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MONDAY, October 01, 2012 (MedPage Today) — Sexually-abused girls appear more likely to skip cervical cancer screening as adults, according to an exploratory study suggesting that the exam brings back the feeling of victimization for some.
Only 49 percent of British women abused as children or young adults had gotten a recommended Pap smear in the prior 5 years as compared with a general population rate of 79 percent there, Anne Szarewski, MD, of the Queen Mary University of London, and colleagues found.
The surveys completed by women visiting the website of the U.K. National Association for People Abused in Childhood often cited fear, anxiety, and a feeling of powerlessness, the group reported in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care.
"One way of coping with the trauma of sexual abuse is to control or avoid the triggers of trauma responses," they wrote. "Intimate gynecological examinations can be particularly stressful for women who have been abused because of the parallels with the abuse situation, for example, perceived loss of control, the power disparity, and the physical sensation of the examination."
However, women who have been sexually abused are at increased risk of cervical lesions, possibly because of early exposure to cancer-related human papillomavirus as well as the risky health behaviors often seen in abused women, such as drug and alcohol abuse.
Many such women are aware of the importance of screening, but "we repeatedly hear that some survivors would rather deal with cervical cancer if it develops than face the experience of regular testing," Sarah Kelly, training and development manager at the abuse survivors' support association, explained in an accompanying editorial.
But the group has also received tips from women on what has helped them have positive experiences with getting a cervical smear test:
- Time to talk about the fear and anxiety they are feeling about the test
- A friend or supporter present with them during the test
- An understanding smear taker
- A private and comfortable environment to undress and be tested
- A prearranged signal they can use to halt the test at any point
Another point for clinicians to consider is that asking a woman to "try to relax" during the test can trigger anxiety or flashbacks, Kelly noted.
"The word 'relax' is often used by abusers and can be very frightening for survivors; an alternative is to agree a word in advance to use in discussions with the patient," she wrote.
Her organization's website featured a short anonymous survey asking about demographics, cervical screening history, and history of abuse, which 135 sexually-abused women completed.
Of the women eligible for cervical cancer screening, 78 percent had ever gotten the test done.
Fewer than half had done so within the recommended screening interval, which in England varies from 3 to 5 years depending on a woman's age:
- 49 percent at least once in the prior 5 years
- 42 percent of women ages 25 to 49 within 3 years
The survey also asked women to explain the main reasons for not ever having had a Pap smear, or sometimes putting it off when invited to do so, as well as for their suggestions to make abused women more likely to get screened.
Nearly all of the women (124 of 135) provided open-ended responses.
Almost one in four cited self-worth issues as part of the reason they didn't go for screening as regularly as they should, not just because of embarrassment but also because of scars or other signs of abuse that would be apparent to the screener in some cases.
Many of the women also pointed to loss of control or feeling vulnerable with the sample collection process (29 percent) and fear and anxiety about the test or the consequences of not getting tested or both (30 percent).
Almost 40 percent of the women made a comment about feeling sexually victimized by the screening, 15 percent saying the experience was just like the abuse they used to suffer.
Safety, trust, and difficulty of disclosing the abuse were issues brought up by one in five of the respondents. About the same proportion said they found the cervical smear tests uncomfortable and even painful.
Poor communication and lack of sensitivity by the smear taker were mentioned by 17 percent of the women.
Practical suggestions for making abused women more likely to undergo screening ranged from support to disclose the history of abuse to lying on the side instead of on the back during the smear collection.
Another possibility is allowing these women to collect their own cervical smear sample, the researchers noted.
"Self-sampling for HPV has been shown to be acceptable to a number of general populations of women and has comparable specificity and sensitivity to cervical cytology in trials," they pointed out.
The group cautioned about the small sample size in the exploratory study as well as the population included in it, survey respondents who were likely the women most affected by their abuse.


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Good Morning guys!
Today I have another installment of….
Today i have two lovely bloggers, Vanessa from Decor Happy and Rosa from Flutter, Flutter sharing their Christmas traditions relating to the Christmas Tree!
When I was young, we always had an artificial Christmas tree. Now that I have a family of my own, we take great joy in either going to our local tree farm or nursery and choosing a real tree. We usually put it up the first week of December so we have many weeks of enjoyment from it. Playing classic Christmas songs by Nat King Cole or Elvis and drinking candy cane hot chocolate while decorating the tree is one of our favourite holiday activities.
My favourite Christmas tradition is the first one of the season… setting up the Christmas tree! It is quite the event at our house. Christmas music is playing, hot chocolate is poured, and then I set up the tree so that the boys and I can all share in the decorating. The boys get ridiculously excited because it's a bit of a race to get it all done by the time daddy gets home so that he is surprised! And it's also an early gift for daddy, since the last thing daddy wants to do is decorate! 😉
Putting up the Christmas Tree is also one of my favourite parts of Christmas! Thanks ladies for sharing yours! I'll be sharing a few more tomorrow and some after Christmas too!

subset: commoncrawl


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For a device with a 3" screen, the iPhone has a pretty impressive resume: Phone, map, camera, sketchbook, dedicated Doodle Jump playing machine. And for $1, the newly revamped Ruler 2 app makes it a pretty decent measuring thinger, too.
Ruler 2, an overhauled version of an apparently less-good Ruler 1, offers a simple, functional ruler that you can drag to measure things smaller than the size of your screen. Measuring things that are longer than your iPhone (or your iPad—it's a universal app) isn't quite as precise: you swipe the ruler to extend it a length and then physically move your iPhone, keeping track of where the left side of the screen should be with your finger. It sounds kind of confusing, but a nice how to video that plays when you first launch the app brings you up to speed quickly.
Measurements can be labeled and saved to a folder, so you don't have to mark them down elsewhere, and overall the app has a nice, straightforward design. If you think you'll ever need to measure something small with accuracy, or measure something slightly less small with slightly less accuracy, Ruler 2's worth your dolla. [iTunes]


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Dear Friend:
You drew me to your website with promises of rapid muscle gain and even faster fat loss. I know we're friends because that's the first thing I saw at the top of your home page: "Dear Friend." That makes it official, doesn't it?
And now I'm upset because you're not being a very good friend. I think you've been lying to me.
First, I'm not sure if the body pictured on your website is really you. If it is, then why is the head chopped off? I mean, your abdominals are so sculpted and oily and hairless, and your muscles are bulging — why wouldn't you want to include your face in that photo? Maybe it isn't you.
But wait, we're friends, right? I guess I can forgive that little deception. After all, we can't expect our friends to be 100% honest with us all the time, can we? But the problem is that wasn't the only time.
