2012 Nobel Prize

Shinya Yamanaka Wins 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine

October 8, 2012Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes — which is affiliated with UCSF — has won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of how to transform ordinary adult skin cells into cells that, like embryonic stem cells, are capable of developing into any cell in the human body.Yamanaka shares the prize with John B. Gurdon of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, England.The prize was awarded for the scientists’ "discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent."Yamanaka, who works in both San Francisco and Kyoto, is also the director of the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) and a principal investigator at theInstitute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS), both at Kyoto University. The former orthopedic surgeon trained in biomedical research at Gladstone in the 1990s, before returning to San Francisco in 2007 as a Gladstone senior investigator and a UCSF anatomy professor.“Dr. Yamanaka’s story is a thrilling tale of creative genius, focused dedication and successful cross-disciplinary science,” said R. Sanders Williams, MD, president of Gladstone, a leading and independent biomedical-research organization. “These traits, nurtured during Dr. Yamanaka’s postdoctoral training at Gladstone, have led to a breakthrough that has helped propel the San Francisco Bay Area to the forefront of stem cell research. Dozens of labs — often supported by organizations such as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and the Roddenberry Foundation – have adopted his technology. Altogether, hundreds of scientists around the world are employing the ‘Yamanaka factors’ and related techniques to search for solutions to a host of relentless illnesses — including those on which Gladstone focuses: diseases of the heart, diseases of the brain and diseases caused by deadly viruses.”Six years ago, Yamanaka discovered that by adding just four genes into adult skin cells in mice, he could induce the cells to become like embryonic stem cells. He called theminduced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. In 2007, he announced that he had done the same with human adult skin cells.Embryonic stem cells — which are “pluripotent” because they can develop into any type of cell — hold tremendous promise for regenerative medicine, in which damaged organs and tissues can be replaced or repaired. Many in the science community consider the use of stem cells to be key to the future treatment and eradication of a number of diseases, such as diabetes, blindness and Parkinson's disease.But the use of embryonic stem cells has long been controversial — which is one reason why Yamanaka's discovery of an alternate way to obtain human stem cells, without the use of embryos, is so important.“This is a wonderful day for Dr. Yamanaka, UCSF, the Gladstone Institutes, Kyoto University and the world,” said UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH. “Dr. Yamanaka’s work exemplifies the potential of basic research to transform our understanding of human cell and molecular biology, and to use this knowledge to work toward the development of treatments for currently intractable diseases. He has opened up a whole new field of discovery, and our scientists are working hard to advance the research.”In addition to avoiding the controversial use of embryonic stem cells, iPS cell technology also represents an entirely new platform for fundamental studies of human disease — and the development of therapies to overcome them. Rather than using models made in yeast, flies or mice for disease research, iPS technology allows human stem cells to be created from patients with a specific disease. As a result, the cells contain a complete set of the genes that resulted in that disease — representing the potential of a far-superior human model for studying disease and testing new drugs and treatments. In the future, iPS cells could be used in a Petri dish to test both drug safetyand efficacy for an individual patient.iPS Cells Gain Momentum
Initially, the simplicity of Yamanaka’s technology was met with skepticism. But he made his data and the DNA of his work publicly available to enable any scientist to work with these new cells. Within months of the 2006 breakthrough, scientists around the world had reproduced and adopted this new approach to generating and studying stem cells.“The impact of Dr. Yamanaka’s discovery is immense,” said Deepak Srivastava, MD, who leads stem cell and cardiovascular research at Gladstone. “It suggested that human adult cells retain a greater ability to be modified than previously thought — and could potentially be altered into whatever cell type might be desired.”The impact can be seen at Gladstone where, for example, the Roddenberry Center for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine — launched at Gladstone last October with a generous gift from the Roddenberry Foundation — collaborates with Kyoto’s CIRA on the use of iPS technology in patient therapeutics to improve human health.Scientific results that Gladstone has announced over the past six months underscore the value of that collaboration. In April, for example, Srivastava announced that his lab had reprogramed cardiac fibroblasts — the heart’s connective tissue — directly into beating cardiac-muscle cells in animals.In June, scientists in the lab of Gladstone Investigator Steve Finkbeiner, MD, PhD, announced the creation of a human model of Huntington's disease from the skin cells of patients with the disease. Earlier that same month, scientists in the lab of Gladstone Investigator Yadong Huang,MD, PhD, announced the use of a single genetic factor to transform skin cells into cells that develop on their own into an interconnected, functional network of brain cells. Both announcements offer new hope in the fight against neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and Huntington’s disease.In July, Yamanaka’s own lab at Gladstone discovered that environmental factors critically influence the growth of iPS cells — offering newfound understanding of how these cells form. These results are crucial for future studies of how iPS cells grow and mature — while all of these research results point to the significance of Yamanaka’s discovery for the future creation of treatments for some of the world’s most debilitating diseases.“The best part about this prize is that it will bring attention to — and will likely spur — the important stem cell work that scientists around the world are conducting,” said Yamanaka, who is also the L.K. Whittier Foundation Investigator in Stem Cell Biologyat Gladstone. “This iPS technology is for patients — and the more scientists who build on it, the faster we can help those who live with chronic or life-threatening diseases.”Leading up to Monday’s Nobel prize announcement, Yamanaka has received a host of other honors recognizing the importance of his iPS discovery, including the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Wolf Prize in Medicine, the Shaw Prize and the Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology. In 2011, Yamanaka was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, garnering one of the highest honors available for U.S. scientists and engineers. In June, Yamanaka won the Millennium Technology Award Grand Prize — the world's largest and most prominent technology award — along with Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux software.Yamanaka will be a speaker at the ISSCR-Roddenberry International Symposium on Cellular Reprogramming being held at Gladstone later this month, on October 24 and 25.Gladstone is an independent and nonprofit biomedical-research organization dedicated to accelerating the pace of scientific discovery and innovation to prevent, treat and cure cardiovascular, viral and neurological diseases.

