Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Nigerian-born scientist wins award for his cancer-seeing glasses

Dr. Achilefu, a professor of radiology and biomedical engineering
Dr. Achilefu, a professor of radiology and biomedical engineering, and his team developed the imaging technology in cancer diagnosis into a wearable night vision-like goggles so surgeons could see the cancer cells while operating.
“They basically have to operate in the dark,” Bloomberg Businessweek quoted Dr. Achilefu, 52, as saying.
“I thought, what if we create something that let’s you see things that aren’t available to the ordinary human eye.”
Dr. Achilefu won a scholarship from the French government to study at the University of Nancy, according to St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a regional newspaper in St. Louis, U.S., and is the 87th person to receive the annual award since it was established in 1931.
Married with two young children, Dr. Achilefu moved to St. Louis after he was hired by Mallinckrodt to start a new research department.
“Our efforts start with two words: ‘What if?’” Dr. Achilefu said during his acceptance speech.
“These words may sound simple, but they embody the belief that each person has the potential to make a difference, if only he or she can take the time to understand the problem.”
According to Bloomberg, the researchers’ technology requires two steps: First, surgeons inject a tiny quantity of an infrared fluorescent marker into the patient’s bloodstream. The peptides contained in the marker enables it to locate cancer cells and buries itself inside.
After the tracer flows through a patient’s body and clears from non-cancerous tissue – which lasts about four hours – the operation would begin. Wearing the goggle, the doctor can inspect tumours under an infra red light that reacts with the dye, causing cancer cells to glow from within.
This month, the goggles have been used on humans for the first time by surgeons at the Washington University School of Medicine.
Four patients suffering from breast cancer and over two dozen patients with melanoma or liver cancer have been operated on using the goggles since they were developed.
“The goggles function fantastically,” says Ryan Fields, a surgical oncologist who is collaborating with Dr. Achilefu to improve on the technology.
“They allow us to see the cells in real time, which is critical. Because the marker has not yet been FDA-approved, doctors are currently using a different, somewhat inferior marker that also reacts with infrared light.”
Julie Margenthaler, a breast cancer surgeon, says tens of thousands of women who had had breast cancer lumpectomies go back for second operations every year because of the inability to see the microscopic extent of the tumours.
“Imagine what it would mean if these glasses eliminated the need for follow-up surgery and the associated pain, inconvenience and anxiety.”
Dr. Achilefu and his team began work in 2012 after they received $2.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Before then, they had been working on a lean budget provided by the Department of Defence’s Breast Cancer Research Program.
After it was developed, the team spent years testing the technology on mice, rats, and rabbits to confirm the efficacy of the goggles.
“Nobody would believe us until we showed that the goggles work,” Dr. Achilefu says.
The Food and Drug Administration are still reviewing the goggles and a related dye Dr. Achilefu and his co-researchers developed, according to Washington University in St. Louis, a St. Louis based journal.
Dr. Achilefu says he intends to keep Washington University as the primary centre for clinical trials to evaluate the technology in patients.
“Making a difference in society should be the goal of everybody,” Dr. Achilefu

SOS Majek Fashek Dying living legend (Wife, son heading to Nigeria to ‘save’ Majek Fashek...)



