Accidental fungus leads to promising cancer drug

A drug developed using nanotechnology and a fungus that contaminated a lab experiment may be broadly effective against a range of cancers, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.

The drug, called lodamin, was improved in one of the last experiments overseen by Dr. Judah Folkman, a cancer researcher who died in January. Folkman pioneered the idea of angiogenesis therapy — starving tumors by preventing them from growing blood supplies. Lodamin is an angiogenesis inhibitor that Folkman’s team has been working to perfect for 20 years. Writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, his colleagues say they developed a formulation that works as a pill, without side-effects. They have licensed it to SynDevRx, Inc, ….

Tests in mice showed it worked against a range of tumors, including breast cancer, neuroblastoma, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, brain tumors known as glioblastomas and uterine tumors. … “Using the oral route of administration, it first reaches the liver, making it especially efficient in preventing the development of liver metastasis in mice,” they wrote in their report. “Liver metastasis is very common in many tumor types and is often associated with a poor prognosis and survival rate,” they added.

‘ALMOST CLEAN’ LIVERS

“When I looked at the livers of the mice, the treated group was almost clean,” Benny said in a statement. “In the control group you couldn’t recognize the livers — they were a mass of tumors.”

The drug was known experimentally as TNP-470, and was originally isolated from a fungus called Aspergillus fumigatus fresenius. … Twenty days after being injected with cancer cells, four out of seven untreated mice had died, while all treated mice were still alive, Benny’s team reported. – yahoo

New hypersonic jet Might reach Mach 5 to Mach 10.

The video I saw doesn’t have much detail, but it does say the system under development by the Airforce, NASA and others uses 1000 explosions per second in its engines.

Fifty-seven years after combat pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, NASA will make a second attempt Saturday at flying an aircraft at 5,000 mph — about seven times Mach 1, the speed of sound.

The space agency’s dogged pursuit of extreme speed, officials hope, will ultimately make space flight easier to accomplish.

NASA will roll out the X-43A, capable of reaching speeds more than Mach 7, in a test flight over the Pacific Ocean. The Hyper-X, as it is called, could also give rise to commercial planes that zip passengers between London and New York in less than two hours.

“It’s relatively simple in its concept,” said Griff Corpening, chief engineer for the X-43A program. “It’s incredibly challenging in its execution…. [That is] where 40 plus years of research comes in.”

The $250-million Hyper-X program has already attracted the interest of the Air Force and private aerospace companies such as Boeing. But dreams of civilian spin-offs are at least 20 years away, said NASA officials, who are betting the program will first lead to a more durable, cheaper workhorse for the space fleet. – cnn

A commenter on this story on gizmodo writes:

Mach 10 = 7,612 MPH
Distance between New York and Los Angeles: 2,451 miles. So you could get it across the country in about 20 minutes

Aging: Good Cholesterol, Good Memory

People are often advised to try to keep up their levels of so-called good cholesterol to reduce their risk of heart disease. But high levels may also help prevent a decline in memory, a new study says.

Researchers found that people with more high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, known as HDL, did better on memory tests than people with lower levels did. The study, led by Archana Singh-Manoux, appears in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, an American Heart Association Journal. – more on nytimes

I think you find good cholesterol in eggs… or something… I can’t remember.

Report: California’s Death Penalty ‘Close to Collapse’

California’s 30-year-old death penalty, which costs more than $100 million annually to administer, is “close to collapse,” according to a new report issued Monday.

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, appointed by the state Legislature to propose criminal justice reforms, issued a 117-page report detailing a deeply flawed death penalty system that has the biggest backlog of cases in the nation.

The commission stopped short of calling for the abolition of the state’s death penalty, but did note that California would save hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the criminal justice system if capital punishment were eliminated. It said most condemned inmates are essentially given life sentences because so few executions are carried out.

The commission blamed inadequate legal representation, a broad death penalty law that makes nearly all first-degree murder cases eligible for the death penalty and a host of other issues that has made California capital punishment system “dysfunctional.”

