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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

George Lucas has announced that there will be one last Star Wars movie to end the saga, but it won’t have any actors visible.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars, an animated film is scheduled to be released into theaters on August 15 of this year.

“I felt there were a lot more ‘Star Wars’ stories left to tell. I was eager to start telling some of them through animation and, at the same time, push the art of animation forward,” said Lucas in a statement to the media.

Lucas says that although the film is animated, people can expect the same kind of galactic space battles and action that all the other Star Wars films have. The approximate running time of the film is 100 minutes.

The film is produced by Warner Brothers and Lucasfilm LTD. The new movie is also set to continue as an animated, 30 minute “mini-movie” series this autumn. The show can be seen on the Cartoon Network.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

In the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Seekport, a German and Saudi founded technological company, began to start on a web-search engine dedicated to the Arabic language called Sawafi. According to Arabic marketing officials, it is predicted to compete with the popular web-search engines, such as Google or Yahoo. Sawafi’s goal is to be as successful as the Chinese web-search engine, Budai, which in China, which has made a great improvement to its marketing businesses. Although internet access is low in the Middle East, Sawafi wishes to reach the other Arab communities in North America or Europe.

Monday, August 7, 2006

Dogs can be trained to detect early and late stages of lung and breast cancer accurately according to a study published by California scientists in the little-known scientific journal Integrative Cancer Therapies.

The study took place over the last five years at the Pine Street Foundation, a non-profit organization which conducts evidence-based research on integrative medicine (combining complementary and alternative medicine and mainstream medicine). Michael McCulloch and colleagues used three Labrador Retrievers and two Portuguese Water Dogs, both common pets, that received basic behavioral dog training. The researchers trained the dogs to lie down next to a sample from a cancer patient and to ignore other samples.

The samples used were breath samples from 55 patients with lung cancer and 31 with breast cancer — the two types of cancer with the highest mortality rates in the United States.

After the training phase, the dogs’ accuracy diagnosis was tested in a double-blind experiment. Among lung cancer patients, the sensitivity and specificity were 99% accurate and for breast cancer sensitivity was 88% and specificity 98%. Because these figures seem almost too good to be true, cancer experts are the same time baffled and skeptical. The authors of the study themselves also say replication of the study is needed.

Importantly, this was independent of the cancer stage, meaning the dogs were able to pick up the scent of cancer in its early stages. This is important because in many cases, the success of any treatment depends on early diagnosis. However, the researchers don’t believe this will lead to the use of dogs in the clinic soon, rather they want to find out which chemicals are actually sensed by the canines, because they could be used in laboratory assays. “It’s not like someone would start chemotherapy based on a dog test,” Dr. Gansler of the American Cancer Society said, “They’d still get a biopsy.”.

The researchers were inspired by anecdotal reports about dogs detecting cancer. In 1989, a British women consulted with her family physician because her Dalmatian kept licking a mole on her leg. At biopsy it showed to be malignant melanoma. When diagnosed too late this form of cancer has a poor survival rate, but in this case early surgery was made possible, and the women survived. Prior studies showed that breath samples from patients with lung cancer or breast cancer contain distinct biochemical markers. This provides a basis for the hypothesis that some cancer types produce volatile chemicals that dogs could smell. A study published in the British Medical Journal already proved that dogs could use their exquisite sense of smell to detect bladder cancer in urine samples, but they were only correct in 41% of cases, and another study provided preliminary evidence that dogs could detect melanomas.

This doesn’t mean you can show your breasts to your dog and it will tell you if you have cancer, other physicians caution, and scientists do not advise people to train their dogs to sniff for cancer. Unresolved issues from the study include the fact that subjects were required to breathe deeper than normal, so it’s not sure whether dogs can smell cancer in normal breath. Also, whether this is a permanent skill that would be retained by dogs was not tested.

Finally, there are concerns that could arise over liability issues: who would be responsible when the dog makes a mistake?

Current detection methods for both lung and breast cancer are not flawless. For lung cancer, chest X-ray and sputum cytology (detecting cancer cells in coughed up fluid) fail to detect many early cases, and CT scan produces many false-positive results unless combined with expensive PET scans. Although it might be comparing apples and oranges, a $2.5 million CT scanner has an accuracy of 85 to 90%. Mammography also produces false-positive results, and it may be difficult in women with dense breast tissue. As such, another type of “pet”-scan, using dogs as a biological assay, might prove feasible for screening if supported by further research. Current tests are also expensive so the use of dogs for preliminary cancer testing could prove to be an affordable alternative for countries in the developing world.

