Biocon to start selling breast cancer drug in India in February

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Biocon Ltd said its generic version of Roche's Herceptin breast cancer treatment would be available to patients in India from the first week of February.

Bangalore-based Biocon jointly developed biosimilar trastuzumab, which received the Indian drug regulator's marketing approval in November, with U.S.-based Mylan Inc.

About 150,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer every year in India, of which 25 percent are eligible for treatment with trastuzumab, Biocon said.

Roche decided not to pursue a patent application for its breast cancer drug Herceptin in India, paving the way for generic drugmakers to produce cheaper copies, known as biosimilars because they are not identical to the original drug.

Global sales for Herceptin were valued at about $6.4 billion in 2012, including about $21 million in India, Biocon said.

(Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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Smooth sailing: Rough surfaces that can reduce drag

Jan. 17, 2014 — From the sleek hulls of racing yachts to Michael Phelps' shaved legs, most objects that move through the water quickly are also smooth. But researchers from UCLA have found that bumpiness can sometimes be better.

"A properly designed rough surface, contrary to our intuition, can reduce skin-friction drag," said John Kim, a professor in the mechanical and aerospace engineering department at UCLA. Kim and his colleagues modeled the fluid flow between two surfaces covered with tiny ridges. They found that even in turbulent conditions the rough surface reduced the drag created by the friction of flowing water. The researchers report their findings in the journal Physics of Fluids.

The idea of using a rough surface for reduced drag had been explored before, but resulted in limited success. More recently scientists have begun experimenting with rough surfaces that are also extremely difficult to wet, a property called superhydrophobicity. In theory this means that the surfaces can trap air bubbles, creating a hydrodynamic cushion, but in practice they often lose their air cushions in chaotic flows.

The ULCA team chose to model a superhydrophobic surface design that another group of researchers at UCLA had already observed could keep air pockets entrapped, even in turbulent conditions. The surface was covered with small ridges aligned in the direction of flow.

The researchers modeled both laminar and turbulent flows, and unexpectedly found that the drag-reduction was larger in turbulent conditions. The irregular fluctuations and swirling vortices in turbulent flows on smooth surfaces generally increase drag, Kim explained. However, the air cushion created by the superhydrophobic ridges altered the turbulent patterns near the surface, reducing their effect, he said.

The team expects insights gleaned from their numerical simulations to help further refine the design of rough, drag-reducing surfaces. Further down the line, such surfaces might cover the undersides of cargo vessels and passenger ships. "It could lead to significant energy savings and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions," Kim said.

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Two students wounded in Philadelphia high school shooting

By Daniel Kelley

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Two students were shot and wounded on Friday afternoon at a charter high school in northern Philadelphia, police said, in the latest school shooting to fuel a national debate over gun control laws.

A teenaged girl and a boy were shot in their arms at the Delaware Valley Charter High School at about 3:30 p.m. when a young male pulled a handgun in a gymnasium with about seven students in it, officials and media reports said.

Police said the young man who fired the gun was part of the group, CNN reported. The shooting may have been an accident, police said.

Investigators have not said who fired the shots. A boy was taken into custody, but later cleared, said Philadelphia Police Lieutenant John Stanford.

"Initially, he was thought to be the shooter, but investigators were able to determine the kid was not a shooter," Stanford said. "He was there but I don't believe he was involved."

Another boy turned himself in and was being interviewed by police late Friday night, Stanford said. A third boy was also supposed to turn himself in, but had not yet done so.

Local television station 6ABC reported the girl and boy who were shot were both 15 and in stable condition.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said the shooting was caught on video.

Earlier, police used Twitter to urge the suspected shooter to surrender.

"SHOOTER - Turn yourself in. Get it over with now," they said.

School shootings such as the one at Sandy Hook elementary school in December 2012 that left 26 people dead have intensified a national debate over whether gun control regulations need to be stricter to curb gun violence.

In another shooting incident on Friday, a 16-year-old student was shot in the arm, apparently by a student with whom he had a dispute, as he walked away from Albany High School, about 165 miles south of Atlanta, WALB-TV reported.

In October, a 12-year-old boy killed a teacher and wounded two students at his school in Sparks, Nevada, before killing himself. Another 12-year-old boy in New Mexico is accused of seriously wounding two students with a shotgun on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Daniel Kelley; Additional reporting by Marina Lopes, Lisa Maria Garza, and Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst, Gunna Dickson, Sharon Bernstein, Lisa Shumaker and Sonya Hepinstall)

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Searching for magic bullet against cancer caused by asbestos: One step closer?

Jan. 17, 2014 — Mesothelioma is a very aggressive cancer associated with asbestos exposure, which is usually diagnosed in an advanced stage. So far no therapeutic strategy has proven effective against this deadly cancer and the prognosis remains very poor with only few exceptions.

In December, the research team of Antonio Giordano, a pathologist, Director and Founder of the Sbarro Health Research Organization in Philadelphia, PA, and Professor of Pathology and Oncology at the University of Siena, Italy, published two separate studies aiming to address the urgent need to identify possible new methods for mesothelioma treatment.

In the first study, published in the scientific journal Cell Cycle, Giordano's researchers tested on mesothelioma cells the effect of two drugs designed to reactivate the p53 protein, one of the most important 'tumor suppressors', which is turned off in most human cancers. "In mesothelioma, although p53 is rarely mutated, it is inactivated by alterations in its pathway," says Francesca Pentimalli of the National Cancer Institute of Naples, Italy, lead author of the study. Both of the drugs used in the study target p53, but with different mechanisms of action. One in particular, called RITA, proved to be very toxic. Specifically, RITA caused mesothelioma cells, and not 'healthy' cells, to undergo apoptosis -- a type of programmed cell death that occurs through the activation of a specific 'cascade' of events.

