DUBAI (Reuters) – President-elect Hassan Rohani said on Monday he hoped the world would grasp a new opportunity for “constructive interaction” with Iran and pledged to be more transparent about the Islamic Republic‘s nuclear program in order to see sanctions lifted.
But he said Tehran was not ready to suspend its enrichment of uranium, which the West fears is aimed at producing a nuclear weapons capability – something Iran denies. “That period has ended,” he said.
Rohani, a moderate conservative cleric, scored an emphatic and surprise election win over conservative rivals on Friday and has quickly moved to assure Iranians and the world that he will keep his pledges of better relations with other countries.
He said the new government, after his inauguration in August, would “revive ethics and constructive interaction with the world through moderation”.
“I hope that all countries use this opportunity,” Rohani told his first news conference after his election win.
Rohani, Iran’s nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005, said Tehran would be more transparent about its activities in the future.
“Our nuclear programs are completely transparent. But we are ready to show greater transparency and make clear for the whole world that the steps of the Islamic Republic of Iran are completely within international frameworks,” he said.
(Reporting by Zahra Hosseinian, Yeganeh Torbati and Marcus George; Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Public release date: 17-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rachel Champeau rchampeau@mednet.ucla.edu 310-794-2270 University of California – Los Angeles Health Sciences
Millions of people each year have polyps successfully removed during colonoscopies. But when a suspicious polyp is bigger than a marble or in a hard-to-reach location, patients are referred for surgery to remove a portion of their colon even if doctors aren’t sure whether the polyp is cancerous or not.
Since only 15 percent of all polyps turn out to be malignant, many patients are unnecessarily subjected to the risks of this major surgery. Now there is an alternative.
A UCLA team of surgeons and gastroenterologists has been performing a new, minimally invasive procedure to remove large and hard-to-reach polyps while keeping the colon intact. The procedure, which combines two minimally invasive techniques, has currently been performed at only a handful of medical centers in the United States.
In the June issue of the journal Surgical Endoscopy, the UCLA researchers present their experiences using the new technique known as CELS, for combination endoscopy and laparoscopy surgery and offer the first comparison of the new technique and standard surgery.
“The CELS approach combines the best of minimally invasive techniques and may prove to be a viable option for select patients,” said senior author Dr. James Yoo, an assistant professor of surgery and chief of the colon and rectal surgery program for the UCLA Health System and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
For the study, the team compared outcomes for five patients who underwent the new procedure with outcomes for nine patients who received standard surgery to remove suspicious polyps between August 2008 and October 2012.
The new technique starts out like a colonoscopy, with a gastroenterologist advancing an endoscope inside the colon. The endoscope, a device with a small video camera and a light attached, lets doctors look inside the body cavity. Once a polyp is in sight and the gastroenterologist is ready to remove it, the surgeon uses minimally invasive surgical tools, inserted through two to four tiny incisions in the abdomen, to carefully maneuver and manipulate the colon, allowing the gastroenterologist better access to the polyp.
If the polyp is in a tricky location, such as a fold of the colon, the surgeon can gently undo the fold temporarily. If the polyp is large and deeply embedded, the surgeon can monitor the outside of the colon with a tiny camera and, if needed, perform minor wall repair to the colon after the polyp is removed.
Once the polyp is removed, it is immediately taken to the lab for analysis to determine if it’s benign or cancerous, while the team and patient wait in the operating room. The analysis takes about 30 minutes. If the polyp turns out to be cancerous, the team proceeds with the standard surgery to remove the affected portion of the colon.
According to the UCLA report, all polyps were successfully removed with the new CELS procedure, and the complication rate was lower than with standard surgery. Four out of the five patients who had the CELS procedure, and six out of nine patients who received standard surgery, were found to have benign polyps.
The procedure time and hospital stay were shorter with the new procedure, the researchers found. Operating time averaged 159 minutes, compared with 205 minutes for standard surgery, and the median hospital stay was one night with the new procedure and five nights with standard surgery.
“The majority of patients in the study had a benign polyp,” Yoo said. “We found that the new procedure can be performed safely with outcomes that compare favorably with standard surgery for these select patients.”
In the majority of the CELS cases, findings from the quick lab analysis were accurate. However, one patient’s final pathology report, which came back a week later, showed that the polyp was cancerous, so that patient was scheduled for standard surgery.