You told me you knew the "secret" to turn my body into a "fat-melting machine" without doing any aerobic training and by focusing on special "super foods" like acai berry. You said I could lose 30 pounds in 30 days, which got me questioning your math.
There are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat. My sedentary metabolism burns about 2,300 calories a day, and I can't go much below 1,800 a day without risking metabolic slowdown (and an overwhelming desire to eat everything in sight). So even if I watch everything I eat, that still leaves 3,000 more calories to burn off each day. Does your program involve the equivalent of
a marathon each day, except without any actual aerobic exercise?
Besides, Dr. Robert Kushner, clinical director of the Northwestern Comprehensive Center on
in Chicago, asserts that a safe rate of
is only 1 to 2 pounds per week, not 7. And the consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest tells me that acai does not promote weight loss and is often sold as part of an online credit card scam.
You told me to "say no to cardio," like there is something wrong with running to assist weight loss. This confused me because, according to the first law of thermodynamics, weight loss is all about creating a caloric deficit. Since running tops the list of calorie-burning activities, why would I want to stop? Is this another lie, one of those things where you tell people what they want to hear?
I wonder if you read "Why People Believe Weird Things," the book by Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society. "More than any other, the reason people believe weird things is because they want to," Shermer wrote. "It feels good. It is comforting. It is consoling."
Is this just one of those examples where you're trying to comfort me by saying I don't have to work hard to lose weight? I think I'd rather get the facts and the results.
Speaking of results, I also wonder about those muscle-building claims on your site. They seem a little … unrealistic. Do you really think I can gain a pound of muscle a day, day after day? I mean, even the pharmaceutically assisted and genetically gifted
had to work his tail off to gain 25 pounds of muscle in a year.
These must be some pretty awesome secrets you have, which I notice are available in your book. I like to read and have many fitness books on my shelf. Most of them cost about $20 to $25, have instructional pictures taken by professional photographers and are professionally edited and sold by respected publishing houses.
I noticed that if I want your book I have to act fast to get the "special introductory price." The special price is $39, which is quite a bit more than I'm used to paying, and all I get is a PDF document that I have to print myself.
I wonder: Does your book have pictures? Did you hire a professional editor? After looking at your website I'm thinking the answer is probably no.
Speaking of your website, I think you got a bit carried away with the all-caps and bolded text, excessive yellow highlighting and multiple exclamation points. I get it that you're promising to
You can turn down the volume.
Where was I? Oh, yeah, you're not scamming me, are you? Of course not, because we're friends and you've got all these great "before" and "after" pictures from other people who've used your secret formula to get in shape. So that's proof that your system really works, right? Sure, your writing makes me think of someone whose mom didn't do such a good job child-proofing the house when you were little, but I could get past that if you were really going to help me lose 30 pounds in 30 days.
So I started searching to see what other people were saying about your program. I wanted to find out if your customers were getting the promised results, and this is when I started to realize that maybe you aren't such a good friend after all.
I typed your name into
, followed by the words "scam" and "ripoff." (Sorry for not trusting you, but in this economy we all need to be careful with our money.) I have to tell you, it was like slipping into the Matrix. I couldn't find any real complaints about your program. Did they disappear into an alternate universe? I wonder whether the search results were carpet-bombed by robots creating an endless stream of semi-legitimate-looking reviews with four-and-a-half and five stars, all with links to buy your book. Are the machines rising up?
I also learned that your "special introductory rate" has been in place for the last few years. Isn't that sort of like a used car salesman saying he's got a few other buyers on the line?
I was starting to seriously question our friendship and decided that we needed to take a break from one another. But when I tried to leave, you wouldn't let me go! The back button on my browser wouldn't work, and even trying to close the browser window was futile. You made me click on some complicated pop-up window before I could finally get away. Twice! I felt so, so … violated.
I don't think this friendship of ours is going to work out. I don't deserve to be treated this way. Since it seems we've got a relationship built on lies, allow me to tell one of my own:
It's not you. It's me.
Fell is a certified strength and conditioning specialist in Calgary, Canada.


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MAHLE expands Tech Center in Shanghai
Shanghai, November 25, 2014 – MAHLE is celebrating the third major expansion phase of its research and development center in China. In addition, a Bosch Mahle Turbo Systems (BMTS) production plant, a plant for industrial filtration, and a production line for the manufacturing of tools for the Filtration and Engine Peripherals business unit will be opened on the campus.
With this third expansion, approximately 15,000 square meters of production space and 3,200 square meters of office space have been added in a newly constructed building. Now with a total of around 35,000 square meters of production, office, laboratory, and test bench space, the research and development center in Shanghai is the largest MAHLE Tech Center in Asia, ahead of Okegawa and Kawagoe in Japan and Pune in India. Founded in April 2006, the site will be home to the development of piston systems, cylinder components, and valve train systems, as well as air, fuel, and oil management systems. The location is also the headquarters of MAHLE in China—in addition to research and development, central functions such as sales, purchasing, human resources, IT, and finance reside here. Currently, 410 employees work at the site; the expansion will create space for up to 1,000 employees.
Bosch Mahle Turbo System (BMTS)—a 50/50 joint venture between MAHLE and Bosch—will primarily manufacture exhaust gas turbochargers for gasoline engines destined for the Chinese market in its first production plant in China. Orders have already been secured from several local and international vehicle manufacturers.
About MAHLE
MAHLE is the globally leading manufacturer of components and systems for the internal combustion engine and its peripherals as well as vehicle air conditioning and engine cooling. In 2014, some 64,000 employees at over 140 production locations and ten major research and development centers are expected to generate sales of around ten billion euros.
Further queries:
MAHLE GmbH
Andrea Arnold
Corporate Communications/Public Relations
Pragstrasse 26–46
70376 Stuttgart/Germany
Phone: +49 711 501-13124
Fax: +49 711 501-13700


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A Monday morning wreck at the intersection of Bluffton Parkway and Simmonsville Road had sections of both roads closed for about 45 minutes.
The Bluffton Township Fire District and Beaufort County EMS were sent to the intersection about 8 a.m.
The two-vehicle wreck is under investigation by the town of Bluffton Police Department.
One person was taken to a local hospital.


text: Time-lapse video Lakeland Mill fire in Prince GeorgeVancouver Sun 04.24.2012ShareAdjustCommentPrintThis is video is a series of pictures taken from approximately 11:00-12:00 p.m. from the north side of the Lakeland Mill fire in Prince George on Monday, April 23. Comments We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information. xShareTime-lapse video Lakeland Mill fire in Prince George Email Twitter Facebook Pinterest Google Linkedin


text: Update: After I reviewed this box, I was notified that a similar looking box for sale on the site is not the same as the one I reviewed, which apparently was curated specifically for bloggers. I am unable to express an opinion on the beauty box for sale on the site. You can find the individual products in… Continue Reading


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The last day Debra Villegas saw her best friend alive, Melissa Britt Lewis came into Debra's office to ask about her outfit. It was a new suit, just purchased that weekend, chocolate brown with pinstripes.
