| Genentech's Avastin Effective At Treating Breast Cancer, Study Says
FDA's Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee in December 2007 voted 5-4 against recommending that the agency approve marketing for the drug, the Times reports. The advisory panel based its decision on a separate study that found the drug's effectiveness in slowing the progression of the disease did not outweigh its toxic side effects (New York Times, 2/13). Genentech in a statement said it believes that the results of the new study "provide confirmation of Avastin's efficacy and safety in this patient population" (New York Times, 2/13). Hal Barron, Genentech's chief medical officer in a statement said, "We are pleased that a second Phase III study in this population of breast cancer patients showed a significant improvement in progression-free survival." He added, "The trial also demonstrated Avastin's potential with a different chemotherapy in this disease" (Berkrot, Reuters, 2/12).
Get Off of My Cloud
It also demonstrates that movie pirates are fundamentally parasitic, not predatory. My interest in this topic came from experiencing how difficult it is to get into even very bad Sundance films. For the public, tickets are scarce and assigned by lottery, and even a press pass is no guarantee. That's why I decided to try using BitTorrent to re-create Sundance in my Park City, Utah, living room. No more cold, no more lines, and no more pesky Q&As with the director, so I reasoned. But the experiment failed. Not a single 2008 Sundance film is on any major pirate site that I could find. That might be accounted for by anti-piracy measures, but here's the kicker: There are also almost no 2007 films on leading pirate sites, and none of last year's Sundance "hits." The online pirate world and the Sundance world are, as far as I can tell, separate domains.
Directed Self-ordering Of Organic Molecules For Electronic Devices
ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2008) A simple surface treatment technique demonstrated by a collaboration between researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Penn State and the University of Kentucky potentially offers a low-cost way to mass produce large arrays of organic electronic transistors on polymer sheets for a wide range of applications including flexible displays, "intelligent paper" and flexible sheets of biosensor arrays for field diagnostics. .
No more weekends off: P’s & C’s reporting
The great L.A. Times scribe Jim Murray once said, "Spring is the time of year when the ground thaws, trees bud, the income tax falls due — and everybody wins the pennant." And so it is that your correspondent, memorably dubbed as the faux "crusading everyman" by one of our angrier blog participants, has already done his taxes, an annual end-of-January ritual before heading to spring training and being immersed in a six-week world where normal life is put on hold and baseball takes precedence over all else. We'll be headed down Wednesday, a day before pitchers and catchers are officially required to report. Need some time to stock the fridge of the rental house and get a lay of the land in our new neighborhood, plus stop by the ballpark at Dark Star to see how many eager Braves arrived early.
Lucara Updates Bulk Sampling Progress at Mothae
Full commissioning of the kimberlite processing and diamond recovery plant was completed during the week of February 22, 2008 and sample processing commenced on February 25, 2008. The initial 30,000 tonnes of kimberlite is being processed in a series of 5,000 to 10,000 tonne samples taken from various kimberlite phases within the 8.8 hectare Mothae pipe. The material is being processed through a dense media separation (DMS) plant which operates at a nominal 30 tonnes per hour. The process plant is designed to recover diamonds in various size fractions ranging from +2 mm to -18 mm. Heavy mineral concentrate produced by the DMS plant is passed through a continuous grease belt for diamond recovery, with the exception of the very coarse fraction (+12mm) which will be hand sorted. The current operating schedule plans for the initial 30,000 tonne sample to be completed by the third quarter of 2008.
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