In a development that surprised many of the 4.5 million residents of Chaohu, the Chinese city has ceased to exist. The metropolis, which sits on the shores of a lake some 250 miles east of Shanghai, was wiped off the map overnight by officials who decided to divvy it…
Continue reading …After the end of World War II, Hugo Boss said he supported the Nazis to keep the company he founded afloat. But the fashion firm has admitted that there was another reason: He was a big fan of the Nazis. Boss—who was Hitler’s favorite tailor and supplied the Nazis…
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The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is likely to fall to Earth between 5pm on Friday and 5am on Saturday UK time A dead spacecraft that is tumbling to Earth will re-enter the atmosphere on Friday evening or Saturday morning UK time, according to Nasa’s latest analysis. Most of the bus-sized Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) will burn up in the atmosphere, but more than half a tonne of debris is predicted to get through. The falling spacecraft is expected to begin its final descent to Earth sometime between the hours of noon and midnight US Eastern time on Friday (between 5pm Friday and 5am Saturday British Summer Time), according to an update released by the US space agency on Wednesday . The satellite will not be passing over North America at the time of re-entry, but Nasa said it was too early to predict the time and location with more certainty. Further updates will be released by Nasa later on Thursday, and then 12, six and two hours before re-entry. The space agency anticipates that 26 potentially hazardous parts , weighing a total of 532kg, could remain intact and hit the Earth. The debris will spread along an estimated 500-mile corridor of the Earth’s surface. Among the parts expected to survive the fiery re-entry are four titanium fuel tanks, four steel flywheel rims and an aluminium structure that alone weighs 158kg. Depending on their size and shape, the components will strike at speeds of between 55mph (90kph) and 240mph (385kph). Radar stations around the world, including RAF Fylingdales in north Yorkshire, are tracking the object, but there is little chance of predicting with any accuracy where the debris will fall. The spacecraft’s orbit puts a great swathe of the planet in its path between the latitudes of 57 degrees north and south. Mainland Britain lies between 50 and 60 degrees north. The satellite spends more time at higher latitudes, so there is a slightly higher risk in those regions. Most likely by far is that the remains of the satellite will drop into the ocean, or be strewn across one of the planet’s most desolate regions, such as Siberia, the Australian outback or the Canadian tundra. Nasa put the odds of anyone being struck by a falling part of the spacecraft at one in 3,200. The individual risk to a particular person is much less – one in 3,200 multiplied by the billions that live under the satellite’s flight path. There are no confirmed injuries from manmade space debris and no record of significant property damage from a falling satellite. An organisation of major space agencies known as the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) takes a lead role in monitoring threats from falling space junk and is running back-to-back simulations to work out when, and roughly where, the spacecraft’s remains will impact. If the IADC or the Ministry of Defence, via RAF Fylingdales, found that the UK was at risk, they would inform the Cabinet Office civil contingencies committee, which is responsible for alerting the emergency services. When Nasa’s Skylab fell to Earth in 1979, the space agency put the risk of human injury at 1 in 152, because the odds of the defunct space station striking a city were much higher. The partially controlled Skylab missed its expected impact site in South Africa and crash-landed in Australia. Predicting where the debris will land is difficult for two main reasons. Unpredictable rises in the sun’s activity warm the atmosphere and make it expand, which causes the spacecraft to experience more drag and re-enter more quickly. Another problem comes from uncertainties in the tracking of how the spacecraft disintegrates, which means that even just a few hours before impact, the corridor of the Earth’s surface at risk will be several thousand kilometres long. Under an international treaty, governments are obliged to return any parts of a satellite that are found to the owner, in this case Nasa. The space agency urged anyone who suspected they had found debris from the spacecraft not to touch it and inform the local police. The satellite was launched in 1991 aboard the space shuttle Discovery and decommissioned in 2005. Satellites Space Nasa United States Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A transgender California convict has lost a bid to force the state to pay for a sex change operation. Lyralisa Stevens, who was born male but lives as a woman, sued the state, demanding that the public fund surgery to remove her male genitalia , at a cost of as much…
Continue reading …First trial of embryonic stem cell treatment in Europe gets green light
September 22, 2011 No Comment
