Millions of families are beginning to grapple with the one major health expense for which most Americans are not insured: long-term care.
About 10 million seniors currently rely on others for daily care, such as help getting dressed, preparing meals or taking medication. That number will only increase as more of the nation?s 78 million baby boomers enter old age. Nearly 7 in 10 people will need some form of long-term care after turning 65, according to the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute.
?Nobody wants to go to a nursing home, it?s the last resort,? says James Firman, president of the National Council on Aging. ?People want to stay in their own home, and if they can?t, they want to go to a place where they can get assistance but that still feels homelike.?
Nursing homes are the most intensive form of long-term care, including round-the-clock medical supervision. That level of care comes with a steep price tag: the average cost of a semi-private room last year was $81,000, according to a survey by insurance provider MetLife. A private room ran more than $90,500.
Fortunately most seniors won?t require extended nursing home care. Only 5 percent will need five years or more in a nursing home.
Less intensive alternatives include home-care services that offer help with meals and household chores, and boarding houses where a small number of seniors live with on-site caretakers. But like nursing homes, these services aren?t covered by Medicare, the government?s health care plan for seniors, or private health insurance.
?The issue is that these are long-term costs and almost all of it comes out of pocket,? says John Migliaccio, director of research for Metlife?s Mature Market Institute. ?It?s important to have some idea about what it will cost dad, mom or your husband to get the care they need.?
Insurance policies for long-term care are available, but only about 5 percent of U.S. adults have them. Most families don?t plan for long-term care because often the need comes unexpectedly: an elder takes a bad fall or suffers a stroke. Cost is another issue, because policies can run $1,000 to $8,000 a year, depending on the seniors? age, health and other factors.
?The people who can really afford long-term care insurance often have enough fixed income that they don?t really need it,? says Bradley Frigon, vice president of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys.
Groups like the National Association for Professional Geriatric Care Managers recommend that families discuss various options for long-term care and how to pay for them ? before they become necessary.
?Once you?re already sick that?s not the time to start changing doctors, moving to a new place and depending on your kids,? says Bunni Dybins, a senior care adviser with LivHome in Los Angeles.
Here?s a quick look at some senior care services to consider:
? MEDICAL ALERT SYSTEMS: Perhaps the cheapest and least intrusive option, seniors can use medical alert systems to get assistance in the event of an emergency. Services like Philips Lifeline and Life Alert consist of a necklace or wristband with an emergency button. When pressed, a dispatcher who has access to the senior?s profile and medical history is called. Depending on the situation he or she will call a neighbor, family member or medical center. Services generally cost between $30 and $50 a month. Some companies also offer extra motion-sensor technology that automatically contacts a dispatcher if it detects the user has fallen. For more, visit: http://www.lifelinesys.com/content/home .
? ADULT DAY CARE: Much like day care for children, adult day care generally operates during business hours Monday through Friday, providing activities and meals for seniors. Perhaps most importantly, these facilities enable caregivers to go to work, run errands or simply take a break.
?Three-fourths of the care people receive in this country comes from spouses, kids and other relatives,? says Firman. ?The challenge there is to make sure those caregivers don?t burn out, and adult day care becomes an important respite during the day.?
HBO Go, the greatest streaming service known to mankind, will be coming to the Apple TV this year. Bloomberg is reporting that the HBO Go app will pop up on Apple's little black box by the middle of 2013. The next months are going to be suspenseful! More »
Not that long ago, I got an email from a former co-worker, asking me to meet for coffee.
It was just after the first of the year. There?s a lot of resume polishing that happens post-holidays. Especially among people who work in marketing agencies. I figured he wanted to network.
We coordinate schedules, no easy task. We meet. We drink our coffees and talk about the things professional dads talk about. Work. Our families. Movies. Things we find annoying. We pass a pleasant hour. We get up to leave, shake hands and head off to our jobs.
As I?m walking to my office, I wonder what just happened. Because him starting a job search never came up. He just wanted to hang out.
I?d didn?t even realize I?d been on a man date.
?
As a parent, making new friends is neither natural or easy.
Do you strike up a conversation with someone at the gym? (Short answer: no. Because what ends up happening is that this person starts taking the treadmill next to you so you can talk. If you?re like me and think of running time as quality alone time to be protected at all costs, including violence, that person quickly becomes the most irritating person in the world.)
Are you friends with your co-workers? (Short answer: maybe. But it?s a sitcom friendship, all taking place on your workplace set, because you want to get home and spend time with your family. And if you do hang out with them away from the office, you have to be conscious of your partner, because when two people from a job get together, talk invariably turns to work and the last thing your wife wants to hear are all these stories about people she doesn?t know. It would be like she started to watch a tele novella in the middle of the third season. All these people are talking, but she doesn?t know any of the relationships or what the hell they?re talking about.)
Are you friends with parents from your kids? school? (Short answer: probably. But what if your kid likes a kid in class and wants a play date and you don?t like that kid?s parents? Or you and your wife like one parent, but not the other? There should be a match.com for parents. I?m writing a business plan and raising venture capital money. If Instagram can get funding, surely this can, too.)
Do you look up old friends on Facebook? (Short answer: yes. But you don?t friend them.)
It used to be easier. You?d share a locker with a guy and become buddies. Friends by alphabetical order.
Morrison died alone in a bathtub, so what does he know?
At the end of the week, I?m heading to the Dad 2.0 Summit in Texas. It?s for bloggers, brand people and agency types to talk and connect. If my Dad had ever gone off for a weekend to talk to a bunch of other dads about being a dad, I would have thought it was really really weird. Or a cover for him to go see his other family. (He didn?t have another family.)
Gatherings of men back then were more limited. To bars and pool halls, mostly. My dad took me to both as a young boy. There was something exciting and illicit about watching football at a corner dive when I was five years old. Like I just got a peek into something I wasn?t supposed to see. A pull back of the manhood curtain.
Google ?make the most of a conference? and you?ll get an endless list of links that are all about optimizing follow-ups or creating action lists or finding ways to make an impression on the power players. I don?t want to do any of that. It?s probably to my detriment that I have no ?conference strategy? aside from avoiding getting lost and ending up in some kind of Urban Cowboy ride-the-mechanical-bull situation.
Fortunately, there is a whiskey tutorial one night. So I?m hoping that my old friend can help smooth the edges of my jaded and pre-conditioned personality and let a conversation be just that. A conversation. Maybe even the precursor to a friendship instead of a favor.
