Archive for February 24th, 2008Multiple readers have written to tell us of news that Pakistan has ordered its ISPs to block access to YouTube “for containing blasphemous web content/movies.” This follows increasing unrest in Pakistan over a Danish newspaper’s reprinting of cartoons which depict Islam in a less-than-favorable light. The cartoons also sparked controversy when they were first published a few years ago. Read more of this story at Slashdot. Filed under: Good news, Products and services, Genentech Inc (DNA), Presidential elections That the FDA has granted accelerated approval to Genentech (NYSE: DNA) for Avastin for the treatment of patients with breast cancer isn’t just big news for the company, but great news for women around the world in their fight against the dreaded cancer. “There is no cure for metastatic breast cancer, so it is important to control the disease as early and for as long as possible,” said Kathy Miller, M.D., Associate Professor of Medical Oncology, Indiana University School of Medicine and lead investigator on the E2100 trial. “Now with Avastin plus Paclitaxel, we have the ability to increase the time a woman’s cancer is kept under control, and offer a biologic option to women who previously were limited to chemotherapies alone.” “As an oncologist who has treated women with metastatic breast cancer, I know how important the first course of therapy can be,” stated Susan Desmond-Hellmann, M.D., M.P.H., president, Product Development, Genentech. “New treatments are needed, and this approval provides women who have not yet received chemotherapy for their metastatic breast cancer a new option to consider with their physician and families.” According to the American Cancer Society, an estimated 178,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, and approximately 40,000 died from the disease in the U.S. in 2007. The news should give a massive boost to Genentech stock. The company, once a high flyer in the biotech industry, has had slowing growth drag down the stock. Now with the potential of Avastin, this could potentially add another 10% a year to revenues, a big number. I wonder if trying to cure breast cancer is something that Michelle Obama would be proud of? Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. DISCLOSURE: Writer has no position in any stock mentioned as of 2/23/08. Babu ‘God’ Hoover tips us to news out of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy that for the first time, a magnetic pole reversal has been observed in a star other than our own. Tau Bootis, while similar to the Sun, also has a planet more than six times larger than Jupiter orbiting at only a twentieth of the distance between Earth and the Sun. Scientists hope to use this discovery to learn more about the magnetic dynamics in the Sun, which can affect our telecommunications, among other things. Read more of this story at Slashdot. biobricks writes “The New York Times is reporting that people who could benefit from genetic testing are too afraid their health insurance companies are going to raise their rates or deny them coverage to find out the health information contained in their own genes. There’s a growing “genetic underground” where people pay for their own tests so they won’t have to share the results with insurers, and beg doctors not to divulge their genetic status in medical records. A bill that would ban genetic discrimination by insurers and employers — and presumably make people feel safer about taking care of their health — is stalled in the Senate. We’ve discussed these types of personal DNA tests in the past.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. Active Seti points out a story about upgrades for the Very Huge Array radio telescope. The improvements will increase the VLA’s capabilities 10-fold, allowing it to “pick up a cell phone signal on Jupiter.” Work on the 28-antenna array is already underway, and it is expected to finish by 2012. From Scientific American: “Data gathered by all 28 of the 82-foot- (25-meter-) diameter dish antennas are brought to a correlator–a central, special-purpose computer–which merges the input into a form that allows scientists to produce detailed, high-quality images of the astronomical objects under investigation. A new fiber-optic system replaces the older waveguide system for taking data collected by the receivers to the central control building and increases the amount of data that can be delivered from the antenna to the new $17-million correlator being built by Canadian scientists and engineers to handle the increased data flow.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. SethJohnson writes “Thanks to a $59 million National Science Foundation grant, there’s likely to be a new king of the High Performance Computing Top 500 list. The contender is Ranger, a 15,744 Quad-Core AMD Opteron behemoth built by Sun and hosted at the University of Texas. It’s peak processing power of 504 teraflops will be shared among over 500 researchers working across the even bigger TeraGrid system. Even though its expected lifespan is just four years, Ranger will provide 500 million processor hours to projects attempting to address societal grand challenges such as global climate change, water resource management, new energy sources, natural disasters, new materials and manufacturing processes, tissue and organ engineering, patient-specific medical therapies, and drug design.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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