In a world first, Canadian scientists have decoded all three billion letters in the DNA sequence of a metastatic breast cancer tumor and identified the mutations that caused the original tumour to spread.
The landmark study by researchers at the B.C. Cancer Agency is a major step toward unravelling the mysteries of how cancer begins and what makes it move to other parts of the body.
(Continue reading in HealthZone.ca)
(Stock photo purchased)
A cluster of 20 solar-powered homes will open their doors to tourists as well as energy and design enthusiasts tomorrow in the 4th Solar Decathlon on the National Mall in Washington.
Teams of architecture and engineering students from colleges around the world are competing in the contest, sponsored by the Department of Energy as a showcase for the potential of solar energy.
Sometime today, each of the 800-square-foot buildings will be connected to a “microgrid” set up for the event, to feed excess electricity to the local power grid. In the next ten days, students will have to perform everyday tasks, such as cooking, doing the laundry, and even washing dishes, to test the energy efficiency of their homes.
They are miserable-looking creatures. Featherless, off-balance, skittish to the point of terror. Also, incredibly lucky. These are “rescue” chickens, formerly caged as egg producers in an industrial hatchery somewhere in southern Ontario.
The chickens are being used as therapy animals to treat a small group of troubled children living in a nearby group home. Shepherd thought interacting with the chickens might help teach the boys empathy. “But they were already so gentle with them, right from the start,” she says. “They worry if the chickens are afraid or if its sweater is too tight.”
The shy boy from Malawi, William Kamkwamba, who became a global sensation after he taught himself to build a windmill to power his family’s shack, visited with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show last night.
Watch the charming interview below, about how he transformed his family and village with his electric windmill made out of junk. His new book on Amazon is called, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
A young Chicago medical school gradute is travelling to five countries in 30 days with a big mission — to raise money for a school in Zambia that his parents founded for orphaned and abandoned children.
Greg Krause, 39, bought a JetBlue All You Can Jet Pass, a promotional offer that allowed 30 days of unlimited flights for $599. He began his jet-setting journey on Sept. 8 in Chicago and will end his trip tomorrow in the same city. During that time he will fly more than 55,000 miles and visit 27 cities in five countries to spread the word about the school.
He found a sponsoring partner for his trip in Orphan’s Promise, an extension of the Christian Broadcasting Network that helps orphans and vulnerable children around the world. Watch the inspiring CBN video below.
Many local economists and child welfare advocates were puzzled this week when new census data came out showing a 3 percentage-point drop in Baltimore’s childhood poverty rate from 2007 to 2008 — despite the economic recession.
The truth is Baltimore’s poverty rate for children has been on the steady decline for at least two decades, representing tremendous progress compared to other cities.
(Continue reading editorial by Andrew A. Green in Baltimore Sun)
Photo courtesy of Sun Star
A British man who was injured in a car crash more than 50 years ago has miraculously grown back his skull.
72-year-old Gordon Moore had worn a metal plate to protect his brain after an accident, and when surgeons removed it, they found his skull had regenerated underneath.
Doctors say it is an extremely rare medical occurrence, and it is believed there has been only one other similar case in the world.
(Continue reading on AU Yahoo7 News)
Also, see the photos at the BBC …
In a historic step this week, the nonprofit Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports magazine, unveiled the first television advertisement in its 72-year history: a spot that encourages Congress to overhaul health care this year.
The 30-second advertisement, which features Consumers Union President and Chief Executive Officer James A. Guest, puts the reputation and clout of the iconic consumer empire firmly behind fundamental change to the way Americans are insured and receive their health care.
“We want to emphasize the consumer voice and underscore that when it finally comes down to it, the ultimate constituent is the consumer,” he says.
(Continue reading interview on NPR)
Africa is changing faster than many realize, and there is definite momentum for economic reform and development — similar to trends in both India and China.
The best example of that momentum is in telecommunications, said longtime investment banker Thomas Gibian, speaking to the Seventh Biennial U.S.-Africa Business Summit in Washington on September 30.
There are approximately 390 million cell phone subscribers presently in Africa, with the rate of growth for the entire continent at more than 58 percent per year.
Gibian predicted that the next “game-changer” for Africa will be affordable high-speed Internet coming around both coasts, a change that is also already under way.
(Continue reading at America.gov)
Photo courtesy of Sun Star
Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation will unveil a house today in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood that was largely wiped away by Katrina floodwaters. The house is different from others that were rebuilt after the hurricane: It floats.
The Float House is a new model for flood-safe, affordable and sustainable housing that is designed to float securely with rising water levels. It is the brainchild of Morphosis Architects and its founder, Thom Mayne, winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize.
“We rethought the idea of a house in terms of the potential conditions of the flooding that took place in Katrina,” Mayne tells Melissa Block.
He says the designers gave the building a chassis, made it out of polystyrene foam and covered it with glass-reinforced concrete.
The “Save the Dream” Tour is traveling across the country, stopping in cities nationwide to rewrite contracts for people whose mortgages have become unaffordable. Thousands of homeowners at each workshop get interest rates reduced immediately, often drastically resulting in payments cut almost in half.
All the services are free. The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) is a non-profit, community advocacy and homeownership organization. Their ability to restructure mortgages comes from agreements they have with many of the biggest lenders, like Wells, Chase, Citi, Bank of America and others.
The tour leaves Phoenix tonight heading for Las Vegas next weekend and San Francisco the following week.