(Image via fvquotes.com: source)
Written by Alan
Father to two. Husband to one. (Take that, Mormons.)
There is a great likelihood that my smart ass personality is going to bite me right in the smart ass when the boys are a little bit older. I started the blog so I would have a forum to hold over their heads when things get heated in the teenage years.
All Critics (64) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (59) | Rotten (3)
Global Warming? "Seeing is believing."
The most important documentary of the year.
"Chasing Ice" is a grand adventure, a visual amazement and a powerful warning.
If you're looking for eye-popping evidence that the world's glaciers are melting, don't miss the small-scale but spectacular documentary, Chasing Ice.
The rapid disappearance of ice mountains, filmed over a period of years, is compressed through time-lapse technology into minutes and seconds. The speeded-up effect is harrowing and also, disturbingly, eerily beautiful.
The movie might have given us a bit less of Balog and a bit more of the startling sequences he produced.
Chasing Ice will open your eyes to a world you've never seen before and it will make you think. But whether any of us can change anything is a different matter altogether.
While skeptics continue to doubt global warming is a man-made phenomenon - Rush Limbaugh called warnings about it "garbage science" - "Chasing Ice" leaves little doubt it is occurring.
It's an absorbing and vital watch.
It's like watching our world disappear.
A few scientists pop their heads in here, a few charts are deployed, but Chasing Ice is powered primarily by the imagery, stark, irrefutable evidence that the planet is warming, not in one or two isolated places but everywhere.
"Chasing Ice" is a beautiful film to watch, especially on the big screen. But the documentary's visual pleasures come with a heavy dose of guilt.
It's sobering stuff but the film's impact is somewhat diminished by Orlowski's reverential profile of Balog, who continues to crusade despite the toll his endeavours have taken on his body.
The documentary feels a little slight but the images speak for themselves ...
Is this about the hazards of global warming or the awesomeness of James Balog? Not entirely sure...
If any film can convert the climate-change sceptics, Chasing Ice would be it: here, seeing really is believing.
While more detailed scientific analysis and greater discussion of impacts would have been welcome, the film's visual rhetoric is solid.
National Geographic photographer James Balog illustrates climate change with time-lapsed records of glacial retreat.
A project of heroic, Herzogian endeavour. Mad, you might say. But probably not as mad as what the rest of us are doing about climate change: namely almost nothing.
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The first soldier to survive after losing all four limbs in the Iraq war has received a double-arm transplant.
Brendan Marrocco had the operation on Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his father said Monday. The 26-year-old Marrocco, who is from New York City, was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009.
He also received bone marrow from the same dead donor who supplied his new arms. That novel approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new limbs with minimal medication to prevent rejection.
The military is sponsoring operations like these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in the wars.
"He was the first quad amputee to survive" from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there have been four others since then, said Brendan Marrocco's father, Alex Marrocco. "He was really excited to get new arms."
The Marroccos want to thank the donor's family for "making a selfless decision ... making a difference in Brendan's life," the father said.
Surgeons plan to discuss the transplant at a news conference with the patient on Tuesday.
The 13-hour operation was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Johns Hopkins, and is the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant done in the United States. Lee led three of those earlier operations when he previously worked at the University of Pittsburgh, including the only above-elbow transplant that had been done at the time, in 2010.
Marrocco's "was the most complicated one" so far, Lee said in an interview Monday. It will take more than a year to know how fully Marrocco will be able to use the new arms, Lee said.
"The maximum speed is an inch a month for nerve regeneration," he explained. "We're easily looking at a couple years" until the full extent of recovery is known.
While at Pittsburgh, Lee pioneered the novel immune suppression approach used for Marrocco. The surgeon led hand transplant operations on five patients, giving them marrow from their donors in addition to the new limbs. All five recipients have done well and four have been able to take just one anti-rejection drug instead of combination treatments most transplant patients receive.
Minimizing anti-rejection drugs is important because they have side effects and raise the risk of cancer over the long term. Those risks have limited the willingness of surgeons and patients to do more hand, arm and even face transplants. Unlike a life-saving heart or liver transplant, limb transplants are aimed at improving quality of life, not extending it.
Quality of life is a key concern for people missing arms and hands ? prosthetics for those limbs are not as advanced as those for feet and legs.
Lee has received funding for his work from AFIRM, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a cooperative research network of top hospitals and universities around the country that the government formed about five years ago. With government money, he and several other plastic surgeons around the country are preparing to do more face transplants, possibly using the new minimal immune suppression approach.
Marrocco expects to spend three to four months at Hopkins, then return to a military hospital to continue physical therapy, his father said. Before the operation, he had been living with his older brother in a handicapped-accessible home on New York's Staten Island built with the help of several charities.
The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.
Despite being in a lot of pain for some time after the operation, Marrocco showed a sense of humor, his father said. He had a hoarse voice from a tube in his throat during the long surgery, decided that he sounded like Al Pacino, and started doing movie lines.
"He was making the nurses laugh," Alex Marrocco said.
___
AP writer Alex Dominguez contributed to this report.
Jenny McClendon, formerly Jenny Masche, of "Raising Sextuplets."
Jenny McClendon sure is giving Octomom a run for her money. The erstwhile star of WE's "Raising Sextuplets" celebrated the birth on Monday of her seventh child, a son named Cash Allen McClendon.?
"An Unbelievable gift...Beyond words!!!!" McClendon wrote on Facebook (via People). "Thank you Lord for the miracle of life!!"
Here's a look at some other famous families?
Jenny, who announced she was pregnant back in November, revealed that her little bundle of joy entered the world at 12:28 p.m. and weighed in at 8 pounds, 0 ounces, measuring 20.75 inches.?
McClendon, nee Masche, tied the knot with Levi McClendon last March after divorcing her former hubby Bryan Masche, with whom she appeared in the reality series along with their now 5-year-old sextuplets: Savannah, Bailey, Grant, Cole, Molli and Blake.
Cash is Levi's third child, as he has two children from a previous relationship.?
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Oscar-nominated documentary "5 Broken Cameras" screened for Palestinians for the first time on Monday, leaving locals hopeful that their struggle with Israel for land and statehood will gain a global audience.
The low-cost film is based on five years of amateur camera work by journalist Emad Burnat as he documented weekly protests against land seizures by Israeli forces and Jewish settlers in his village of Bil'in in the occupied West Bank.