 date 2012/10/08       from UCSF

1. embryonic 胚胎

2. orthopedic 骨科

3. cross-disciplinary  跨學科

4. nurture 培育

5. postdoctoral 博士的

6. molecular 分子

7. yeast 酵母

8. cardiovascular 心血管

9. collaboration. 合作

10. neurological 神經系統

US presidential election

US presidential election 2012: The fight for Ohio, the state that likes to back the winner

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have returned again and again to Ohio, which has backed every winner in presidential elections since 1964 

Ohio is where the warring halves of America meet. This midwestern state, mixing rural farmland, small towns and decaying industrial cities, is the ground zero of the bitter and protracted 2012 election that on Tuesday will decide who wins the White House.

It is where blue state Americans, who back Barack Obama to win a second term, battle over turf with red state Americans who desperately want Republican challenger Mitt Romney to bring the right back to power.

Ohio has voted for the winning candidate in very election bar one since 1944 (in 1960, it went for Nixon over Kennedy). No Republican has ever won the White House without taking Ohio. If Obama can stop Romney here, he is likely to emerge the victor. But if Romney can take the state it will signify a ground shift: one that will reduce Obama to a humbled, one-term president. Both sides know this.

In the small town of Celina in western Ohio last week, the state's lieutenant-governor, Mary Taylor, was acting as a warm-up act for Romney and his running mate, Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan. In a high school sports hall she warned a packed crowd: "The world is watching Ohio." A day later, on the other side of the state – literally and metaphorically – former president Bill Clinton was oozing Arkansas charm in the "rust belt" city of Youngstown. "Ohio is an old-school kind of state, and I mean that in the best possible sense," Clinton drawled. "Obama had your back when you were against the wall, and you will have his back now."

This, after months of brutal campaigning, is where it ends. All the heat and fury of almost two years of rallies and speeches, all the relentless attack ads, all the politicking and horse-trading, comes to a head this week.

