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Thursday, 8 February 2018

Diet rich in fruits and veggies may help halt spread of breast cancer

Researchers are now considering conducting an early-phase clinical trial in which healthy participants would consume a low-asparagine diet.

Numerous studies have often noted properties in certain foods that can help prevent, fight and curb cancer and its potential risks.

This highlights the importance of a proper diet, especially during the course of cancer treatment.

Now, researchers, including one of Indian origin, have suggested a diet that can help halt the spread of a deadly type of breast cancer.

According to the research team, limiting the intake of foods rich in asparagine including dairy, beef, poultry, eggs, fish, nuts, soy and whole grains, while increasing the intake of fruits and vegetables may just do the trick.

Asparagine is an amino acid – the building blocks that cells use to make proteins.

The findings showed that limiting amino acid asparagine in laboratory mice with triple-negative breast cancer dramatically reduced the ability of cancer to travel to distant sites in the body.

"Our study adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests diet can influence the course of the disease," said lead author Simon Knott, Associate Director at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre – a US-based non-profit.

"This study may have implications not only for breast cancer but for many metastatic cancers," added Ravi Thadhani, from the varsity.

In the study, published in the journal Nature, the team discovered that the appearance of asparagine synthetase – the enzyme cells used to make asparagine – in a primary tumour was strongly associated with later cancer spread.

Further, metastasis was found greatly limited by reducing asparagine synthetase, treatment with the chemotherapy drug L-asparaginase, or dietary restriction.

When the lab mice were given food rich in asparagine, the cancer cells spread more rapidly.

"The study suggests that changes in diet might impact both how an individual responds to primary therapy and their chances of the lethal disease spreading later in life," said Gregory J. Hannon, a professor at the University of Cambridge in England.

Researchers are now considering conducting an early-phase clinical trial in which healthy participants would consume a low-asparagine diet.

If the findings are confirmed in human cells, limiting the amount of asparagine cancer patients ingest could be a potential strategy to augment existing therapies and to prevent the spread of breast cancer, Knott added.

Black Lives Matter Activist Who Snatched Confederate Flag Killed In New Orleans

A Black Lives Matter activist who made headlines last year when he leaped through police tape to grab a Confederate flag away from a protester was fatally shot in New Orleans early Tuesday morning.

Muhiyidin Moye, also known as Muhiyidin d’Baha, was riding his bike in New Orleans when he was shot in the leg by an unknown assailant around 1 a.m., WCSC reports.

Moye’s niece, Camille Weaver, told the station that her 32-year-old uncle rode more than five blocks after being shot to get medical help.

“He was transported to a hospital and subsequently died of his wounds,” New Orleans Police spokesman Beau Tidwell said in a statement to WCSC. “The incident is the subject of an active and ongoing investigation.”

Moye was a leader of the Black Lives Matter movement in Charleston, South Carolina, and close to the family of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man who was shot and killed by then-officer Michael Slager in 2015.

“I thank God for placing him here to be the soldier that he is, that he was,” Walter Scott’s brother, Anthony Scott, said to the station about Moye.

In February of last year, as a WCSC reporter was broadcasting, Moye took an impressive running leap through police tape to snatch a Confederate flag in Charleston. He was charged with disorderly conduct for his actions, but was hailed as a hero online.

‘This gender crap needs to just stop,’ mom says after father-daughter dance postponed

This Friday was supposed to be a father-daughter dance for elementary school students in Staten Island, New York.

But now that dance had been postponed because of concerns that it would violate the state’s new gender guidelines that aim to create a more inclusive space for transgender people, according to the New York Post.

“Gender-based policies, rules, and practices can have the effect of marginalizing, stigmatizing, stereotyping and excluding students, whether or not they are transgender or gender nonconforming,” read the guidelines from the New York City Department of Education. “For these reasons, schools should review such policies, rules and practices, and should eliminate any that do not serve a clear pedagogical purpose.

“Examples may include such practices as gender-based graduation gowns, lines, and/or attire for yearbook pictures.”

Instead, the dance has been postponed until March, when people of all gender identities will be able to attend, according to CBS New York.

“We have clear guidelines in place that require schools to maintain welcoming and supportive environments at all events,” a spokeswoman for the Department of Education told Staten Island Live, “and (the principal) worked closely with the PTA to ensure the event was in the best interest of the entire school community.”

That hasn’t gone over well with some people with children at the school, PS 65.

“It’s almost as if they’re taking it away,” Matt West, a father, told CBS.

Akaia Cameron, a mom of a third-grader at the school, didn’t mince words.

“All this gender crap needs to just stop,” she told the Post.

Angelina Lubo, a fifth-grader who was preparing for the big dance, called it “kind of a letdown.”

Even Donald Trump Jr. weighed in on the controversy.

But not everyone is upset about the gender-segregated dance being nixed.

“If there’s a situation that’s going to make a child uncomfortable, feel left out, sad because they can’t attend that’s not what we want,” parent Roxanne Ingroe told CBS.

There’s been a growing push for gender inclusivity as more children begin to self-identify as something other than the gender they were assigned at birth. A study of 81,000 Minnesota teens found that 3 percent of ninth- and 11th-graders identified as gender nonconforming or transgender, according to The Associated Press.

That includes debate over gender neutral bathrooms, clothing lines that both boys and girls can wear and pronouns for those who identify as neither male nor female.

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Daddy Daughter Valentine's Ballet Class

Fathers of dance students at the Philadelphia Dance Center took the father-daughter dance to a new level for Valentine's Day and created some lifelong memories in the process.