Neighbors are killed in the protests and demolition equipment mars the landscape while the filmmaker captures his infant son's rapid loss of innocence, heralded by his first words: "wall" and "army."
"This is a film for those who were martyred. It's bigger than me and bigger than Bil'in. More than a billion people follow the Oscars and they will know our struggle now," Burnat said after the viewing.
His work will compete at next month's Oscar ceremony against four other films, including a documentary called "The Gatekeepers" that looks at the decades-old Middle East conflict through the eyes of six top former Israeli intelligence bosses.
Although the perspective is very different, both movies share a surprisingly similar message -- the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is morally wrong and must end.
Burnat's film received a standing ovation at its premier in Ramallah, the Palestinians' administrative capital, with the audience excited to see their seemingly endless conflict splashed on the big screen.
"The film shows the whole world what occupation is. It wiped the happiness off the boy's face at too young an age. This has been the experience for all of us," said taxi driver Ahmed Mustafa, who brought his wife and child to the viewing
"It's not all bad though. It shows that there is progress, there are victories, and that our cause is still alive and moving," he said.
In 2007, Israel's High Court ruled that the separation barrier built on Bil'in lands was illegal and ordered it rerouted, cheering activists. The ruling was finally implemented in 2011, but the protests continue.
ISRAELI CO-DIRECTION
Humble villagers in black-and-white chequered Palestinian scarves and smartly dressed city dwellers shared the same visceral reaction to scenes in the film that are much chronicled but seldom appear in feature-length film.
A shot of olive trees reduced to glowing embers after being torched by Jewish settlers coaxes an audible gasp from viewers.
"Oh God!" said one man.
But as Burnat's camera captures defiant chants in the protagonists' village accent, or rocks being hurled at fleeing Israeli jeeps, ecstatic applause filled the hall.
The film was co-directed by an Israeli activist and filmmaker, Guy Davidi. This close association has led some people to classify 5 Broken Cameras as an Israeli movie and it was rejected by a Morocco film festival for this reason.
However, Burnat said it had been shown in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries and denied that the joint production reflected any meaningful "normalization" of relations between Israel and the Palestinians.
"(Davidi) is a solidarity activist who came to the village to show his support. He was shown our material and agreed to help. This doesn't represent Israeli-Palestinian collaboration," Burnat said.
But the film's action shows many examples of cooperation between Israeli solidarity activists and locals.
An Israeli photographer gives Burnat one of his five cameras, which are progressively shot or crushed in protests over the years, giving the film its name, and Israeli solidarity activists are shown helping to plan protests in Hebrew.
"Working jointly with an Israeli doesn't diminish this work, it enhances it," Palestinian student Amira Daood told Reuters.
"They're not all against us. Some are opposed to what Israel is doing and the movie demonstrates that," she said.
(Reporting By Noah Browning, editing by Paul Casciato)
Jan. 28, 2013 ? Patients with early stage breast cancer who were treated with lumpectomy plus radiation may have a better chance of survival compared with those who underwent mastectomy, according to Duke Medicine research.
The study, which appears online Jan. 28, 2013, in the journal Cancer, raises new questions as to the comparative effectiveness of breast-conserving therapies such as lumpectomy, where only the tumor and surrounding tissue is surgically removed.
"Our findings are observational but do suggest the possibility that women who were treated with less invasive surgery had improved survival compared to those treated with mastectomy for stage I or stage II breast cancer," said E. Shelley Hwang, M.D., MPH, chief of breast surgery at Duke Cancer Institute and the study's lead author.
Taking advantage of 14 years of data from the California Cancer Registry, a source of long-term outcome data for women diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer in California, the research team found improved survival to be associated with the less invasive treatment in all age groups, as well as those with both hormone-sensitive and hormone-resistant cancers. Women age 50 and older at diagnosis with hormone-sensitive tumors saw the largest benefit of choosing lumpectomy plus radiation: they were 13 percent less likely to die from breast cancer, and 19 percent less likely to die from any cause compared with those undergoing mastectomy.
Prior randomized trials have shown that when it comes to survival, lumpectomy with radiation is as effective as mastectomy in treating early stage breast cancer. As a result, the rate of women electing lumpectomy with radiation has climbed in the past few decades.
However, a recent trend has emerged with more early stage breast cancer patients, often younger women with very early cancers, opting for mastectomy. These women may perceive mastectomy to be more effective at eliminating early stage cancer and therefore reducing the anxiety accompanying long-term surveillance.
"Given the recent interest in mastectomy to treat early stage breast cancers despite the research supporting lumpectomy, our study sought to understand what was happening in the real world, how women receiving breast-conserving treatments were faring in the general population," Hwang said.
The team analyzed data from 112,154 women diagnosed with stage I or stage II breast cancer between 1990 and 2004, including 61,771 who received lumpectomy and radiation and 50,383 who had mastectomy without radiation.
The researchers looked at age and other demographic factors, along with tumor type and size to decipher whether each treatment had better outcomes for certain groups of women. Patients were followed on average for 9.2 years.
The researchers evaluated whether illnesses other than breast cancer, such as heart and respiratory disease, may have influenced whether women chose lumpectomy or mastectomy. Within three years of diagnosis, breast cancer patients who underwent lumpectomy and radiation had higher survival rates than those who chose mastectomy when all other illnesses were evaluated. This suggests that women choosing lumpectomy may have been generally healthier.
However, Hwang and her colleagues were surprised to also find that early stage breast cancer patients treated with breast-conserving treatment had a significantly better short-term survival rate from breast cancer than women who underwent mastectomy. A subset analysis limited to women with stage I cancer only showed consistent results.
"The hopeful message is that lumpectomy plus radiation was an effective alternative to mastectomy for early stage disease, regardless of age or tumor type," said Hwang. "Our study supports that even patients we thought might benefit less from localized treatment, like younger patients with hormone-resistant disease, can remain confident in lumpectomy as an equivalent and possibly better treatment option."
The authors emphasize that observational studies such as this one cannot establish causality between type of surgery and outcome and that longer follow up is needed. Nevertheless, this is a provocative observation that requires more research to understand whether patient factors that were not available for analysis might contribute to these observed survival differences.
In addition to Hwang, study authors include Daphne Y. Lichtensztajn, Scarlett Lin Gomez, and Christina A. Clarke of the Cancer Prevention Institute of California. Barbara Fowble of the University of California San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center also contributed to the research.