Across America there are only a nine states where votes matter. Giant states such as Texas and California are already in the bag for, respectively, Romney and Obama. Instead, these few swing states – from Colorado in the west to Florida in the south and tiny New Hampshire in New England – are the battleground on which the election has been fought. The fight there is poised on a knife edge. Romney's surge after the first presidential debate has abated and left the national polls largely tied. In the swing states – and, crucially, in Ohio – Obama holds a slim but steady lead. That means, as the election goes down to the wire, it is Obama who many believe has his nose just ahead.

But the last week has seen a frantic final push. Across the swing states tens of thousands of party volunteers have gone door to door. The "get out the vote" plans for election day are being rehearsed and fine-tuned. Airwaves in the swing states are so saturated with political ads that in some areas there is no ad space left to buy. Even superstorm Sandy – which devastated the north-east – saw the campaign suspended for only a couple of days before combat resumed. By the time people vote on Tuesday a staggering $2.5bn will have been spent on the election – the most expensive in history.

Yet in Ohio, despite the intense effort, two different realities stubbornly persist. John DeCaussim, a 56-year-old Youngstown mechanic, said he could not understand how anyone could vote for Romney. "I have no idea why this election is close," he said. "It shouldn't be." Meanwhile, in Celina sales manager Jim McGee, 62, believed Obama was a threat to the country's existence. "He's been a disaster. In my lifetime I have never seen things fall apart so far," he said.

For Republicans the importance of winning Ohio is maths and history. Every Republican president has had the state on his side. And almost every plan that party strategists have devised to grab the White House for Romney includes Ohio in the win column. As a result, the Romney campaign has been virtually camped in the state. Romney has visited almost 50 times this year alone. Ryan too has been a virtual ever-present.

The state has seen a remarkable transformation of the Romney message over the last week. He has sought to shed his conservative image and long career in high finance and turn into an economic populist, emoting about tough economic times and bewailing the plight of the poor. In Findlay, Ohio, a small college town with a dilapidated Main Street, Romney was in full flow. He told stories of single mothers, low wages and parents making sacrifices so they could buy birthday presents for their children. For Romney, a millionaire many times over who has repeatedly extolled the virtues of high capitalism, it was a jarring performance. "There has been a middle-class squeeze in this country," he said.

Romney even started to sound like Obama circa 2008. He has adopted the "change" slogan as his own, portraying himself as an enemy of the status quo. "I happen to think that the American people understand that we need dramatic and real change," he said. Ignoring the last three years of bitter politics and a Tea Party-dominated Republican party, he claimed to be a centrist, keen to reach out a Republican hand to Democrats, even though it is the same hand that has been rejecting Obama for his entire first term.

But Romney as populist fist-pumper was as nothing compared to the musical act in Findlay. Before the teetotal, Mormon former Massachusetts governor took the stage, country music stars John Rich and Cowboy Troy, a black rapper, gave a lyrical performance, singing I Play Chicken with the Train. Rich suggested the crowd treat polling day like a drunken football game day party. "I would make a tailgate party and go to vote for Mitt Romney. Put that man in the White House, can you hear? Oh yeah," Rich said. "Put some beer in the cooler in the truck!"

But if such contradictory images were a sign of a notoriously fluid Romney, keen to find any message that sells in Ohio, there have also been signs in recent weeks of the Republican party's knife-sharp edge. Across America mysterious anonymous "robo-texts" slamming Obama have been buzzing millions of people's mobile phones. Billboards appeared in Ohio, and other swing states, apparently targeting poor and minority neighbourhoods with warnings of the threat of prison for voter fraud.

On the airwaves the ads have got more extreme. A Romney ad claiming Jeep production was being moved to China was condemned as an outright lie by Jeep's own parent company, Chrysler. Another ad, running in Florida, linked Obama to Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. Neither is virulent dislike for Obama hard to find, often tinged with a sense that the president is not really American. "I want to support Romney the good old-fashioned American way," said construction worker Kevin Williams, 48, in Celina. "I don't like socialism and Obama supports that."

