OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada expects to be able to make enough medical isotopes through non-nuclear methods by 2016 to replace those now produced by an aging reactor and better assure an uninterrupted supply for medical imaging, a government minister said on Thursday.
To that end, the federal government will fund three research institutes developing cyclotron and linear accelerator technologies for production of isotopes on a commercial scale, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver said.
Canada's only current source of the isotopes is a problem-plagued reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd's facility at Chalk River, Ontario. The reactor is licensed to run until 2016.
"Our challenge now is to prove that cyclotron and linear accelerator production can be commercially viable. ... We envision a future where isotope production will no longer require highly enriched uranium ? a weapons-grade material," he said.
The government will give a total of C$25 million ($24.3 million) to the three facilities for this goal.
Asked if there would be a gap between the end of production by the Chalk River reactor and the supplies from the other sources, Oliver said he did not think so, since the technology was proven and what remained was commercialization.
"That's been worked on for a while," he told reporters after making the announcement. "It's reached a fairly robust stage right now. We're talking about increasing the amount ... and we're comfortable we can meet those objectives by 2016."
Oliver also announced Canada wanted a private operator to run the Chalk River facility, a move that would take two years to accomplish.
The temporary closure of the Chalk River reactor for safety reasons in 2007 and then again from May 2009 to August 2010 caused a medical challenge and a political furor as the government scrambled to find isotope replacements internationally.
The closures dealt a blow to Nordion Inc, which as a major supplier of isotopes relied on Chalk River. Nordion had no immediate comment on Thursday's announcement.
AECL had built two more modern prototype reactors to make isotopes but eventually mothballed them after a series of problems. An arbitration panel last year rejected Nordion's claim for damages against AECL.
Oliver said the government was not seeking to close down or sell the Chalk River nuclear laboratories. In October 2011 Canada sold AECL's Candu nuclear reactor division to a subsidiary of SNC Lavalin Group Inc.
(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Frank McGurty and Kenneth Barry)
Feb. 28, 2013 ? Blockages in your heart arteries could mean you're more likely to have a stroke, even if you're considered low risk, according to research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.
"This study demonstrates that stroke risk is tightly aligned with coronary atherosclerosis, showing the closely related nature of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease," said Dirk M. Hermann, M.D., the study's lead investigator and professor of vascular neurology and dementia at the University Hospital Essen in Germany.
"This raises the need for intensified interdisciplinary efforts for providing adequate disease prevention and management strategies."
In the study, researchers used the non-invasive electron beam-computed tomography, a variation of the conventional CT scan, to determine how much plaque had built up in the coronary arteries of 4,180 patients who had no previous strokes or heart attacks. The patients, men and women 45-75 years old, were followed for about eight years.
During the study, 92 strokes occurred.
The blockages, caused by coronary artery calcification (CAC), were significantly higher in those who had a stroke than those who didn't. Those who had CAC levels of more than 400 Hounsfield units (HU), a density measurement, were three times more likely to have a stroke than those with CAC levels below 399 HU.
CAC measurements were more potent in predicting stroke in patients younger than 65 and those at low risk for cardiovascular disease, researchers said.
CAC levels were an accurate predictor of stroke in men and women regardless of whether patients suffered from atrial fibrillation, a form of irregular heartbeat often associated with stroke.
"Not only atrial fibrillation but also CAC has to be taken into account as a marker of risk for stroke events," Hermann said.
Study patients who suffered a stroke were about 65 years old, had a higher body mass index and were more likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol levels. Although the study was conducted in Germany, Hermann said the findings among the middle-aged participants are likely generalizable to Americans in the same age group.
Co-principal investigators were R. Erbel, M.D.; K. H. J?ckel, Ph.D.; and S. Moebus, Ph.D. Author disclosures are on the manuscript.
The Heinz Nixdorf Foundation, German Ministry of Education and Science and German Research Foundation funded the study.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Heart Association.
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Journal Reference:
Dirk M. Hermann, Janine Gronewold, Nils Lehmann, Susanne Moebus, Karl-Heinz J?ckel, Marcus Bauer, and Raimund Erbel. Coronary Artery Calcification Is an Independent Stroke Predictor in the General Population. Stroke, 2013; DOI: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.111.678078
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.
The Big East breakup is picking up speed: A coalition of seven Catholic schools announced Thursday that their new conference will be up and running for the 2013-2014 school year.