But it was a size 8, and Melissa was afraid it was too big. She was just five-foot-three, with a sensible honey-brown haircut and an easy Southern smile. As a rising star in the Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler law firm, Melissa, 39, took her appearance seriously. She carried a red Prada purse and wore a Judith Ripka ring.
Melissa stepped on a ladder to study herself in the tall mirror that Debra, chief operating officer at the firm, kept in her office. She twirled around. "Do you think I should have worn this shirt?" Debra remembered her saying, according to a sworn police interview.
"This is the kind of suit you wear," Melissa told Debra. "I don't usually wear these. If I would have thought about it, I would have gotten you one too."
So it was for the best friends of nine years, so close that they called each other Lucy and Ethel. If Melissa (Lucy) went shopping and found an outfit she liked, she bought one for Debra (Ethel) as well. They texted each other every night, ate lunch together nearly every day.
Melissa even did Debra's grocery shopping. She cooked dinner for her kids on Saturday nights and took the family on vacations to Disney World. When Debra was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, Melissa stood by her, dragging her out of bed on the mornings it seemed too much of an effort to get up.
Their friendship buoyed the women through Melissa's divorce, Debra's abusive marriage, and the stress of working at a major Fort Lauderdale firm. But it was also a friendship that the Plantation police say cost Melissa her life.
The next day, Debra was describing Melissa's new suit to police. Sometime after arriving home on the night of March 5, 2008, Melissa had been strangled and murdered, her body dumped in a canal.
The man accused of killing her was Debra's husband, Tony.
At the time, it was nearly impossible to imagine a motive for the crime. Melissa was a well-respected attorney who had just made partner in the firm and had no identifiable enemies.
But two years later, there's renewed interest in the baffling tragedy. Scott Rothstein has pleaded guilty to running a $1.4 billion Ponzi scheme out of the firm. The scam, which began three years before Melissa died, involved coaxing investors into buying stakes in bogus lawsuit settlements.
Debra has been implicated in the scam. Federal prosecutors charged her this week with money laundering. As Rothstein's chief operating officer, Debra handled a lot of his finances, and the feds claim she helped cook the books.
Meanwhile, Tony Villegas remains in Broward County Jail awaiting trial on a charge of first-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty. Conspiracy theories abound online about whether he was framed or the fall guy for some larger crime involving Rothstein. But court records suggest a much simpler story. It's Melissa and Debra's story — about love, jealousy, and how far one woman was willing to go to help her best friend.
Even as a kid, Melissa Fisher took care of people. She grew up in Jacksonville, the first grandchild of her family, adored by her aunts and a mother hen to her younger sister, Carrie.
Her father was an alcoholic, and her parents eventually divorced. One aunt, Lynn Haberl, says Melissa's education was "interrupted" by family troubles when she was a teenager. She dropped out of high school.
In her mid-20s, Melissa landed an administrative job at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale. She got her GED and began taking college courses.
She decided to be a lawyer because she appreciated the "finer things in life," Haberl says — and the finer things required money. So she enrolled at Nova Southeastern University Law Center, living on loans and working as much as she could.
As a student, Melissa seemed quiet at first but proved to be fiercely loyal. "If you were her friend, she would be a great friend to you," says a former attorney colleague and friend who did not want his name printed. No one would mistake her for a pushover. "She was very strong-willed. She had her opinions, and she was not easily swayed."
Melissa's legal talent became apparent quickly. Her peers selected her to be editor in chief of the Nova Law Review, an honor that required a 3.5 GPA.
"She did not appreciate mediocrity," says the former colleague. "She was a person of the highest ethics you could ever find... She won't tolerate bullshit from anybody."
Yet the man who would become one of Fort Lauderdale's most renowned bullshit artists was one of Melissa's early mentors. Scott Rothstein was a professor at Nova and taught Melissa's trial advocacy class. In 1999, he hired her to clerk for him at his fledgling firm while she was still in school. Helping him on labor and employment cases, Melissa found her calling as "the defender of the underdog," Haberl says.
She enjoyed representing the plaintiffs in employment cases, says longtime friend Tonja Haddad, since they were the people who claimed to have been mistreated by their companies. Sometimes she'd even volunteer to take on a juvenile case — a kid who got caught shoplifting, for example — and do the work for free.
"If she felt that someone had been wronged... she would basically be in your corner and fight for you to the end," Haddad says.
When Melissa started as a law clerk, Rothstein had a tiny office with only a handful of people, a far cry from the 70-attorney firm that Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler became at its height. It was in that small office where Melissa befriended Rothstein's secretary and office manager, a tall, boisterous Texan named Debra.
Debra Taylor came to Florida to start over. She'd left her family, her job, and her ex-husband in Texas and moved to Daytona with two young daughters.
"I grew up very hard in rural Texas, and my parents were not very good parents," Debra would later tell Plantation police detectives. "[Melissa's] the only person in my whole life who has actually loved me and done for me and been good to me."
One spring in Daytona, Debra met Tony Villegas, a train conductor from Miami who was on vacation. The two began dating long-distance, and Debra soon moved in with him in Pembroke Pines. But she had some doubts about him from the beginning, according to a sworn statement she gave Plantation police in March 2008.
When her youngest daughter was about 3, they were riding in the car with Tony. Her daughter was babbling away in the back seat, as toddlers do, and "it drove [Tony] crazy," Debra told police.
So he pulled the car over to the side of the road, found some duct tape, and taped the toddler's mouth shut, Debra said. All the while, Tony "didn't even blink," Debra recalled.
"And I'm just sitting in the car thinking, 'You can't do that to her,' " Debra said. "But he didn't see anything wrong with that."
Despite her reservations about Tony, she didn't leave him. "I felt like I didn't have anywhere to go. I had no family here, no friends."
To complicate matters, Debra, 25 and already a mother of two, got pregnant. She filed a paternity suit against Tony in Broward County Court when her son was born in 1993. But the couple must have decided to work things out, because a year later, they were married and soon had a second son. (Debra Villegas, through her attorney, declined to comment for this article.)
One of the first nights she lived with her mother's new husband, Aimee Villegas was petrified. She was only 6 or 7 at the time, and the family had just moved into a townhouse in Pembroke Pines. One night, she told Plantation police, she heard her mother screaming from another part of the house, "Help me! Help me! Help me!"