The study was supported by National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program (HHSN261201000140C) awarded to the Cancer Prevention Institute of California. The collection of cancer incidence data used in this study was supported by the California Department of Health Services.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Duke Medicine.
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Journal Reference:
E. Shelley Hwang, Daphne Y. Lichtensztajn, Scarlett Lin Gomez, Barbara Fowble, Christina A. Clarke. Survival after lumpectomy and mastectomy for early stage invasive breast cancer. Cancer, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/cncr.27795
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Image taken of a TV screen showing Dutch Queen Beatrix announcing she will abdicate April 30, 2014, during a speech prerecorded in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday Jan. 28, 2013. Beatrix, who turns 75 on Thursday, has ruled the nation of 16 million for more than 32 years and would be succeeded by her eldest son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. (AP Photo/NOS Television/Peter Dejong)
Image taken of a TV screen showing Dutch Queen Beatrix announcing she will abdicate April 30, 2014, during a speech prerecorded in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday Jan. 28, 2013. Beatrix, who turns 75 on Thursday, has ruled the nation of 16 million for more than 32 years and would be succeeded by her eldest son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. (AP Photo/NOS Television/Peter Dejong)
FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2011 file photo, Dutch Queen Beatrix, center, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, left and Princess Maxima, second left, arrive at the "Hall of Knights" to formally open the new parliamentary year in The Hague, Netherlands. Queen Beatrix announced she is to abdicate in favor of Crown Prince Willem Alexander during a nationally televised speech Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. Beatrix, who turns 75 on Thursday, has ruled the nation of 16 million for more than 32 years and would be succeeded by her eldest son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. (AP Photo/Bas Czerwinski, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2011 file photo, Dutch Queen Beatrix formally opens the new parliamentary year with a speech in The Hague, Netherlands, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011. Queen Beatrix announced she is to abdicate in favor of Crown Prince Willem Alexander during a nationally televised speech Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. Beatrix, who turns 75 on Thursday, has ruled the nation of 16 million for more than 32 years and would be succeeded by her eldest son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. (AP Photo/Toussaint Kluiters, Pool, File)
FILE - In this April 30, 1980 file photo, Princess Juliana, just after her abdication, kisses her eldest daughter Queen Beatrix, left, on the balcony of the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Dutch Queen Beatrix announces she is to abdicate in favor of Crown Prince Willem Alexander during a nationally televised speech Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. Beatrix, who turns 75 on Thursday, has ruled the nation of 16 million for more than 32 years and would be succeeded by her eldest son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. (AP Photo/ Ferry van Groen, File)
FILE - In this April 30, 1980 file photo, Queen Beatrix is shown during her crowning ceremony at Nieuwe Kerk, or New Church in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Dutch Queen Beatrix announced she is to abdicate in favor of Crown Prince Willem Alexander during a nationally televised speech Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. Beatrix, who turns 75 on Thursday, has ruled the nation of 16 million for more than 32 years and would be succeeded by her eldest son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. (AP Photo, File)
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) ? The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix announced Monday that she is ending her reign after 33 years and passing the crown to her eldest son, who has long been groomed to be king but who will have to work hard to match his mother's popularity.
The widely expected abdication comes at a time of debate over the future of the largely ceremonial Dutch monarchy, but also as calm has descended upon the Netherlands after a decade of turmoil that saw Beatrix act as the glue that held together an increasingly divided society.
"Responsibility for our country must now lie in the hands of a new generation," Beatrix, one of Europe's longest-serving monarchs, said in the simple, televised speech announcing her abdication.
The queen, who turns 75 in just a few days, said she will step down from the throne on April 30. That same day, her eldest son, Willem-Alexander, will be appointed king at an inauguration in Amsterdam. He will be the Netherlands' first king since Willem III died in 1890.
Willem-Alexander is a 45-year-old father of three young daughters, an International Olympic Committee member, a pilot and a water management expert.
Over the years, he has struggled to win the affection of this nation of 16 million, but his immensely popular wife, the Argentine-born Maxima, has helped him gain more acceptance ever since she brushed away a tear during their wedding in 2002.
They are a hard-working couple: Willem-Alexander regularly gives speeches at water conferences, sharing his low-lying nation's centuries of experience battling to stay dry, while soon-to-be Queen Maxima, a former investment banker, has carved out a career as a microfinance expert.
Together, the pair has often been seen cheering on Dutch sportsmen and women at Olympics from Beijing, to Vancouver and London.
"He's known as 'Mister Water,' isn't he? He seems like a reliable person, just like his mother," said Desiree Hoving, an Amsterdam resident. "I don't really have an emotional response to him, but I do think it's nice that Maxima is going to be queen."
Despite regular public appearances, Willem-Alexander is also fiercely private, giving reporters and photographers brief, choreographed glimpses of his family in return for being left in peace the rest of the time.
"He and Princess Maxima are fully prepared for their future roles," Beatrix said. "They will serve our nation with dedication, faithfully preserve the constitution and bring all their talents to the monarchy."
Despite her popularity, Maxima has always carried an air of controversy because her father was an agriculture minister in the military junta that ruled Argentina with an iron fist in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In a move that may curtail possible protests, the Royal House said that Maxima told Prime Minister Mark Rutte that her parents will not attend the inauguration.
In her brief, prerecorded speech from her Huis ten Bosch Palace in The Hague, Beatrix said she was, "deeply grateful for the great faith you have shown in me in the many years that I could be your queen."
The queen's departure is sure to bring about an outpouring of sentimental and patriotic feelings among the Dutch, most of whom adore Beatrix. In everyday conversation, many of her subjects refer to her simply by the nickname "Bea."
Well-wishers immediately gathered outside the palace Monday.
One of them, Laura Dinkshof, took along a homemade orange banner. "We hope the queen will see it," she said. "It says we were very happy with our queen and we wish her a nice retirement and that we have trust in our new king."
Rutte, a staunch monarchist, said that ever since her coronation in 1980, Beatrix ? the nation's oldest-ever monarch ? "applied herself heart and soul for Dutch society."
Beatrix succeeded her mother, Juliana, as head of state, and her reign has been marked by tumultuous shifts in Dutch society and, more recently, by personal tragedy.