monica
The deteriorating health of veteran singer, Majek Fashek has been the topic of discussion for a while. Unfortunately, not much has been done about it up till now that would be said to have worked in the favour of the ‘Little Patience’ singer. A few weeks back, a fan ran into the veteran singer at the Fadeyi area of Lagos and he wrote a very touching story about the encounter between which has since gone viral. The story once again bought to the fore the fact that Majek Fashek truly needs help. And urgently too. Leading the way for immediate action to help save the man Nigerians refer fondly as the ‘Rainmaker’ is his days is one of his former back up singers, Monica Omorodion Swaida who launched an online campaign to help rehabilitate the troubled music legend. Monica doesn’t reside in Nigeria, she’s in faraway Massachusetts, U.S.A, close to Majek’s wife, Rita and the children of the Reggae/dance hall act whose prodigious talent has never been in doubt.... 
3m360 reached out to Monica who recalls vividly her first encounter with Majek Faskek, so as to lay the background of what she feels about the singer who has become a shadow of his former self. ‘I was introduced to Majek Fashek when I was a member of Sound on Sound. We were signed up by Aibtonia Studio at Anthony Village. I was still in high school,’ she began. She continued: ‘Majek the best then! I was barely 15 years old. I decided to leave Sound on Sound after we had issues. Majek felt sorry for me about all that happened then. He went to my father and told him that he wanted me to travel with his band. They were going on a huge tour. I was overwhelmed then. It was too good to be true. He turned my sadness about SOS to joy! He was a big brother to me and always took care of me. He promised my dad that he would and he did! Majek never smoked or drank at that time. Such great memories for a teen at that time.’ From what Monica recalls, Majek had 3 major back-up singers at the time – herself, Jolass Court and Ify. However, Monica is the only one among the three who remains determined to lead the campaign to save her former master. ‘I just know that I have to help this brother that brought so much joy to my life at one time. He helped me when my group abandoned me. I was a kid and naive, I knew nothing about contracts. Majek took me as his little sister and helped me. There is no way I can let my brother down. I will do my best for him with the help of his fans and by the grace of God,’ she said. Asked how she intends to go about the project of resuscitation for the man who has had such efforts extended to him in the past but ended up on the streets shortly after, Monica mentions an ongoing fundraising initiative. ‘It is going slowly, people are getting to hear about it and spreading the word. I know this is going to work. Thanks for helping me spread the word. It’s about time. Many people have been reaching out to me, wanting to know how to help. Time will tell. Right now, I am focusing on the people in the diaspora. After, we shall take it home.’ She confirmed that less than $1k has been raised but remains optimistic that the figure will surely rise further with time. ‘So far, less than $1000, but it is going to grow. I am working on it. I have stopped promoting my album for now to focus on promoting this issue. I believe we shall get enough funds to get help for him. I am working. I ask people to continue praying because it’s not easy, but with God, all things are possible.’ Monica is however not working alone, she’s in talks with Majek Fashek’s wife, Rita and the singer’s eldest son, Randy. Together, they intend to return to Nigeria when there are enough funds to step up efforts towards ‘saving’ Majek who brought joy to many Nigerians through his music. ‘The goal is not to bring Majek to the US right now. The goal is to raise money to help him get to Rehab. No money will be given to him directly. I am working with his wife and son here right now. ‘We shall be returning to Nigeria to finish the task. We shall be looking at different facilities in Nigeria. We are also looking at some in South Africa. The wife is working with me and his oldest son, Randy. They have gone through so much trauma because of their father’s case. But they are hopeful. When we have raised the needed funds, the three of us will be returning together to help him. The other sons are 


Wearing skinny jeans could be really bad for your health

skinny jeans
Hipsters take note: Wearing skinny jeans could actually cause bodily harm.
Scientists recently documented a case of a 35-year-old woman whose legs had swelled up so bad — and whose ankles had become so weak as a result — that she couldn't walk. At the hospital, doctors had to cut off her pants to remove them from her distended legs.
Her diagnosis?
Compartment syndrome, a condition that results from increased pressure in a confined body space, like, from wearing skinny jeans.
The study, hilariously titled "Fashion victim: rhabdomyolysis and bilateral peroneal and tibial neuropathies as a result of squatting in 'skinny jeans,'" was published Monday, June 22, in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry.
At the hospital, the woman told doctors she'd spent the day in a pair of extremely tight pants. She'd reportedly been squatting and emptying cupboards while helping a family member who was moving when she began to feel extreme pain and discomfort. A medical exam revealed signs of nerve and muscle damage in her legs.
The injury kept her from being able to walk for days, highlighting the hidden dangers of hipster fashion.
"I would certainly say, be cautious about wearing skinny jeans when doing this sort of activity," study co-author Thomas Kimber, a neurologist at Royal Adelaide Hospital and the University of Adelaide, in Australia, who treated the woman, told Business Insider.
So if your plans include squatting for long periods at a time, maybe consider swapping the skinnies for a pair of equally-fashionable leggings. 