By Ralph D. Russo,?Associated Press / February 28, 2013
Connecticut's Ryan Boatright, left, reacts during an NCAA college basketball game against Georgetown in Storrs, Conn., Wednesday, Feb. 27. Georgetown is one of seven Catholic schools breaking away from the Big East.
Jessica Hill / AP
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The breakup of the?Big?East's?football and basketball schools appears to be on the fast track.
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The major college football members will meet in Atlanta on Friday to discuss the departure of the seven basketball schools that are planning to leave the conference and create a new league.
According to media reports Thursday, the basketball schools plan to have their new conference up and running for the 2013-14 school year and will pay the football schools to keep the?Big?East?name and play its conference tournament at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Big?East?Commissioner Mike Aresco told the AP in a phone interview no deal has been completed between the two groups but "some of this stuff is clearly coming down to the wire."
Aresco will be meeting with the presidents and athletic directors from the football members. The members that do not have FBS football programs will not be part of the meeting.
The seven Catholic schools that are breaking away from the football part of the rebuilt?Big?East?include some of its founding members and signature schools, such as Georgetown, St. John's and Villanova. The other departing schools are Seton Hall, Providence, DePaul and Marquette.
Big?East?football is in the midst of a major makeover, with 2013 scheduled to be another season with lame duck members.
Next year,?Big?East?football will have holdovers Connecticut, Cincinnati, South Florida, Temple, Rutgers and Louisville, along with newcomers Central Florida, Memphis, Houston and SMU.
In 2014, Louisville and Rutgers are likely on the way out ? the Cardinals to the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Scarlet Knights to the?Big?Ten ? and Tulane and?East?Carolina will join. Navy is schedule to join the Big?East?for football in 2015, and the conference is looking to add another member ? Tulsa is the front-runner ? to get to an even 12.
The?Big?East?is also putting the finishing touches on a new TV deal with ESPN.
The network last week matched an offer made by NBC for the TV rights to the conference. The deal will be for seven years and pay the league about $130 million, though that figure would come down if the seven Catholic schools are not in the league next season.
It had been presumed that the seven basketball schools would stay in the current?Big?East?for another year, because time is getting tight to start a new conference. But with a TV deal reportedly waiting for them, it seems they're ready to ramp up the process.
The seven basketball schools reportedly have an offer from Fox to broadcast its games that could earn the schools about $3 million per year, depending on how many more members they bring on. Butler, Xavier and Creighton are being talked about as potential targets.
A faster-than-expected divorce between?Big?East?football and basketball puts Notre Dame in an uncertain situation.
The Fighting Irish have announced they will leave the?Big?East?and join the ACC in everything but football and hockey, but no timetable has been set for their departure.
Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick has said that he expected the Irish to stay in the?Big?East?through next season. But what does that mean if the?Big?East?is now the basketball-only schools?
A phone message left for Swarbrick was not immediately returned Thursday night.
Feb. 28, 2013 ? A new model suggests that inhospitable hydrodgen-sulphide rich waters could have delayed the spread of complex life forms in ancient oceans. The research, published online this week in the journal Nature Communications, considers the composition of the oceans 550-700 million years ago and shows that oxygen-poor toxic conditions, which may have delayed the establishment of complex life, were controlled by the biological availability of nitrogen.
In contrast to modern oceans, data from ancient rocks indicates that the deep oceans of the early Earth contained little oxygen, and flipped between an iron-rich state and a toxic hydrogen-sulphide-rich state. The latter toxic sulphidic state is caused by bacteria that survive in low oxygen and low nitrate conditions. The study shows how bacteria using nitrate in their metabolism would have displaced the less energetically efficient bacteria that produce sulphide -- meaning that the presence of nitrate in the oceans prevented build-up of the toxic sulphidic state.
The model, developed by researchers at the University of Exeter in collaboration with Plymouth Marine Laboratory, University of Leeds, UCL (University College London) and the University of Southern Denmark, reveals the sensitivity of the early oceans to the global nitrogen cycle. It shows how the availability of nitrate, and feedbacks within the global nitrogen cycle, would have controlled the shifting of the oceans between the two oxygen-free states -- potentially restricting the spread of early complex life.
