University of Missouri researchers have proven that a drug used as a cholesterol lowering agent not only halts breast cancer progression, but can kill cancerous cells, offering new promise to the one-in-eight women who will suffer from breast cancer in their lives.
Salman Hyder, lead researcher
The drug therapy may even be more attractive than now-popular anti-hormone medicines, such as tamoxifen, because when tumor cells develop resistance to anti-hormone therapies the tumor cells continue to grow and spread, but because tumor cells need cholesterol to grow, the cholesterol-lowering drug starves the tumor cells. Not only that, cholesterol also contributes to anti-hormone resistance because cholesterol is converted into hormones in tumor cells, therefore lowering cholesterol should help hormone therapy.
The study, “Cholesterol biosynthesis inhibitors as potent novel anti-cancer agents: suppression of hormone-dependent breast cancer by the oxidosqualene cyclase inhibitor RO 48-8071,” was funded by a grant from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Program and the National Institutes of Health. The study was published in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.
“Because tumor cells grow rapidly they need to synthesize more cholesterol,” said Salman Hyder, lead researcher on the project. “Scientists working to cure breast cancer often seek out alternative targets that might slow or stop the progression of the disease, including the elimination of the cancerous cells. In our study, we targeted the production of cholesterol in cancer cells leading to death of breast cancer cells.”
The drug has already been tested on human breast cancer cells, and was found effective in reducing breast cancer cell growth. It also killed the cancer cells in many cases.
The research findings indicated that an estrogen receptor which causes tumor cells to grow was destroyed by the drug. This is thought to be the reason for the success of the drug in combating breast cancer.
The drug was then tested on mice with breast cancer and was found effective. The drug reduced the presence of estrogen receptors in the tumor cells.
The research team will next conduct further tests that they hope will lead to a drug that will both fight high cholesterol and breast cancer.
Answering a global outcry for urgently desired action against caste-based rape and violence against women, the UN Human Rights Council held a side-event Tuesday dedicated to the issue.
Many human rights organizations, policy makers and India’s UN representative had asked rights groups to address the problem after it received attention following the gang-rape and hanging of two girls in India May 27.
The event, “Caste-based Violence against Women: The role of the UN in combating caste-based violence and discrimination,” was co-sponsored by Human Rights Watch, the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), Minority Rights Group, Franciscan International, and the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, Norway, Denmark, and the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) at the Palais des Nations in Geneva and urged member UN members to speak up about the problem, which is thought to be increasing.
Asha Kowtal, leader of a delegation of Dalit women to the Human Rights Council, stated, “Caste-based rape and violence against Dalit women and girls is escalating as we fight to claim justice.”
“Words and legislation is not enough,” said UN Women policy director, Saraswathi Menon. “We need concrete action. Legislation alone does not address structural discrimination. The UN has an important role to play and must step up to the plate to help stop caste-based violence against women.”
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said, “I urge governments to fully implement all the recommendations made by international human rights mechanisms, as well as those arising from national processes. Our outrage is not enough. We must take real and focused action to mend our societies’ dramatic failure to support the rights of people of discriminated castes, particularly women and girls.”
Caste-based violence and discrimination affect women in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Yemen and other cultures that value caste.
One day after Russian tanks crossed the Russia-Ukraine border, the EU invited Russia to participate in EU-Ukraine trade agreement talks. The EU continues to include Russia in efforts toward peace in Ukraine, despite the continued violence of pro-Russian fighters in Ukraine, who, according to the Ukrainian government, the US government, NATO, the EU and others, are aided by Russia–allegations which, although supported by proof, Russia continues to deny.
EU president Herman Van Rompuy made strong statements Saturday on Russia’s involvement in Ukraine. On Saturday, Van Rompuy said, “There is … no doubt that the armed fighters that are terrorizing and disrupting the lives of citizens in Ukraine, are enjoying external support, including arms supply and reinforcement through foreign fighters.”
“As a neighboring state, Russia bears a primary responsibility in ensuring that any such traffic and external support through its borders is immediately stopped,” Van Rompuy further commented.