"The ability of RITA to induce apoptosis is remarkable considering that mesothelioma is very refractory to this process. In fact the most aggressive and rare variant, sarcomatoid mesothelioma, did not respond to the treatment probably because of its intrinsically high levels of molecules acting as inhibitors of this process" says Alfredo Budillon, Head of the Experimental Pharmacology Unit of the National Cancer Institute of Naples and coauthor of the study. "It remains to be seen whether the combination of RITA with other activators of apoptosis can achieve efficacy also against the more aggressive cases."

Furthermore, challenging mesothelioma cells with RITA worked in synergy with the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, which is the mainstay of treatment for this disease, suggesting that its use in a clinical setting could possibly help to reduce the required doses and the side effects of chemotherapy, thereby improving patients' quality of life.

The second study, published online in Cancer Biology and Therapy and led by Paola Indovina of the University of Siena and the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine, Temple University in Philadelphia, was designed along the same lines as the first study. In the second study, the authors tested, for the first time in mesothelioma, a new drug called MK-1775 in combination with cisplatin. MK-1775 is a selective inhibitor of WEE1, a protein that is crucial in activating a 'checkpoint' for the repair of damaged DNA before the cell starts its division process. The rationale for this strategy is based on the fact that many cancer cells, especially those with non-functional p53, rely on WEE1 to stall cell division and allow cells to repair the damage induced by genotoxic agents, such as many chemotherapeutic drugs, including cisplatin. WEE1 inhibition limits the time available for repair and, therefore, sensitizes cancer cells to DNA-damaging agents. Indeed, inhibiting WEE1 with MK-1775 selectively sensitized mesothelioma cells to the genotoxic action of cisplatin by preventing checkpoint activation and forcing the cells to divide despite the damage, thus triggering apoptosis.

"Overall our studies are aimed at identifying promising new molecular therapies against mesothelioma that hold the potential for clinical use in the near future. MK-1775, for example, is already being utilized in clinical trials for other types of tumors in the United States," Giordano concludes.

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Is Europe equipped with enough medical oncologists? Horizon still unknown

Jan. 17, 2014 — The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has welcomed a recent survey that shows the number of medical oncologists in Western Europe appears to be keeping pace with the rising toll of cancer.

But the society has also warned that a worrying lack of information about the situation in Eastern Europe must be urgently addressed.

Published in the Annals of Oncology this week, the survey provides the first detailed information on the current number of medical oncologists in 12 European Union countries, mostly in Western Europe, and their predicted availability by 2020.

Around the world countries are struggling to ensure their medical oncology systems can deal with the increase in cancer cases, says ESMO Press Officer Solange Peters, a lung cancer expert from the university of Lausanne, Switzerland. Until now, nobody could say what the situation was in Europe.

The survey, led by Evandro de Azambuja from Jules Bordet Institute, Brussels, shows that Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the UK will probably have enough medical oncologists over the next eight years since data collection to meet the needs of an increasing cancer patient population.

The study provides the current ratio of cancer cases to medical oncologists for each country, and shows the annual increase in the total number of medical oncologists.

However, despite repeated attempts, researchers were not able to gather adequate information from the 15 other EU Member States, making it impossible to paint a full picture of the situation in Europe.

"ESMO is willing to help countries work together to make this kind of data available for all of Europe," Peters says. "We need a complete picture and the current one is insufficient to draw firm conclusions."

"It is vital that we collect this data and we continuously monitor it, to optimise the medical oncology system in every European country," says the ESMO spokesperson.

"In the long term, we hope that it might be possible to build a Europe-wide system that will ensure we have a full picture of the needs across Europe, also beyond 2020, to guarantee optimal care to cancer patients" she says.

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LGBT tolerance growing in Jamaica, push to repeal of anti-gay law

By Aileen Torres-Bennett

KINGSTON (Reuters) - Prince Jones says he will never go back to Jamaica, not even to visit.

The 25-year-old, who is gay and uses a pseudonym to protect himself and his family, grew up in Kingston and recalls how he was repeatedly harassed over his sexuality before moving to the United States in 2012.

The plight of gays in Jamaica has cast an ugly spotlight on the Caribbean island, famous for its beaches, speedy athletes and laid-back culture.

When Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller visited New York to attend the 68th United Nations General Assembly meeting in September, she was greeted by protesters who chanted: "Shame on you, Portia. Gay rights, human rights."

Such protesting is uncommon in Jamaica, where homophobia is a cultural norm. Yet despite the stigma attached to homosexuality, the push for equal rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community is gaining momentum.

The government says it plans to test the waters by conducting a non-binding "conscience vote" in parliament on ending the notorious Jamaican Offenses Against the Person Act, which makes anal sex a crime, regardless of gender or consent, and prohibits "acts of gross indecency" between men, in public or in private.

The Minister of Justice, Mark Golding, told Reuters that a vote in parliament would take place before the end of the legislative year in March, opening the door for the law to be reviewed, possibly later in 2014.

The prime minister, although she was the target of gay rights protesters in New York, reflected this increasing tolerance during her election campaign in 2011, when she advocated repeal of the law.

"No leader at that level had ever made that kind of statement," said Dane Lewis, the executive director of the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays (J-FLAG). "It would normally have been political suicide, but their party won."

Time and effort are needed to prepare for the vote, according to J-FLAG. If it were held now, the group fears the law would likely stand because there would not be enough time for MPs to get feedback from their constituents on the issue.

