Britain to grant 20,000 visas to Indian workers annually |  |
- Britain to grant 20,000 visas to Indian workers annually
- Community oncology: Ensuring the best standards of care
- $1.9 million NIH grant supports research in the most common soft tissue tumor in children
- Spent nuclear fuel is anything but waste
- Skin color: Handy tool for teaching evolution
- How to leave your body
- Arizona State University geographer calls for complexity in sustainability science models
- Retire aging monkeys, Pamela Anderson urges AIIMS
- Large study of arthroscopic rotator cuff repair reveals some surprises
- Common hip disorder can cause sports hernia
| Britain to grant 20,000 visas to Indian workers annually Posted: 21 Feb 2011 11:35 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Britain is set to welcome 20,000 extra Indian workers annually as part of a secretive trade deal brokered by the European Union , a media report said. Under the EU-India Free Trade Agreement, European countries will grant India between 35,000 and 50,000 visas in return for four billion pounds worth of trade. However, sources have revealed that India is demanding up to 20,000 of them should be provided by Britain, with only 7,000 asked of Germany and 3,000 from France. Estonia is expected to accept just 19 individuals, Daily Mail reported. The agreement is expected to be signed later this year. The 20,000 will not count towards the coalition's pledge to cap net immigration at 'tens of thousands'. Britain's unemployment stands at 2.5 million. The workers will be exempt from National Insurance in their first year but will be able to use the NHS, according to the newspaper Sunday. Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said: 'The secrecy surrounding this deal has gone on long enough. 'This scheme makes a nonsense of efforts to limit economic migration.' A spokesman for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, told The Sunday Telegraph: 'Strict criteria are being negotiated to ensure there is a focus on highly-skilled and highly-qualified professionals entering the UK temporarily.' Nearly 30,000 workers came to Britain from India last year. Two thirds of them travelled as part of the intra-company transfer scheme. They are except from the coalition's interim immigration cap. http://www.rxpgnews.com    |
| Community oncology: Ensuring the best standards of care Posted: 21 Feb 2011 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Receiving a cancer diagnosis is a devastating experience. Still under the shock of the bad news, patients must make many choices including who to turn to for advice and treatment, with the possibility to choose among a comprehensive cancer center, a university hospital or a community oncology hospital. When my oncologist informed me about my blood results, and told me the diagnosis (Plasmocytoma), I was disoriented. As a patient I was looking for detailed answers to my many questions and I wanted time, explains Inge from Germany. My doctor at the community oncology center explained everything to me: type of cancer, life expectancy, different treatments available and so on. To make it short, he helped me to understand what was going on with me. I was given a phone number to call at any time. The constant support of the whole team was essential to my recovery. The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) recently created a new working group dedicated to Community Oncologists. The group aims to represent professionals working outside academic institutions or comprehensive cancer centers, who treat patients with a wide range of tumors and whose practice needs and access to resources are very specific. Dr Robert Eckert from Internistische Gemeinschaftspraxis und Onkologische Schwerpunktpraxis in Wendlingen, Germany, who chairs the ESMO Community Oncology Working Group, explains that the first step will be to conduct surveys in as many European countries as possible in order to identify the special needs of Community Oncologists. This will be a challenging task because the situation varies greatly across Europe. So far, we have been able to show for a number of countries that Community Oncologists are interested in practice-oriented tools, primarily in guidelines and score calculators. They need to be able to access reliable, up-to-date information quickly at the point of care in their practice, which reflects their challenge of... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| $1.9 million NIH grant supports research in the most common soft tissue tumor in children Posted: 21 Feb 2011 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A nearly $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will help investigators at Nationwide Children's Hospital search for biomarkers that may be linked to the development and outcome of hemangiomas, the most common soft tissue tumor in children. Nationwide Children's is home to the only Hemangioma and Vascular Malformations Clinic in the United States with an NIH-sponsored clinical study. A hemangioma is an abnormal buildup of blood vessels in the skin or internal organs. Hemangiomas appear as a red to reddish-purple, raised lesion or as a massive, raised tumor. Hemangiomas can be extremely disfiguring and life-threatening, resulting in significant