"Me and my little sister were terrified. We wouldn't even come out of the room," Aimee, now 23, told police in a 2008 interview. "And from that day on, I never liked him."
Tony had a habit of excluding Aimee from family activities, she said, and he directed some of his most vicious attacks toward her. Mainly, he targeted her when Debra was at the office, because at the time he worked nights as a train conductor and was home during the day.
One day, Aimee went to the kitchen to get a drink. Tony came up behind her, grabbed her by the neck, and shoved her against the fridge. "You don't [eat] my food; you don't drink or eat in my house unless your mother is here," she remembered him scolding her.
She also saw Tony hit her younger brothers. If the boys' room wasn't clean, Tony would walk in and start throwing toys at them. "If it hit their head, oh well, 'Toughen up — you're a man,' " she remembered Tony saying. "Or sometimes if he hit them and they'd cry, he'd hit them even more.
"And sometimes he would come in our room and because one person got in trouble, everyone had to get hit," she said.
Caleb Villegas, who was 14 when Plantation police questioned him in March 2008, confirmed these allegations. "If my room wasn't clean or I didn't do a chore... he would throw stuff at us," Caleb told police in a separate interview.
Debra was spared from seeing much of the violence, Aimee told police, because Tony wouldn't hit the kids much in front of her. But he would stalk his wife, showing up at her office parking garage after work if she didn't come home at the appointed time. "And I would get in my truck, and all the way home, I would just cry and be angry," Debra told police.
Debra said she lived in near-constant terror that her husband would kill her or Aimee. Tony once calmly informed her that if she ever tried to leave him, "I'll feed you to the alligators so the body won't be found," she said.
He also enjoyed watching violent movies, far more than his wife thought was normal. When Debra questioned him about it, "He would just tell me, 'You know, sometimes you just want to cross the line,' " Debra told police.
"What did he mean by 'cross the line'?" a detective asked her.
"He's just crazy," Debra said. "I think he meant he, you know, would kill somebody... He's just nuts, you know."
Meanwhile, at work, Debra found a savior in Scott Rothstein. As he established his law firm, he took Debra with him. She ascended from being a paralegal with no college degree to COO of Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler. Rothstein trusted her to handle the firm's money and paid her a six-figure salary. He made her gatekeeper of his "inner sanctum" — the heavily secured area on the 16th floor of the firm's offices where he allegedly solicited investors in his false legal deals.
Debra, in turn, considered her boss to be one of her closest friends. She figured Tony must be jealous of Rothstein. "I'm sure he hates Scott," Debra told police. "Scott found the [divorce] attorney. Scott helped us, you know, get situated. You know, Scott pays me very well. Scott's very good to me.
"I couldn't even say Scott's name at home," she said. " 'Cause me and Scott are very, very close."
Melissa continued working with Rothstein when she graduated from law school and became a respected labor and employment attorney. "Whatever side it was, you wanted her on your side," her former colleague says.
She was ambitious, hoping one day to be a judge. After a few years, she briefly left Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler to work for another firm. "She told her mother that she wouldn't work for the — I don't curse — but she said she wouldn't work for the SOB anymore, and she meant [Rothstein]," her aunt, Haberl, told New Times columnist Bob Norman.
But Melissa quickly returned, partly because Debra was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, her friends say. When she came back, her supervisor was Stuart Rosenfeldt. He became her mentor, a lawyer whose studious style contrasted sharply with Rothstein's bravado.
Melissa was finally making the kind of money she had once dreamed about, and she spent it generously. She didn't want children of her own, her aunt says, but she adored spoiling her sister's kids as well as Debra's kids. An unabashed fan of Disney World, she bought a time-share there so she could take her nieces to the theme parks. After a stint in Orlando, she'd bring back stuffed animals and souvenirs for her friends at the office. "She was the aunt everybody would wish they had," her former attorney colleague said. "She made everyone feel good."
In her free time, Melissa loved to read, cook Southern food, and shop. She had every cooking gadget imaginable, her aunt says. Haberl remembers her niece driving to Lakeland to whip up some crab and scallop linguine for an aunt's birthday. "Honey, she could cook anything she wanted and I would eat it," Haberl says.
In 2002, Melissa married another lawyer at the firm, Robert Lewis. Five years later, he asked for a divorce. Melissa was heartbroken, Tonja Haddad says. (A few weeks before she died, Melissa got another shock. She found out that Robert had quietly married a woman who worked for him, and his new wife was pregnant, Melissa's friends told police.) But her friends wouldn't let her stay at home on the couch watching the Food Network.
She became their "cruise director," Haddad says, organizing dinners and happy hours, signing them up for cooking classes. She bought herself a Jimmy Buffett margarita machine to host parties and took Debra's kids to a monster truck rally. She joined Leadership Broward, a community-service and networking group for rising stars of the yuppie set. She signed up for cooking classes. She started dating again.
And just a few months before she died, she made partner at the firm. "She was embracing life right before it was taken from her," Haddad says.
As Melissa's life improved, so did Debra's. Around the same time that Melissa got divorced in 2007, Debra finally found the courage to kick Tony out of the house.
The last straw came one night when Debra's 10-year-old son wasn't finishing his homework fast enough to please Tony, Debra later told police. So Tony "picks up a textbook, whacks [his son] across the head, drags him down the hallway, throws him in his bedroom," Debra told police. Aimee, who was pregnant at the time, tried to step in and help her little brother. Tony threw her across the living room "and bounced her like a basketball," Debra said.
After Tony moved out, Melissa became Debra's support system, Aimee told police. "She's my mom's backbone," she said. "My mom, without Melissa, she wouldn't have ever left [Tony].
"She gets my mom food in the morning. My mom, with all her medical problems, if she's in bed and depressed, [Melissa's] like, 'Get out of bed, let's go, get dressed!' or putting her clothes on for her," Aimee said. "I don't even think my mom would be where she was today without Melissa."
Lucy and Ethel, now both single, spent more time together — sharing their lunch breaks, texting before bed every night.
"I know Melissa wanted to spend extra time sometimes with Debra, to kinda protect her," Christina Kitterman, another Rothstein attorney and friend of Melissa's, told police.
After work, Melissa wasn't eager to stay home alone in an empty house, so she would go to Debra's to cook and laugh and be with her adopted family.
"I always joke, 'Yep, Melissa's our dad,' " Aimee told police. "She does our groceries, she takes care of us, she spoils us at Christmastime, she spoils my son. We go to the Keys together. She makes sure we have everything that we need."
Her generosity was essential to the Villegas family as Debra pursued a new life without Tony. And it didn't go unnoticed.
