke only once, to confirm that he understood he was still subject to the court summons issued by judges.
He is one of four accused, including his one-time political rival and now running mate, ex-education minister William Ruto. The son of Kenya's founder president, Kenyatta is running a close second to Prime Minister Raila Odinga in election polls.
Lawyers for another of the accused, Francis Muthaura, went further in their criticism of the prosecution, accusing prosecutors of summoning witnesses who had lied to the court.
"The prosecution have an ethical obligation, if they have an interest in a fair trial and not a win at all costs, to disclose their evidence," said Karim Ahmad Khan, his lawyer.
"We have a cabal of witnesses coming to court to lie, and we need time to expose these lies."
Asked by judge Chile Eboe-Osuji if he meant to make this "very serious allegation", Khan said he did.
PROSECUTION DENIES STALLING
The prosecution said it had followed the court's guidelines, and would complete the disclosure of all its evidence in March, a month before the trial's planned start date.
For Kenyatta and Ruto, a trial that begins after they took office would be preferable as it would avoid the spectacle of candidates preparing for trial on the day of the March 4 vote.
But ICC judges, already dealing with a heavy workload, might also welcome a delay to the trial. The court also faces financial constraints that could lead it to hold the linked but separate trials of Kenyatta and Ruto consecutively.
Kuniko Ozaki, the Japanese judge who chairs the panel of three, is also hearing the concurrent trial of Jean-Pierre Bemba, a Congolese politician, for crimes against humanity.
Her colleague, Christine van den Wyngaert, is also still writing the verdict in the war crimes case against the Congolese warlord Germain Katanga, due in the first part of this year.
"We think we need another three months to prepare after (the prosecution's) disclosure of its witnesses," one defence lawyer told Reuters. "If an application of that nature were granted, it would take us into July."
In a filing to judges, court officials said the ICC, which has an annual budget of around 100 million euros, would need to call four new judges and recruit 40 new members of staff if the trials were held at the same time.
If Kenyatta wins the election, Kenya would become the second country after Sudan to have a sitting president facing trial at the International Criminal Court.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
President Barack Obama's State of the Union remarks fell in line with what many energy experts, industry representatives and environmental advocates predicted to me earlier today -- lots of rhetoric yet little detail on how to tackle climate change and propel green energy.
Also unsurprisingly, his words on the issues have already generated a range of reactions.
Obama focused his clean energy comments not only on the promise of green jobs, as he primarily has in the past, but on the dire consequences of not taking action on climate change.
"Yes, it's true that no single event makes a trend," Obama said. "But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15.?Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods -- all are now more frequent and intense.?We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence.?Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science -- and act before it's too late."
The Institute for Energy Research was not impressed.
"It is telling that President Obama seemed more concerned about climate change than job creation, clearly following a well-worn path for this administration where no crisis goes to waste in pursuit of the President's progressive agenda," said IER president Thomas Pyle. "For this administration, a deadly hurricane means a chance for carbon taxes."
Frank Maisano, an energy strategist at the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, was generally unexcited about the climate and energy section of Obama's speech, going as far as to suggest it "put everybody to sleep."
"His rhetoric was very similar to previous State of the Unions," Maisano told The Huffington Post. "And there was lots of similar hype from the environmental community in advance of it, and I suspect there will be following it."
Sure enough, responses so far from the environmental community appear animated -- and fairly positive.
Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, used the term "assertive" as she described the agenda Obama laid out for reducing carbon pollution.
"The president has a full box of tools to strike back at climate chaos," she said in a statement. "The best tool he has is the Clean Air Act. It gives him the authority to reduce the carbon pollution from our dirtiest power plants, the single greatest threat to our climate future. That will take presidential leadership. Americans are counting on it -- and that's what the president delivered tonight."
Trip Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice, offered a similarly optimistic response: "We applaud President Obama's commitment to 'reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy'," Van Noppen said in a statement. "The President's plan to 'cut in half the energy wasted by our homes and businesses over the next twenty years' is a great idea."
Forecast the Facts campaign director Daniel Souweine was more critical, however.
"While we are excited to hear the President connect the dots between climate change and increasingly severe weather, accurately explaining the problem is not nearly enough," he said in a statement. "Tonight, President Obama set the lowest possible bar for action -- he did not pledge to stop the carbon-spewing Keystone XL Pipeline nor promise carbon regulations on existing power plants. In fact, he pledged no specific actions at all."
Going after something like existing power plants in the State of the Union would have been "too much in the weeds," said Maisano, revisiting his suggestion from earlier today that the speech is about "broad strokes."