Barely a third of MPs could be counted on to support repeal, Lewis said.

Even so, in the last few years the LGBT community has been making public inroads, according to Lewis. "There have been shifts in terms of increasing pockets of tolerance," he said.

Simpson Miller's declaration to put the Offenses Against the Person law on the national agenda is a far cry from former Prime Minister Bruce Golding's stance. In 2008, Golding openly stated that he would never appoint a gay cabinet minister.

Analysts say Simpson Miller's decision to seek a conscience vote could be politically well-timed as pressure from the gay community has been building on the island, which is sensitive to its international image in the tourism industry.

Legally, there are no rights in Jamaica pertaining specifically to the LGBT community. Public tolerance is growing, as evidenced by the willingness of the press in the last few years to cover LGBT issues, but open expression of homosexuality is still frowned upon.

At worst, the intolerance can lead to murder. In July, a cross-dressing male teenager from Montego Bay was stabbed to death after being accosted while dancing at a party dressed as a woman.

As a teenager, Jones shunned the island's macho culture, wearing elegant clothes and speaking with more refined language than the patois of his peers.

He didn't have to say he was gay. People put two and two together, and branded him. "Perception is all it takes," he said.

Throughout high school, being harassed "was my daily prescription," he told Reuters. He came to be known in his community as a "batty man," common slang in Jamaica for homosexuals derived from the male posterior.

In 2011 he was waiting at the bus stop when a group of men approached him, spouting slurs. One wielded a knife and another held a metal rod. "My heart just sank," said Jones, before he hopped on a passing bus to make a getaway.

Jones said he also lost friends because of his homosexuality and has experienced discrimination in his own family.

He moved to the United States in November 2012 and now has a job raising awareness for LGBT asylum-seekers.

He has gay relatives and close friends in Jamaica who have become victims of violence. "My cousin was murdered on suspicion that he was gay. A friend of mine was stabbed to death," he said.

The Offenses Against the Person law is rarely applied by prosecutors, in large part because it requires someone witnessing the sexual act and reporting it. But its continued presence on the books is more than symbolic, analysts say, pointing to police harassment of gays.

The latest report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights points a finger at civilians and the police for committing violence against LGBTs. The report states that LGBTs experience "police harassment, arbitrary detention, mob attacks, stabbings, and harassment ... by hospital and prison staff and targeted shooting of homosexuals."

In the Caribbean, Jamaica is not unique in its homophobia. The former British colonies in the region all have a history of anti-sodomy laws from the colonial era, according to the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.

Conservative groups, such as the Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society and the Lawyers Christian Fellowship, held a conference last December in Kingston where they advocated keeping the Offenses Against the Person law. They also took out a full page ad in one of the main daily newspapers, calling efforts to repeal the law an "international human rights scandal."

The Supreme Court is set to weigh in on the Offenses Against the Person law with a trial scheduled to start in November. Javed Jaghai Aajri, who used to work for J-FLAG, wants the Court to rule on whether the law violates the right to privacy under Jamaica's Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.

Jagai Aajri declined to be interviewed for this story.

Jamaica's Ministry of Justice established and filled a human rights officer post within the ministry last year and is looking to establish a Social Justice Commission to promote human rights. The ministry is also in talks with the United Nations Development Program for assistance in formulating the case for reform of the law.

These government-led efforts represent progress for the LGBT community, but "legislation is just one piece," said Lewis. "That's not a magic bullet. There has to be community-level work. The bigger issue is increasing the understanding of Jamaicans. People still think it's a choice."

(Editing by David Adams and Ken Wills)

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Genomic study identifies subgroups of breast cancer with varying sensitivities to treatment

Jan. 17, 2014 — Research led by the Translational Genomics Group at Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) in Barcelona has not only shown that HER2+ breast cancer can be classified into four different subtypes, but also unmasked a subtype showing both a greater response to and increased benefit from chemotherapy and anti-HER2 therapy. Such newly, refined classification of different tumor subtypes will ultimately facilitate more effective treatment tailored to a specific tumor as well as advance targeted therapy against HER2+ breast cancer.

The study led by Aleix Prat, Principal Investigator of VHIO’s Translational Genomics Group, in collaboration with Jose Baselga, Physician-in-Chief of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York (USA), has today been published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. The research centers on the fact that not all HER2+ tumors respond in the same way to anti-HER2 targeted therapy. Although tumors disappear in many patients, others show no response or become resistant to anti-HER2 therapy in combination with chemotherapy. This observation led to this present retrospective study of patients treated in the phase III NOAH clinical trial, with the objective of establishing the genomic differences of both the treatment-sensitive and the treatment-resistant tumors.

Determining the molecular subtype of any breast cancer is fundamental. Until recently, breast cancer had been classified into three groups according to the presence or absence of hormone receptors and the HER2 receptor: hormone-sensitive, HER2+ and triple-negative (when not included in either of these first two groups). Over recent years however, largely thanks to the stunning advancements in genomic technologies, this classification has been finely-tuned and subsequently shown that there are at least four major breast cancer subtypes (Luminal A, Luminal B, HER2-enriched and Basal-Like). Last year, this very group of researchers refined the classification of hormone-sensitive tumors by genomics.