Melissa's sister, Carrie Fisher, and her then-fiancé, Jon Holmberg, spent Thanksgiving and Christmas 2007 at Melissa's house in Plantation. One day during the holidays, Holmberg later told police, he overheard Melissa talking to Carrie about Tony. Melissa said Tony had threatened to set Debra on fire.
Wanting to protect themselves, Debra bought a Taser, and Melissa bought Mace, Holmberg remembered Melissa saying. "And I told her she should have got a gun," Holmberg said.
In mid-December 2007, Melissa sent an email to some of her lawyer friends asking how hard it was to do a will. She was thinking of protecting Debra's children in case Tony did something drastic. "My friend Debra is going through a divorce," she wrote. "Her ex-husband is nuts. To be on the safe side, she wants to be sure she designates who gets her children if he hurts her and goes to jail. Seems extreme, but you have NO IDEA what is going on and restraining orders are worthless."
Around this time, Tony Villegas was keeping a makeshift diary in his day planner. He filled it with entries about how much he missed his family. He also knew that Debra had been spending a lot of time with friends at the Round Up Country Western Club in Davie.
"Missing my family," he wrote in a December 12 entry. "Mad at her but loving her so that it hurts... She look like she in love. At Round Up with some guy for 3 hrs. outside making out. Tony you don't like flys on you meat. Forget her."
A few days later, he added: "Remember Tony, she don't love you. She laffing at you."
According to Caleb Villegas, Tony was also aware of how much time Melissa and Debra were spending together. In fact, Caleb told police that his dad blamed Melissa for Debra's filing for divorce, and that case is still pending.
Once, when Tony came to collect Caleb and his brother for a weekend visit, he noticed Melissa's car at the house. And he brought up the issue to his sons.
"He's like, 'The reason that we probably got a divorce [was] so they can spend more time [together],' " Caleb told Plantation police. " 'Cause she had gotten a divorce; Melissa got a divorce from her husband the same time as my mom and dad got a divorce. So he [Tony] thought it was planned for a while, like they were planning to get a divorce at the same time."
"Did he seem at all upset about that?" a detective asked Caleb.
"Yeah," Caleb replied.
"OK. Did he tell you anything more than what you told me?"
"Not really," Caleb said. "He just thought it was her fault."
On March 5, 2008, Melissa Lewis left the Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler offices on Las Olas Boulevard around 7 p.m. She stopped at a Publix near her home in Plantation and picked up a few groceries. She called her 11-year-old niece, Sheila, to discuss the Jonas Brothers concert they were planning to attend that week.
After that, police can only surmise what happened next based on crime-scene evidence. Melissa pulled her car into the garage of her house and was attacked. She fought back. Pepper-spray stains, the color of rust, marked her garage floor, walls, and ceiling. Her bull terrier got some on his legs.
On the morning of March 6, Melissa didn't show up for work, and she didn't call. So Debra called a Plantation police sergeant and asked him to stop by Melissa's house to see if she was OK. Carrie Fisher came over with a key to let the officers inside. Melissa was gone. So was her black Cadillac.
That afternoon, police found her Cadillac in a parking lot in Plantation. Her brown suit jacket, missing a button, and her dress shoes were in the trunk. A crime-scene deputy noticed bloodstains on the carpet in the trunk.
It took another day to find the body. A South Florida Water Management District employee was raking debris from water pumps in the New River Canal in Plantation when he saw a body floating face-up in the water. Melissa was still wearing the flowered shirt and pants she had modeled for Debra two days earlier.
Her attacker had beaten her repeatedly around her head and neck, but she had fought back, earning bruises and cuts on her arms. The official cause of death was strangulation.
Police have never found Melissa's Prada purse or her iPhone. They did not note in their reports that her body was found less than a mile from the Round Up club where Tony had watched Debra kiss another man.
But after interviewing Debra Villegas and her children and hearing about Tony's alleged pattern of violence, the detectives began examining his cell phone records and Melissa's.
They found that Melissa's phone kept moving after she was attacked. It communicated with cell phone towers in the area, following a path that "closely mirrored" the route from Plantation to the Miami Gardens apartment where Tony was living.
The day after Melissa disappeared, Tony went to work in Fort Lauderdale as usual around 5 a.m. Melissa's phone followed his path to work and the route of the train he was operating that day. Her cell phone also traveled to the places where her body and her car were found.
According to Debra, a deposition in her divorce case had been tentatively scheduled for the day Melissa disappeared. But she said Tony's attorney never confirmed the time or scheduled the deposition, so it never happened. She told police she wasn't sure if Tony even knew about it.
"He didn't even know that my depo was set," Debra said in a sworn interview. "He didn't know about it... because his attorney said that, you know, it wasn't a real date, and we just cleared it over the phone."
But Tony may not have been as ignorant as Debra thought. Tony's roommate, Wilset Pascual, said that on the evening of March 5, 2008, Tony came home from work around 5:30 and said he was leaving for an appointment with his attorney.
"He came home, took a shower, and left," Pascual told Plantation police in a sworn interview.
"He didn't mention the attorney's name he was going to see?" a detective asked Pascual.
"No. It was a deposition, if I am not mistaken, a deposition," Pascual said.
That evening, Pascual left to have dinner with a girlfriend. He arrived home around 11:30 p.m. to find Tony washing his arms in the bathroom. Tony seemed to be itchy, scratching himself.
"What's wrong? You OK?" Pascual asked him.
Tony explained that he had been sorting through some moving boxes and that a can of pepper spray had exploded on him. He asked Pascual if he knew how to get the stuff off his hands.
"I don't know — check the internet," Pascual remembered saying. Then Pascual went to his laptop and searched for "pepper spray." Computer records confirmed Pascual's account.
On March 10, Plantation police detectives confronted Tony at work with a search warrant. He told them he had been expecting them. As the interview began, he broke down crying.
On the night Melissa was murdered, he said, he was either home in Miami Gardens, at his parents' house, or at one of his two sisters' houses. He "denied any involvement in the murder of Melissa Lewis," according to the police report.
Tony admitted that "he was bothered by guys being at 'his' house with Debra, but he was not bothered by the relationship that Debra had with Melissa," the report continued.
"Debra was a smart woman and did not need Melissa," he said.
Meanwhile, Tony said that he didn't own pepper spray and that "there is no reason it would be on him and that he has never used pepper spray."
Nine days later, forensic testing revealed that Tony's DNA had been found on Melissa's suit jacket — the same one that ended up in the trunk of her car the day she died.
He was arrested on March 15, 2008, and charged with first-degree murder.