Also much to the chagrin of some environmentalists, Obama emphasized energy independence heavily in terms of home-harvested oil and natural gas. "We produce more natural gas than ever before -- and nearly everyone's energy bill is lower because of it," he said.
Still, Pyle of the energy group IER suggested that Obama isn't moving fast enough on oil and gas. "The President promised to 'keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.' Yet his record is a more reliable indicator of his agenda than his rhetoric," he said. "Currently, it takes more than 300 days to get a permit to drill for oil or gas on federal lands, compared with 10 days in North Dakota where an energy boom has led to the lowest unemployment in the country. For all his talk of speeding up permits, it is telling that one permit remains on ice: the Keystone XL pipeline."
The President also pledged to continue the progress he's made in reducing carbon emissions -- from the doubling of renewable energy from wind and solar to increasing fuel economy standards for cars. He pleased environmentalists with a promise that, going forward, he won't let partisan politics get in his way.
"I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change," Obama said.?"But if Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will."
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Barack Obama used his State of the Union address to make an emotional plea to lawmakers over gun control.
The President demanded that Congress listened to the voices of the victims of gun crime, many of whom sat to hear him make his speech.
Among them was Gabrielle Giffords, the former Democrat representative who was shot in the head at a mass shooting two years ago in her Arizona district.
The parents of Chicago shooting victim?Hadiya Pendleton, who performed at Mr Obama's inaugural parade just days before she was gunned down, were also there.
"Just three weeks ago, she was here, in Washington, with her classmates, performing for her country at my inauguration," Mr Obama said in paying tribute to the 15-year-old.
Hadiya Pendleton: teenager shot dead after performing at the inauguration
"And a week later, she was shot and killed in a Chicago park after school, just a mile away from my house."
Mr Obama also referred to the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December that claimed the lives of 20 young schoolchildren and six adults.
He said: "It has been two months since Newtown. I know this is not the first time this country has debated how to reduce gun violence. But this time is different."
Imploring Congress to tighten the country's gun laws, Mr Obama said: "Hadiya's parents, Nate and Cleo, are in this chamber tonight, along with more than two dozen Americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence. They deserve a vote.
"Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote," he said, before turning to a list of other communities devastated in recent mass shootings.
"The families of Aurora deserve a vote," he said, to applause. "The families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence -- they deserve a simple vote."
The President also vowed that the war in Afghanistan would end by late 2014 and that another 34,000 American troops would be returning over the next year.
"This drawdown will continue. And by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over," Mr Obama said in his annual address.
He said that al Qaeda was a "shadow of its former self" and no longer posed the kind of threat that needed tens of thousands of US troops to fight abroad.
However, he said that al Qaeda affiliates had appeared elsewhere in the world including Yemen and Somalia and said that in future the US would help those countries to provide their own security to fight terrorism.
Mr Obama also said he would take "firm action" against the "provocations" of North Korea, after the state carried out its third nuclear test.
Michelle Obama arrives to hear her husband give his address
He said: "The regime in North Korea must know that they will only achieve security and prosperity by meeting their international obligations.
"Provocations of the sort we saw last night will only isolate them further, as we stand by our allies, strengthen our own missile defence and lead the world in taking firm action in response to these threats."
Mr Obama promised to spark economic growth and create jobs.
He told Congress: "A growing economy that creates good, middle-class jobs -- that must be the North Star that guides our efforts.
"It is our generation's task, then, to reignite the true engine of America's economic growth -- a rising, thriving middle class."
He warned against dramatic budget cuts saying that they would cost jobs and threaten the military.
He said: "That's why Democrats, Republicans, business leaders, and economists have already said that these cuts, known here in Washington as 'the sequester', are a really bad idea."
The President greets workers dealing with the aftermath of superstorm Sandy
The President said that the United States and Europe would launch talks on what would be the world's largest free trade zone.
He said: "Tonight, I am announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union -- because trade that is free and fair across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs."
The move answered mounting calls from Europe to pursue a grand trade pact to spur growth on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mr Obama also warned Congress that if they didn't act on climate change, that he would.
He tackled climate sceptics in the rival Republican Party by noting that 12 of the world's hottest years on record took place in the past 15 years.
Mr Obama told them: "We can choose to believe that superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence.
"Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgement of science -- and act before it's too late."
A quantum dot energy harvesterPublic release date: 14-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Leonor Sierra lsierra@ur.rochester.edu University of Rochester
Turning waste heat into electricity on the nanoscale
A new type of nanoscale engine has been proposed that would use quantum dots to generate electricity from waste heat, potentially making microcircuits more efficient.
"The system is really a simple one, which exploits certain properties of quantum dots to harvest heat," Professor Andrew Jordan of the University of Rochester said. "Despite this simplicity, the power it could generate is still larger than any other nanoengine that has been considered until now."
