Nightfall over the Northern end of Lake Havasu.
Skewed and Unskewed visions of the Future of publishing — keep watching for an interesting effect.
In the new Nature there’s a paper on a recent study of attacking cancers with siRNA (small interfering Ribonucleic Acid strand) Nano-bots that looks very promising. More here:
Short sequences of RNA that can effectively turn off specific genes have for the first time been used to treat skin cancer in people.
The technique, called RNA interference (RNAi), gained its inventors a Nobel Prize in 2006, but researchers have struggled to get it to the clinic, partly because of problems in getting the molecules to their target.
Now, Mark Davis from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and his colleagues have found a way to deliver particles containing such sequences to patients with the skin cancer melanoma. When analysing biopsies of the tumours after treatment, they found that the particles had inhibited expression of a key gene, called RRM2, needed for the cancer cells to multiply. Their research is published today in Nature
We are in Lake Havasu right now packing up mom after her cancer treatment, and we will be hitting the road to ferry her back home and to her second round of treatments later this week. (After two full rounds of Taxol treatments it’s time to switch since the cancer she has now has mutated and evolved to a state that’s resistant to Taxol.)
Here’s a picture I took the other night from the deck.
We’ve got a few birds visiting the back yard today – halted in their migratory trek by a freak Spring snow. Here’s a gallery of the woodpecker that decided to hang about today. Click on the thumbs to enlarge.
Peter Sinclair covers several of the recent climate denialist headlines, which almost always get things exactly wrong or backwards.
In a recent controversy a shcool in Mississippi canceled the Prom because the bigots in the school administration did not want to allow a lesbian to attend with a female date or to wear a tuxedo. The cancellation was to prevent being taken to court by the ACLU, but now they are going to court regardless. Way to go ACLU – replace “lesbian” with black, Jew, Indian, or Amish and you can see how this is clearly discrimination and how it deserves it’s day in court. The move by the school admin is discrimination, and is bigotry. Parents in the Itawamba district need to reconsider what kind of education their children are getting in a district where exclusionary bigotry like this is supported by the school board.
From the article:
Jackson, MS– The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit against a Mississippi school board after a decision was made to cancel the high school prom. The Itawamba County School District’s refusal to change their policy on allowing same-sex dates to be admitted to the dance prompted their decision to cancel the prom altogether. The suit, filed in federal court on Thursday, March 11, 2010, contended the school board violated a student’s First Amendment right to free expression, according to information provided by USA Today.
Previous post: Narrow Minded Bigots Cancel Prom and Spite Everyone
The hard religious right’s bigotry for science, other religions, lifestyles, and races is like a frozen decay within the Republican party. Slowly and steadily getting worse until spring comes, the ice melts, and someone hoses the ugly muck off the walkway.
Bigots from the Religious right have canceled a school prom when they were challenged by a lesbian who wanted to bring her girl friend and who wanted to dress in a tuxedo. What kind of educators teach gay exclusion and bigotry?
