real estate menu left
real estate menu right

Resources

Good Sites


'Breakthrough' melanoma drug shrinks tumors PDF Print E-mail
Written by Liz Szabo   
Tuesday, 31 August 2010 22:25

A small study of an experimental drug for advanced melanoma — a brutal disease that often kills within nine months — is giving rare hope to doctors and patients.

For the first time, doctors say, new therapies that include the drug allow them to envision a time when they might be able to keep melanoma patients alive for years, treating the tumor as they would a chronic disease.

Q&A: Learn more about this promising new drug

The pill, known as PLX4032, doesn't cure melanoma, and it helps only the roughly 50% of melanoma patients whose tumors have a mutation in a key gene called BRAF. But among those patients in the study, 81% saw their tumors shrink. And for those 32 patients, the drug kept melanoma in check for a median of seven months, says the study's lead author, Keith Flaherty of Massachusetts General Hospital.

No other drug has ever helped that high a percentage of patients with melanoma or any other solid tumor, says Paul Chapman, co-author of the study in today's New England Journal of Medicine. The results are especially striking, he says, considering that only 10% to 20% of patients respond to standard treatments for melanoma, which don't improve overall survival.

"This is the most important breakthrough in melanoma, ever," says Lynn Schuchter of the University of Pennsylvania, who worked on the study. Some patients improved within days, she says.

The most common side effects are fatigue, rash and joint pain, but some patients also developed non-lethal skin cancers, the study says.

Until recently, patients have had few treatment options. The last new treatment for advanced melanoma was approved 12 years ago, says Timothy Turnham, executive director of the Melanoma Research Foundation.

In June, however, researchers published results of another experimental drug, ipilimumab, the first to prolong overall survival for advanced melanoma patients in a large-scale trial.

And researchers already are developing several other drugs similar to PLX4032, Turnham says, which could be key to preventing relapses. Although cancer often can mutate to get around one roadblock, the disease might have a harder time overcoming two, three or four different obstacles.

Read more...
 
Discovering Which Way to Go PDF Print E-mail
Written by Sabrina McOwen   
Friday, 20 August 2010 06:11

At first, I certainly don't know what and where I'm at. I feel lost and despair out of nowhere. I don't know which way would I take the left or the right road? Left road is life contentment. And the right is risks taking by goal setting.

The nature of a man is choosing among things that would give privileges for the long run. Choosing from options that which with optimum assurance and less rate of complexity. Unlike others, risks' taking is by aiming for more than you hold in your hands. Raising standards and being continuously focus on achieving predetermined set of objectives.

The first step to success is to create a sense of direction. The chances of accomplishing huge things are just too little without direction. This direction can be produce through carefully planning and goal setting. Clearly defined goals, establishes what a person want to be in the future. It strives to describe what exist, how things work and looks at outcomes through courses of actions.

Unfortunately, people have a tendency to generate goals according to the people around him/her especially persons having authority. Competition is also involved in succeeding goals. It requires and pressures a person to have enduring performance against to the people surrounding him. This will eventually result to impressive outcomes. On the other side, set goals should be also be based on the person's values so goals are feasible to obtain.

Commitment makes worthwhile goals. Making things to work smoothly and efficiently is committing yourself to something you wanted. It can tell whether a goal can be achieved progressively or not because this provides a sense of self enjoyment in one processing the goal setting.

Motivation fuels a person to strive harder and work better. Goal itself motivates a person because this is the focal point and the end accomplishment.

Read more...
 
Office Design and Technology Use For Home Workers-00-7243 PDF Print E-mail
Written by Emma Pilcher   
Tuesday, 17 August 2010 13:51

By the second half of 2008 laptop or notebook PC shipments exceeded those of desktop computers¹. This astonishing leap to dominance within the computer market reflects the reduction in price and improvements in technology of laptop computers, but also changes in ways of working.

A growing phenomenon in the world of work is the shift towards home-working. About 8% of the workforce are now teleworkers (working from different locations, using the home as a base or working from home full-time). The HSE’s (Health and Safety Executive) 2006 Horizon Scanning paper reports that by 2015, 70-80% of workers could be, at least partially, working away from the office.² Home office workers are made up of several different groups: self-employed and freelance workers; employees who have the freedom to work from home some or all of the time and teleworkers whose motto is “work is something you do, not something you travel to”.³ The variety and breadth of homeworkers’ roles is as diverse as the workforce as a whole: from accountant to journalist and musician to software project manager. The one thing that unites pretty much all of them is their need to use technology on a daily basis.

Most home-workers find it necessary to be “mobile workers” too, whether driven by client and site meetings or just a desire for a change of scene. For this reason laptops rather than PC’s tend to be the technology tool of choice. Laptops were never really designed for prolonged use and can in some cases result in repetitive strain injury and musculoskeletal disorders.4 However, with the right accessories a laptop can be transformed into an ergonomically correct workstation. A home office laptop stand to adjust the height, (i.e. viewing position of the screen) and a secondary keyboard and mouse (so that hands have space to spread and find their natural position) can adapt a laptop to seriously reduce these health risks.

Read more...
 
« StartPrev12345678910NextEnd »

Page 1 of 18



Powered by Joomla | Themes | Breakfast of Losers