Sally Church › Comments

Email http://is.gd/fH7i please, many thanks! - Sally Church

no access here - Bill Hooker

Email http://is.gd/fH7i please, many thanks! - Sally Church

sent - Bill Hooker

Email http://is.gd/fH7i please, many thanks! - Sally Church

sent - Graham Steel

Would also love to import my iPhoto library of conference posters without having to do so manually, but no obvious way of importing them either. - Sally Church

OIC, thanks, Patrick. I thought I was losing my mind for a moment! - Sally Church

I don't think I ever have, but I wasn't one of the people who wanted it to begin with. - Rochelle

a lot - George Dearing

It is now. Finders-keepers. - Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)

If I wasn't sure I just used to walk down the block while toggling the on/off thingy until the lights came on. Saved a lot of grief :) - Sally Church

:) - Jemm

"One of my favorite pasta recipes is Pasta alla Puttanesca, which I've cooked before for this column. It's a haunting sauce of tomatoes, chile flakes, capers, and olives, and I can never get enough of the briny, sweet flavors and the punch of the capers. If you're into that sort of thing, this recipe for Mediterranean Poached Eggs from Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express, a cool little collection of 20-minute recipes, didn't fall far from the Puttanesca tree. Bittman's addition is some sliced mushrooms, which release their liquid as they cook into the mixture; that round, meaty flavor binds the ingredients together. Slivers of fresh basil leaf stirred into the end give it that hit of fresh herbiness. This could be served as shown, on thick slices of rustic bread, which is how Bittman recommends it. But next time I'd just put it in a small bowl with the poached egg laid on top, bread on the side—much easier to eat. Either way, it's a fast meal that's big on flavor." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet

Yum, love puttanesca, mediterranean vegetables and poached eggs... now very hungry! - Sally Church

Email http://is.gd/fH7i please, many thanks! - Sally Church

The comparison is more to give a descriptive picture of just how mutated the cancer cells are, I think. - Mr. Gunn

"Evernote's Web Clipper extension let you save interesting stuff you see on the web." - Russellreno from Bookmarklet

It's working quite well on Mac Chromium for me... Mac Chrome doesn't have extensions support yet. - Bill Sodeman

Email http://is.gd/fH7i please, many thanks! - Sally Church

sent! - Björn Brembs

Oh wow! Thanks, Björn! - Sally Church

That's wine-soaked shitake and red onion, on a hickory smoked turkey patty covered in pepperjack & sharp cheddar, on a sesame seed buN (LOL @Amanda) slathered in garlic tahini. My inspiration: http://friendfeed.com/e... - Admiral Anika

Oh man. I had forgotten about this. *drool* - Admiral Anika

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today warned consumers to use extreme care when purchasing any products over the Internet that claim to diagnose, prevent, treat or cure the H1N1 influenza virus. The warning comes after the FDA recently purchased and analyzed several products represented online as Tamiflu (oseltamivir), which may pose risks to patients. - Sally Church

MIT cancer biologists have identified a subpopulation of cells that can give rise to pancreatic cancer. They also found that tumors can form in other, more mature pancreatic cell types, but only when they are injured or inflamed, suggesting that pancreatic cancer can arise from different types of cells depending on the circumstances. - Sally Church

We do believe that we should aim to choose 100% of the benefit. We should not forget that the “benefit” in this situation is reducing deaths from breast cancer. A 30% reduction in saving lives is not acceptable. We also recognize that mammograms are not perfect. We realize that women do have to get additional studies for suspicious lesions. We realize that some women have biopsies that do not show breast cancer. We realize that our predictive tests are not perfect, so that we can’t say with certainty which breast cancers are aggressive and require intensive treatment and which would—if left alone—never cause a problem. We realize that we need better screening tools, and that we must work diligently to improve the quality of screening mammography across the country. Until we have something better, what we have to work with to detect breast cancer early is the screening mammogram. Is it imperfect? Yes. Has it saved lives and reduced deaths from breast cancer? Absolutely. - Sally Church

Leaders of the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last night requesting an expedited report on recent trends in prescription drug pricing. - Sally Church

Key research findings: ● Genetic variation in the core components of the PI3K/ PTEN/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway influences recurrence risk, overall survival, and response to chemoradiotherapy for esophageal cancer patients ● A cumulative effect and higher-order interactions among single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with recurrence risk were identified ● A single SNP in AKT2 — rs892119 — was associated with a poor clinical outcome based on all 3 endpoints - Sally Church