Yoo noted that in the future, newer imaging methods and lab analysis may make it easier to differentiate between a benign and malignant polyp.
“Although this is a small study with one institution’s experience, newer technology is helping doctors raise the bar and offer more minimally invasive procedures with less down-time and trauma for the patient,” said Dr. Eric Esrailian, co-chief of the division of digestive diseases for the UCLA Health System and the Geffen School of Medicine, who was part of the UCLA team.
Physicians note that patients who successfully undergo the CELS procedure still require follow-up endoscopic evaluation and that surgery is still the standard treatment for cancer or cancerous polyps or if the polyp cannot be removed endoscopically even with the CELS technique.
The next step in research, according to the UCLA team, is a multi-institutional study to further examine use of the CELS approach to better characterize its impact on surgery.
###
The study received no outside funding.
Addditional authors included Minna K. Lee, Formosa Chen, Marcia McFory Russell, Jonathan Sack and Anne Y. Lin.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 17-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rachel Champeau rchampeau@mednet.ucla.edu 310-794-2270 University of California – Los Angeles Health Sciences
Millions of people each year have polyps successfully removed during colonoscopies. But when a suspicious polyp is bigger than a marble or in a hard-to-reach location, patients are referred for surgery to remove a portion of their colon even if doctors aren’t sure whether the polyp is cancerous or not.
Since only 15 percent of all polyps turn out to be malignant, many patients are unnecessarily subjected to the risks of this major surgery. Now there is an alternative.
A UCLA team of surgeons and gastroenterologists has been performing a new, minimally invasive procedure to remove large and hard-to-reach polyps while keeping the colon intact. The procedure, which combines two minimally invasive techniques, has currently been performed at only a handful of medical centers in the United States.
In the June issue of the journal Surgical Endoscopy, the UCLA researchers present their experiences using the new technique known as CELS, for combination endoscopy and laparoscopy surgery and offer the first comparison of the new technique and standard surgery.
“The CELS approach combines the best of minimally invasive techniques and may prove to be a viable option for select patients,” said senior author Dr. James Yoo, an assistant professor of surgery and chief of the colon and rectal surgery program for the UCLA Health System and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
For the study, the team compared outcomes for five patients who underwent the new procedure with outcomes for nine patients who received standard surgery to remove suspicious polyps between August 2008 and October 2012.
The new technique starts out like a colonoscopy, with a gastroenterologist advancing an endoscope inside the colon. The endoscope, a device with a small video camera and a light attached, lets doctors look inside the body cavity. Once a polyp is in sight and the gastroenterologist is ready to remove it, the surgeon uses minimally invasive surgical tools, inserted through two to four tiny incisions in the abdomen, to carefully maneuver and manipulate the colon, allowing the gastroenterologist better access to the polyp.
If the polyp is in a tricky location, such as a fold of the colon, the surgeon can gently undo the fold temporarily. If the polyp is large and deeply embedded, the surgeon can monitor the outside of the colon with a tiny camera and, if needed, perform minor wall repair to the colon after the polyp is removed.
Once the polyp is removed, it is immediately taken to the lab for analysis to determine if it’s benign or cancerous, while the team and patient wait in the operating room. The analysis takes about 30 minutes. If the polyp turns out to be cancerous, the team proceeds with the standard surgery to remove the affected portion of the colon.
According to the UCLA report, all polyps were successfully removed with the new CELS procedure, and the complication rate was lower than with standard surgery. Four out of the five patients who had the CELS procedure, and six out of nine patients who received standard surgery, were found to have benign polyps.
The procedure time and hospital stay were shorter with the new procedure, the researchers found. Operating time averaged 159 minutes, compared with 205 minutes for standard surgery, and the median hospital stay was one night with the new procedure and five nights with standard surgery.
“The majority of patients in the study had a benign polyp,” Yoo said. “We found that the new procedure can be performed safely with outcomes that compare favorably with standard surgery for these select patients.”
In the majority of the CELS cases, findings from the quick lab analysis were accurate. However, one patient’s final pathology report, which came back a week later, showed that the polyp was cancerous, so that patient was scheduled for standard surgery.
Yoo noted that in the future, newer imaging methods and lab analysis may make it easier to differentiate between a benign and malignant polyp.