Patients with an eye disease that leads to blindness will take part in first human embryonic stem cell trial to be approved in Europe British surgeons are to take part in the first trial in patients of a human embryonic stem cell therapy to gain approval from regulators in Europe. Surgeons at Moorfield’s Eye Hospital in London will inject cells into the eyes of 12 patients with an incurable eye disease called Stargardt’s macular dystrophy , one of the main causes of blindness in young people. The clinical trial, designed to investigate the safety and tolerance of the groundbreaking therapy, is due to begin in December having received approval from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on Thursday. It is the first trial in people of a stem cell therapy to receive the go ahead from regulators in any European country. Medical teams hope to slow, halt or even reverse the effects of the disease by injecting healthy retinal cells into the eye. The trial is controversial because the replacement retinal cells – known as RPE, or retinal pigment epithelial cells – are derived from human embryonic stem cells. The Massachusetts-based company Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced the trial on Thursday. It will run alongside a similar study that began in July at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. Only one patient has been treated so far in the US trial for Stargardt’s disease. The results from both studies are expected next year. Patients taking part in the UK trial will have between 50,000 and 200,000 cells injected behind the retina through a fine needle in an outpatient operation expected to take up to an hour. Only patients with advanced disease will be admitted to the trial. Stargardt’s disease is an inherited disorder that causes progressive vision loss through the thinning of retinal pigment epithelial cells at the centre of the retina, the region where the eye forms its sharpest images. The loss of RPE cells usually begins between the ages of 10 and 20 years and leads to light-sensitive rods and cones in the eye dying off. This ultimately causes vision loss and even blindness. If the treatment works, the replacement RPE cells will grow and eventually restore the retina to a healthy state that can support light-sensitive cells required for sight. “This is a safety and tolerability study, so we are dealing with patients with advanced stage disease. Where we expect to get the most significant results is in earlier patients, before they have lost their photoreceptors. We’re hoping to prevent the onset of blindness altogether in those patients,” Robert Lanza, ACT’s chief scientific officer , told the Guardian. “The UK has been at the forefront of stem cell research in the past, but I think this confirms it is the leader in stem cell work in Europe. This is the first time an embryonic stem cell therapy has been approved in Europe,” Lanza added. “There is real potential that people with blinding disorders of the retina, including Stargardt disease and age-related macular degeneration, might benefit in the future from transplantation of retinal cells,” said retinal surgeon James Bainbridge at Moorfields and the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology . “The ability to regenerate retinal cells from stem cells in the laboratory has been a significant advance and the opportunity to help translate such technology into new treatments for patients is hugely exciting. Testing the safety of retinal cell transplantation in this clinical trial will be an important step towards achieving this aim,” he said. Last year, the US company Geron began a long-awaited trial of a stem-cell therapy to repair spinal cord injuries. Doctors hope that injecting stem cells directly into the spine will repair damaged nerve cells enough for paralysed people to regain some movement. Stem cells Embryos Medical research Biology Blindness and visual impairment Health Health & wellbeing Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
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UBS trader charged with fraud relating to activities between 2008 and 2010, in addition to two allegations of false accounting and one of fraud in 2011 Kweku Adoboli , the 31-year-old charged with fraud and false accounting at UBS, was remanded in custody until 20 October on Thursday after learning he also faced a second fraud charge. Lawyers for Adoboli, who holds a Ghanaian passport, did not make an application for bail at the hearing in the City of London magistrates’ court that followed the three charges police brought against him on Friday . The alleged “unauthorised trading” announced by the Swiss bank has caused turmoil at the bank, which has raised the estimate of losses from the incident to $2.3bn from $2bn. The trader spoke only to confirm his name, birth date and address at the hearing. He did not enter a plea. He originally faced three charges. Two claim that Adoboli falsified records of exchange traded funds – complex financial instruments – between October 2008 and December 2009 and then in January 2010 and September 2011. The third charge alleges that he committed fraud between January 2011 and September 2011 while senior