"Other than my children, I love Lucy [Melissa] more than I love my parents, more than I love anybody... And I, I wish I could have been in that car that night, because I would give my life for her today."
That's what Debra Villegas told Plantation police in a sworn interview days after Melissa disappeared. But as time went on, it became clear that Debra had some serious blind spots when it came to her best friend's death.
The day Tony was arrested, Debra told the Miami Herald she was shocked that her ex-husband could have committed the crime. "It never crossed my mind," she said. "I certainly have an overwhelming amount of guilt."
Plantation police had questioned Debra repeatedly about whether Tony had a motive to kill Melissa. And Debra always struggled to believe that her husband — despite the violence and threats he made toward her — would lash out at her friend.
"I am 99.9 percent sure he's not your guy," she told police.
"Why is that?" a detective asked her.
"I wish I could tell you, because I thought about it a hundred times since we talked yesterday," Debra replied. "Just, when you lived with somebody for 17 years, you just know them, you know what I mean? And ah, he couldn't do it... He could not, especially somebody like her..."
It's tough to know whether Debra was in denial, a common affliction for women in abusive relationships, or if she truly believed Tony was innocent.
A year and a half later, Debra was implicated in the Ponzi scheme that destroyed the Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler firm. According to federal prosecutors, from 2005 to 2009, Scott Rothstein persuaded investors to buy stakes in fake lawsuit settlements. Clients were supposed to be repaid over time, but instead, he used their money to support his lavish lifestyle — a fleet of flashy cars, waterfront houses, a yacht. He also bankrolled the campaigns of favorite politicians, such as Charlie Crist.
Rothstein conducted his business meetings in a heavily secured area in the Bank of America building, which housed his law office. He had a private entrance. Employees who wanted to talk to Rothstein had to go through Debra first, and Rothstein has told New Times that she handled his finances. In a March 2009 email to his employees, obtained by New Times' Bob Norman, Rothstein made Debra's importance abundantly clear:
Rothstein has pleaded guilty to charges of racketeering, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and wire fraud. He has not yet been sentenced.
Debra is expected to be arraigned on the money laundering charge this week. Her attorney, Paul Lazarus, declined to comment for this article.
The Ponzi scheme has created a frenzy of renewed interest in Melissa's death. Online commenters wonder if she knew about the criminal activity in the firm. If so, was there some kind of conspiracy to kill her?
Then there's a question of conflicts of interest: The original prosecutor on the murder case, Howard Scheinberg, left the Broward State Attorney's Office to work at Rothstein's firm. Rothstein's personal head of security, Joe Alu, is also a former Plantation police officer.
But Melissa's friends and family don't seem sold on any conspiracy theories. They say Melissa was extremely busy working on labor and employment cases that had nothing to do with Rothstein. In a large law firm, it's easy to become preoccupied with your own assignments and have no clue what your coworkers are doing.
If Melissa had known about Rothstein's scheme, she never would have tolerated it, Haddad says. "She took way too much pride in what she did, " she says.
Two years after her death, no one else has been charged in the murder. Tony Villegas remains in the Broward County Jail, ineligible for bail, because the crime was allegedly premeditated. His attorney, Al Milian, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
No matter how much time passes, the shock over Melissa's death remains. Haddad says she's still occasionally tempted to call or text her longtime friend. She attends every calendar call in the murder case, because she knows Melissa would do the same for her.
"She was the glue that kept us all together," Haddad says.
Through Leadership Broward, Melissa was involved in helping to plan a memorial garden in Davie for victims of violent crime. The Garden of Reflection at the Long Key Nature Center and Natural Area now bears a plaque with Melissa's name. "We consider that her spot," Haberl says.
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None of Melissa's family and friends is looking forward to Tony Villegas' trial. They want him to get a fair shake, but Melissa's aunt worries that's not possible now, because of all the doubts created by the Rothstein Ponzi scheme.
"We want to see justice served," Haberl says. "We used to think we were going to, and now we're not so sure."
When the case finally makes it to a courtroom, everyone will learn what Melissa's family already knows — how generous she was and how she may have paid dearly for taking care of her friend Debra.
"That's a risk people who love deeply take," Haberl says. "And she would risk her life for a friend."


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PA Systems
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We stock a wide range of public address equipment from dozens of trusted brands such as Meyer Sound, RCF, Electro Voice, Tannoy, Sennheiser and Yamaha to name a few - click HERE for a full listing of our partners, all of whom have been carefully chosen to enable us to deliver an almost limitless range of options to suit every application and budget.
Where it all began...
The origins of what we now know as PA systems lie with the Magnavox company of Napa, California, using components invented and developed by founders Edwin Jensen and Peter Pridham. Using a carbon microphone and a loudspeaker, they produced a sound that could be heard up to a mile away (and simultaneously invented 'feedback'!). This technology was then used for the first time in a public place in San Francisco City Hall in 1915.
What is a PA system and why would I need one?
PA systems normally have a simple objective: they provide a means of delivering audible communications in situations where this cannot be achieved without such a system, because of numbers of people and / or the topography of the location. Public address systems at their most basic comprise a microphone, an amplifier and a loudspeaker - once properly connected and in sufficient numbers they can project sound such that it can be heard by everyone present, whether in a pub, a village hall, a church, a theatre, an airport, a railway station, an arena, a sports stadium or indeed pretty much anywhere that electricity can be provided - some systems are even battery-powered.
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You probably hear a PA system in action several times a week without even being aware of it. For many systems that is the objective, and using modern equipment it's now possible to deliver intelligible audio throughout large areas whilst keeping the equipment very discreet.
Local railway and bus stations, shopping centres, theatres and universities such as Bradford Interchange and Leeds Station, White Rose shopping centre, the Alhambra Theatre and Leeds Met University all use PA systems to deliver audible messages appropriate to their own needs. Perhaps the most widely-recognised use of PA systems is for live music events such as one might find at Bradford's St Georges Hall.
Pro Audio Systems supply not only PA equipment but essential advice and after-sales support for all our clients. For further information about us and what we can do for you, contact us on 0845 166 752 or fill in an enquiry form
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"Alchemy" Episode 20 in Season 8
As Reid (Mathew Gray Gubler) and the BAU travel to Rapid City after two male victims are discovered murdered in a ritualistic manner, he continues to struggle with his grief over Maeve's death, on CRIMINAL MINDS, Wednesday, May 1 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Gubler also directs the episode. Photo: Sonja Flemming/CBS ©2013 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.