The US State Department recently confirmed reports that Russian tanks had entered Ukraine, saying, “We assess that separatists in eastern Ukraine have acquired heavy weapons and military equipment from Russia, including Russian tanks and multiple rocket launchers… Russia will claim these tanks were taken from Ukrainian forces, but no Ukrainian tank units have been operating in that area. We are confident that these tanks came from Russia.”
NATO supplied evidence about the veracity of the claims of Russian tanks entering Ukraine over the border. “The tanks do not bear markings or camouflage paint like those used by the Ukrainian military. In fact, they do not have markings at all, which is reminiscent of tactics used by Russian elements that were involved in destabilizing Crimea.
“These images raise significant questions concerning Russia’s role in facilitating instability in eastern Ukraine and its involvement in the movement of military equipment from Russian territory into Ukraine. If these latest reports are confirmed, this would mark a grave escalation of the crisis in eastern Ukraine in violation of Russia’s Geneva commitments”.
Last Friday, however, the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, restated its willingness to include Russia. “[C]oming back to the agreements with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia that we are going to sign in Brussels in June 27,” said Barroso, “I want to reiterate our willingness, as European Union, to pursue talks with Russia, to discuss the concrete implementation of these agreements, in case there are any concerns on the Russian side. Of course we have to respect the content of these agreements, what was already decided by the governments of these countries, but if there are some concerns, if there are technical issues that the Russian authorities want to clarify, we are ready for it.”
“So our message, as European Union, is a message of dialogue and cooperation, not a message of confrontation. At the same time we have to be firm in the respect of the sovereign right of any country to decide its own future.”
The EU leader reiterated “an appeal to Russia to engage constructively with Ukraine and to give concrete steps and clear evidence of de-escalating efforts.”
Meanwhile, the fighting in Eastern Ukraine continues. A second Ukrainian troop carrier plane was shot down at an airport near Luhansk airport Friday. The Il-76 transport plane was shot down with a MANPADs and was carrying 40 paratroopers and 9 crew.
Driverless cars are now legal in America, but what happens when your car has to decide whether to save your life or others’ in an accident? Recently, a survey was taken to find out what Americans thought should happen.
The survey, conducted by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) polled 196 participants. The survey asked, “Should your robot car sacrifice your life if it will save more lives?”
The decision was split. Around one third chose each of three options: Yes, the car should prioritize its drivers life; No, the car should be programmed to save the maximum number of lives; and that choice should be up to the owner of the car, who could pre-program the vehicle as he or she sees fit.
IEET Survey
Beyond the ethical choice, other factors have been raised as important to the question of what a car should do in such an emergency. Cars are considered to be not designed to protect the lives of anyone except those within the car, so some commenters have said that each car can protect its own occupants best.
Other questions surrounding the advent of automated cars include how the law would relate to such cars in accidents. Can automated cars be held criminally liable? Are computized ethics enough, when most people believe good judgment can compel people to act illegally? How can driverless cars be insured? What are the tests for competancy to drive on the road? Should separate roads be set aside for driverless cars? How will the decision to use driverless cars be made?
Chinka Mui, the author of New Killer Apps: How Large Companies Can Out-Innovate Start-Ups, has commented on some of these questions. “Insurance companies make money on their premiums, and over time they’ll be fighting over a smaller pool,” said Mui. “That will have a massive impact from a business-model standpoint, but it will also have an impact on hundreds of thousands of jobs for people sitting in claims centres, answering phones.”
States where driverless cars are legal
Currently, driverless cars are legal in five US States. Most recently, California Governor Jerry Brown signed senate bill SB1298 into state law on May 22, providing for driverless cars on the states roads.
The legislation will allow driverless cars to be licenced in California beginning September.
But driverless cars may currently be legal anyway, since they are not yet legislated against. “Everything is permitted unless prohibited,” commented Stanford law fellow Bryant Walker Smith. Since there are no laws against driverless cars, Smith has argued, the tests of Google’s and others on America’s highways were most likely not illegal, and neither is any other driverless activity at the moment.
Kevin Bollaert, who was charged after allegedly posting pornographic photos of women and girls submitted by ex-boyfriends as revenge, then asking complaining women and girls for money in order to remove the photos, will go to trial on 31 felony counts.