In this study, the group focuses on HER2+ disease. HER2+ breast cancer affects 20% of women with breast cancer and is characterized by the presence of a large number of HER2 receptors and increased proliferative activity of the respective tumor cells -- all of which translates in a highly aggressive tumor and the consequent increased risk of relapse and cancer-related death. The development of HER2-targeted therapies, such as Trastuzumab or Lapatinib, has greatly improved the prospects and treatment options for patients suffering from this particular type of cancer. However, HER2+ breast cancer is still considered as a single subgroup and receives a similar kind of treatment overall, despite the fact that not all HER2+ breast cancer patients respond equally to such therapy.

This new study evaluated the response of the different molecular subtypes upon treatment with anti-HER2 therapy. The study reveals that the four genomic subtypes in breast cancer (Luminal A, Luminal B, HER2-enriched and Basal-like) are also found in HER2+ breast cancer, and they affect treatment response. "Specifically, we have found that HER2+ tumors in the HER2-enriched subtype have a highly activated HER2 signaling pathway, thereby making them especially sensitive to anti-HER2 targeted therapies such as Trastuzumab. Therefore, among the four defined subtypes, HER2-enriched benefits most from specific anti-HER2 therapy" explains Aleix Prat.

Establishing the genomic and clinical particularities between each of the subtypes may firstly drive more individually tailored treatment strategies, leading in turn to more robust treatment for those who stand to benefit from it. Second, more effectively targeted treatments may also be facilitated for those patients who may benefit from this strategy and thus ultimately receive a more personalized, precise therapy, resulting in better and longer survival. The PAMELA study led by Prat through the support of a Susan G. Komen Foundation grant, involving various Spanish sites coordinated by the SOLTI cooperative research group, will aim to address the latter. The PAMELA study's primary objective is to identify those patients with HER2-positive tumors who can be cured with anti-HER2 biological therapies without the need for chemotherapy.

Cancer genomics: research translated to the clinic

"There is no doubt that gene expression in breast cancer provides us with essential biological information to better determine the diagnosis, treatment, relapse risk and possibilities of survival" says Aleix Prat, "From this moment on, treatment strategies should be based on prior molecular characterization of the tumor, and we must therefore make every effort to ensure accuracy. Genomic tests provide such accuracy and are increasingly being used in daily practice. There really is no other option if we are to continue to combat cancer," he concludes.

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Clever chemistry improves new class of antibiotics

Jan. 17, 2014 — As concerns about bacterial resistance to antibiotics grow, researchers are racing to find new kinds of drugs to replace ones that are no longer effective. One promising new class of molecules called acyldepsipeptides -- ADEPs -- kills bacteria in a way that no marketed antibacterial drug does -- by altering the pathway through which cells rid themselves of harmful proteins.

Now, researchers from Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have shown that giving the ADEPs more backbone can dramatically increase their biological potency. By modifying the structure of the ADEPs in ways that make them more rigid, the team prepared new ADEP analogs that are up to 1,200 times more potent than the naturally occurring molecule.

A paper describing the research was released on-line by the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

"The work is significant because we have outlined and validated a strategy for the enhancing the potency of this promising class of antibacterial drug leads," said Jason Sello, professor of chemistry at Brown and the paper's senior author. "The molecules that we have synthesized are among the most potent antibacterial agents ever reported in the literature."

"The molecules that we have synthesized are among the most potent antibacterial agents ever reported in the literature."ADEPs kill bacteria by a mechanism by that is distinct from all clinically available anti-bacterial drugs. They work by binding to a protein in bacterial cells that acts as a "cellular garbage disposal," as Sello describes it. This barrel-shaped protein, called ClpP, breaks down proteins that are misfolded or damaged and could be harmful to the cell. However, when ClpP is bound by an ADEP, it's no longer so selective about the proteins it degrades In essence, the binding by ADEP causes the garbage disposal to run amok and devour healthy proteins throughout the cell. For bacteria, a runaway ClpP is deadly.

ADEPs have been shown to kill bacteria that cause staph infections, some kinds of pneumonia, tuberculosis, and other types of infection in the lab. The molecules have also been reported to cure bacterial infections in mice and rats.

ADEPs were first discovered as naturally occurring compounds. Certain bacteria produce them for chemical defense. But for the last few years, scientists including Sello's group have been making synthetic ADEP analogs, in the hope of identifying compounds with potential as new drugs.

One approach the researchers thought might work involves making the ADEP molecule more rigid. Compared to the ClpP molecule to which it binds, the ADEP molecule is a bit "floppy," Sello said. "We often use the expression 'lock and key' to describe how a small molecule binds to a protein. One can imagine that it is easier to fit a rigid key into a lock rather than a floppy key. In the same sense, rigid molecules often bind to their protein targets more tightly."

Sello and his team synthesized several new ADEP molecules. They swapped out certain amino acids in the naturally occurring molecule with ones they thought might increase the molecule's rigidity. To find out if the new molecules were indeed more rigid, the team performed experiments that tested the strength of hydrogen bonds within the molecule. Stronger hydrogen bonds would indicate a more rigid molecule.

The researchers placed ADEP molecules in a solution rich in deuterium, a hydrogen atom that has an extra neutron. Over time, the deuterium atoms in the solution will swap places with the hydrogen atoms in the ADEP molecules. The deuterium swap happens more slowly, however, when hydrogen atoms are involved with strong bonds. So if the modified ADEPs exchanged deuterium more slowly, it would be an indication of strong bonds and a more rigid molecule.

The experiments showed that the modified ADEPs exchanged deuterium as much as 380 times more slowly than the natural molecule, a clear indication that the molecules were more rigid.

"It was exciting to see how rather simple modifications to the ADEP structure could affect their rigidity in such a profound manner," said Daniel Carney, a graduate student in Sello's group. "More importantly, the results were in line with our ADEP design principle. It is always rewarding when a sophisticated chemical theory can be applied and validated by laboratory experiments."