Ned Calonge, who chairs the 16-member panel, defended the recommendations and denied that cost or the debate over health-care reform played any role in the decision. "Cost just isn't a consideration when the task force deliberates," said Calonge, who is also the chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Twelve of the task force members were seated during the Bush administration, and the remaining four were chosen before President George W. Bush left office, he said. - Sally Church

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends screening mammography, with or without clinical breast examination (CBE), every 1-2 years for women aged 40 and older. Grade: B Recommendation. - Sally Church

new study which uses modeling to summarize the benefits and harms of breast cancer screening finds that regular mammography screening for women ages 50 to 74 reduces the risk of dying due to breast cancer, with a smaller benefit for women 40 to 49. - Sally Church

Way back in 1997, a committee of a dozen experts convened by the National Institutes of Health heard testimony, reviewed the scientific literature and mulled what to tell doctors and women in their 40s about screening for breast cancer. After weighing the risks and benefits, they concluded: [T]he data currently available do not warrant a universal recommendation for mammography for all women in their forties. Each woman should decide for herself whether to undergo mammography. - Sally Church

National statistics show that about 18 percent of all breast cancers occur in women aged 40-49, and, at Johns Hopkins, more than one in four breast cancer patients are among this age group. We also know that breast cancers occurring in women under 50 tend to grow faster and more aggressively than in older women and arise in denser tissues, making their early detection more difficult. - Sally Church

The inhibition of Wee1 kinase by a selective small molecule inhibitor significantly enhances the anti-tumor efficacy of DNA damaging agents, specifically in p53 negative tumors by abrogating S-G2 checkpoints, while normal cells with wild-type p53 are not severely damaged due to the intact function of the G1 checkpoint mediated by p53. Since the measurement of mRNA expression requires a very small amount of biopsy tissue and is highly quantitative, the development of a pharmacodynamic (PD) biomarker leveraging mRNA expression is eagerly anticipated in order to estimate target engagement of anti-cancer agents. - Sally Church

Wee1 is a tyrosine kinase that phosphorylates and inactivates CDC2 and is involved in G2 checkpoint signaling. Reported the discovery of a potent and selective small-molecule inhibitor of Wee1 kinase, MK-1775. This compound inhibits phosphorylation of CDC2 at Tyr15 (CDC2Y15), a direct substrate of Wee1 kinase in cells. The data indicate that Wee1 inhibition provides a new approach for treatment of multiple human malignancies. - Sally Church

G2 checkpoint abrogation by PD0166285 was demonstrated to kill cancer cells, there at a toxic highest dose of 0.5 muM in some cell lines for exposure periods of no longer than 6 hours. The deregulated cell cycle progression may have ultimately damaged the cancer cells. Used in mouse melanoma cell line model. - Sally Church

The kinases, Chk1, Wee1, and Myt1 are key regulators of the G2 checkpoint, which act directly or indirectly to inhibit Cdc2 activity. Show that RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated downregulation of Wee1 kinase abrogated an Adriamycin trade mark -induced G2 checkpoint in human cervical carcinoma Hela cells that are defective in G1 checkpoint response. Wee1 downregulation sensitized HeLa cells to Adriamycin-induced apoptosis. - Sally Church

MK-1775 is a first in class Wee1 inhibitor that is well tolerated and shows promising anti-tumor activity in previously treated pts. - Sally Church

There was a problem with corrupt javascript earlier in the week, so the quiz widget didn't record the answers to the 100 odd people who took the quiz. If you did try it out, please would you take a couple of minutes to run through it again. - Sally Church

The good news is that this time, the widget will tell you what your 4 uncommon answers were compared to those taking the same questions from the blog, ie other scientists and biotech people. - Sally Church

When I have another sample of about 100, I'll post the aggregated results (it's anonymised and no individual answers can be viewed) and also compare them with a group of tech/VC people where there were common questions. - Sally Church

Longer queries irrespective of query elicitation mode are significantly associated with increased searcher satisfaction with search results. - Sally Church

Like we need your support - Shey, Jamaican of FF

How do I not join? - Flavio Santos

Email http://is.gd/fH7i please, many thanks! - Sally Church

Not available at VT either. :-( - Chris Lasher