“Although this is a small study with one institution’s experience, newer technology is helping doctors raise the bar and offer more minimally invasive procedures with less down-time and trauma for the patient,” said Dr. Eric Esrailian, co-chief of the division of digestive diseases for the UCLA Health System and the Geffen School of Medicine, who was part of the UCLA team.
Physicians note that patients who successfully undergo the CELS procedure still require follow-up endoscopic evaluation and that surgery is still the standard treatment for cancer or cancerous polyps or if the polyp cannot be removed endoscopically even with the CELS technique.
The next step in research, according to the UCLA team, is a multi-institutional study to further examine use of the CELS approach to better characterize its impact on surgery.
###
The study received no outside funding.
Addditional authors included Minna K. Lee, Formosa Chen, Marcia McFory Russell, Jonathan Sack and Anne Y. Lin.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
It was announced earlier this month that new food and drink producers have a window of opportunity to pitch their innovative products to food giant Sainsbury?s through the PitchUp with Sainsbury?s initiative, part of StartUp Britain.
The initiative, which is open until midnight on 7 July, will enable the growing number of small British food and drink companies a direct route to retailers and will continue the supermarket?s commitment to offering products from small suppliers on its shelves.
The competition is part of a wider initiative by StartUp Britain to help start-ups find routes to market. The campaign?s retail arm PopUp Britain has already helped start-ups and micro business find a co-working space via empty shops.
Food and drink producers who wish to apply must fill in on online form saying why their product should be on supermarket shelves and should be able to demonstrate its innovation and scalable potential.
Producers with the most promising ideas will then be invited to pitch their products to representatives from Sainsbury?s and StartUp Britain in August at Sainsbury?s London HQ.
As StartUp Britian co-founder, Emma Jones, said, getting their products on supermarket shelves is a really important step in helping smaller producers to achieve sustainable growth.
She added that the competition gives start-ups a real chance to find out how they can take their brand to the next level and is essential for allowing retailers to harness the creativity of the next generation of food entrepreneurs.
Sainsbury?s is delighted to be part of the initiative, a spokesperson said, as British food and drink is very important to its customers and the supermarket hopes it will help it to achieve its 2020 target of doubling the amount of British food and drink it sells.
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FILE – These file photos shows Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., left and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the Senators warned Sunday June 13, 2013 that Republicans’ hopes to reclaim the White House in the 2016 elections hinge on whether they support _ or sabotage _ the immigration overhaul being debated in the Senate. (AP Photo/
FILE – These file photos shows Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., left and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the Senators warned Sunday June 13, 2013 that Republicans’ hopes to reclaim the White House in the 2016 elections hinge on whether they support _ or sabotage _ the immigration overhaul being debated in the Senate. (AP Photo/
FILE – In a Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010 file photo, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. Graham, on Sunday June 13, 2013 told conservatives who are trying to block the measure that they will doom the party and all but guarantee a Democrat will remain in the White House after 2016′s election. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republicans’ hopes to reclaim the White House in the 2016 elections hinge on whether they support ? or sabotage ? the immigration overhaul being debated in the Senate, two lawmakers who helped write the proposal warn.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Sunday told conservatives who are trying to block the measure that they will doom the party and all but guarantee a Democrat will remain in the White House after 2016′s election. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., went a step further and predicted “there’ll never be a road to the White House for the Republican Party” if immigration overhaul fails to pass.
The Senate is moving forward with an overhaul and appears to be on track to have a vote from the full Senate by July 4. A timeline for a House proposal is less certain, although leaders say they are working on plans that more closely follow conservatives’ wish list.
The Senate last week overcame a procedural hurdle in moving forward on the first immigration overhaul in a generation. Lawmakers from both parties voted to begin formal debate on a proposal that would give an estimated 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally a long and difficult path to citizenship.
The Senate legislation also creates a low-skilled guest-worker program, expands the number of visas available for high-tech workers and de-emphasizes family ties in the system for legal immigration that has been in place for decades. It also sets border security goals that the government must meet before immigrants living in the U.S. illegally are granted any change in status.
Meanwhile, one of the proposal’s authors, who is considering a White House campaign, refused again to pledge support for the measure without changes conservatives have demanded.
“I think 95, 96 percent of the bill is in perfect shape and ready to go. But there are elements that need to be improved,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
Republicans are demanding tougher border security measures and stricter standards for who qualifies for government programs such as Social Security and health care.
