Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- Researchers Perform Breakthrough Research on Immune Response
- … | News for Dallas, Texas | Science, Health and Medicine |…
- Obits in the news: Actor John Conte - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
- Time to eat crow, Mr. Cayetano
- Russia to invest billions

Researchers Perform Breakthrough Research on Immune Response
Newswise - Newswise (press release) - Sep 6, 2006
Anthony, Gause, and co-workers suggest a new model of resistance, involving macrophages. Macrophages have previously been associated primarily with protection against microbes, including bacteria and viruses. The studies reported in Nature Medicine indicate that during helminth infection, macrophages differentiate along an alternative activation pathway that mediates clearance of these relatively large, multicellular parasites. Gause, formerly professor and vice chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at USU, is currently university professor and senior associate dean for research at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-NJMS. Anthony, whose doctoral dissertation is based on this work, is now a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University.

… | News for Dallas, Texas | Science, Health and Medicine |…
Dallas Morning News - Dallas Morning News (subscription) - Sep 6, 2006
It weighs the generation of new replacement cells, required for continued life, against the risk of death from cancer, which is the inevitable outcome of letting cells divide. To offset the increasing risk of cancer as a person ages, the gene gradually reduces the ability of stem cells to proliferate. The new finding, reported by three groups of researchers online Wednesday in Nature, was made in a special breed of mice that lacks the pivotal gene, but is thought likely to apply to people, as well. The finding suggests that many of the degenerative diseases of aging are caused by an active shutting down of the stem cells that renew the body’s various tissues and are not just a passive disintegration of tissues under daily wear and tear, as is often assumed. "I don’t think aging is a random process," said Dr. Norman Sharpless of the University of North Carolina, senior author of one of the three reports. "It’s a program, an anticancer program.

Obits in the news: Actor John Conte - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
pittsburghlive.com - Sep 6, 2006
26 of a heart attack at Emory Dunwoody Medical Center. He leaves behind a network of more than 200 nature centers and museums across the country that encourage people to love the outdoors as much as he did. Much of his work was done through two organizations he founded: the Natural Science for Youth Foundation and the Southeast Land Preservation Trust. Forbes never graduated from college, but studied at the University of Iowa and Bowdoin College, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1987. As president of the William T. Hornaday Foundation, which later became the Natural Science for Youth Foundation, he helped establish museums in Kansas City, Mo… She developed one of the first transplant services in Illinois and in 1969 performed one of the state’s first kidney transplants. She was a UIC faculty member from 1967 to 1987, when she moved to Ohio State University to become the first woman in the United States to head an academic surgery department. She was a member of the editorial boards of the Annals of Surgery and the Journal of the American College of Surgeons; a reviewer for the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine; and an honorary fellow of England’s Royal College of Surgeons. Bazzell Mull

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.

Time to eat crow, Mr. Cayetano
ABS CBN News - Sep 6, 2006
(PPIC) that became the pretext for the takeover. DENR officials in the Ilocos region issued the CDO on the basis of allegations that PPIC had committed environmental lapses. Last week the DENR got a taste of its own medicine when the Court of Appeals issued an order temporarily restraining the department from enforcing its CDO on PPIC, which has a 25-year contract to operate the Poro Point port and bulk terminal. PPIC is actually a joint venture among BCDA, PPMC and private investor Bulk Handlers, Inc. —but BCDA and PPMC seem hell-bent on kicking BHI out of Poro Point. In its resolution, the court noted that the CDO “might have been hastily and improvidently used. ”
The court noted that the desist order was issued on the same day that PPMC—through its president Felix Singson Racadio—sent a letter to DENR Secretary Angelo Reyes requesting the issuance of a CDO against the private operator ASAP… According to the appellate court, PPIC’s right to manage the port, in accordance with the pre-incorporation agreement with BCDA and PPMC’s precursor, John Hay Poro Point Development Corp. , takes the nature of a property right, the deprivation of which must observe the basic tenets of due process. The court said that the alleged environmental infractions were apparently “not attributable to the PPIC itself but rather to Saturn Marketing Corporation. ” The court further noted that Saturn Marketing is merely a “permitee” of PPIC at the economic zone. The court issued the TRO upon the petition of PPIC, which had questioned the DENR order, noting the hastiness of the issuance and lack of due process. The CDO, signed by DENR regional director Joel Salvador, was issued upon the request of PPMC, which cited a complaint filed by San Fernando Mayor Mary Jane Ortega. However, the department’s own records showed that it actually received Ortega’s letter days after the CDO was released.

Russia to invest billions
Independent Online - Sep 6, 2006
They were speaking on Tuesday after meeting in Cape Town during Putin’s State visit to SA, the first ever by a Russian President to the country or to sub-Saharan Africa. On Wednesday the two leaders will participate in a meeting of top business leaders from both countries to discuss further business deals. The two governments signed four co-operation agreements on Tuesday - one on friendship and partnership that sets the framework for co-operation in most areas; one on co-operation in space; one on co-operation in health and medicine and one on protecting intellectual property rights in defence industry co-operation. The brisk and businesslike Putin, a no-nonsense former KGB officer, briefly acknowledged these thanks but quickly added that he was not visiting the country for “sentimental reminiscences, but to do business”. He then announced that Russia would be using some of its $280-billion reserves to invest in SA. The main one would be an investment of $1-billion by a Russian corporation in manganese production… SA officials said before Putin’s arrival that SA had tried to persuade Putin to address Parliament, but that he had declined. However, Mbeki gave a different explanation during Tuesday’s Press conference, saying that Putin had wanted to address Parliament but that time had been too short. After participating in the business roundtable on Wednesday, Putin is to visit Robben Island and the Cape Point nature reserve before visiting Morocco and then returning home.