There is little doubt that Republicans are highly motivated. Maggie Niswaner is 73 but reckons she has walked more than 20 miles in the last week, knocking on doors and delivering pamphlets as a volunteer for Romney in Findlay. "I am a good American," she said when asked for a reason why she was putting in such efforts to defeat Obama.

The doom and gloom pumped out by the Romney campaign has worked, too. Though there is little doubt the economy is stuttering in its recovery, and unemployment remains high, but has been on a downward trend. But that is taboo on the Republican campaign trail. "We have a jobs crisis in America," said Paul Ryan in Celina, pointing out that 23 million Americans were struggling to find enough work.

But Ryan is right about one thing. It is a favourite part of the firebrand conservative's performance to read out a quote at the beginning of his stump speech. It goes: "If you do not have fresh ideas, use stealth tactics to scare voters. If you do not have a record to run on, paint your opponent as someone that people should run from." Ryan then asks his audience who said that and delightedly gives the answer. "That's what Barack Obama said when he was running for president four years ago. Now when you switch on the TV that is exactly what he has become," Ryan said in Findlay.

There is much truth in the claim. Obama's re-election campaign, led by the hardnosed political operative David Axelrod, has been relentlessly negative. It has been a brutally sustained assault on Romney's image. One controversial – and widely debunked – attack ad all but accused Romney of killing a man's wife after she lost healthcare benefits. Obama has raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative advertising and Bill Clinton and vice-president Joe Biden have become even punchier as the campaign has drawn to a close.

In Youngstown, Clinton mocked Romney's flexibility of ideas, perhaps forgetting his own notorious "triangulation" of policy. "Romney ties himself in more knots than a boy scout does at a knot-tying contest," Clinton quipped. Biden followed suit. "This guy pirouettes more than a ballerina," he said, bringing a cry of "Romney is a liar!" from the audience.

It is not a pretty end to Obama's campaign. And it is a long way from "hope and change". Though few ever expected Obama to fulfil the wild expectations of his historic 2008 election win, his first term has ended with a disappointed liberal base dismayed by broken promises on union rights and closing Guantánamo Bay and by a resounding defeat in the 2010 midterm elections. The result has been an Obama effort that has only hesitantly defended its main policy achievement of healthcare reform and has focused on attacking Republicans, rather than laying out any bold agenda.

Yet, for many on the blue state side of Ohio's divide, that is more than enough. On the streets of Akron, a city at the heart of the north-eastern rust belt, student Cara Chappell remained loyal. "When Obama came in it was already all messed up," she said. "The next four years he will be able to get things right. He had to save the economy first."

She cannot conceive of a Romney victory, even as she admits that her mother – who boasts a technology degree – cannot find work and might leave the state. "If Romney wins, I will probably be speechless for the first time in my whole life," she said.

So will Axelrod. Buoyed by polls showing that Obama is holding on to a slim lead in Ohio, his political guru was in a bullish mood. "I don't want to be ambiguous at all: we are winning this race," he said.

Of course, both sides cannot be right. Unless the election is so tight that it ends up in court decisions and recounts, either blue state America or red state America will triumph. But the warring sides agree on one thing. As Ryan looked out over an enthusiastic crowd of Republican true believers in Celina, he told them: "Ohio, you get to decide." That decision – whatever it is – will affect the whole world.

from: The Observer    2012/12/18

1.warring 交戰

2.decaying 腐爛衰敗

3.signify 象徵

4.lieutenant-governor 布政使

5.respectively 分別地 相對地

6.surge 浪濤 波浪

7.frantic 瘋狂的

8.tinge 色調

9.punchier 有力的

10.triumph 勝利

Diaoyu islands

Ties between China and Japan have been repeatedly strained by a territorial row over a group of islands, known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and the Diaoyu islands in China. The BBC looks at the background to the row.