Observers believe Beatrix remained on the throne for so long in part because of unrest in Dutch society as the country struggled to assimilate more and more immigrants, mainly Muslims from North Africa, and shifted away from its traditional reputation as one of the world's most tolerant nations.
Beatrix was also thought to be giving time for her son to enjoy fatherhood before taking the throne.
The abdication also comes at a time of trial for Beatrix. A year ago, she was struck by personal tragedy when the second of her three sons, Prince Friso, was left in a coma after being engulfed by an avalanche while skiing in Austria.
And even in a job that is mostly symbolic to begin with, the previous government stripped her of one of her few remaining powers: the ability to name a candidate to begin Cabinet formation after the election of the national parliament.
Beatrix's reign began in difficult economic times and there were riots in Amsterdam at her inauguration, as thousands of demonstrators protesting the city's housing shortages fought pitched battles with police just a few hundred meters (yards) from the downtown palace where she was crowned.
But throughout her tenure she was a calming influence on society, particularly in the aftermath of the 2002 assassination of populist politician Pim Fortuyn and the murder two years later of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist.
Personal tragedies have exposed a softer side of the queen and brought her closer to her subjects.
The 2002 death of her German-born husband, Prince Claus, took a toll on her, and it was apparent how deep her reliance on the quiet man had been: she was filmed leaning heavily, almost hanging, on Prince Friso's arm as they entered the church for her spouse's funeral.
In another blow, a deranged loner tried to slam a car into an open-topped bus carrying members of the royal family as they celebrated the Queens Day national holiday in 2009. The driver killed seven people who had gathered to watch the royals, a brazen attack that shocked the nation.
Friso, who had been such a support after Claus' death, remains in a coma. Late last year, the Royal House said he showed "very minimal" signs of consciousness.
"I think it's a good time for her to leave, with all that happened in her life recently," said 44-year-old Bert Duesenberg of The Hague as he stood at the queen's palace gates. "I also think that Alexander is ready to take over, and he has to do that. It is good news, and it's time for the change."
____
Associated Press writer Toby Sterling contributed from Amsterdam and Alex Furtula contributed from The Hague.
Jan. 27, 2013 ? Rice University scientists have taken an important step toward the creation of two-dimensional electronics with a process to make patterns in atom-thick layers that combine a conductor and an insulator.
The materials at play -- graphene and hexagonal boron nitride -- have been merged into sheets and built into a variety of patterns at nanoscale dimensions.
Rice introduced a technique to stitch the identically structured materials together nearly three years ago. Since then, the idea has received a lot of attention from researchers interested in the prospect of building 2-D, atomic-layer circuits, said Rice materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan. He is one of the authors of the new work that appears this week in Nature Nanotechnology. In particular, Ajayan noted that Cornell University scientists reported an advance late last year on the art of making atomic-layer heterostructures through sequential growth schemes.
This week's contribution by Rice offers manufacturers the possibility of shrinking electronic devices into even smaller packages. While Rice's technical capabilities limited features to a resolution of about 100 nanometers, the only real limits are those defined by modern lithographic techniques, according to the researchers. (A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.)
"It should be possible to make fully functional devices with circuits 30, even 20 nanometers wide, all in two dimensions," said Rice researcher Jun Lou, a co-author of the new paper. That would make circuits on about the same scale as in current semiconductor fabrication, he said.
Graphene has been touted as a wonder material since its discovery in the last decade. Even at one atom thick, the hexagonal array of carbon atoms has proven its potential as a fascinating electronic material. But to build a working device, conductors alone will not do. Graphene-based electronics require similar, compatible 2-D materials for other components, and researchers have found hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) works nicely as an insulator.
H-BN looks like graphene, with the same chicken-wire atomic array. The earlier work at Rice showed that merging graphene and h-BN via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) created sheets with pools of the two that afforded some control of the material's electronic properties. Ajayan said at the time that the creation offered "a great playground for materials scientists."
He has since concluded that the area of two-dimensional materials beyond graphene "has grown significantly and will play out as one of the key exciting materials in the near future."
His prediction bears fruit in the new work, in which finely detailed patterns of graphene are laced into gaps created in sheets of h-BN. Combs, bars, concentric rings and even microscopic Rice Owls were laid down through a lithographic process. The interface between elements, seen clearly in scanning transmission electron microscope images taken at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, shows a razor-sharp transition from graphene to h-BN along a subnanometer line.
"This is not a simple quilt," Lou said. "It's very precisely engineered. We can control the domain sizes and the domain shapes, both of which are necessary to make electronic devices."
The new technique also began with CVD. Lead author Zheng Liu, a Rice research scientist, and his colleagues first laid down a sheet of h-BN. Laser-cut photoresistant masks were placed over the h-BN, and exposed material was etched away with argon gas. (A focused ion beam system was later used to create even finer patterns, down to 100-nanometer resolution, without masks.) After the masks were washed away, graphene was grown via CVD in the open spaces, where it bonded edge-to-edge with the h-BN. The hybrid layer could then be picked up and placed on any substrate.
While there's much work ahead to characterize the atomic bonds where graphene and h-BN domains meet and to analyze potential defects along the boundaries, Liu's electrical measurements proved the components' qualities remain intact.
"One important thing Zheng showed is that even by doing all kinds of growth, then etching, then regrowth, the intrinsic properties of these two materials are not affected," Lou said. "Insulators stay insulators; they're not doped by the carbon. And the graphene still looks very good. That's important, because we want to be sure what we're growing is exactly what we want."
Liu said the next step is to place a third element, a semiconductor, into the 2-D fabric. "We're trying very hard to integrate this into the platform," he said. "If we can do that, we can build truly integrated in-plane devices." That would give new options to manufacturers toying with the idea of flexible electronics, he said.
"The contribution of this paper is to demonstrate the general process," Lou added. "It's robust, it's repeatable and it creates materials with very nice properties and with dimensions that are at the limit of what is possible."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Rice University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
C. Drexler, S. A. Tarasenko, P. Olbrich, J. Karch, M. Hirmer, F. M?ller, M. Gmitra, J. Fabian, R. Yakimova, S. Lara-Avila, S. Kubatkin, M. Wang, R. Vajtai, P. M. Ajayan, J. Kono, S. D. Ganichev. Magnetic quantum ratchet effect in graphene. Nature Nanotechnology, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2012.231
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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In addition to protecting itself from your pirated content with its see-no-evil encryption, Kim Dotcom's Mega service aims to stay on the law's good side by playing nicely with copyright takedown requests and keeping that super important DMCA safe harbor status. So far so good, too; it's responded to an early batch of requests with all due speed and efficiency. More »
KONNA, Mali - French forces in Mali have seized the airport and the bridge over the Niger River at the Islamist rebel-held stronghold of Gao, the French Defence Ministry said Saturday.
