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House Members Continue Bickering Over Reform
Hope is fading in the House on voting on reform before the August recess as Democrats bicker over details, Roll Call reports: "Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Friday that Democratic leaders may push off the health care bill until September if they can"t get it finished within the next two weeks."

Editorials Respond To Selection Of Sotomayor As Supreme Court Nominee
Several newspapers recently published editorials on President Obama"s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Summaries appear below.~ Boston Globe: "Some liberal activists hoped that Obama would seek a firebrand to counter [Supreme Court Justice] Antonin Scalia, the darling of the right," but "Sotomayor has made her reputation not on hot-button social issues but on matters ranging from environmental regulation to the baseball business," a Globe editorial states. It adds that while Sotomayor "presumably shares Obama"s support for abortion rights, she upheld the Bush administration"s restrictions on family-planning activities" by international groups that received U.S. funding. Now, "conservative groups have seized upon an offhand remark in 2005" when she described the "federal appeals courts as the place "where policy is made" ... as evidence that Sotomayor would legislate from the bench," the editorial states, adding. "The attack is disingenuous." The editorial concludes, "Short of any unexpected revelations about her record or her philosophy, though, the Senate should confirm Sonia Sotomayor," adding that in addition to her "intriguing" personal background she "also has the experience to make an excellent Supreme Court Justice" (Boston Globe, 5/27).~ Chicago Tribune: Sotomayor "has to bring more than diversity to the court," a Tribune editorial states, adding that the "evidence so far suggests that she is up to the job." One "would expect a nominee chosen by Obama to be on the liberal side of the judicial spectrum," but some of her rulings "suggest otherwise," according to the editorial. While Sotomayor "has stressed that the "duty of a judge is to follow the law, not to question its plain terms,"" on the bench, "she ruled against an abortion-rights group challenging" the Bush administration"s "global gag rule," the editorial notes, among other rulings that "could be characterized as "conservative decisions"." However, "the point is not that she"s a closet conservative -- it"s that ideology didn"t seem to determine her decisions," according to the editorial. The "Senate has a responsibility to undertake a thorough examination of her record and her thinking," the editorial states, concluding, "But for now, it looks as though her critics have a tough task ahead of them" (Chicago Tribune, 5/27).~ Los Angeles Times: "Sotomayor doesn"t possess the political experience that would be brought to the court"s cloistered chambers by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) or Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano," but "she satisfies Obama"s other criteria: experience, erudition and, as he put it, "a common touch and a sense of compassion, an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live,"" a Times editorial states. Sotomayor"s "experiences as a Latina raised in a housing project who went on to excel at Princeton and Yale don"t in themselves qualify her for the court," but these facts do "complement her sterling credentials and equip her with perspectives that could illuminate legal issues that come before her," the editorial continues. Senate Republicans "should accord her the same respect [they] demanded for Bush"s nominees and end the tiresome tit-for-tat that has cheapened the confirmation of federal judges and deprived the bench of some of the nation"s most capable legal minds," the editorial concludes (Los Angeles Times, 5/27).~ Philadelphia Inquirer: "Sotomayor would bring to the court a diversity it has lacked for most of its history," an Inquirer editorial states. Although "[c]onservatives want to make an issue out of President Obama"s search for "empathy" in a nominee" and "criticize Sotomayor for a speech in 2001 in which she said that being a woman of color affects her decisions," neither comment "is sinister nor shocking," according to the editorial. It concludes, "The Senate has a duty to examine Sotomayor"s qualifications rigorously and fairly. But she appears to have the experience and the
News of the day
New Book About Women's Health Looks At The Good And Evil Of Hormones
The evidence is in. Estrogen does not halt aging or protect women from heart disease and dementia, nor is it the safest or best treatment for the hot flashes, night sweats and the insomnia that are associated with menopause and perimenopause. Quite simply - estrogen is not a good and magical hormone - as Susan Baxter, PhD., and Dr. Jerilynn C. Prior, painstakingly prove in their book, The Estrogen Errors; Why Progesterone is Better for Women"s Health.
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Computer Model Predicts Brain Tumor Growth And Evolution

Researchers from Brown University and other institutions have developed a computational computer model of how brain tumors grow and evolve. The model is the product mathematical formulas based on the first principals of physics, such as conservation of mass, and it has allowed researchers to recreate tumor growth in a computer. Through subsequent repetitive testing against real tumors, they have also linked their computerized tumors to real-world brain tumors, or "gliomas," and can now watch tumor growth on a computer screen. Creating such a model is significant because it could help design specific, targeted treatments for individualized therapy. There is no cure for gliomas, which can kill quickly, often within 15 months of diagnosis. Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy announced a year ago that he was suffering from this type of tumor, a malignant glioma of the brain. Details of the research were highlighted at an April meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. The full article is included in the May 15 edition of the journal Cancer Research. "This helps us design a treatment," said Elaine Bearer, the lead author and professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Brown. "By testing potential therapies in the computer, we can get our new drugs much faster to patients." Bearer, who also has faculty appointments in the Division of Engineering and the Department of Music, worked with a number of collaborators on the project, including co-author Vittorio Christini, a mathematician at the University of Texas. To conduct the study, Bearer and her collaborators developed a mathematical formula that incorporated a number of equations describing the process of tumor evolution and growth. The master computational model was built on formulas that predict how much oxygen tumor cells consume and the rate of oxygen diffusion, and quantitative measures of cell growth and metabolic rates. The model is a series of interdependent differential equations. Each equation includes variables, or numerical values that can be experimentally manipulated. For example, to test if oxygen consumption rates influence tumor growth, the values assigned to those rates can be changed and the outcome observed on the computer screen -not unlike playing a computer game. The result: A three-dimensional matrix of a glioma that can be adjusted to see what its growth stage will be over time, including speed of growth, size and shape. Researchers validated their computational model with glioma specimens. Bearer studied about 40 different human brain tumor samples. Bryan Kinney, a member of Bearer"s lab, obtained the samples from a number of s, including the Rhode Island Hospital pathology department, the Columbia University Brain Bank and the Cooperative Human Tissue Network, a division of the National Cancer Institute that helps increase access to human cancer tissue for research. The samples, sliced and sealed in a specimen slide, were as large as a chick pea or as small as the head of a pin. The tumor specimens used in the studies had been removed for diagnosis or surgical treatment of the tumor. Researchers compared their virtual computational tumor with the actual human brain tumor samples at different stages of tumor evolution. Through many rounds of checking computer output against the real-life tumors, researchers created a computational model that mimicked natural biological tumors in all respects. They focused specifically on a glioma because it does not invade the body through a basement membrane as epithelial-based cancers do, such as tumors that grow in the colon, breast or prostate. In the brain, tumors grow without having to digest a basement membrane to invade adjacent tissue. A basement membrane is essentially boundary of a given tissue that separates cells from the surrounding connective tissue. Bearer said she hopes the research will allow doctors to find drug targets for glioma. She also envisions using the computational model to find targets for personalized medical therapies, enabling it to quickly identify molecular targets, and then select from existing treatments or design new treatments to stop the tumor. Mark Hollmer Brown University


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