U.S. hints at declaring end to Korean War

Officials from U.S. President George W. Bush on down went out of their way to highlight the incentives they are dangling - from economic cooperation to a formal end to the Korean War - if Pyongyang gives up its nuclear weapons programs.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said on Saturday the list of what the United States might do includes “a declaration of the end of the Korean War and moving forward on economic cooperation, cultural, educational and other ties.”

The 1950-1953 Korean War ended with an armistice, rather than a formal peace treaty.

“We want the North Korean leaders to hear that if it gives up its weapons - nuclear weapons ambitions - that we would be willing to enter into security arrangements with the North Koreans as well as move forward new economic incentives for the North Korean people,” - herald

Bottled oxygen newest fashion accessory

Touting such benefits as improved concentration and stopping hangovers, Oxia pure oxygen canisters are becoming a major trend in New York.Containing 40 deep breaths worth of pure oxygen, the canisters are being marketed at New York locales such as the Bergdorf Goodman department store at the introductory cost of $70, said the New York Post.

With refills of oxygen made available at $15 a pop, the Oxia canisters are being oriented toward ordinary people suffering from stress, and travelers beset by jet lag.

“It’s what bottled water was 20 years ago,” said Oxia co-founder Bryce Margetts. - upi

US had 600 tons of chemical weapon mustard agent in one building

Three workers at Aberdeen Proving Ground were taken for medical observation yesterday after a laboratory vial containing dilute mustard agent broke, officials said. … The Harford County military base’s emergency personnel responded to an accident in a laboratory at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at 11:30 a.m. after a worker handling a small quantity of the blister agent was exposed, said George Mercer, a spokesman for APG. …

While the gate to the facility was closed for 20 minutes, no chemical agent was released to the environment, Mercer said. The Edgewood Chemical Biological Center is a 1.5 million-square-foot research and engineering facility within APG for chemical and biological defense.

Earlier this year, APG became the first continental U.S. military site to eliminate its stockpile of chemical weapons, clearing out 600 tons of mustard agent. A building that held containers that once held the agent was demolished this fall. But work involving small amounts of mustard agent continues, typically in small quantities. - balt

Four Were Framed With The FBI’s Help

“… a flurry of gunshots ended Edward “Teddy” Deegan’s misspent life more than 40 years ago …FBI agents had been listening to the murder plot unfold for five months through a microphone hidden in a mob office and through reports from informants. They knew that Vincent “Jimmy” Flemmi and Joseph “The Animal” Barboza, two hoodlums the bureau was recruiting as informants, were behind the conspiracy. Thousands of recently disclosed U.S. Justice Department records show that the FBI, in order to cultivate Flemmi and Barboza as informants, allowed them to frame four innocent men for the Deegan murder.” - courant

Public Drawing site: Drawball.com

This is fun. Anyone can create art (or destroy the art of others) at this public drawing web site. (Hint: Be sure to click “DISAGREE” to start, then you have to solve a puzzle to start drawing.) Tricky. I just ran out of ink. How do you get more? Seems you have to connect from different computers… Hmm…

Stem cells core of more cancers

A spate of new discoveries about the basic biology of cancer is pushing researchers toward an astonishing conclusion: For decades, efforts to cure the disease may have targeted the wrong cells.

Current therapies treat all cancer cells the same. They’re aimed at shrinking tumours on the basis that the various cells within them all have similar powers to spawn new cancers and spread destruction.

But mounting evidence suggests that cancer’s real culprits — the roots of perhaps every tumour — are actually a small subset of bad seeds known best to the world as stem cells. …

Dr. Dick, who discovered the first cancer stem cell in 1994 in leukemia, said the new work shows that while current therapies treat colon cancer as a “homogeneous entity, not every colon cancer cell has the ability to keep that tumour going; only one in 60,000.”

New research has repeatedly shown that contrary to conventional wisdom, only abnormal stem cells can sprout and sustain tumours by renewing themselves indefinitely. Without signals from cancer stem cells, ordinary tumour cells seem to stop growing.

What’s more, some experiments have found these bad seeds to be highly resistant to standard cancer therapies, including radiation, medicine’s nuclear weapon.

The findings may explain why cancers come back even after treatments seem to make tumours disappear. Just a small number of mutant stem cells left behind — invisible to the naked eye or any scan — may be enough to spark cancer’s regrowth.

“Killing 98 per cent of tumour cells on a scan may look good, but that 2 per cent could be enough to grow the cancer back,” said Jeremy Rich, a neuro-oncologist and cancer researcher at Duke University in North Carolina. “Maybe one of the reasons we haven’t been as good as we thought we could be is because we’ve been looking at the wrong cells.” - globeandmail

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Normal Stem Cells vs. Cancer Stem Cells

The stem cells in tumors discovered by researchers at the University of Michigan are not the same type of stem cells being explored as potential therapies to treat degenerative diseases. Both normal embryonic and adult stem cells are being actively studied for their ability to proliferate and replace damaged cells in diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and heart disease.

But stem cells in tumors develop because of mutations that accumulate over years and often decades. The mutations are thought to promote the tumor stem cells’ ability to proliferate, eventually leading to cancer. - genomenews