After Bollaert’s five-day preliminary hearing, the judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence to proceed with the trial. Bollaert is reported to have posted over 10,000 revenge porn images on his websites, including YouGotPosted.com.
Bollaert also created a second site called changemyreputation.com for revenge-porn victims.
Bollaert is charged with conspiracy, identity theft and extortion. There had also been allegations of child pornography, since at least two victims had said that they were underage.
Bollaert denies the charges. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 22 year in prison.
Bollaert was also charged in three other states in the past, but he did not respond to the lawsuits, and the judge entered default judgements.
There exists in California a law the criminalizes revenge porn. Only a few states have such laws, but there is increasing activism to create them.
At least 20,000 African elephants were poached last year–hunted for their tusks, which are still in high demand on the Asian ivory market. The statistics were published last Friday the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a group which observes 35,000 world species, including 30-40 percent of all elephant populations.
There has also been an increase in large seizures of ivory–over 500 kg–mainly in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, which account for 80 percent of the seizures reported by CITES.
John E. Scanlon, Secretary-General of CITES, commented on the trend, “Africa’s elephants continue to face an immediate threat to their survival from high-levels of poaching for their ivory and with over 20,000 elephants illegally killed last year the situation remains dire. Due to the collective efforts of so many, we also see some encouraging signals, but experience shows that poaching trends can shift dramatically and quickly, especially when transnational organized crime is involved.”
CITES monitors sites where poaching is taking place. Sites where poaching is increasing include Dzanga Sangha (Central African Republic). In Zakouma National Park (Chad) poaching is declining.
Besides Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, five other countries have been implicated by CITES: China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. These are the main origin, transit and destination locations for the trade.
The rates of killing are far higher than elephant repopulation rates, and the species are declining across Africa.
Poaching is thought to continue in such high levels due to poverty and weak governance, coupled with demand for the illegal commodity.
On July 7-11, the CITES Standing Committee will meet to discuss the figures in Geneva. The Monitoring Illegal Killing in Elephants (MIKE) program and the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) will also participate.
CITES collects data for 35,000 species around the globe. The data comes from law enforcement patrols and others who collect such information. CITES monitors 30-40 percent of the entire elephant population.
Fatherlessness in families has been on the rise since 1960, and now is the situation in one-third of homes–meaning that 24 million American children do without their fathers.
Among the stock-and-trade activities documented to be missing from the lives of fatherless children are talking about the child’s day, sharing meals, helping with homework and going to and coming from activities.
Statistics show marked disadvantages caused by fatherlessness. Fatherless children account for more youth suicides, runaways and dropouts, and are two to three times as likely to have behavior disorders, experience poverty, chemical abuse, institutionalization and imprisonment, child abuse and child neglect. Criminal behavior such as anger-related rape is higher for those who were fatherless.
However, the greatest losers when fathers are not present are daughters. The prospects for family of fatherless daughters are very different from those of daughters with families. Fatherless daughters are 711 percent more likely to have kids as teenagers, 164 more likely to have a pre-marital birth, and 92 percent more likely to get divorced.
Why fatherlessness has increased from around 8 percent in 1960 to around one third in the 2010s is not completely understood, but fathers have cited two main reasons. The most commonly cited is “non-marital relationships and divorce.” The second is incarceration, which accounts for 7.3 of the 24 million fatherless American children.
One little US town is showing the world how a small community can take on big oil and gas. Lafayette, Colo. (pop. 25,733) was unhappily facing fracking within their town area. The citizens banded together with environmental groups and amended their Community Bill of Rights to secure their right to clean air, pure water, and the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish.
Besides Lafayette’s stand, moratoriums and bans have been enacted in six small cities and towns with a combined total of more than 400,000 citizens.
The Community Bill of Rights was amended on November 6, Election Day. The margin for the vote was nearly 60 percent, and in nearby Oberlin, OH. (pop. 8,286) the vote was over 70 percent in favor.
The vote was held after an employee of Halliburton, the world’s second largest oil field services company, filed a complaint with the elections board that the amendment being proposed by the community would have to include a summary of the measure according to state law.
The petitioners included the entirety of the amendment language, and the city clerk, Susan Koster, threw out the petition challenge, stating, “As a home rule city, Lafayette operates under a citizen adopted charter. In the case of this protest, the petition submitted to amend the City’s Charter complied with the Colorado Home Rule Act.”
