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Ambulance Of Tomorrow Unveiled
"Smart Pod", ideas for the ambulance of the future - was unveiled to the NHS and the healthcare industry at the NHS Innovation Expo in London.
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New Pre-Clinical Data On OmniGuide's BeamPath NEURO(TM) Demonstrates Precise Cutting In Brain Tissue
OmniGuide, Inc., the developer of the first and only flexible CO2 laser fiber based on breakthrough photonic bandgap technology, announced the results of a pre-clinical study comparing the Company"s fiber scalpels to conventional incision methods in neurosurgery. In the study, surgeons from the Barrow Neurological Institute reported that careful studies of incisions produced in live brain tissue with fiber delivered CO2 laser radiation produced precise cuts while minimally effecting adjacent brain tissue when compared with a widely used reference technique. The study, led by Drs. Mark Preul, Robert W. Ryan, and Robert Spetzler of the Neurosurgery Research Laboratory, Barrow Neurological Institute, in Phoenix, Arizona, was presented at the annual conference of the American Academy of Neurological Surgeons in San Diego, California.
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Obama Administration's Filings On Asylum For Abused Foreign Women Brings 'Overdue Dose Of Clarity,' Editorial Says
The Obama administration recently laid out "a clear but narrow pathway" toward asylum for foreign women who have experienced severe physical or sexual abuse, a New York Times editorial states, noting that the U.S. government has debated the issue for 15 years. According to the editorial, the "question is not the fact of persecution, but whether the women would qualify for protection under the law, which limits asylum to those who suffer due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or "membership in a particular social group."" It adds that attorneys general under former Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush "have gone both ways and in circles" in their decisions.Although "[n]ot all victims will qualify," the Obama administration "made it clear that some could," the editorial states. "A petitioner would have to demonstrate to a judge that domestic violence was widely tolerated by society and government in her country, that women were viewed as subordinate to men and that she had no place within its borders to find a safe haven," the editorial adds.Department of Homeland Security lawyers say the new definition could apply to a severely abused Mexican woman, identified only by her initials, whose asylum petition is before a San Francisco immigration court. The editorial notes that DHS "did not immediately recommend asylum" for the woman, but "it did urge that she be allowed to continue to gather evidence and to refine her case according to the standards it proposed." The editorial concludes, "Advocates who have fought for years to advance women"s rights are celebrating the department"s action, which brings reasoned compassion, and an overdue dose of clarity, to an issue of anguish and difficulty" (New York Times, 7/19).
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New Tool Helps Researchers Identify DNA Patterns Of Cancer, Genetic Disorders

A new tool will help researchers identify the minute changes in DNA patterns that lead to cancer, Huntington"s disease and a host of other genetic disorders. The tool was developed at North Carolina State University and translates DNA sequences into graphic images, which allows researchers to distinguish genetic patterns more quickly and efficiently than was historically possible using computers. David Cox, a Ph.D. student in computer science at NC State, devised the "symbolic scatter plot" tool to provide a visual representation of a DNA sequence. Cox explains, "The human visual system is more adept at identifying patterns, and differentiating between patterns, than existing computer programs such as those that try to identify repetitions of DNA sequences." In other words, the naked eye sees patterns better than computers can. Identifying patterns in a sequence of DNA is important because it can help researchers identify the minute genetic variations between subjects that suffer from a disease, such as cancer, and subjects that do not. "Improved identification of relevant DNA sequences will hopefully expedite the development of successful treatment for a range of diseases," Cox says, "by allowing researchers to focus on the components of DNA that are related to the disease and improving our understanding of the genetic mechanisms of these diseases. For example, what turns specific genes on and off?" So, how does the symbolic scatter plot create a visual representation of DNA? DNA is composed of a series of nucleotides. There are only four types of nucleotides, represented by the letters A, T, G and C. Each three-letter string of these nucleotides, such as AAA or ATG, is called a 3-mer. Cox explains, "There are only 64 possible 3-mers, thus each 3-mer maps to a number from zero to 63. The symbolic scatter plots take a very long string of letters representing a DNA sequence and split it into a bunch of 3-mers. It then plots a point for each 3-mer, zero through 63, with that number serving as the y-coordinate." The x-axis is the order that the 3-mer appears in the genetic sequence. "If this seems really simple," Cox says, "that"s because it really is simple. Even so, the resulting scatter plots reveal interesting patterns in the original DNA. I can also string these scatter plots together to produce animations for the purpose of comparing DNA sequences." Cox chose to focus on 3-mers because they correlate to codons, which are the genetic codes the body uses to specify the insertion of a specific amino acid during the creation of proteins. In other words, they oversee the creation of proteins - which are themselves the basic building blocks of the human body. "There are 64 3-mers, but only 20 amino acids," Cox says, "so each amino acid corresponds to multiple 3-mers." Cox designed the symbolic scatter plot so that those 3-mers that correspond to the same amino acid are adjacent to one another. "This way," Cox says, "it is easier to determine when a difference in 3-mers is significant - from one amino acid to another - rather than a difference in 3-mers that still results in the production of the same amino acid. A change in a single amino acid can be the difference between a relatively harmless disease and a fatal one," Cox says. Cox will present the research this July at BIOCOMP "09 - The 2009 International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology in Las Vegas. The research was co-authored by Dr. Lina Dagnino of the University of Western Ontario. Matt Shipman North Carolina State University


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