trader in global synthetic equities. The fourth charge, of fraud, was made on Thursday, relating to activity between 1 October 2008 and 31 December 2010. Adoboli is represented by the law firm Kingsley Napley, which also advised Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who brought down Barings in 1995. A committal hearing originally set for 22 October will now take place on 20 October. The Swiss bank is now under intense pressure to restore confidence in its investment banking arm. The Zurich-based bank’s board is meeting on Thursday and Friday in Singapore where chief executive Oswald Grübel, parachuted in to the bank in 2009 when UBS was on the brink of collapse, is determined to secure his future. The head of UBS’s investment banking arm, Carsten Kengeter, has urged staff to work hard to repair the “financial damage” caused by the alleged incident, which the bank has admitted will tip it to a loss in the third quarter. An update on the bank’s strategy is expected on 17 November at a previously arranged investor meeting in New York. Kweku Adoboli UBS Banking European banks Sam Jones Jill Treanor guardian.co.uk
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National Association of Head Teachers to hold ballot on whether to take industrial action over cuts to pensions Teachers stepped closer to mounting their biggest strike in a generation this autumn after a headteachers’ union decided it would ballot members to take industrial action over pension reforms. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) , which represents more than 28,000 heads and their deputies, will hold its first strike ballot of its 114-year history from 29 September. If members vote in favour of industrial action, a co-ordinated strike with several other classroom unions could take place on 30 November and would be likely to shut the majority of schools in England and Wales. The National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers have already voted to carry out rolling strikes, while another teachers’ union, the NASUWT, has proposed industrial action. The Public and Commercial Services Union has already said it is planning a strike in November. A government-commissioned report in March by the former Labour minister Lord Hutton called for final salary pension schemes to be scrapped and replaced with career averages for public sector workers. He recommended that public sector staff should pay higher monthly contributions and called for a rise in the retirement age to 68 – most headteachers now retire aged 60 to 65. The government has said changes are needed because the cost of teachers’ pensions will rise from about £5bn in 2005 to almost £10bn by 2015 as more staff retire and life expectancy increases. Russell Hobby, general secretary of the NAHT, said the decision to ballot members was taken with “great reluctance”. “Faced with a refusal by the government to negotiate on the basis of a proper valuation of the scheme, we feel we have no option but to demonstrate our anger at this attack on the teaching profession,” he said. “We fear for the future of a system with a demoralised and devalued profession. We fear that we will not be able to attract people to become heads at a time when targets and workloads are rising.” He said many headteachers believed an attack on pensions was a threat to the future of education itself. “Teaching is a vocation and no one entered the profession to get rich. However, we do need to ensure that teaching is an attractive career choice for the most talented graduates. Future pupils deserve nothing less.” In June, teachers staged the biggest school strikes since the 1980s over the pension reforms. More than 2 million pupils missed classes and thousands of parents were forced to take a day off work with nearly 6,000 schools closed and 5,000 partially closed. In total, half of schools were affected. A Cabinet Office spokesman said there was “genuine engagement” with trade unions over pensions. “We have a lot to talk about and there are proposals on the table for discussion.” Schools Public sector pay Teaching Trade unions Pensions Public sector cuts Public sector pensions Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Troy Davis was executed by lethal injection shortly after 11pm last night. In his last moments, he continued to proclaim his innocence. “I am innocent,” Davis said. “All I can ask … is that you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth. I ask my family and friends
Continue reading …Sarah Palin is leaving the door open for a presidential run —but most Republican voters want that door slammed shut, according to the latest McClatchy-Marist poll . More than 70% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters don’t want Palin to run for the presidency, the poll found. If Palin and Rudy Giuliani…
Continue reading …A 2.5 pound shipment of high-grade pot from Northern California was traced to the Kentucky home of a Cincinatti Bengals football player, according to investigators. Wide receiver Jerome Simpson and teammate offensive lineman Anthony Collins were both at Simpson’s home during the special delivery, said federal narcotics agents, who…
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