Rubio is trying to balance concerns from his party’s conservative flank, which has great sway in picking a nominee, with the political attempt to win over Hispanic and Asian-American voters who overwhelmingly favored President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012. Further complicating Rubio’s presidential aspirations, the Republican-led House hews toward tea partyers.
“After eight years of President Obama’s economic policies, and, quite frankly, foreign policy, people are going to be looking around,” Graham said. “But if we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016. We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community, in my view, is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don’t do that, it really doesn’t matter who we run.”
In 2012, Obama won re-election with the backing of 71 percent of Hispanic voters and 73 percent of Asian voters. A thwarted immigration overhaul could again send those voting blocs to Democrats’ side. That has led some Republican lawmakers to support immigration reform, but the party’s conservative base still opposes any legislation that would create a pathway to citizenship for immigrants living here illegally.
Democrats are well aware of the numbers.
“I would tell my Republican colleagues, both in the House and the Senate, that the road to the White House comes through a road with a pathway to legalization,” Menendez said. “Without it, there’ll never be a road to the White House for the Republican Party.”
Graham spoke on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Menendez was interviewed on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Rubio was on ABC’s “This Week.”
___
Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/philip_elliott
With all the coverage of PRSIM and the NSA’s data collection have been getting recently, it’s no surprise that the US government is eager to rationalize its actions. The crux of the latest defense seems to be that the government isn’t using its treasure trove of data very often: according to recently declassified documents, the NSA used the database to investigate less than 300 phone numbers last year. These efforts reportedly prevented terrorist actions in more than 20 countries.
It’s a small assurance, but a vague one, and the NSA knows it — according to the Associated Press, the organization is trying to get the records of these thwarted plots declassified to demonstrate the program’s value to concerned citizens. The reveal of such data might be a convincing argument, but disquieting revelations continue to roll out: members of congress are now reporting that the NSA has acknowledged that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls. Either way, we’re certainly open to more government transparency.
>>is a former nazi commander living in the
united states
? the associated press reporting a man who led an ss unit during
world war ii
has been living here for decades. that unit, accused of horrific
war crimes
. according to an associated press investigation, 94-year-old michael carkotz lied to authorities about his
war time
past to gain entry into the u.s. shortly after
world war ii
eventually settling in the suburbs of minneapolis with his wife and kids.
>>couldn’t believe it. it’s not that i wouldn’t want to. i couldn’t believe it, because he just doesn’t appear to me that, whatever that would be, you know.
>> reporter: neighbors say he and his wife went on walks, mowed the lawn, and were active in their
local church
.
>>he’s kind of a gentle guy, quiet spoken.
>> reporter: even more shocking, residents say there are
holocaust survivors
living in the same neighborhood.
>>for my entire life she lived there and she was a
holocaust survivor
. there is another
holocaust survivor
that lives down the street.
>> reporter: according to the ap records do not show he had a direct hand in
war crimes
but statements from that time confirm the unit he reportedly commanded killed civilians. authorities in poland say they’ll investigate and help gather any possible evidence for the u.s.
>>if you commit crimes as terrible as the crimes of the holocaust even many years later there will still be an effort to find you and hold you accountable. in this case we’re talking about a local
nazi collaborator
.
>>late friday karcoc’s son accused the ap of defaming his father saying, quote, my father was never a nazi.
HALLE, Germany (AP) ? Roger Federer won his first title of the year, overcoming a sluggish start to beat unseeded Mikhail Youzhny 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4 at the Gerry Weber Open on Sunday.
Returning to grass in his favorite warm-up for Wimbledon, the top-seeded Federer looked lethargic until the middle of the second set against a player he had never lost to in 14 previous matches. It was the first final on the tour this year involving two players 30 or older.
The 31-year-old Federer won his first title since Cincinnati in August and his sixth in Halle, the first since 2008. Four of Federer’s seven Wimbledon titles have come after victories in Halle.
“I’ve won a lot but not so much in the last 10 months, although I feel I’d been playing well,” Federer said. “But the others were playing better.”
The former top-ranked player, who is now No. 3, won his 77th career title.
Federer will be looking to extend his record of 17 Grand Slam championships when he defends his title at Wimbledon.
With Federer starting to hit shots with confidence, the turning point of the match came in the eighth game of the second set, when Youzhny double-faulted on break point. The Swiss star then hit a perfect backhand passing shot to go up 4-3 in the third set. He held for 5-3 with a smash and fired a service winner to seal his victory after just over 2 hours.