US Congress expected to vote on budget to avert govt shutdown

The US Senate and House of Representatives were expected to vote on a proposed budget deal on Thursday that would avert another government shutdown but that has angered fiscal conservatives who complain it would lead to a $1 trillion deficit.

The plan to keep the government operating and to increase spending over the next two years faced resistance from the right wing of the Republican Party, which favours less spending on government. At the same time, many liberal Democrats wanted to withhold their support as leverage to win concessions on immigration policy.

That meant the bill's passage in the House was not assured. However, House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican who has backed the agreement, said on Thursday morning he believed there would be enough votes to pass the budget deal in that chamber.

Mark Meadows, chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, called the deal "eye-popping and eyebrow-raising." "We took an official position last night to say we can`t support this," he told CNN on Thursday.

The rare bipartisan deal reached by Senate leaders on Wednesday raises spending on military and domestic programs by almost $300 billion over the next two years.

The agreement would allow for $165 billion in extra defence spending and $131 billion more for non-military programs, including health, infrastructure, disaster relief and efforts to tackle an opioid crisis in the country.

It would stave off a government shutdown before a Thursday night deadline for a new short-term spending bill, and also extend the federal government`s debt ceiling until March 2019, putting off for more than a year the risk of a debt default by the United States.

The agreement, backed by Republican President Donald Trump, disappointed conservative House Republicans and outside groups. Republicans control both chambers of Congress.

"It's not like Republicans aren`t concerned about disaster relief, or Republicans aren`t concerned about funding community health centres or dealing with the opioid crisis," US Representative Warren Davidson, a Republican, said in an interview with National Public Radio. "But when you add them all up, it adds to an awful lot of spending. ... It`s not compassionate to bankrupt America."

Liberal Democrats meanwhile opposed the deal because it does not include an agreement to protect from deportation hundreds of thousands of "Dreamers," young people brought illegally to the United States as children.

In voicing her opposition on Wednesday, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi set the record for the longest continuous speech in House history, an eight-hour effort that included reading letters from Dreamers pleading to be allowed to stay in the United States.

A number of lawmakers who supported the bill acknowledged the deal was not perfect. "It`s not pretty," Republican US Representative Adam Kinzinger said on CNN.
Democratic Senator Jon Tester said he hoped House Democrats would back the measure. "We don`t want the perfect to get in the road of the good," he told the cable network.

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News the agreement provides long-term certainty in the budget and funding for Trump priorities including infrastructure and military funding.

Failure to agree on spending led to a partial three-day shutdown of government agencies last month.

Google fined Rs 136 cr in India for bias in search results

Globally, this is one of the rare cases where Google has been penalised for unfair business ways.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI), which is country's antitrust watchdog on Thursday imposed a fine of Rs 136 crore on search engine major Google for unfair business practices in the Indian market for online search.

Passing the order on complaints that were filed back in 2012, the regulator said the penalty is being imposed on Google for "infringing antitrust conduct".

Globally, this is one of the rare cases where Google has been penalised for unfair business ways.

"Google was found to be indulging in practices of search bias and by doing so, it causes harm to its competitors as well as to users," the CCI said in its order.

It was alleged that Google is indulging in abuse of dominant position in the market for online search through practices leading to search bias and search manipulation, among others.

According to the CCI order, the penalty amount of Rs 135.86 crore translates to 5 percent of the company's average total revenue generated from India operations from its different business segments for the financial years 2013, 2014 and 2015.

The regulator said that it has given thoughtful consideration on the submissions made by Google on the issue of penalty and found it appropriate to impose a fine.

The ruling has come on complaints filed by Matrimony.Com and Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS) — back in 2012 — against Google LLC, Google India Pvt Ltd and Google Ireland Ltd.

The company will need to deposit the fine within 60 days, the commission said.

Small asteroid to shoot closely past Earth on Friday

What is interesting to note is that the asteroid was discovered by astronomers at the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) in Arizona very recently – on February 4.

The Earth has had many close encounters with asteroids that have conveniently and thankfully missed colliding with our planet by just a tiny distance.

Well, the space circuit and the cyberspace are buzzing with the news of another asteroid encounter that is set to happen on Friday, February 9.

The asteroid in question is estimated to measure somewhere between 15 and 30 metres and will whizz past Earth quite safely, according to NASA.

The celestial object's – designated asteroid 2018 CB – encounter with our home planet is scheduled to take place at around 5:30 pm EST (4:00 am Saturday IST), at a distance of about 64,000 kilometres, which is less than one-fifth the distance of Earth to the Moon.

"Although 2018 CB is quite small, it might well be larger than the asteroid that entered the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, almost exactly five years ago, in 2013," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"Asteroids of this size do not often approach this close to our planet – maybe only once or twice a year," Chodas said.

What is interesting to note is that the asteroid was discovered by astronomers at the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) in Arizona very recently – on February 4.

Another asteroid discovered by CSS on the same day passed by Earth on Tuesday.

Asteroid 2018 CC was estimated to be between 15 and 30 metres in size.

Its close approach to Earth came at 3.10 p.m. EST at a distance of about 184,000 kilometres, NASA said.

Infographic That Will Show You How To Fight Anxiety (7 Pics)

According to World health Organization, anxiety disorder is the world's most common mental disease. This information will show you different ways to cope with it. If you have it, don't give up and just know that there is a way out.

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Thursday, 8 February 2018