The engines would be microscopic in size, and have no moving parts. Each would only produce a tiny amount of power a millionth or less of what a light bulb uses. But by combining millions of the engines in a layered structure, Jordan says a device that was a square inch in area could produce about a watt of power for every one degree difference in temperature. Enough of them could make a notable difference in the energy consumption of a computer.
A paper describing the new work is being published in Physical Review B by Jordan, a theoretical physics professor, and his collaborators, Bjrn Sothmann and Markus Buttiker from the University of Geneva, and Rafael Snchez from the Material Sciences Institute in Madrid.
Jordan explained that each of the proposed nanoengines is based on two adjacent quantum dots, with current flowing through one and then the other. Quantum dots are manufactured systems that due to their small size act as quantum mechanical objects, or artificial atoms.
The path the electrons have to take across both quantum dots can be adjusted to have an uphill slope. To make it up this (electrical) hill, electrons need energy. They take the energy from the middle of the region, which is kept hot, and use this energy to come out the other side, higher up the hill. This removes heat from where it is being generated and converts it into electrical power with a high efficiency.
To do this, the system makes use of a quantum mechanical effect called resonant tunneling, which means the quantum dots act as perfect energy filters. When the system is in the resonant tunneling mode, electrons can only pass through the quantum dots when they have a specific energy that can be adjusted. All other electrons that do not have this energy are blocked.
Quantum dots can be grown in a self-assembling way out of semiconductor materials. This allows for a practical way to produce many of these tiny engines as part of a larger array, and in multiple layers, which the authors refer to as the Swiss Cheese Sandwich configuration.
How much electrical power is produced depends on the temperature difference across the energy harvester the higher the temperature difference, the higher the power that will be generated. This requires good insulation between the hot and cold regions, Jordan says.
###
About the University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is one of the nation's leading private universities. Located in Rochester, N.Y., the University gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College, School of Arts and Sciences, and Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are complemented by its Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, School of Medicine and Dentistry, School of Nursing, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, and the Memorial Art Gallery.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
A quantum dot energy harvesterPublic release date: 14-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Leonor Sierra lsierra@ur.rochester.edu University of Rochester
Turning waste heat into electricity on the nanoscale
A new type of nanoscale engine has been proposed that would use quantum dots to generate electricity from waste heat, potentially making microcircuits more efficient.
"The system is really a simple one, which exploits certain properties of quantum dots to harvest heat," Professor Andrew Jordan of the University of Rochester said. "Despite this simplicity, the power it could generate is still larger than any other nanoengine that has been considered until now."
The engines would be microscopic in size, and have no moving parts. Each would only produce a tiny amount of power a millionth or less of what a light bulb uses. But by combining millions of the engines in a layered structure, Jordan says a device that was a square inch in area could produce about a watt of power for every one degree difference in temperature. Enough of them could make a notable difference in the energy consumption of a computer.
A paper describing the new work is being published in Physical Review B by Jordan, a theoretical physics professor, and his collaborators, Bjrn Sothmann and Markus Buttiker from the University of Geneva, and Rafael Snchez from the Material Sciences Institute in Madrid.
Jordan explained that each of the proposed nanoengines is based on two adjacent quantum dots, with current flowing through one and then the other. Quantum dots are manufactured systems that due to their small size act as quantum mechanical objects, or artificial atoms.
The path the electrons have to take across both quantum dots can be adjusted to have an uphill slope. To make it up this (electrical) hill, electrons need energy. They take the energy from the middle of the region, which is kept hot, and use this energy to come out the other side, higher up the hill. This removes heat from where it is being generated and converts it into electrical power with a high efficiency.
To do this, the system makes use of a quantum mechanical effect called resonant tunneling, which means the quantum dots act as perfect energy filters. When the system is in the resonant tunneling mode, electrons can only pass through the quantum dots when they have a specific energy that can be adjusted. All other electrons that do not have this energy are blocked.
Quantum dots can be grown in a self-assembling way out of semiconductor materials. This allows for a practical way to produce many of these tiny engines as part of a larger array, and in multiple layers, which the authors refer to as the Swiss Cheese Sandwich configuration.
How much electrical power is produced depends on the temperature difference across the energy harvester the higher the temperature difference, the higher the power that will be generated. This requires good insulation between the hot and cold regions, Jordan says.
###
About the University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is one of the nation's leading private universities. Located in Rochester, N.Y., the University gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College, School of Arts and Sciences, and Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are complemented by its Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, School of Medicine and Dentistry, School of Nursing, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, and the Memorial Art Gallery.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 14-Feb-2013
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