Dr Richard Boyle from the University of Exeter said: "Data from the modern ocean suggests that even in an oxygen-poor ocean, this apparent global-scale interchange between sulphidic and non-sulphidic conditions is difficult to achieve. We've shown here how feedbacks arising from the fact that life uses nitrate as both a nutrient, and in respiration, controlled the interchange between two ocean states. For as long as sulphidic conditions remained frequent, Earth's oceans were inhospitable towards complex life."
Today, an abundance of nitrate, in the context of an oxygenated ocean, prevents a reversion to the inhospitable environment that inhibited early life. Determining how Earth's oceans have established long-term stability helps us to understand how modern oceans interact with life and also sheds light on the sensitivity of oceans to changes in composition.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Exeter.
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Journal Reference:
R.A. Boyle, J.R. Clark, S.W. Poulton, G. Shields-Zhou, D.E. Canfield, T.M. Lenton. Nitrogen cycle feedbacks as a control on euxinia in the mid-Proterozoic ocean. Nature Communications, 2013; 4: 1533 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2511
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Contact: Jason Socrates Bardi jason.bardi@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco
Network analysis sheds new light on the abnormal brain connectivity responsible for a common genetic cause of autism
Combining hospital MRIs with the mathematical tool known as network analysis, a group of researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley have mapped the three-dimensional global connections within the brains of seven adults who have genetic malformations that leave them without the corpus callosum, which connects the left and right sides of the brain.
These "structural connectome" maps, described in the upcoming April 15, 2013 issue of the journal Neuroimage, reveal new details about the condition known as agenesis of the corpus callosum, which is one of the top genetic causes of autism and was part of the mysterious brain physiology of Laurence Kim Peek, the remarkable savant portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the 1987 movie "Rain Man."
While some people born with agenesis of the corpus callosum are of normal intelligence and do not have any obvious signs of neurologic disease, approximately 40 percent of people with the condition are at high risk for autism. Given this, the work is a step toward finding better ways to image the brains of people with the condition, said Pratik Mukherjee, MD, PhD, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at UCSF who was the co-senior author of the research.
Understanding how brain connectivity varies from person to person may help researchers identify imaging biomarkers for autism to help diagnose it and manage care for individuals. Currently autism is diagnosed and assessed based on cognitive tests, such as those involving stacking blocks and looking at pictures on flip cards.
While the new work falls short of a quantitative measure doctors could use instead of cognitive testing, it does offer a proof-of-principle that this novel technique may shed light on neurodevelopment disorders.
"Because you are looking at the whole brain at the network level, you can do new types of analysis to find what's abnormal," Mukherjee said.
The Connection between the Brain Hemispheres and Autism
Agenesis of the corpus callosum can arise if individuals are born missing DNA from chromosome 16 and often leads to autism.
Scientists have long puzzled over what the link is between this disorder and the autistic brain, said co-senior author of the paper Elliott Sherr, MD, PhD, professor of neurology and genetics especially since not all people with this malformation develop autism.
Doctors believe this is because the brain has a rich capacity for rewiring in alternative ways.
Pursuing this question, Mukherjee and Sherr turned to MRI and the mathematical technique of network analysis, which has long supported fields like civil engineering, helping urban planners optimize the timing of traffic lights to speed traffic. This is the first time network analysis has been applied to brain mapping for a genetic cause of autism.
The brain offers a significantly complicated challenge for analysis because, unlike the streets of a given city, the brain has hundreds of billions of neurons, many of which make tens of thousands of connections to each other, making its level of connectivity highly complex.
By comparing the seven rain man-like brains to those of 11 people without this malformation, the scientists determined how particular structures called the cingulate bundles were smaller and the neurons within these bundles were less connected to others in the brain. They also found that the network topology of the brain was more variable in people with agenesis of the corpus callosum than in people without the malformation.
###
The article, "The structural connectome of the human brain in agenesis of the corpus callosum" is authored by Julia P. Owen, a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF, with co-authors Yi-Ou Li, Etay Ziv, Zoe Strominger, Jacquelyn Gold, Polina Bukhpun, Mari Wakahiro, Eric J. Friedman, Elliott H. Sherr and Pratik Mukherjee. It appears in the April 15, 2013 issue of the journal Neuroimage, and is now published online ahead of print. See: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.12.031
This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health through grant #R01NS060776, #R01NS060776 and #R01NS058721. Additional support was provided by a grant from the UCSF Sandler Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
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.