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|ST-DB4 Black Fanless Aluminium Bi-Symmetrical ITX Chassis
20 in stock
|ST-DB4 Silver Fanless Aluminium Bi-Symmetrical ITX Chassis
Coming soon
Streacom ST-DB4 Fanless Aluminium Bi-Symmetrical Chassis
Approximately every 10 years or so a product is released that defies belief. It scream quality and is utterly gorgeous, the Streacom DB4 is this decade's product!
- A manufacturing masterpiece featuring a bi-symmetrical design
- Full aluminium body
- Passively cooled CPU and power supply
- Compatible with mini-ITX motherboards
The DB4 is a design masterpiece featuring a bisymmetrical design that blurs the lines between technology and art. Every element of this case subtly screams premium, from the 13mm thick extruded aluminium side panels to the precision CNC'd internal frame, all perfectly blended together with Streacom's characteristically understated design tone.
Key to its design are the identical sides of the case which serve both as the striking monolithic exterior and the convection surface (or heat sink) for component cooling and is the basis of its fanless operation. The top of the chassis features a matt black PVC cover that has cutouts on each edge to allow heat to escape.
Motherboard compatibility has been address and the DB4 solves one of the biggest complexities of building a fanless case. With both the motherboard and side panels being parallel, the heat pipes run perpendicular, away from any components and in combination with the flexibility of the universal bracket, means that virtually all ITX motherboard are compatible with the case.
The existing CPU mount has also been re-engineered to be adjustable and universally compatible with any current desktop socket. It now features a copper shim interface between the IHS and heat pipes which creates a more efficient all copper thermal path to the heat sink, greatly improving cooling performance.
To make assembly easier, all the side panels are removable, as is the motherboard tray, leaving an open frame with plenty of accessibility. Building on the innovation of the ST-F12C, components are fitted using a universal bracket system that supports, drives, heatsink mounts and the ZF240, allowing components to be mounted anywhere along the frame of the case, delivering a truly modular and flexible layout.
The DB4 measures 260 x 260 x 270mm but still manages to accommodate an ITX motherboard, a dual slot full height PCI card (max 200mm length, 110mm height), up to 5 x 3.5" or 12 x 2.5" drives (lots of combinations in between), and can be powered by their ST-ZF240 or Nano Series PSU solutions.
|ST-DB4 Black
|ST-DB4 Silver
|Chassis Material
|Premium Grade (6063) All Aluminium, 4mm Thick Extruded Panels
|Available Colours
|Black – Sandblast Finish
|Silver – Sandblast Finish
|Motherboard Support
|Drive Capacity
|Maximum 5 x 3.5" or 12 x 2.5" (six SSD/HDD brackets supplied) *
|Optical Drive Bays
|Requires ST-DB4ODD optical kit for slim slot loading drive
|Expansion Slot
|2 x Full Height Slots (max 200mm Length, 110mm Height) †
|USB Ports
|2 x USB3.0, Bottom Facing
|4x 6mm Heatpipes with 65W per Side Panel, Expandable to 110W (requires ST-LH6) ‡
|External Dimensions
|260 x 260 x 270mm (W x D x H)
|Power Supply
|ST-ZF240 or Nano Series PSU (not included)
|Kensington Lock
|Remote Control
|Net Weight
|24 months
|EAN barcode
- *Many different combinations of both.
- †Pay attention to the AUX Power Connector orientation on the graphics card as this could increase the total height above the 116mm limit.
- ‡As with any passive cooling solution, environmental conditions will have an impact on the performance. A location with adequate air flow and moderate ambient room temperature is required.


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The last leg of our Summer vacation included a stop in Kutztown, Maxatawny Twp., PA. My wife's LeVan family settled in the area after emigrating from Holland in the 1730s and 40s. Our plan was to eat lunch at a little restaurant called the Seasons Grill, located in the homestead built by her 6th great grandfather, Daniel Levan, and later operated as tavern and hotel.
When we arrived, we were greeted by a parking lot overgrown with weeds and this sign on the door:
The lousy economy had claimed another victim. I think it closed sometime after 2004.
Danel Levan built his stone house, in about 1740, in Maxatawny Twp., just about a mile from his brother, Jacob, who settled in the Eagle Point area. The house was built beside the highway that ran from the towns of Reading and Easton. In 1755, the road was improved, and in about 1765, because traffic had become so heavy, Daniel doubled the size of his building and set up business as proprietor of what is said to be the oldest hostelry in the eastern part of Berks County.
The Levan Tavern was situated beside the road where the first defenders of the colonies marched to Cambridge, MA. On September 18, 1777, the Continental Congress adjourned as Howe's British Army was approaching. In John Adams' diary, he mentions stopping over night at the Levan Tavern.
The following is from the book Genealogical record of the LeVan family: descendants of Daniel LeVan and Marie Beau (Huguenots), natives of Picardy, France, who settled in Amsterdam, Holland, 1650 to 1927 by Warren Patton Coon
"On the evening of November 12th, 1777, there was a group of half a dozen men at Levans's, whose conversation one might wish had been more fully reported. One was the Hon. William Ellery, a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, and, as Representative from Rhode Island, at this time a Member of the Continental Congress sitting at York, Pa. From his Diary under that date we learn,–"From thence to Levan's about 15 miles from Snell's, where we lodged. Here we met Col. John Brown and four other New England men. Brown gave us an account of his expedition to Ticonderoga and of the Mode of Surrendry of the vaunting Burgoyne."
It is quite certain that most of the noted characters of the American Revolution passed over this "Easton Road", en route to and from York, Pa., where the Congress sat so long, and, with every probability, many of them "dined" or remained over night at the Levan Tavern."
When Daniel died in 1777, he left the building to his son Daniel. In 1788, it came into the possession of the elder Daniel's daughter Susana and her husband, Captain George Kemp. There are two special stones on the front face of the building. One says the name of George Kemp, and the other, Susana Kemp. Both have the date of 1795 with their names.
They operated the renamed Kemp's Hotel for the next 52 years.
We were disappointed that the old Hotel is no longer open. The outside is in pretty rough shape. I hope that the building is saved. It is listed on the National Register of Historical Places. It would be nice if there was a marker noting it's significance.
The following are pictures of the building as it looks today. I was able to peer in the windows and get a couple of inside shots. It's pretty sad to look at.
An announcement was made on January 3, 2013, by Brandi Woodard, stating that she "recently signed an agreement of sale to purchase the Kemp Hotel property. I plan on restoring it to it's former glory and would appreciate any and all help in accomplishing this project."
More information about this can be read in the comments on this blog and on the Facebook page dedicated to saving the the building. A link to that page is here.
As of May, 2013, The Yoga House and Nectar's Cafe & Juice Bar has opened. You can visit their website at www.yodates.com.
On December 17, 2014, Brandi Woodard announced that she is putting the building up for sale.