Monday, March 19, 2007

At least 10 pets, 9 cats and 1 dog have died as a result of eating contaminated pet food, says the United States Food and Drug Administration, or FDA. The contamination caused cats and dogs to both go into kidney failure.

At least 51 brands of cat food and 40 brands of dog food have been recalled. The manufacturer of the food is Menu Foods, which is based in Mississauga, Ontario in Canada. The brands include: Iams, Nutro, and Eukanuba pet foods. Nestle, Purina PetCare Co., Procter & Gamble and Hill’s Pet Nutrition Inc. are voluntarily recalling their pet foods as a precaution. The FDA says that only wet food has been reported to have caused the deaths. The food was sold between December of 2006 and March 3 of 2007. The recall includes pouches and cans of wet food that total over 60 million.

“We are still trying to find out what the true picture is out there of animals. We’re talking about 1 percent of the pet food [supply] and it’s really just impossible to extrapolate at this point,” reported the FDA’s head veterinarian, Stephen F. Sundlof.

The manufacturer is currently performing tests to determine what might have caused the contamination, but so far, the source has not been identified.

“We’re testing and testing, but we can’t identify the problem in the product,” said Sarah Tuite, a spokeswoman for Menu Foods.

Anywhere from 40 to 50 cats and dogs were fed the contaminated food during testing by Menu Foods, and at least seven of those animals died. The species or how many cats or dogs died during testing is not known.

The FDA says that the possible cause of the contamination could be from heavy metals, lead or fungi inside wheat gluten which is used in pet foods as a “filler.”

A complete list of the products recalled can be found here: Menu Foods Recall List. Pet owners are urged to stop using any and all food on that list that may still be in their home. Owners are also asked to seek immediate veterinarian attention if the pets are suspected of eating the food.

The recall could cost over 30 million USD.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Kivimetsän Druidi? is a Finnish female-fronted band formed in 2002 whose music is a fusion of symphonic, fantasy and folk metal, which the band’s website dubs ‘Rock ‘N’ Troll’.

Brothers Joni and Antti Koskinen formed the band in Kouvola with Joni playing guitar and growling while Antti played keyboard and sings backing vocals. They joined up with a female lead vocalist, lead and bass guitarists and a drummer. The brothers write the songs between them, with Antti doing the main body and Joni writing the lyrics.

Together the band recorded and released three demos and an EP, all released independently, across 2002-6. Across October and November 2007 they gained international attention by supporting well-known Finnish folk metal band Korpiklaani across a large European tour.

On June 6 this year Kivimetsän Druidi? was announced to have been signed to Century Media Records in a global deal. The band have now entered Noice Camp studio in Turku to record their debut, with a planned release date in October. This summer the only performances will be at a handful of festivals while the band works on their new album, but after that is released a major tour will follow to support it. The band say they are “extremely pleased” with the deal.

Wikinews was able to discuss these events and what the future holds for the band with the Koskinen brothers and female vocalist Leeni-Maria Hovila, who also writes the vocal melodies in an exclusive interview, which is published below for the first time.

Tuesday, October 4, 2005

Dr. Stephen Schoenthaler, a Professor of Criminal Justice at the California State University in Stanislaus, has long argued that there is a link between a healthy diet and decreased aggressive behaviour, as well as with increased IQ and school performance.

Dr. Schoenthaler is well-known for a youth detention center study where violations of house rules fell by 37% when vending machines were removed and the cafeteria replaced canned food by fresh alternatives. He summarizes his findings by saying that “Having a bad diet right now is a better predictor of future violence than past violent behaviour.” In a very large test, Schoenthaler directed a study in meals at 803 New York City schools, in low-income neighbourhoods, finding that the number of students passing final exams increased by 16%.

Critics have questioned some of Dr. Schoenthaler findings, due to the lack of placebo control groups. However, more recent work by Dr. Bernard Gesch, a physiologist at the University of Oxford, has placed some of the work on a more scientific footing. Dr. Gesch found that nutrition supplements produced a 26% drop in violations of prison rules over a placebo, and a 37% decrease in violent offences. The Netherlands has embarked on a wider scale dietary research program in 14 prisons.

The short term behaviour consequences of ingesting sugar are well understood: an initial burst on energy, followed a sugar low in which your body produces adrenalin, which makes you irritable and explosive. However, Schoenthaler and Gesch suggest that there are long term impacts over and above the short term consequences of blood sugar variations.