Among the other challenges anti-fracking citizens faced were the Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s (COGA) $66,974 investment in local media and claims that the “Bowling Green” charter amendment would kill jobs and raise energy costs buy over 80 percent.
The city itself enacted an ordinance that banned fracking. This was a way of dissuading voters from voting for the charter amendment, according to the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF),which helped craft the Community Bill of Rights, because the ordinance was subject to being rescinded by the Council after the election was over. Similar actions had recently succeeded in nearby Broadview Heights and Mansfield, OH, according to CELDF.
However, Lafayette voted to adopt the charter amendment, banning fracking.
One month later, COGA filed suit against the city in attempt to overturn the fracking ban.
Then, energy industry representatives began private meetings with Gov. John Hickenlooper. Eleven environmental groups formally requested to be present at any such meetings.
“Apparently, it is now simply business as usual to shut out the voice of the people when making decisions that effect us all,” said the president of Protect our Loveland, Sharon J. Carlisle. “We demand our rightful place in your smoke-filled, oil- and gas-filled rooms of secret wheelings and dealings.”
Gov. John Hickenlooper
Hickenlooper approved a Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s lawsuit with Longmont City in an attempt to overturn that city’s fracking ban last summer, but weeks later admitted fracking was something “no one wants in their backyard.”
Reacting to the COGA suit, Lafayete residents filed a class-action lawsuit against COGA, the state of Colorado and Hickenlooper. The lawsuit is the first of its kind. Although the particular focus of the suit is fracking, it insists on the right of local self governance for citizens, protected through a community bill of rights. The residents’ suit alleges that their right to self governance is guaranteed by the US Constitution, the COGA Act infringes that right, and Colorado officials are guilty of not enforcing the ban on fracking. The residents allege that the ban passed in November was not being enforced.
CELDF executive director, Thomas Linzey, Esq., said of the suit, “This class action lawsuit is merely the first of many by people
Thomas Linzey, Esq
across the United States whose constitutional rights to govern their own communities are routinely violated by state governments working in concert with the corporations that they ostensibly regulate.
“The people of Lafayette will not stand idly by as their rights are negotiated away by oil and gas corporations, their state government, and their own municipal government.”
Halliburton Dubai Headquarters
Halliburton Co. is incorporated in the US, where its headquarters is in Houston, TX., but its chairman and CEO, David Lesar, works and lives in Dubai, where Halliburton’s other headquarters is located.
The company took in $5 billion of profits for the past three fiscal years, and billions in the years before.
Halliburton has recently been the source of several controversies. In 2013, the company pled guilty on charges of destroying evidence relating to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, incurring a $200,000 statutory fine. In addition, Halliburton has been implicated in the creation of a toxic cloud that forced evacuations in Farmington, New Mexico in 2006, and it may also be implicated in spill in a 2009 Timor Sea off Australia and a 2010 improper cementing in the Gulf of Mexico.
UNESCO’s The Division of Ethics, Youth and Sport has issued a call for Ethics teachers. The teachers will attend an Ethics Teacher Training Course (ETTC) in Amman, Jordan, between October 19 and 23 of this year.
The course is a part of a collaborative effort between UNESCO, the Jordanian National Committee on Ethics of Science and Technology (NCEST), Hashemite University, and the Jordanian National Commission for UNESCO to improve the teaching of ethics worldwide.
The course will be taught by a team of international experts in ethics teaching.
UNESCO has specified that applicants should submit a registration form to their Bioethics Section secretariat with a letter of intent. The registration deadline is July 1. Participants must cover their own travel meals and accommodation expenses.
Global education aid has fallen significantly. It fell six percent between 2010 and 2011, and another 3 percent in 2012. The drop has brought funding levels back to par with 2008 funding. The figures were released recently by UNESCO’s Education For All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report. This is the first time aid funding for education has fallen since 2002.
The report was published in anticipation of UNESCO’s Global Partnership for Education’s Replenishment Pledging Conference, which will take place June 25-26 in Brussels. Donors are being faced with a request to raise $3.5 billion to educate the world’s poorest.