distress for the families of affected children, said the grant's principal investigator, Gayle Gordillo, MD, director of the Hemangioma and Vascular Malformations Clinic in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Nationwide Children's Hospital. A critical barrier to improving the clinical outcomes for affected children is the lack of low-risk treatment options. The most effective treatment options all have life-threatening side effects. Dr. Gordillo's laboratory research using a mouse-model has shown that the formation of these soft tissue tumors depends on nox-4. Nox-4 is an enzyme involved in the production of reactive oxygen species, a natural part of a healthy cellular environment. However, excessive production of reactive oxygen species can result in significant damage to the cell. As part of the NIH-funded study, Dr. Gordillo and colleagues at both Nationwide Children's Hospital and The Ohio State University Medical Center, will examine urine and blood samples from patients with hemangioma beginning from the time they enroll in the study until they are 2 years of age. They will also perform ultrasound on each patient to measure the size of the hemangioma and velocity of the blood flowing to the tumor. Recruitment for study participants will take place at... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Spent nuclear fuel is anything but waste Posted: 20 Feb 2011 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Failure to pursue a program for recycling spent nuclear fuel has put the U.S. far behind other countries and represents a missed opportunity to enhance the nation's energy security and influence other countries, the former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Sunday. Dale Klein, Ph.D., Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Texas System, said largely unfounded concerns and long-held myths about the reprocessing of spent fuel have prevented the U.S. from tapping into an extremely valuable resource. Spent nuclear fuel, which includes some plutonium, often is inaccurately referred to as waste, Klein said. It is not waste, he said. The waste is in our failure to tap into this valuable and abundant domestic source of clean energy in a systematic way. That's something we can ill-afford to do. Klein, who also serves as an associate director at UT Austin's Energy Institute, made his remarks Sunday morning at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) annual meeting, in Washington, D.C. Compared to other fuels used in the production of electricity, the energy density of uranium is remarkable, Klein said, noting that 95 percent of the energy value in a bundle of spent nuclear fuel rods remains available to be re-used. The once-through nuclear fuel cycle, which is our practice in the U.S., is an enormous waste of potential energy, he said. Critics cite the potential for nuclear weapons proliferation as the biggest reason to oppose recycling. But such concerns are largely unfounded, Klein said. While it is true that the plutonium in recycled nuclear fuel is fissionable, no country in the world has ever made a nuclear weapon out of low-grade plutonium from recycled high burn-up nuclear fuel, he said. It just doesn't work for a strategic or a tactical nuclear weapon. While the U.S. has sat on the sidelines, other countries, including France, Japan, the United Kingdom, Russia,... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Skin color: Handy tool for teaching evolution Posted: 20 Feb 2011 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Variations in skin color provide one of the best examples of evolution by natural selection acting on the human body and should be used to teach evolution in schools, according to a Penn State anthropologist. There is an inherent level of interest in skin color and for teachers, that is a great bonus -- kids want to know, said Nina Jablonski, professor and head, Department of Anthropology, Penn State. The mechanism of evolution can be completely understood from skin color. Scientists have understood for years that evolutionary selection of skin pigmentation was caused by the sun. As human ancestors gradually lost their pelts to allow evaporative cooling through sweating, their naked skin was directly exposed to sunlight. In the tropics, natural selection created darkly pigmented individuals to protect against the sun. Ultraviolet B radiation produces vitamin D in human skin, but can destroy folate. Folate is important for the rapid growth of cells, especially during pregnancy, when its deficiency can cause neural tube defects. Destruction of folate and deficiencies in vitamin D are evolutionary factors because folate-deficient mothers produce fewer children who survive, and vitamin D-deficient women are less fertile than healthy women. Dark skin pigmentation in the tropics protects people from folate destruction, allowing normal reproduction. However, because levels of ultraviolet B are high year round, the body can still produce sufficient vitamin D. As humans moved out of Africa, they moved into the subtropics and eventually inhabited areas up to the Arctic Circle. North or south of 46 degrees latitude -- Canada, Russia, Scandinavia, Western Europe and Mongolia -- dark-skinned people could not produce enough vitamin D, while lighter-skinned people could and thrived. Natural selection of light skin occurred. The differences between light-skinned and dark-skinned people are more interesting than studying changes in the wing... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Posted: 20 Feb 2011 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Leave your body and shake hands with yourself, gain an extra limb or change into a robot for a while. Swedish neuroscientist Henrik Ehrsson has demonstrated that the brain's image of the body is negotiable. Applications stretch from touch-sensitive prostheses to robotics and virtual worlds. Ask a child if their hands belong to them and they will answer, Of course! But how does the brain actually identify its own body? And why do we experience our centre of awareness as located inside a physical body? In a series of studies, neuroscientist Henrik Ehrsson of the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet has shown that the brain's perception of its own body can alter remarkably. Through the coordinated manipulation of the different senses, subjects can be made to feel that their body suddenly includes artificial objects or that they have departed their body entirely to enter another. His experiments have been published in Science and other leading scientific periodicals and journals, and have garnered considered international attention. By clarifying how the normal brain produces a sense of ownership of the body, we can learn to project ownership onto artificial bodies and simulated virtual ones, and even make two people have the experience of swapping bodies with one another, says Dr Ehrsson. The research addresses fundamental questions about the relationship between mind and body, which have been the topic of theological, philosophical and psychological discussion for centuries but which have only recently been accessible to experimental investigation. The key to solving the problem is to identify the multisensory mechanisms through which the central nervous system distinguishes between sensory signals from the body and from its environment. The research may have important implications in a wide range of areas, such as developing hand prostheses that feel more like real hands and the next generation of virtual reality... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Arizona State University geographer calls for complexity in sustainability science models Posted: 20 Feb 2011 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) WASHINGTON - Tropical deforestation is intimately linked with urban dynamics and needs to be considered along with the role and effect of national and regional policies on land use decisions, and the dynamics of economic globalization in the next generation of sustainability science research, according to an Arizona State University geographer. You just can't think of isolated farmers operating out there by themselves. They are linked to whatever are the closest urban areas, noted B.L. Turner II, whose research concentrates on human-environment relationships focusing on land-use change. He addressed change in tropical forests and the challenges that address its complexity at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was one of the presenters in a Feb. 19 session on the research frontiers in sustainability science. Today, there is a lot of work on ecosystem services related to forest change, yet there really is a paucity of work that says how those ecosystem services come back and affect human outcomes, said Turner, the Gilbert F. White Professor of Environment and Society in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He also is a professor in the School of Sustainability. We have a lot of work informing us about the environmental impacts of deforestation, but it doesn't tell us how people react to it and deal with it. We only now are beginning to ask how those environmental services link to farm income. How do those factors link to whether people abandon land and go off someplace else or sell their land rights to a cattle farmer. And, how does all this link to changes in rural-urban ties, policy, and global economy changes, he said. It's linking the feedback of environmental changes themselves on decisions to cut forest, or not; to expand agricultural land, or not. It isn't just the amount of forests that's cut or the amount of... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Retire aging monkeys, Pamela Anderson urges AIIMS Posted: 19 Feb 2011 04:00 PM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, Feb 19 - International celebrity Pamela Anderson Saturday wrote a letter to All India Institute of Medical Sciences - director N.C. Deka, asking him to free the aging monkeys at the premier health institute's central facility. Anderson sent the letter on behalf of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals - India after watching video footage taken secretly inside AIIMS. 'It broke my heart to see the suffering that is documented in the enclosed video. But the animals suffering behind closed doors at AIIMS must endure this nightmare every day,' the actress wrote. 