To follow up on the prediction that the rigid ADEPs would bind ClpP more tightly, Robert Sauer and Karl Schmitz at MIT measured the capacity of the ADEP analogs and the parent compound to produce the "runaway garbage disposal" phenomenon in solutions containing the ClpP protein. The experiments showed that the modified ADEPs produced the effect at much lower concentrations, indicating a higher binding efficiency. The results implied that the modified molecules were about seven times better than the standard ones at binding to ClpP.

The final step was testing whether the rigid ADEPs were better at killing bacteria in a test tube. Those tests showed that, compared to published reports for standard ADEPs, the modified compounds were much more potent against three different dangerous bacteria -- 32 times more potent against S. aureus, 600 times more potent against E. faecalis, and 1,200 times more potent against S. pneumoniae.

Sello was a bit surprised by the dramatic increase in ADEP potency compared to the much more modest improvement in ClpP binding.

"We found that the most potent ADEP analog binds ClpP seven-fold better than the parent compound, yet it has 1,200-fold better antibacterial activity," Sello said. "We believe that some of the increase in potency may stem from the fact that the rigidified ADEPs bind ClpP more tightly and have an enhanced capacity to cross the cell membrane. The improved cell permeability of the ADEP analogs is consistent with reports in the literature that molecules with strong intramolecular hydrogen bonds are particularly good at penetrating cells."

Sello and his team are encouraged by their results and are working to develop the ADEPs into next-generation antibacterial drugs. The next step -- a study to test how well the compounds work in mice -- is already underway.

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Honduras approves shooting down suspected drug planes

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran lawmakers on Friday approved legislation allowing the government to shoot down planes suspected of trafficking illegal drugs through the poor nation that has been hit by deepening gang violence.

The legislation authorizes progressive use of force to make unidentified aircraft land. Only the country's defense minister can order that a plane be shot down, the legislation said.

Most of the cocaine destined for the United States moves though Honduras, where Mexican drug gangs have moved in as they take increasing control over the drug trade from Colombian traffickers.

The Honduran military shot down two small planes in 2012 that were suspected of carrying drugs. The incident pushed the United States to suspend anti-drug radar support to Honduran authorities for about three months.

Conservative Juan Hernandez was elected president last November after promising a tough militarized response to drug gang violence that has driven Honduras' murder rate to the world's highest.

Honduras has said it will buy three radar systems from Israel that it can use to track planes suspected of carrying illegal drugs.

(Reporting by Gustavo Palencia; Editing by Ken Wills)

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Man in Oklahoma church bomb plot not guilty by reason of insanity

(Reuters) - A 25-year-old man accused of plotting to bomb numerous churches in Miami, Oklahoma, with an arsenal of Molotov cocktails was found not guilty by reason of insanity on Friday.

Gregory Weiler II was arrested in October 2012 after a maintenance worker found a discarded duffel bag full of the improvised firebombs at the Miami hotel where Weiler was staying, and the items were traced back to him, according to court records.

Weiler, who according to local media reports was from Elk Grove Village, Illinois, was charged in federal court with possession of an unregistered destructive device and jailed before facing trial.

U.S. District Judge Claire Eagan at a hearing in Tulsa, Oklahoma, found Weiler not guilty by reason of insanity, court records showed.

Eagan ordered Weiler committed to a facility until he is eligible for release, when it is found that he does not pose a threat to others, the records said. Eagan also ordered Weiler to undergo a psychiatric examination.

Federal prosecutors and Weiler, through his attorney, jointly filed court papers on Friday stating that Weiler should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

After his arrest, Weiler admitted to making the Molotov cocktails found in a dumpster and more of the incendiary devices that were in his hotel room, court papers said.

"Weiler also stated he planned to burn all of the churches in Miami, Oklahoma, using the Molotov cocktails he had manufactured," stated the joint stipulation made by prosecutors and Weiler through his attorney.

An evaluation at a medical facility in North Carolina, run by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, found that Weiler experienced "severe mental illness at the time of the alleged offenses, as a result of which he was unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions," the court papers state.

The type of mental illness was not specified.

Weiler, who the judge on Friday ordered transferred back to a medical facility, is scheduled to return to court on February 21 where findings of a mental health report will be presented.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; editing by Gunna Dickson)

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'Molecular scaffolding' found that maintains skin structure, organization

Jan. 16, 2014 — The human body is daily exposed to external assaults such as bacteria, ultraviolet light or chemical agents. Skin, the largest organ of the body, is the first line of defense against these agents. Skin performs this function thanks to the close connections established between its cells (e.g. adherens junctions). The loss of cell adhesion between these cells is related to inflammatory diseases and cancer, hence the special interest in this area of research over the past years.

A study by the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), featured on the cover of the Journal of Cell Biology, shows how interactions between skin stem cells -- the cells responsible for the constant renewal of skin -- maintain the architecture of this organ. "We knew that these junctions were important in skin stem cells but the cellular components involved in their structure and function were not yet understood," says Mirna Perez-Moreno, head of the Epithelial Cellular Biology Group that led the study.

Using skin cells derived from mice, researchers have discovered that one of the key elements in the formation and stabilisation of these junctions are microtubules, tubular structures that are part of all cells and that serve as pillars to maintain their form and function.

"We have seen for the first time that skin stem-cell microtubules connect with cell-cell junctions to form velcro-like structures that hold the cells together," says Marta Shahbazi, a researcher on Perez-Moreno's team and the first author of the study.