Over 50 million children and 70 million adolescents are currently not in school. The hardest hit by the funding cuts include the countries that need the funding most, such as sub-Saharan Africa–the home of more than half the world’s out-of-school children.
Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, said, “When so many girls and boys are still out of school and not learning, the continuing drop in funds for education is cause for serious concern. Increasing external support for education is an ethical and development imperative. We know the difference that well-targeted aid can make in helping countries to put quality education first.”
Education is not the only area of aid funding that has declined. Overall aid has decreased by a percent globally, which has caused UNESCO to state that education is not a priority development goal at present. Education aid accounts for two percent of humanitarian appeals–half the target amount set by the UN in 2013 and one of the smallest proportions of requests made for funding.
Two of the countries with the most out-of-school children, India and Pakistan, have the largest funding cuts to basic education.
The Global Partnership for Education, which will meet later this month, has the stated goal of ensuring “sufficient and sustainable financing for education in our partner countries and achieve GPE’s vision of all children in school and learning…” Two hundred and fifty children in the world today cannot read and write by grade four.
Scientists at Northwestern University have found evidence that four times the amount of water commonly thought to exist on Earth actually exists. The study, based on years of seismographical data, shows the existence of massive amounts of water located 255-400 miles (410-660 kilometers) under the surface of the Earth–equivalent to three times Earth’s oceans–and has caused a reassessment of the origin of Earth’s waters.
Evidence of the underground reservoir comes from years of US monitoring of subsurface movements. Researchers now believe they have found proof that a huge water reservoir exists in the transition zone–between the upper and lower mantle, the the two layers below the Earth’s crust.
The transition zone contains a mineral that has a high water storage capacity, called ringwoodite. Scientists believe ringwoodite fills the mantle.
Ringwoodite has been experimented on, and under extreme pressure, it has been found to trap water.
Ringwoodite (Photo credit: Richard Siemens)
The ringwoodite sinks into the mantle when oceanic crusts slide under adjoining plates and are forced further and further down. As even more weight bears on the ringwoodite from above, the water trapped in the mineral is forced out. This process is called hydration melting.
The amount of water held in subsurface ringwoodite is expected to be around three times the amount that fills the Earth’s oceans. Transition-zone ringwoodite would have to contain 2.6 percent water to bear this amount. The amount of water thought to be under the Earth, if it were on the surface, would only leave the tops of Earth’s mountains poking out as islands.
Given this information, scientists also believe there is more grounds to believe the Earth’s oceans came from within the Earth–the so-called “whole-Earth water cycle”–not from icy comets, the other popular theory.
The depth of the water is unreachable with contemporary tools, however. The deepest modern tools have drilled into the earth is 7.5 miles (12 kilometers)–halfway through the Earth’s crust. At that depth, the drill bit began to melt from geothermal heat.
Graham Pearson
The study supports the research of University of Alberta’s Graham Pearson, who found that a diamond from the transition zone expelled by a volcano contained water-bearing ringwoodite. Pearson has since found another ringwoodite crystal that also contained water.
A column of Russian military equipment, composed of perhaps 200 peices, has been videoed moving toward the Ukrainian border. The video shows 16 loader trucks carrying tanks. The column is reportedly moving toward the Dolzhansky crossing.
These reports have not been officially verified. Information is being written as it is becomes available. [Update: the reports have now published in Podrobnosti, and is being reported on by several Western outlets.]
Reports are also coming in fromdjp3trosand other sources on Twitter.
Earlier Sunday, NATO released images it said showed Russian tanks had recently entered Ukraine from the same origin, the Russian city of Rostov. Russia had vigorously denied any truth to the claims of the Ukrainian government that Russian tanks had entered, but the US State Department confirmed the claims Saturday.
[Updated] The Ukrainian military has since stated that their forces at the border are in full combat readiness, and that no advances on the border have been made in the past 24 hours.
74 vehicles can be counted in another video.
Another video, posted Saturday, also shows large amounts of military vehicles moving toward Ukraine in Rostov. Around 45 vehicles are shown.
thought to be the reason for the success of the drug in combating breast cancer.
Community Bill of Rights to secure their right to clean air, pure water, and the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish.