French and Malian forces have advanced rapidly against Islamist militant fighters holding the Saharan north of the West African state after France intervened earlier this month at the request of the Malian government.
On Friday, al-Qaida-allied fighters were forced to pull back under relentless French air strikes and the town of Hombori, about 100miles southwest of Gao, was recaptured.
French and Malian troops have been pushing forward on either side of the Niger River, securing several farming towns recaptured over the last week.
Gao, with the other Saharan desert towns of Timbuktu and Kidal, has been occupied since last year by an Islamist alliance that includes AQIM, the north African franchise of al-Qaida.
NBC's Richard Engel expects a support role for the U.S. in the current conflict in Mali with no "boots on the ground." Engel talks to MSNBC's Craig Melvin about the ongoing conflict.
Mali's national radio said Hombori's inhabitants turned out to cheer the government soldiers.
Western and African leaders say the U.N.-backed intervention in Mali is necessary to stop the country's north - a vast, lawless tract of desert and mountains that juts into the Sahara - from becoming a safe haven for radical Islamist jihadists seeking to launch international attacks.
A Malian officer and residents living in the area south of Gao reported Thursday that the militants had blown up a bridge at Tassiga, south of Ansongo, on the road following the Niger River down to Niger.
Two civilians were reported killed when their vehicle drove off the destroyed bridge, the same sources said.?
Related:
Malians praise French troops: 'If they leave, I will leave'
Jihadists leave trail of destruction, brutality
Analysis: Why France is taking on Mali extremists
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
BEIRUT (AP) ? Syrian troops raided an opposition stronghold near the capital on Saturday, killing rebels and uncovering tunnels they used to move around and smuggle weapons, the state-run news agency said.
SANA said three tunnels were discovered after clashes in Daraya, just south of the capital, Damascus. Syrian troops have been trying to capture Daraya for weeks, but have faced strong resistance from hundreds of rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad.
The rebels have used Damascus suburbs to stage attacks on nearby government facilities.
The conflict in Syria began nearly two years ago after a peaceful uprising against Assad turned violent. The unrest was inspired by the Arab Spring wave of revolutions that toppled leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
More than 60,000 have been killed since the fighting began in March 2011, according to the U.N. Since then, the Syrian opposition has taken control of wide swathes of territory, mostly in the north near Syria's border with Turkey.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported an air raid Saturday on the northern town of Al-Bab, which killed at least four people and wounded others.
Amateur video posted online showed about a dozen wounded men and women and at least two boys and a girl being treated at a hospital. "Oh God help us. They are children," a man could be heard saying as a doctor cut the clothes of a boy to expose his wound.
The Observatory and another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, also reported shelling and air raids in other Damascus suburbs, including Shebaa and Aqraba near the international airport. The LCC also said rebels fired several rockets from Daraya toward Assad's People's Palace on Qasioun Mountain, overlooking the capital.
It released a video showing a masked man firing at least one small rocket from the roof of a building near the palace. Syrian officials have previously denied claims by rebels that rockets have targeted the palace ? one of three mansions Assad uses in the capital.
The videos appeared genuine and correspond to reporting done by The Associated Press.
Daraya is flanked by districts that are home to a military air base, the government headquarters, the intelligence agency's head office and the Interior Ministry.
The Observatory said troops bombarded southern neighborhoods of the capital and have witnessed anti-government activities for months. It said a rebel was killed in Damascus during clashes with pro-regime gunmen in the neighborhood of Tishrin.
The activist groups also reported heavy clashes in the central city of Homs and the nearby town of Qusair, which is close to the border with Lebanon, and near a prison in the northwestern city of Idlib.
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posted on 2013-01-25??|?by Admin | 7 views
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BOSTON (Reuters) - Top manufacturers sounded a confident note about their expectations for 2013 on Wednesday as fears of the year-end "fiscal cliff" faded into memory.
Textron Inc laid out an earnings forecast that would represent growth of about 12 percent, while larger peer United Technologies Corp reiterated a projection that its profit would rise about 13 percent.
Executives at each company said that, after seeing a year-end pause in ordering as customers worried about a budget standoff that could have triggered large spending cuts and higher taxes in the United States, demand is recovering.
"What we see in the economy in the U.S. is that the rebound in the housing market is really having a pull-through effect on the rest of the economy," said Greg Hayes, chief financial officer of United Tech, in an interview. "Commercial construction is coming back. We saw particular strength in North America and Asia, not as much of a story in Europe, as you can imagine.
The U.S. housing slump set the 2007-2009 recession in motion and a slow recovery in that market has been one important drag on a long, sluggish recovery. Recent government data have shown a pickup in demand, with a report last week showing housing starts surged to a four-year high in December.
Hartford, Connecticut-based United Tech is the world's largest maker of elevators and air conditioners and also produces Pratt & Whitney jet engines and Sikorsky helicopters. It also noted that airlines' orders for spare parts for jet engine had risen in the quarter, reflecting higher rates of travel.
"The path gets a little easier," said Daniel Holland, equity analyst at Morningstar, who covers United Tech. "If you look at all the pieces, a housing recovery here and in China, and an improving environment for Otis (elevators) in China, they have decent, positive momentum."
Meanwhile, Textron said it expects sales of its Cessna corporate jets to pick up this year, after a year-end drop that the Providence, Rhode Island-based company blamed on "fiscal cliff" worries.
"We probably have had more order activity than we're used to seeing at the beginning of January," reflecting orders that had been delayed during the "fiscal cliff" standoff, said Chief Executive Scott Donnelly, on a conference call with analysts. "We'll see a degree of uncertainty in the jet market as Washington works through its fiscal challenges, but we believe demand will solidify as those uncertainties are reduced."
While the White House and Congress averted the crisis that could have been triggered by allowing the U.S. economy to go over the "fiscal cliff", an event that economists said would have sent the nation back into recession, budget battles continue.
On Wednesday, U.S. lawmakers are expected to vote to extend by four months the government's ability to borrow money, effectively suspending rules that allow the nation to borrow no more than $16.4 trillion.