The connection between these two cellular components -- microtubules and cell-cell junctions -- occurs via the interaction between the CLASP2 and p120 catenin proteins, linked to microtubules and cell junctions respectively.

"We found that the abscence of CLASP2 or p120 catenin in epidermal stem cells caused a loss of their adhesion, and therefore the structure of these cells," says Shahbazi.

"Our results will open up new paths for exploring how these proteins regulate skin physiology," says Perez-Moreno, adding that this knowledge will be "important for the possible development of future regenerative or anti cancer therapies."

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncologicas (CNIO), via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. M. N. Shahbazi, D. Megias, C. Epifano, A. Akhmanova, G. G. Gundersen, E. Fuchs, M. Perez-Moreno. CLASP2 interacts with p120-catenin and governs microtubule dynamics at adherens junctions. The Journal of Cell Biology, 2013; 203 (6): 1043 DOI: 10.1083/jcb.201306019

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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Energy storage in miniaturized capacitors may boost green energy technology

Jan. 17, 2014 — The capacitors of electronic circuits function something like batteries -- storing electrical charge that can be quickly dumped to power devices like camera flashes. So-called "supercapacitors" take the energy-storing abilities of capacitors a step further, storing a far greater charge in a much smaller package.

In a paper published in the journal AIP Advances researchers describe the possibility of fabricating a new class of high heat-tolerant electronics that would employ supercapacitors made from a material called calcium-copper-titanate, or CCTO, which the researchers have identified for the first time as a practical energy-storage material.

Devices using CCTO supercapacitors could compete with similar devices currently in use and could operate at much higher temperatures than standard silicon circuits, "more like the temperature in an engine," says William Stapleton, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Texas State University (TSU) in San Marcos, Texas. CCTO had been identified as a promising supercapacitor material before, but its development for practical applications faced unexpected hurdles.

The lead author Raghvendra Pandey, Ingram Professor of electrical engineering at Texas State University, San Marcos, TX along with Stapleton and other collaborators, showed that in CCTO two properties of fundamental importance for the efficiency of a capacitor device are tightly linked. The first property, called permittivity, is the physical property of the capacitor material that allows it to store energy- with higher permittivity values representing a better capacitor.

The second property, called loss tangent "has to do with how efficiently energy can be moved into and out of the capacitor, that is, how much is lost in the process to inefficiency," Stapleton said.

"When the loss tangent is high," explain Pandey, "the capacitor is 'leaky' and it cannot hold a stored charge for more than a few seconds."

Researchers found that permittivity and loss tangent increased or decreased in tandem in CCTO. Efforts to simultaneously retain the high permittivity while minimizing the loss tangent might not succeed unless a new approach is taken for processing the material. While the work could help explain why researchers have had trouble producing ideal CCTO material in the past, Pandey and his research team have demonstrated that CCTO supercapacitors should be capable of achieving high permittivity while maintaining low loss tangent, which would make them suitable for storing energy at the desired levels for many industrial applications.

"Efficient, high-speed, high-density energy storage is important to many fields, and supercapacitors offer this," Stapleton said. "Fields such as 'green' energy and electric vehicles could benefit immediately from the use of these materials."

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Here comes the sun to lower your blood pressure

Jan. 17, 2014 — Exposing skin to sunlight may help to reduce blood pressure and thus cut the risk of heart attack and stroke, a study published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology suggests.

Research carried out at the Universities of Southampton and Edinburgh shows that sunlight alters levels of the small messenger molecule, nitric oxide (NO) in the skin and blood, reducing blood pressure.

Martin Feelisch, Professor of Experimental Medicine and Integrative Biology at the University of Southampton, comments: "NO along with its breakdown products, known to be abundant in skin, is involved in the regulation of blood pressure. When exposed to sunlight, small amounts of NO are transferred from the skin to the circulation, lowering blood vessel tone; as blood pressure drops, so does the risk of heart attack and stroke."

While limiting sunlight exposure is important to prevent skin cancer, the authors of the study, including Dr Richard Weller of the University of Edinburgh, suggest that minimising exposure may be disadvantageous by increasing the risk of prevalent conditions related to cardiovascular disease.

Cardiovascular disease, often associated with high blood pressure, accounts for 30 per cent of deaths globally each year. Blood pressure and cardiovascular disease are known to vary according to season and latitude, with higher levels observed in winter and in countries further from the equator, where ultraviolet radiation from the sun is lower.

During the study, the skin of 24 healthy individuals was exposed to ultraviolet (UVA) light from tanning lamps for two sessions of 20 minutes each. In one session, the volunteers were exposed to both the UVA rays and the heat of the lamps. In another, the UV rays were blocked so that only the heat of the lamps affected the skin.

The results suggest that UVA exposure dilates blood vessels, significantly lowers blood pressure, and alters NO metabolite levels in the circulation, without changing vitamin D levels. Further experiments indicate that pre-formed stores of NO in the upper skin layers are involved in mediating these effects. The data are consistent with the seasonal variation of blood pressure and cardiovascular risk at temperate latitudes.

Professor Feelisch adds: "These results are significant to the ongoing debate about potential health benefits of sunlight and the role of Vitamin D in this process. It may be an opportune time to reassess the risks and benefits of sunlight for human health and to take a fresh look at current public health advice. Avoiding excess sunlight exposure is critical to prevent skin cancer, but not being exposed to it at all, out of fear or as a result of a certain lifestyle, could increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Perhaps with the exception of bone health, the effects of oral vitamin D supplementation have been disappointing.