A walk in the park that turned into a hospital trip

The woman told doctors that her jeans began to feel tighter and more uncomfortable as the day went on. By the time she went for a walk in the park that evening, she noticed her feet beginning to feel numb. Soon she had trouble lifting them.
Within a few hours, she collapsed, lying on the ground for several hours before she was able to crawl to the side of the road and hail a taxi to take her to the hospital, Kimber said.
When he and his colleagues examined the woman, they found her lower legs were incrediby swollen, especially below the knees. So swollen, in fact, that hospital staff "had to cut her jeans off her," Kimber said. The woman had severe weakness in her calves and problems moving or feeling her feet, he added.
Medical tests revealed that the woman had abnormally high levels of the enzyme creatine kinase, which can be a sign of muscle damage and can, if left untreated for long periods, harm the kidneys. Luckily, the woman's kidney function was normal. A CT scan revealed she had low muscle mass — worse on the right side — suggesting signs of muscle damage.
Other tests showed that the woman had poor function in the two main nerves in the calf, the common peroneal nerve and the tibial nerve.
Since being treated with fluids and rest, the woman has made a full recovery, said Kimber.

Could this happen to anyone?

This type of lower leg nerve injury is often caused by compression of the nerves near the top of the calf bones, such as from prolonged squatting.
In the woman's case, wearing skinny jeans probably made the problem worse by building up pressure in her legs, the researchers said. 
"If she’d been wearing loose, flowing trousers, the muscles could have swelled outward," Kimber said. But in the skinny jeans, her swollen muscles "had nowhere to go, except down onto the nerves and the blood vessels," he said.
There have been a handful of reports in which wearing tight pants have compressed nerves in the groin and caused numbness in the thigh. But as far as the researchers know, this was the first report that wearing tight jeans caused damage to these particular nerves and muscles. 
There's still no word on the health risks of wearing plaid shirts or thick glasses, however.

Oscar-winning composer James Horner feared dead after his plane crashed and burned

The Oscar-winning composer behind Titanic hit “My Heart Will Go On”, James Horner, is missing, feared dead, after a plane registered in his name was found crashed and burning near Santa Barbara, California.
Only the pilot was aboard the plane when it crashed. It is not confirmed whether Horner, 61 years-old and a keen aviator, was the pilot
Fire officials say they found the wrecked plane about 2 miles west of Highway 33 in Southern California. Officials discovered the tail section of Horner's two-seater S312 Tucano MK1 single engine turoprop plane, according to Mashable.
One of Horner's attorneys Jay Cooper told The Daily Mail that the plane was one of several owned by Horner. He also noted that "if [Horner] wasn't in it, he would have called."
In an interview with KNBC-LA, Cooper said, "We haven't heard from James ... We don't know where he was headed...He flies a lot and is an experienced pilot."
mapcrashsite james hornerGoogle Maps/Screenshot
tucano mk1YouTube/ScreenshotA S312 Tucano MK1 plane.
His agency has not commented on the crash and his lawyer told Mashable no one has heard from Horner since the crash was reported around 9.30am local time. 
Horner is best known for his work on James Cameron's "Titanic," for which he won Oscars for best original dramatic score and best original song for "My Heart Will Go On." Horner also composed the scores for "Braveheart," "Glory," "Avatar," "Legends of the Fall," and "A Beautiful Mind."

10 Scariest Theories Known to Man

#1 False vacuum

This is, in short, a scientific hypothesis that our universe is actually in a false phase state as part of a larger universe, like if it were a temporary thing (think the real universe is a pot of boiling water, and we are just within a bubble forming at the bottom of the pot). Eventually however that false vacuum has to pop, even after billions of years in this false state and we and everything we know in our visible universe will disappear in an instant with no warning whatsoever and there is nothing you can do about it.