Both companies also have significant defense businesses, and face the risk that the U.S. will continue to scale back spending on weapons, such as United Tech's Black Hawk military helicopters and Textron's heavy armored vehicles.
GROWTH FORECASTS
United Tech stood by its forecast, first issued last month, that called for 2013 earnings to rise by about 13 percent to a range of $5.85 to $6.15 per share, with sales up about 12 percent to a range of $64 billion to $65 billion.
Textron issued a 2013 forecast that called for profit to rise by about 12 percent to a range of $2.10 to $2.30 per share, with revenue up about 6 percent to $12.9 billion.
The results came a few days after General Electric Co , the largest U.S. conglomerate, said that it ended 2012 with a record-high order backlog and sounded a confident note on 2013, sending its shares higher on Friday.
The manufacturing sector has been one of the better performers this quarter, with 80 percent of the industrial companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index <.spx> topping analysts' forecasts. That's better than the 68 percent of companies across the index that have beaten estimates.
United Tech and Textron shares, each of which had risen roughly 15 percent over the past six months, outpacing the broader U.S. market, were little changed in early trading.
United Tech rose 70 cents, less than 1 percent, to $88.17 and Textron gained 1.2 percent to $27.40. Both trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
Investors will get more news on the sector later this week, when 3M Co and Honeywell International Inc are due to report results.
(Reporting By Scott Malone; Editing by Theodore d'Afflisio and Andrew Hay)
Gene sequencing project mines data once considered 'junk' for clues about cancerPublic release date: 24-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Carrie Strehlau carrie.strehlau@stjude.org 901-595-2295 St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project takes new approach to measuring the repetitive DNA at the end of chromosomes and opens new window on mechanisms fueling cancer
(MEMPHIS, Tenn. January 24, 2013) Genome sequencing data once regarded as junk is now being used to gain important clues to help understand disease. The latest example comes from the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, where scientists have developed an approach to mine the repetitive segments of DNA at the ends of chromosomes for insights into cancer.
These segments, known as telomeres, had previously been ignored in next-generation sequencing efforts. That is because their repetitive nature meant that the resulting information had defied analysis and the data were labeled as junk. But researchers have now traced changes in the volume of telomeric DNA to particular types of cancer and their underlying genetic mistakes. Investigators found that 32 percent of pediatric solid tumors carried extra DNA for telomeres, compared to just 4 percent of brain tumors and none of the leukemia samples studied. The findings were published recently in the journal Genome Biology.
Using this new approach, the investigators have linked changes in telomeric DNA to mutations in the ATRX gene and to longer telomeres in patients with a subtype of neuroblastoma, a cancer of the sympathetic nervous system. Telomere length limits how many times cells can divide. Mechanisms that maintain or lengthen telomeres contribute to the unchecked cell division that is a hallmark of cancer.
"This paper shows how measuring the DNA content of telomeres can enhance the value of whole- genome sequencing," said Matthew Parker, Ph.D., the paper's first author and a St. Jude postdoctoral fellow. "In the case of the ATRX mutation, the telomere findings gave us information about the mutation's impact that would have been hard to get through other means."
The results stem from the largest study yet of whole-genome sequencing to measure the content of telomeric DNA. The effort involved whole-genome sequencing of normal and tumor DNA from 235 pediatric patients battling 13 different cancers. For comparison, normal DNA from 13 adult cancer patients was included in the research.
"There's been a lot of interest among cancer researchers into telomere length," said Richard Wilson, Ph.D., director of The Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "While more research remains, we think it's important to begin to characterize the genetic sequences that make up the telomeres. That's a crucial first step to understanding more precisely any role they may play in cancer."
The Pediatric Cancer Genome Project sequenced the complete normal and cancer genomes of more than 600 children and adolescents with some of the most aggressive and least understood cancers. Investigators believe the project's findings will lay the foundation for a new generation of clinical tools. Despite advances, cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease of U.S. children age 1 and older.
The human genome is stored in the four-letter chemical alphabet of DNA, a molecule that stretches more than 3 billion characters in length and provides the instructions for building and sustaining life. Those instructions are the genes that are organized into the 46 chromosomes found in almost every cell.
Each chromosome ends with the same six-letter DNA sequence that is associated exclusively with telomeres. The DNA sequence does not vary, but the number of times it is repeated does, affecting the length of the telomeres. Telomeres shorten each time cells divide, which explains why their length declines naturally with age.
Researchers have known cancer cells use several mechanisms to circumvent the process and keep dividing. But until now the repetitive nature of the telomeric DNA sequence meant they had little to offer researchers using whole-genome sequencing to map the human genome. Other genes can be assigned to a particular spot on a particular chromosome; telomeres cannot.
"For scientists analyzing whole-genome sequencing data the telomeres were just a headache," said the study's corresponding author Jinghui Zhang, Ph.D., an associate member of the St. Jude Department of Computational Biology. "We could not properly map them to a position on the human genome, so we didn't really use them."
Then listening to a colleague's presentation, Parker had an idea: "Why not just count the telomeric DNA and look for changes between the normal and cancer cells of patients?"
Zhang said the question was a conceptual leap in thinking about how to use whole-genome sequencing data to study telomeres and cancer. "This is the classic story of how one person's problem is another person's gold," she said.
Parker and his colleagues developed an approach that correctly distinguished between older and younger individuals based on the amount of telomeric DNA in their blood or bone marrow cells. Researchers used three other methods to confirm that whole-genome sequencing could be used to reliably capture telomeric DNA differences between normal and cancer cells. Additional supportive evidence came when investigators found that the method yielded similar estimates of the telomeric DNA content of twins with leukemia who shared similar genetic alterations.
When investigators used the method to study pediatric cancer patients, they found tumors that gained telomeric DNA were also more likely to contain chromosomal abnormalities, including rearrangements within and between chromosomes. Researchers also found that different cancers had distinct patterns of telomeric DNA change. In some cases, the change offered clues about the mechanism responsible for lengthening the telomeres, pointing to a process called alternative lengthening of telomeres.
###
The other authors are Xiang Chen, Armita Bahrami, James Dalton, Michael Rusch, Gang Wu, John Easton, Michael Dyer, Charles Mullighan, Richard Gilbertson, Suzanne Baker, Gerard Zambetti, David Ellison and James Downing, all of St. Jude; Nai-Kong Cheung, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York; and Elaine Mardis, of The Genome Institute at Washington University, St. Louis.