Federer has a big following at the Halle tournament and has a street named after him next to the stadium. The fans gave him a standing ovation, while his wife, Mirka, let out a sigh of relief while keeping an eye on their twin daughters.
“The difference was that he was better today ? he’s been better all his life,” the 30-year-old Youzhny said.
Federer finished with 12 aces.
“The first set was very close; it could have gone either way. I had to fight very hard to stay in the second. My serve saved me today,” Federer said. “At the end I was just a bit steadier.”
With summer coming and surf season in full swing, I thought I’d take a closer look at the Casio EMA100-1AV Edifice watch with tide graph and moon-phase data. Casio is best known for their G-Shock line of beefy (and some would say ugly) plastic sports watches so this steel-cased model is a departure for the brand. Casio announced the watch in April and it is on sale now for $250.
Once considered tools for tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorists and stealthy corporate executives, software that allows you to hide your tracks online may have found its moment.
As details of the broad scope of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance programs have continued to emerge over the last week, services and apps that focus on privacy, encryption and preventing online tracking have surged in popularity. Most of the companies that market themselves as privacy-focused alternatives don’t hold onto user data, so they have nothing to turn over to authorities.
“Our traffic is going crazy,” said Gabriel Weinberg, the founder and CEO of Duck Duck Go, a Pennsylvania-based search engine that, unlike Google, Yahoo and Bing, doesn’t collect or store the data of its users. “We’ve never seen this quick [of an] increase in traffic.”
This week, DuckDuckGo had four days in a row of record-breaking traffic, according to metrics the site makes available. On Thursday, the search engine had 2.46 million queries, a 33 percent increase over the previous Thursday. (Still, the site is so small that Comscore doesn’t include it in its search engine rankings.)
While a mention on CNN and an appearance on Bloomberg TV this week have certainly contributed to Duck Duck Go’s rise in popularity, Weinberg attributes a majority of the recent growth to the fact that the government’s Internet surveillance program, known as PRISM, has become “a water cooler topic of conversation.”
“All of our users are telling people about [DuckDuckGo] in their conversations,” Weinberg said. “It’s finally an opportunity for them to tell their friends and family.”
Sarah Downey, a privacy analyst and attorney at Abine, a company that provides online privacy tools, said that downloads of its free DoNotTrackMe browser add-on — which blocks commercial web tracking — increased 42 percent this week.
“Almost all surveillance starts with private companies,” said Downey. “So staying more private online means keeping your data out of the hands of private companies that feed the government. It’s like a data supply chain.”
Seecrpyt, a 2-month-old communications app that encrypts calls and text messages, and doesn’t keep any metadata about its users, first saw a spike in downloads last month with the disclosure that the Justice Department had seized phone records from the Associated Press.
“We started it because we thought there’d be a need for privacy,” said Harvey Boulter, the company’s chairman. “People are increasingly creating more and more technologies that are invasive. We thought there’d be a backlash at some point.”
This may be the backlash Seecrypt has been waiting for. While Boulter wouldn’t reveal hard figures, he did say that downloads of the app have quadrupled over roughly the last week.
Vic Hyder is a retired Navy SEAL and the chief operations officer of Silent Circle, a communications service that provides encryption of video and phone calls, as well as text messages and email. He said that the company has signed up five times more new subscribers this week than on average. He added that as part of a promotion, the company this week decreased the price of its service by half, to $10 per month.
Hyder said that Silent Circle doesn’t hold any information about which users communicate with whom, so if authorities were to come to Silent Circle and say they knew of a criminal using the service, the most the company could do would be to shut down the account in question.
But moving from an online world where personal data and communications are stored on a giant corporation’s servers takes time, said Dan Auerbach, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group focused on digital civil liberties.
“I think it’s great and exciting that people want to switch away from central services that act as big repositories of data for spy agencies,” said Auerbach, “and I think there are viable alternatives. But I think it’s not as easy as flipping a switch.”
Auerbach advised people who may want to move to more privacy-friendly services to spend several hours researching the available options and what they do and do not protect.
“It’s important to understand that different tools defend against different threats, and general knowledge about the threats one faces go a long way towards making a user safe.”
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With summer coming and surf season in full swing, I thought I’d take a closer look at the