'I was shocked to see that rabbits are forced to live in wire-floored cages; the sharp wire digs into their sensitive footpads and can cause their feet to become stuck,' she added. In the letter, the former 'Baywatch' star who recently also made a brief appearance at 'Bigg Boss' pointed out that many of the monkeys at AIIMS have been languishing in cramped, rusty cages for more than a decade and that one monkey has been suffering in these conditions for nearly 20 years. According to the legal framework, laboratories in India are required to rehabilitate animals after three years of biological use. The video shows horrifying conditions under which the animals have been caged, including rabbits suffering from an infectious skin disease and rats with wounds being denied veterinary care. 'Please, won't you at least agree to retire the animals who have been at AIIMS the longest to a sanctuary?' Anderson asked Deka in the letter. PETA India demands the shifting of caged animals to a sanctuary and switch to modern, humane non-animal research and training methods. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Large study of arthroscopic rotator cuff repair reveals some surprises Posted: 19 Feb 2011 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Arthroscopic rotator cuff repair is highly effective and provides durable results five years after surgery, according to a large, prospective study by Hospital for Special Surgery investigators. The study also surprisingly revealed that the rotator cuff has the ability to heal even when early imaging studies have found a defect at the site of repair. The research will be presented at the upcoming American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES) 2011 Specialty Day meeting, to be held Feb. 19 in San Diego, Calif., following the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Our study demonstrates that arthroscopic rotator cuff repair results remain excellent when followed over five years, and we found that some tendons that were incompletely healed at two years appeared to heal fully by five years, suggesting that rather than deteriorating over time, results may in fact improve over time, said David Altchek, M.D., attending orthopedic surgeon and co-chief in the Sports Medicine and Shoulder Service at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York, who was involved with the study. These days, arthroscopy is the standard of care for repairing rotator cuffs. Most patients who have this procedure have excellent clinical results, but surprisingly the results sometimes don't correlate to whether the rotator cuff is healed or not. When your rotator cuff is torn, you attribute all your pain and dysfunction to your torn rotator cuff, then you have it fixed and you feel better, but sometimes when you take an ultrasound or an MRI, the rotator cuff looks exactly like it did before you had the surgery, said Lawrence Gulotta, M.D., who led the study and is a sports medicine and shoulder surgeon at HSS. Before this study, we thought that once a rotator cuff had re-torn or failed to heal following surgery, it had no capacity to heal in the future. Now we know that the rotator cuff does have the capacity to heal itself, even if early... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Common hip disorder can cause sports hernia Posted: 19 Feb 2011 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Sports hernias are commonly found in individuals with a mechanical disorder of the hip and can be resolved with surgery to fix the hip disorder alone in some cases, according to a recent study. The research, conducted by investigators at Hospital for Special Surgery, will be presented at the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine 2011 Specialty Day meeting, held Feb. 19 in San Diego following the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. If individuals have symptoms of athletic pubalgia otherwise known as sports hernia, doctors should carefully assess their hip joint to make sure there is not an underlying mechanical problem in the hip that may be the bigger problem in the overall function of the athlete, said Bryan Kelly, M.D., co-director of the Center for Hip Pain and Preservation at Hospital for Special Surgery who led the study. If patients present with both sports hernia and femoro-acetabular impingement symptoms, you have to consider what the order of treatment should be or whether you should just treat one. He said the research suggests that treating the joint mechanics first is optimal and if problems persist, doctors can then try surgery for the sports hernia. In recent years, a hip condition known as femoro-acetabular impingement (FAI) or hip impingement has become widely recognized in the medical community. The hip is a ball-and-socket joint where the upper end of the thigh bone fits into the cup-shaped socket of the pelvis. In a healthy hip joint, the ball rotates freely in the cup, but in some people a bony bump on the upper thigh bone produces a situation where there is inadequate space for the hip bone to move freely in the socket. The result is damage to the socket rim and the cartilage that lines the bones, which can lead to hip arthritis. In the past few years, doctors have thought that this condition may also cause sports hernias. A sports hernia is a tearing of the tissue that... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
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