The research was funded in part by the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, including Kay Jewelers, a lead partner; a Cancer Center Support Grant (CA021765) from the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health; the Henry Schueler 41&9 Foundation in conjunction with Partnership4Cures; and ALSAC.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is internationally recognized for its pioneering research and treatment of children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. The hospital's research has helped push overall survival rates for childhood cancer from less than 20 percent when the institution opened to almost 80 percent today. It is the first and only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children, and no family ever pays St. Jude for anything. For more information, visit www.stjude.org. Follow us on Twitter @StJudeResearch.
Washington University School of Medicine
Washington University School of Medicine's 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Gene sequencing project mines data once considered 'junk' for clues about cancerPublic release date: 24-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Carrie Strehlau carrie.strehlau@stjude.org 901-595-2295 St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project takes new approach to measuring the repetitive DNA at the end of chromosomes and opens new window on mechanisms fueling cancer
(MEMPHIS, Tenn. January 24, 2013) Genome sequencing data once regarded as junk is now being used to gain important clues to help understand disease. The latest example comes from the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, where scientists have developed an approach to mine the repetitive segments of DNA at the ends of chromosomes for insights into cancer.
These segments, known as telomeres, had previously been ignored in next-generation sequencing efforts. That is because their repetitive nature meant that the resulting information had defied analysis and the data were labeled as junk. But researchers have now traced changes in the volume of telomeric DNA to particular types of cancer and their underlying genetic mistakes. Investigators found that 32 percent of pediatric solid tumors carried extra DNA for telomeres, compared to just 4 percent of brain tumors and none of the leukemia samples studied. The findings were published recently in the journal Genome Biology.
Using this new approach, the investigators have linked changes in telomeric DNA to mutations in the ATRX gene and to longer telomeres in patients with a subtype of neuroblastoma, a cancer of the sympathetic nervous system. Telomere length limits how many times cells can divide. Mechanisms that maintain or lengthen telomeres contribute to the unchecked cell division that is a hallmark of cancer.
"This paper shows how measuring the DNA content of telomeres can enhance the value of whole- genome sequencing," said Matthew Parker, Ph.D., the paper's first author and a St. Jude postdoctoral fellow. "In the case of the ATRX mutation, the telomere findings gave us information about the mutation's impact that would have been hard to get through other means."
The results stem from the largest study yet of whole-genome sequencing to measure the content of telomeric DNA. The effort involved whole-genome sequencing of normal and tumor DNA from 235 pediatric patients battling 13 different cancers. For comparison, normal DNA from 13 adult cancer patients was included in the research.
"There's been a lot of interest among cancer researchers into telomere length," said Richard Wilson, Ph.D., director of The Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "While more research remains, we think it's important to begin to characterize the genetic sequences that make up the telomeres. That's a crucial first step to understanding more precisely any role they may play in cancer."
The Pediatric Cancer Genome Project sequenced the complete normal and cancer genomes of more than 600 children and adolescents with some of the most aggressive and least understood cancers. Investigators believe the project's findings will lay the foundation for a new generation of clinical tools. Despite advances, cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease of U.S. children age 1 and older.
The human genome is stored in the four-letter chemical alphabet of DNA, a molecule that stretches more than 3 billion characters in length and provides the instructions for building and sustaining life. Those instructions are the genes that are organized into the 46 chromosomes found in almost every cell.
Each chromosome ends with the same six-letter DNA sequence that is associated exclusively with telomeres. The DNA sequence does not vary, but the number of times it is repeated does, affecting the length of the telomeres. Telomeres shorten each time cells divide, which explains why their length declines naturally with age.
Researchers have known cancer cells use several mechanisms to circumvent the process and keep dividing. But until now the repetitive nature of the telomeric DNA sequence meant they had little to offer researchers using whole-genome sequencing to map the human genome. Other genes can be assigned to a particular spot on a particular chromosome; telomeres cannot.
"For scientists analyzing whole-genome sequencing data the telomeres were just a headache," said the study's corresponding author Jinghui Zhang, Ph.D., an associate member of the St. Jude Department of Computational Biology. "We could not properly map them to a position on the human genome, so we didn't really use them."
Then listening to a colleague's presentation, Parker had an idea: "Why not just count the telomeric DNA and look for changes between the normal and cancer cells of patients?"
Zhang said the question was a conceptual leap in thinking about how to use whole-genome sequencing data to study telomeres and cancer. "This is the classic story of how one person's problem is another person's gold," she said.
Parker and his colleagues developed an approach that correctly distinguished between older and younger individuals based on the amount of telomeric DNA in their blood or bone marrow cells. Researchers used three other methods to confirm that whole-genome sequencing could be used to reliably capture telomeric DNA differences between normal and cancer cells. Additional supportive evidence came when investigators found that the method yielded similar estimates of the telomeric DNA content of twins with leukemia who shared similar genetic alterations.
When investigators used the method to study pediatric cancer patients, they found tumors that gained telomeric DNA were also more likely to contain chromosomal abnormalities, including rearrangements within and between chromosomes. Researchers also found that different cancers had distinct patterns of telomeric DNA change. In some cases, the change offered clues about the mechanism responsible for lengthening the telomeres, pointing to a process called alternative lengthening of telomeres.
###
The other authors are Xiang Chen, Armita Bahrami, James Dalton, Michael Rusch, Gang Wu, John Easton, Michael Dyer, Charles Mullighan, Richard Gilbertson, Suzanne Baker, Gerard Zambetti, David Ellison and James Downing, all of St. Jude; Nai-Kong Cheung, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York; and Elaine Mardis, of The Genome Institute at Washington University, St. Louis.
The research was funded in part by the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, including Kay Jewelers, a lead partner; a Cancer Center Support Grant (CA021765) from the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health; the Henry Schueler 41&9 Foundation in conjunction with Partnership4Cures; and ALSAC.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is internationally recognized for its pioneering research and treatment of children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. The hospital's research has helped push overall survival rates for childhood cancer from less than 20 percent when the institution opened to almost 80 percent today. It is the first and only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children, and no family ever pays St. Jude for anything. For more information, visit www.stjude.org. Follow us on Twitter @StJudeResearch.
Washington University School of Medicine
Washington University School of Medicine's 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
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Public release date: 24-Jan-2013
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