“It is the law in name only, and not in reality,” the report stated. – fox

Good. Stop killing people. Just give them the brain surgery they need. Fix their behavior with a few brain nanobots … then we can let them out so they can do useful jobs for society. Reprogramming damaged brains is the wave of the future.

Guantanamo Evidence Faulted in Detainee Case

Read the Snark.

In the first case to review the government’s secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal appeals court found that accusations against a Muslim from western China held for more than six years were based on bare and unverifiable claims. The unclassified parts of the decision were released on Monday.

With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.

The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character in the Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark”: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”

“This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,” said the panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The unanimous panel overturned as invalid a Pentagon determination that the detainee, Huzaifa Parhat, a member of the ethnic Uighur Muslim minority in western China, was properly held as an enemy combatant.

The panel included one of the court’s most conservative members, the chief judge, David B. Sentelle. – NYTimes

Suspect in USS Cole Attack Alleges Torture

An alleged terrorist being charged with the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 says he only confessed to stop the torture.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri told a hearing last year that’s he’s been tortured since his arrest in 2002. He said he only admitted to the Cole bombing and other terrorist acts to make his interrogators happy.

The CIA has admitted that al-Nashiri was among terrorist suspects who were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003 while being interrogated in secret prisons. The Pentagon says it will have to be decided at trial whether any confessions that resulted are tainted.

Al-Nashiri, who is a Saudi, is charged with “organizing and directing” the bombing of the Cole, which killed 17 sailors. The Pentagon wants the death penalty. – fox

Nothing he confesses to can be taken as useful now. Stop torturing people.

The lunatic fringe: Is moonlight the miracle cure?

Deep in the Arizona desert, a bizarre machine is offering new hope to sufferers from conditions ranging from eczema to cancer. How does it work? By the light of the silvery moon… Words & pictures by Jason Oddy

People come from far and wide to test the benefits of the Interstellar Light Collector…

While another couple were receiving their dose Eric began rhapsodising about an experiment conducted by Dr Corinne Davies, a professor at the University of Arizona. “She took two lots of seeds and put one in front of the Collector,” he explained. “The seeds that were exposed to the moonlight germinated much more successfully. It was incredible.” Later on the phone, I asked Dr Davies, currently on sabbatical writing a book, In the Arms of the Moon: A Lunar Spin on the Evolution Story, about her experiment. “It’s cool what he’s doing,” she said of Chapin’s invention. “Everyone should have the chance to realise their dreams. But I don’t think my results proved anything. It was just a preliminary test … Still, I didn’t expect anything to happen – but it did.” – independent

Stilt-walker completes 830 miles across Michigan

A 24-year-old man has completed an 830-mile trek on aluminum stilts across Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas to make people aware of cerebral palsy. … Sauter has raised $16,000 for United Cerebral Palsy of Michigan. A 3-to-1 matching federal grant pushes that total to $64,000. Sauter has mild cerebral palsy and used three pairs of stilts on the walk. – yahoo

I had a roommate in college with CP. Nice guy with a great sense of humor. Is walking on stilts easier than walking 830 miles without them?

Court: Exorcism is protected by law

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday threw out a jury award over injuries a 17-year-old girl suffered in an exorcism conducted by members of her old church, ruling that the case unconstitutionally entangled the court in religious matters.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices found that a lower court erred when it said the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God’s First Amendment rights regarding freedom of religion did not prevent the church from being held liable for mental distress triggered by a “hyper-spiritualistic environment.”

Laura Schubert testified in 2002 that she was cut and bruised and later experienced hallucinations after the church members’ actions in 1996, when she was 17. Schubert said she was pinned to the floor for hours and received carpet burns during the exorcism, the Austin American-Statesman reported. She also said the incident led her to mutilate herself and attempt suicide. She eventually sought psychiatric help.

Story continues on msnbc

Dumb. What if a particular type of exorcism involves taking money from a bank? Is that still protected?