Contact: Jason Socrates Bardi jason.bardi@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco
Network analysis sheds new light on the abnormal brain connectivity responsible for a common genetic cause of autism
Combining hospital MRIs with the mathematical tool known as network analysis, a group of researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley have mapped the three-dimensional global connections within the brains of seven adults who have genetic malformations that leave them without the corpus callosum, which connects the left and right sides of the brain.
These "structural connectome" maps, described in the upcoming April 15, 2013 issue of the journal Neuroimage, reveal new details about the condition known as agenesis of the corpus callosum, which is one of the top genetic causes of autism and was part of the mysterious brain physiology of Laurence Kim Peek, the remarkable savant portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the 1987 movie "Rain Man."
While some people born with agenesis of the corpus callosum are of normal intelligence and do not have any obvious signs of neurologic disease, approximately 40 percent of people with the condition are at high risk for autism. Given this, the work is a step toward finding better ways to image the brains of people with the condition, said Pratik Mukherjee, MD, PhD, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at UCSF who was the co-senior author of the research.
Understanding how brain connectivity varies from person to person may help researchers identify imaging biomarkers for autism to help diagnose it and manage care for individuals. Currently autism is diagnosed and assessed based on cognitive tests, such as those involving stacking blocks and looking at pictures on flip cards.
While the new work falls short of a quantitative measure doctors could use instead of cognitive testing, it does offer a proof-of-principle that this novel technique may shed light on neurodevelopment disorders.
"Because you are looking at the whole brain at the network level, you can do new types of analysis to find what's abnormal," Mukherjee said.
The Connection between the Brain Hemispheres and Autism
Agenesis of the corpus callosum can arise if individuals are born missing DNA from chromosome 16 and often leads to autism.
Scientists have long puzzled over what the link is between this disorder and the autistic brain, said co-senior author of the paper Elliott Sherr, MD, PhD, professor of neurology and genetics especially since not all people with this malformation develop autism.
Doctors believe this is because the brain has a rich capacity for rewiring in alternative ways.
Pursuing this question, Mukherjee and Sherr turned to MRI and the mathematical technique of network analysis, which has long supported fields like civil engineering, helping urban planners optimize the timing of traffic lights to speed traffic. This is the first time network analysis has been applied to brain mapping for a genetic cause of autism.
The brain offers a significantly complicated challenge for analysis because, unlike the streets of a given city, the brain has hundreds of billions of neurons, many of which make tens of thousands of connections to each other, making its level of connectivity highly complex.
By comparing the seven rain man-like brains to those of 11 people without this malformation, the scientists determined how particular structures called the cingulate bundles were smaller and the neurons within these bundles were less connected to others in the brain. They also found that the network topology of the brain was more variable in people with agenesis of the corpus callosum than in people without the malformation.
###
The article, "The structural connectome of the human brain in agenesis of the corpus callosum" is authored by Julia P. Owen, a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF, with co-authors Yi-Ou Li, Etay Ziv, Zoe Strominger, Jacquelyn Gold, Polina Bukhpun, Mari Wakahiro, Eric J. Friedman, Elliott H. Sherr and Pratik Mukherjee. It appears in the April 15, 2013 issue of the journal Neuroimage, and is now published online ahead of print. See: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.12.031
This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health through grant #R01NS060776, #R01NS060776 and #R01NS058721. Additional support was provided by a grant from the UCSF Sandler Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
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.
FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2013, photo provided by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Jeffrey Atkins, also known as the rapper ?Ja Rule? is shown. Atkins, left a state prison in central New York last week after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession, going straight into federal custody in a tax evasion case. (AP Photo/New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision)
FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2013, photo provided by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Jeffrey Atkins, also known as the rapper ?Ja Rule? is shown. Atkins, left a state prison in central New York last week after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession, going straight into federal custody in a tax evasion case. (AP Photo/New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision)
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) ? Federal authorities say platinum-selling rapper Ja Rule is in a New York City jail with a July release date.
The 36-year-old rapper left a state prison in central New York last week after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession and went straight into federal custody in a tax evasion case.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons says he has since moved from an upstate jail to Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, which houses prisoners awaiting court dates or having short terms left on their sentences.
The bureau said Thursday his expected release date is July 28.
Ja Rule admits he failed to pay taxes on more than $3 million earned between 2004 and 2006 while he lived in New Jersey.
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Public release date: 28-Feb-2013
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