"We believe that NO from the skin is an important, so far overlooked contributor to cardiovascular health. In future studies we intend to test whether the effects hold true in a more chronic setting and identify new nutritional strategies targeted at maximizing the skin's ability to store NO and deliver it to the circulation more efficiently."

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North Carolina ultrasound abortion law ruled illegal by judge

By David Adams

(Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday struck down a 2011 North Carolina law requiring abortion providers to perform an ultrasound and explain it to a woman before having an abortion, arguing it violated the constitutional right to free speech of doctors.

U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles found that a state does not have "the power to compel a health care provider to speak, in his or her own voice, the state's ideological message in favor of carrying a pregnancy to term."

The law "compels a health care provider to act as the state's courier and to disseminate the state's message discouraging abortion, in the provider's own voice, in the middle of a medical procedure, and under circumstances where it would seem the message is the provider's and not the state's," she added in her 42-page ruling.

"This is not allowed under the First Amendment," Eagles ruled.

The U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, but lawmakers in more conservative states in recent years have enacted laws that seek to place restrictions on the procedure, especially on late-term abortions.

The ultrasound requirement of the law had been blocked by Eagles a few months after it was passed due to concerns over what she described as the "non-medical message" doctors were required to deliver.

The law required that an ultrasound image be presented and the sound of the fetal heartbeat be offered at least four hours before an abortion, though a woman is free to look away and ignore an explanation and medical description of what is on the screen.

The decision was hailed as a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood Federation of America which filed a lawsuit challenging the Women's Right to Know Act.

"Today's ruling protects the rights of women and their doctors from the ideological agenda of extremist lawmakers," said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the ACLU of North Carolina.

"This law represented an egregious government intrusion into individuals' private medical decisions, and we are very pleased that it will not go into effect," she said.

Defenders of the law said it provided crucial information for women making a major and irrevocable decision.

"North Carolina's ultrasound requirement is no different than requiring speech for airlines and cigarette manufacturers for safety reasons," said Barbara Holt, president of North Carolina Right to Life. "The required information must be given even if the person hearing, seeing or reading the information finds the information upsetting, unnecessary or repetitive."

A Republican state legislator who advocated the law, House Majority Leader Paul Stam, was not immediately available to comment after normal business hours.

North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue, a Democrat and the state's first female governor, vetoed the measure in 2011 but the state Senate overrode the veto.

In her veto message, Perdue called the legislation a "dangerous intrusion into the confidential relationship that exists between women and their doctors."

When the law went into effect in October 2011, North Carolina joined 25 other states that require pre-abortion counseling that goes beyond basic medical "informed consent," according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit sexual health research organization.

It also became the tenth state to include the additional requirement of an ultrasound, which has drawn legal challenges in several states.

North Carolina has some of the country's toughest requirements for clinics performing abortions, including a requirement doctors be present when abortions are performed.

It also bans publicly funded health insurance programs from paying for most abortions, and authorizes state health officials to design rules for increased safety standards for abortion clinics.

In North Carolina, 17 percent of pregnancies end in induced abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The case is Gretchen S. Stuart, M.D. et al v. Ralph C. Loomis, M.D. et al: 1:11-CV-804.

(Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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Evidence of biological basis for religion in human evolution

Jan. 17, 2014 — An Auburn University researcher teamed up with the National Institutes of Health to study how brain networks shape an individual's religious belief, finding that brain interactions were different between religious and non-religious subjects.

Gopikrishna Deshpande, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Auburn's Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, and the NIH researchers recently published their results in the journal, "Brain Connectivity."

The group found differences in brain interactions that involved the theory of mind, or ToM, brain network, which underlies the ability to relate between one's personal beliefs, intents and desires with those of others. Individuals with stronger ToM activity were found to be more religious. Deshpande says this supports the hypothesis that development of ToM abilities in humans during evolution may have given rise to religion in human societies.

"Religious belief is a unique human attribute observed across different cultures in the world, even in those cultures which evolved independently, such as Mayans in Central America and aboriginals in Australia," said Deshpande, who is also a researcher at Auburn's Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Center. "This has led scientists to speculate that there must be a biological basis for the evolution of religion in human societies."

Deshpande and the NIH scientists were following up a study reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to scan the brains of both self-declared religious and non-religious individuals as they contemplated three psychological dimensions of religious beliefs.

The fMRI -- which allows researchers to infer specific brain regions and networks that become active when a person performs a certain mental or physical task -- showed that different brain networks were activated by the three psychological dimensions; however, the amount of activation was not different in religious as compared to non-religious subjects.

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Highly efficient broadband terahertz radiation from metamaterials

Jan. 17, 2014 — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have demonstrated broadband terahertz (THz) wave generation using metamaterials. The discovery may help develop noninvasive imaging and sensing, and make possible THz-speed information communication, processing and storage. The results appeared in the Jan. 8 issue of Nature Communications.

Terahertz electromagnetic waves occupy a middle ground between electronics waves, like microwave and radio waves, and photonics waves, such as infrared and UV waves. Potentially, THz waves may accelerate telecom technologies and break new ground in understanding the fundamental properties of photonics. Challenges related to efficiently generating and detecting THz waves has primarily limited their use.

Traditional methods seek to either compress oscillating waves from the electronic range or stretch waves from the optical range. But when compressing waves, the THz frequency becomes too high to be generated and detected by conventional electronic devices. So, this approach normally requires either a large-scale electron accelerator facility or highly electrically-biased photoconductive antennas that produce only a narrow range of waves.

To stretch optical waves, most techniques include mixing two laser frequencies inside an inorganic or organic crystal. However, the natural properties of these crystals result in low efficiency.