#2 The Great Filter

It’s a theory about why the universe seems so filled with potential for life and yet we haven’t found it. It states that somewhere between pre-life and an advanced civilization that is capable of colonizing the stars, there’s a Great Filter that stops them and ends life. This means humans fit into one of these three scenarios:

-We’re rare, meaning we’ve already passed the Great Filter, unlike other civilizations on other planets.
-We’re the first, meaning conditions in the universe are only now life friendly and we’re among many on our way to the capability of colonization.
-We haven’t hit the Filter yet, meaning we are f*cked. If this one is true, it means finding life or proof of life on Mars or Europa would be awful news because it would almost certainly mean the Filter is still ahead of us instead of behind us.

#3 Brain in a vat

The brain in a vat is an element used in a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of our ideas of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, and meaning. It assumes the following;
-The brain is the origin of all consciousness.
-The brain operates on electrical impulses.
-External stimuli can affect the way the brain operates.
-Any external stimuli to the brain can be simulated to a degree that the brain cannot distinguish these simulated stimuli from natural stimuli.
The point is that you could be a brain in a jar, being fed false impulses for your entire life by an external source, or you (still a brain in a jar) could be hallucinating your entire life from lack of stimuli.

#4 Higher Dimensional Beings

Imagine if there was a 2D person. If you stare at them a certain way, they can’t see you. All you have to do is look from a top view and they won’t know you are there, and they would never know. Living their life as 2D, they would never be able to comprehend how something could be looking down on them.

Now imagine a 4D person. They could be looking at you from a 4 dimensional angle, an angle that you will never understand. They could be right beside you, but you wouldn’t know, and you would never know. Just as we could interact with the 2D person, the 4D person could interact with us. But as long as they don’t want us to, we could never interact with them or not even know of them.

#5 Fermi Paradox

Let’s say we have an ant hill in the middle of the forest. And right next to the ant hill, we are building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is “Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would the ants be able to understand the technology and the intentions of the beings building the highway next to them?
So it’s not that we can’t pick up the signals from Planet X using our technology, it’s that we can’t even comprehend what the beings from Planet X are or what they’re trying to do. It’s so beyond us that even if they really wanted to enlighten us, it would be like trying to teach ants about the internet.
When Pizarro made his way into Peru, did he stop for a while at an anthill to try to communicate? Was he magnanimous, trying to help the ants in the anthill? Did he become hostile and slow his original mission down in order to smash the anthill apart? Or was the anthill of complete and utter and eternal irrelevance to Pizarro? That might be our situation here.

#6 Roko’s Basilisk

Roko’s basilisk is a proposition that says an all-powerful artificial intelligence from the future may retroactively punish those who did not assist in bringing about its existence. It resembles a futurist version of Pascal’s wager; an argument suggesting that people should take into account particular singularitarian ideas, or even donate money, by weighing up the prospect of punishment versus reward. Furthermore, the proposition says that merely knowing about it incurs the risk of punishment (Now you know about it. You know who to thank while you will be tortured). It is also mixed with an ontological argument, to suggest this is even a reasonable threat.

#7 Terror Management Theory

Everything that humanity has ever accomplished beyond basic survival has been motivated by a fundamental and irreducible fear of non-existence. Our conception of self and self-esteem generally is simply a buffer against the anxiety that comes with recognizing that we will cease to be. Culture is just a massive shared delusion to mitigate our fear of the unknown and ultimately of death. Thus we want to imagine certain works of art as timeless or to place value in family lines and offspring, to project ourselves beyond death. We take comfort in our value systems and the structures that arise from them, whether that’s through conceptions of biological kinship, national/ political identity, religious faith, etc. This includes belief in the inherent value of ensuring the future of humanity through scientific progress. Indeed much of modern western life is devoted to the avoidance of death, the various euphemisms and stock phrases in mourning, the entire funeral home industry that serves to remove death from the ordinary course of life, from the home and onto the embalming table or into the crematorium. We build up the artifice to avoid the brutal reality. In short, everything that we’ve ever done and will ever do is motivated by nothing more than our existential terror in confronting death.