What is the row about?

The eight uninhabited islands and rocks in question lie in the East China Sea. They have a total area of about 7 sq km and lie northeast of Taiwan, east of the Chinese mainland and southwest of Japan's southern-most prefecture, Okinawa.

They matter because they are close to strategically important shipping lanes, offer rich fishing grounds and are thought to contain oil deposits. The islands are controlled by Japan.

What is Japan's claim?

Japan says it surveyed the islands for 10 years and determined that they were uninhabited. That being the case, on 14 January 1895 it erected a sovereignty marker that formally incorporated the islands into Japanese territory. The Senkaku islands became part of the Nansei Shoto islands - also known as the Ryukyu islands and now as modern-day Okinawa prefecture.

After World War II Japan renounced claims to a number of territories and islands including Taiwan in the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco. But under the treaty the Nansei Shoto islands came under US trusteeship and were then returned to Japan in 1971, under the Okinawa reversion deal.

Japan says that China raised no objections to the San Francisco deal. And it says that it is only since the 1970s, when the issue of oil resources in the area emerged, that Chinese and Taiwanese authorities began pressing their claims.

What is China's claim?

China says that the Diaoyu islands have been part of its territory since ancient times, serving as important fishing grounds administered by the province of Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that this is "fully proven by history and is legally well-founded".

Taiwan was ceded to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, after the Sino-Japanese war. When Taiwan was returned in the Treaty of San Francisco, China says the islands - as part of it - should also have been returned. But Beijing says Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek did not raise the issue, even when the Diaoyu islands were named in the later Okinawa reversion deal, because he depended on the US for support.

Separately, Taiwan also claims the islands.

Have there been incidents before?

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that the issue should be shelved for future settlement and that the two sides should try to prevent it from becoming "a disturbing factor" in bilateral ties. There have nonetheless been sporadic incidents over the islands.

In 1996 a Japanese group established a lighthouse on one of the islands. Chinese activists then sailed repeatedly to the islands and in one incident, Hong Kong activist David Chan jumped into the sea and drowned. Since then, there have been periodic attempts by Chinese and Taiwanese activists to sail to the islands. In 2004, Japan arrested seven Chinese activists who landed on the main island.

There have also been face-offs between Japanese patrol boats and Chinese or Taiwanese fishing vessels. In 2005, 50 Taiwanese fishing boats staged a protest in the area, complaining of harassment by Japanese patrols.

In September 2010, Japan seized a Chinese trawler that collided with two coast guard vessels near to the islands, sparking a serious diplomatic row. Small anti-Japanese protests were held in several cities in China. A visit by 1,000 Japanese students to the Shanghai Expo and a concert by a top Japanese band were also cancelled.

In the end, Japan released the entire crew of the trawler - first the 14-member crew and then the captain, several days later.

In April 2012, a fresh row ensued after outspoken Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said he would use public money to buy the islands from the current private owner.

In August of the same year, a group of activists sailed to the islands from Hong Kong, with seven landing on one island. All were detained and later sent back. Several days later, at least 10 Japanese nationalist activists also landed on the islands with flags.

Tensions continued to rise and in early September, two men were detained in Beijing for ripping the flag off the Japanese ambassador's car in late August, in an apparent protest over the islands.

Following that, the Japanese government reached a deal to buy the disputed islands from private owners. On 11 September, China sent two patrol ships to waters near the island as Japan signed the purchase contract.

So what next?

The Senkaku/Diaoyu issue complicates efforts by Japan and China to resolve a dispute over oil and gas fields in the East China Sea that both claim.

It also highlights the more robust attitude China has been taking to its territorial claims in both the East China Sea and the South China Sea in recent months.

1. row 排 列

2. uninhabited 無人居住的

3. matter 有關係 礙眼

4. strategically 戰略性

5. deposit 貯藏

6. bilateral 雙邊的

7. trusteeship 託管

8. sporadic 零星

9. trawler 拖網漁船

10. detain 扣留