So, to address these challenges, the Ames Laboratory team looked outside natural materials for a possible solution. They used human-made materials called metamaterials, which exhibit optical and magnetic properties not found in nature.

Institute of Technology in Germany, created a metamaterial made up of a special type of meta-atom called split-ring resonators. Split-ring resonators, because of their u-shaped design, display a strong magnetic response to any desired frequency waves in the THz to infrared spectrum.

Ames Laboratory physicist Jigang Wang, who specializes in ultra-fast laser spectroscopy, designed the femto-second laser experiment to demonstrate THz emission from the metamaterial of a single nanometer thickness.

"The combination of ultra-short laser pulses with the unique and unusual properties of the metamaterial generates efficient and broadband THz waves from emitters of significantly reduced thickness," says Wang, who is also an associate professor of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University.

The team demonstrated their technique using the wavelength used by telecommunications (1.5 microns), but Wang says that the THz generation can be tailored simply by tuning the size of the meta-atoms in the metamaterial.

"In principle, we can expand this technique to cover the entire THz range," said Soukoulis, who is also a Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy at Iowa State University.

What's more, the team's metamaterial THz emitter measured only 40 nanometers and performed as well as traditional emitters that are thousands of times thicker.

"Our approach provides a potential solution to bridge the 'THz technology gap' by solving the four key challenges in the THz emitter technology: efficiency; broadband spectrum; compact size; and tunability," said Wang.

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Most women undergoing conservative surgery for vulvar cancer maintain healthy body image and sex life

Jan. 17, 2014 — A new study finds that most women who undergo conservative surgery for vulvar cancer experience little to no long-term disruption to sexuality and body image. Published early online in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, the study also reveals factors that can increase women's risk of feeling negative emotions after surgery.

Women diagnosed with vulvar cancer are often treated with surgery that involves the removal of substantial sections of the external genitalia. Because survival rates are extremely high for women with early stages of the disease, it is important to understand the psychosocial issues that women experience following treatment.

Ellen Barlow, RN, of The Royal Hospital for Women in Australia, and her colleagues interviewed 10 women who had previously been treated for early stage vulvar cancer, with a focus on investigating the women's experiences of sexuality and body image.

The researchers found that the majority of women experienced little to no long-term disruption to sexuality and body image following conservative surgery to treat their cancer. Women's sexual satisfaction was affected more by intimacy and relationship status than physical arousal. Women tended to feel negative emotions if they experienced more radical vulvar excision, multiple vulvar procedures, and/or swelling of the lower limbs (a potential complication of surgery). Some women expressed fear of possible removal of their clitoris, and all sexually active women expressed fear of pain on resumption of sexual intercourse.

"The findings indicate surprisingly good outcomes for sexuality and body image in women having conservative surgery for early stage vulvar cancer and support the concept of performing the most conservative vulvar resection consistent with cure of their disease," said Barlow. The authors noted a need for improved communication about sexuality and body image, specifically about resumption of sexual intercourse. They also stressed that women should be counselled on how to prevent or alleviate sexual issues that may arise as a consequence of their treatment.

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Wiley, via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Ellen L. Barlow, Neville F. Hacker, Rafat Hussain, Glenda Parmenter. Sexuality and body image following treatment for early-stage vulvar cancer: a qualitative study. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 2014; DOI: 10.1111/jan.12346

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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Tiny swimming bio-bots boldly go where no bot has swum before

Jan. 17, 2014 — The alien world of aquatic micro-organisms just got new residents: synthetic self-propelled swimming bio-bots.

A team of engineers has developed a class of tiny bio-hybrid machines that swim like sperm, the first synthetic structures that can traverse the viscous fluids of biological environments on their own. Led by Taher Saif, the University of Illinois Gutgsell Professor of mechanical science and engineering, the team published its work in the journal Nature Communications.

"Micro-organisms have a whole world that we only glimpse through the microscope," Saif said. "This is the first time that an engineered system has reached this underworld."

The bio-bots are modeled after single-celled creatures with long tails called flagella -- for example, sperm. The researchers begin by creating the body of the bio-bot from a flexible polymer. Then they culture heart cells near the junction of the head and the tail. The cells self-align and synchronize to beat together, sending a wave down the tail that propels the bio-bot forward.

This self-organization is a remarkable emergent phenomenon, Saif said, and how the cells communicate with each other on the flexible polymer tail is yet to be fully understood. But the cells must beat together, in the right direction, for the tail to move.

"It's the minimal amount of engineering -- just a head and a wire," Saif said. "Then the cells come in, interact with the structure, and make it functional."

See an animation of the bio-bots in motion and a video of a free-swimming bot.

The team also built two-tailed bots, which they found can swim even faster. Multiple tails also opens up the possibility of navigation. The researchers envision future bots that could sense chemicals or light and navigate toward a target for medical or environmental applications.

"The long-term vision is simple," said Saif, who is also part of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the U. of I. "Could we make elementary structures and seed them with stem cells that would differentiate into smart structures to deliver drugs, perform minimally invasive surgery or target cancer?"

The swimming bio-bot project is part of a larger National Science Foundation-supported Science and Technology Center on Emergent Behaviors in Integrated Cellular Systems, which also produced the walking bio-bots developed at Illinois in 2012.

"The most intriguing aspect of this work is that it demonstrates the capability to use computational modeling in conjunction with biological design to optimize performance, or design entirely different types of swimming bio-bots," said center director Roger Kamm, a professor of biological and mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "This opens the field up to a tremendous diversity of possibilities. Truly an exciting advance."

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