Watch the 9-minute video about the group’s formation and success across the country…
The “Save the Dream” Tour is traveling across the country, stopping in cities nationwide to rewrite contracts for people whose mortgages have become unaffordable. Thousands of homeowners at each workshop get interest rates reduced immediately, often drastically resulting in payments cut almost in half.
All the services are free. The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) is a non-profit, community advocacy and homeownership organization. Their ability to restructure mortgages comes from agreements they have with many of the biggest lenders, like Wells, Chase, Citi, Bank of America and others.
The tour leave Phoenix tonight heading for Las Vegas next weekend and San Francisco the following week. (See their full calendar and sign up to attend the event at the NACA website .
Watch Sunday’s News report below from KPHO, or read it here: $1,300 Mortgage Payment Becomes $700.
Watch the 9-minute video about the group’s formation and success across the country at the bottom of the page…
Despite almost hunting these beautiful creatures to extinction, humpback whales may soon be graduating from the endangered species list, thanks to efforts that led to steady population growth.
Researchers last year found the North Pacific population had annually grown 4-7 percent, to an estimated 19,000 animals, from fewer than 1,400 before the 1960’s ban on whaling.
On December 7, leaders from 192 countries will gather at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to determine the fate of our planet. Meanwhile, the International Advertising Association and a coalition of the world’s leading marketing and media agencies have joined together to work pro bono for the United Nations to create public pressure for bold action.
They aim to turn Copenhagen into “Hopenhagen”.
The international campaign, led by a new agency in the Ogilvy public relations advertising universe called Ogilvy Earth, launched September 21 with a petition drive, website and video ad.
Hopenhagen will allow citizens to make their voices heard to world leaders and the conference delegates attending the meeting. The ultimate call to action will be to secure signatures for the “Climate Change” petition in support of the UN, which calls for a climate treaty that is “ambitious, fair and effective in reducing emissions.”
A variety of new technologies are gearing up to grab climate-warming carbon right out of the air.
This is different from trapping carbon dioxide as it comes out of pollution sources like factories and power plants. This so-called air capture technology could be set up anywhere and suck carbon directly from the atmosphere.
Chemicals giant BASF and glass and ceramics firm Corning are working with a team at Columbia University in New York on a company called Global Thermostat to develop an carbon capture device.
(Continue reading the Reuters report)
Related 2008 Story: New Machine Scrubs CO2 From the Air (photo, right, University of Calgary Scientists with carbon scrubber)
A battlefield visit to the Swat Valley of Pakistan’s war against the Taliban left “one indelible image” upon David Ignatius of the Washington Post — “of a teenage boy’s beaming smile of relief.” The traumatized boy was a symbol of what a successful counterinsurgency campaign is all about: He had been in training to become a suicide bomber; now he is being rehabilitated after being reunited with his family.
The Swat campaign shows how the Pakistanis finally got it right after years of mishandling the Taliban’s rise here. “We told our majors and captains, ‘People should fall in love with you,’ ” explains the Pakistani commander.
An Escondido man with a passion for the bright orange-and-black monarch butterfly will play a key role in the restoration of the butterfly’s winter home in Mexico’s Sierra Madre as a result of a bi-national initiative announced last week at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s climate summit.
Bill Toone’s California nonprofit environmental group ECOLIFE is aiming to plant 1 million trees a year in the lofty mountain range where an estimated 750 million monarch butterflies winter.
“We’re trying to repair decades and decades of damage,” Toone said, in a telephone interview. “Trees are leaving illegally at a very unsustainable rate.”
Students from a team at West Philadelphia High School are the only teenagers in a field of about 90 teams from around the world hoping to win the $10 million Automotive X Prize for their innovative hybrid car designs. The prestigious international competition requires entrants to build cars that get at least 100 miles per gallon, can be mass-produced, and are safe and reliable. The urban teens are hot off the heels of other impressive wins for their Hybrid X team.
The field of contestants, many based in Universities, will be reduced by about half on Oct. 19 — a cut the Philly team is confident of surviving. The final winner will be decided in 2010.
(Continue reading at Reuters)
The West Philly team provides a powerful example of how urban young people can impact climate change and create important roles for themselves in the new green economy, especially because the West Philadelphia High School serves one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the city.
The High School’s Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering combines students and teachers with support from business and higher education partners organized by Philadelphia Academies, Inc., to achieve unprecedented success.
The West Philly team has built and raced electric, hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles for the last eleven years. As entrants in the Tour de Sol, they outperformed university teams and production vehicles, winning the competition in 2002, 2005 and 2006. In 2007, they won the 21st Century Automotive Challenge. The team’s participation in the Tour de Sol, in particular, has equipped it to undertake the much larger challenge of the X PRIZE.
Watch the video below about the team, produced by America.gov…
Learn and be Inspired: FuelOurFutureNow.com features activities for grade levels K-12, as well as high-quality videos, virtual labs, and other interactive resources intended for use from the classroom to the living room.
Hundreds of Nigerian rebel fighters gave up their weapons and accepted an amnesty deal on Saturday in the most concerted effort yet to end years of fighting in the oil-producing Niger Delta.
Militant commanders Ateke Tom and Farah Dagogo, both responsible for many years of attacks on the oil industry in the eastern Niger Delta, led gunmen from camps in the mangrove creeks to the oil hub of Port Harcourt to disarm.
File photo Rawandan soldiers
On July 22 1941, before her family had gone into hiding, Anne Frank is captured on film during the next door neighbor’s wedding festivities. She is leaning out of the window of her house in Amsterdam to get a good look at the bride and groom. It is the only time Anne Frank has ever been captured on film.
The couple gave a copy of the film to Anne Frank’s father.