#8 Quantum Suicide/Quantum Immortality

A man sits down before a gun, which is pointed at his head. This is no ordinary gun; i­t’s rigged to a machine that measures the spin of a quantum particle. Each time the trigger is pulled, the spin of the quantum particle — or quark — is measured. Depending on the measurement, the gun will either fire, or it won’t. If the quantum particle is measured as spinning in a clockwise motion, the gun will fire. If the quark is spinning counterclockwise, the gun won’t go off. There’ll only be a click.
Nervously, the man takes a breath and pulls the trigger. The gun clicks. He pulls the trigger again. Click. And again: click. The man will continue to pull the trigger again and again with the same result: The gun won’t fire. Although it’s functioning properly and loaded with bullets, no matter how many times he pulls the trigger, the gun will never fire. He’ll continue this process for eternity, becoming immortal.
Go back in time to the beginning of the experiment. The man pulls the trigger for the very first time, and the quark is now measured as spinning clockwise. The gun fires. The man is dead.
But, wait. The man already pulled the trigger the first time — and an infinite amount of times following that — and we already know the gun didn’t fire. How can the man be dead? The man is unaware, but he’s both alive and dead. Each time he pulls the trigger, the universe is split in two. It will continue to split, again and again, each time the trigger is pulled. This thought experiment is called quantum suicide.

#9 Transcension Hypothesis

The hypothesis proposes that once civilizations saturate their local region of space with their intelligence, reach microscopic technological singularity, create a black hole and leave our visible, macroscopic universe in order to continue exponential growth of complexity and intelligence, and disappear from this universe, thus explaining the Fermi Paradox. Developments in astrobiology make this a testable hypothesis. It proposes space, time, energy and matter compression, as a driver of accelerating change, which must lead cosmic intelligence to a future of highly-miniaturized, accelerated, and local “transcension” to extra-universal domains, rather than to space-faring expansion within our existing universe.

#10 Sixth Mass Extinction

We are currently living through what many biologists consider to be the sixth mass extinction that the world has ever seen. This is going to be an interesting puzzle for the species that comes after us. It wasn’t until around the year 1800 that humanity reached a population of 1 billion after thousands and thousands of years. In the 215 years since then, the world population has increased to ~7.2 Billion. That exponential growth has very large and long lasting negative effects on our planet, and will continue to do so until we reach carrying capacity or die off.


Princess Diana's Versace Gown Up for Auction Starting at $30,000

A Princess Diana classic is going up for auction and the hefty price tag, well, shouldn't really surprise you.
Diana wore the silk beaded Versace confection for a photo shoot with famed photographer Patrick Demarchelier in 1991, although the dress only first appeared in print six years later in November 1997, when Harper's Bazaar ran the photo for a cover feature commemorating her life. (Diana had died in a car accident in Paris just three months before.)
The dress, which spent a cool 18 years in the Versace archives, is being unearthed for the Julien's Auctions' Hollywood Legends sale, with a starting bid of $30,000 (the dress is, however, expected to rake in a good deal more than that).
As recently as December five gowns formerly owned by Princess Diana fetched a combined $500,000 when they went under the hammer at Julien's Auction House


Sean "Diddy" Combs Arrested for Assault at UCLA With Kettlebell





Rap mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs was arrested Monday at UCLA after allegedly assaulting someone affiliated with the football team with a kettlebell, according to school officials.
Combs' son Justin Combs is a redshirt junior defensive back on the UCLA football team, which has been practicing on campus, according to The Associated Press. He has played only several games in three years with the team.
Combs, 45, was arrested at the Acosta Athletic Training Complex for assault with a deadly weapon just after 12:30 p.m. (3:30 p.m. ET), according a statement from the school. The deadly weapon was a kettlebell, which athletes use in weight training.
No one was seriously injured.
Combs remains at the UCLA jail, but is expected to be transferred to a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department jail facility later, according to the statement. 
The UCLA police department confirmed to NBC Los Angeles that Combs has been arrested.
Football coach Jim Mora issued a written statement, saying, "I’m thankful that our staff showed the level of professionalism that they did in handling this situation. This is an unfortunate incident for all parties involved. While UCPD continues to review this matter, we will let the legal process run its course and refrain from further comment at this time."
Combs' publicist, Nathalie Moar, declined to comment "until all of the facts are sorted out."

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