Per the Yoga House's Facebook page, she states that she "Just wanted to post that Nectar's Cafe & Juice Bar At the Yoga House is for sale. This amazing property will hit the open market tomorrow at a asking price of $725,000.00. Pictures and all information will be available online through Monaghan Reality, Zillow, etc. We will continue to do business as usual until a buyer is found at which point we will move into a new location. If you always wanted to live and work in the same property, you should check this out!"


text:
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A Phase I/II Study of BEZ235 in Patients With Advanced Solid Malignancies Enriched by Patients With Advanced Breast Cancer
|The safety and scientific validity of this study is the responsibility of the study sponsor and investigators. Listing a study does not mean it has been evaluated by the U.S. Federal Government. Read our disclaimer for details.
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00620594
Recruitment Status : Completed
First Posted : February 21, 2008
Last Update Posted : February 14, 2017
- Study Details
- Tabular View
- No Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
This is a first-in-human, phase I/Ib clinical research study with BEZ235, an inhibitor of phosphatidylinositol 3'-kinase (PI3K). The study consists of a dose escalation part followed by a safety dose expansion part:
Dose escalation part (advanced solid tumors, including patients with breast cancer being treated with trastuzumab):
Patients receive oral BEZ235 once daily on days 1-28 of the first course. Courses will repeat every 28 days in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity.
Cohorts of at least 3 patients receive escalating doses of BEZ235, as single agent or in combination with trastuzumab, until the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) is determined. The MTD is defined as the dose expected to produce during the first course of treatment dose-limiting toxicity in 33% of patients.
Once the MTD has been defined, the safety expansion parts of the trial will be opened for enrollment.
Safety dose expansion part (advanced solid tumors, including patients with breast cancer being treated with trastuzumab):
Patients will be treated with BEZ235, as single agent or in combination with trastuzumab, given at the MTD, once daily. Treatment of patients will continue until disease progression or occurrence of unacceptable side effects.
|Condition or disease
|Breast Cancer Advanced Solid Tumors Cowden Syndrome
|Drug: BEZ235
|Phase 1
|Study Type :
|Interventional (Clinical Trial)
|Actual Enrollment :
|183 participants
|Intervention Model:
|Single Group Assignment
|None (Open Label)
|Primary Purpose:
|Official Title:
|A Phase I/II, Multi-center, Open-label Study of BEZ235, Administered Orally on a Continuous Daily Dosing Schedule in Adult Patients With Advanced Solid Malignancies Including Patients With Advanced Breast Cancer
|Actual Study Start Date :
|December 21, 2006
|Actual Primary Completion Date :
|January 8, 2013
|Actual Study Completion Date :
|January 8, 2013
|Experimental: BEZ235 Alone, Dose Escalation
Drug: BEZ235
|Experimental: BEZ235 + trastuzumab, Dose Escalation
Drug: BEZ235
|Experimental: BEZ235 Alone, MTD Expansion
Drug: BEZ235
|Experimental: BEZ235 + Trastuzumab, MTD Expansion
Drug: BEZ235
- determine the maximum Tolerated Dose (MTD) of BEZ235 as single agent and in combination with trastuzumab (Dose escalation part) [ Time Frame: at end of study ]
- assess the safety & tolerability of BEZ235 SDS as single agent and in combination with trastuzumab administered to patients at the MTD level (Safety expansion part) [ Time Frame: at end of study ]
- assess the safety and tolerability of the various formulations of BEZ235 [ Time Frame: at end of study ]
- Asses the Pharmacokinetics of BEZ235 which includes AUC, Cmax, Tmax, t1/2 as endpoints [ Time Frame: at end of study ]
- Preliminary anti-tumor activity (tumor response) of BEZ235 SDS as single agent and in combination with trastuzumab [ Time Frame: end of study ]
Choosing to participate in a study is an important personal decision. Talk with your doctor and family members or friends about deciding to join a study. To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contacts provided below. For general information, Learn About Clinical Studies.
|Ages Eligible for Study:
|18 Years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
|Sexes Eligible for Study:
|Accepts Healthy Volunteers:
Inclusion Criteria:
[Single agent dose escalation arm]: Patients with histologically-confirmed, advanced unresectable solid tumors including CS patients who have progressed on (or not been able to tolerate) standard therapy within three months before screening visit or for whom no standard anticancer therapy exists.
[Combination part]: Patients with metastatic HER2+ Breast Cancer, after failure of trastuzumab treatment. Eligible patients will have to have tumors carrying molecular alterations of PIK3CA and/or PTEN.
[Single agent safety expansion arm]: Patients with histologically-confirmed, advanced unresectable solid tumors including CS patients who have progressed on (or not been able to tolerate) standard therapy within three months before screening visit or for whom no standard anticancer therapy exists. Patients will be prescreened for molecular alterations affecting PIK3CA and/or PTEN. Patients with NSCLC will also be pre-screened for EGFR mutation.
Exclusion Criteria:
- Patients who have brain metastases, which are progressive and/or requiring medical intervention for symptom control
- Prior treatment with a PI3K inhibitor
- Acute or chronic liver disease or renal disease
- Acute or chronic pancreatitis
- Patients with unresolved diarrhea ≥ CTCAE grade 2
- Impaired cardiac function or clinically significant cardiac diseases
- Patients with diabetes mellitus requiring insulin treatment
- Patients with known coagulopathies
- Patients with a history of photosensitivity reactions to other drugs
- Any of the following ophthalmological findings:
- Progressive eye disease that could lead to severe loss of visual acuity or visual field
- loss during the study period
- Inability to perform the ophthalmic procedures required in this protocol
- Other concurrent severe and/or uncontrolled concomitant medical conditions (e.g. active or uncontrolled infection) that could cause unacceptable safety risks or compromise compliance with the protocol.
Other protocol-defined inclusion/exclusion criteria may apply
To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contact information provided by the sponsor.
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier (NCT number): NCT00620594
|United States, California
|University of California at Los Angeles JonssonComprehensiveCancerCtr
|Los Angeles, California, United States, 90095
|United States, Connecticut
|Yale University School of Medicine YaleCancerCtr-ClinTrialsOffice
|New Haven, Connecticut, United States, 06520
|United States, Massachusetts
|Dana Farber Cancer Institute Clinical Trials ProjectManager
|Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02215
|United States, Nevada
|Nevada Cancer Institute NVCC - Huntsman
|Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, 89135
|United States, South Carolina
|Cancer Centers of the Carolinas CCC Faris
|Greenville, South Carolina, United States, 29605
|United States, Tennessee
|Sarah Cannon Research Institute Dept.ofSarahCannonCancerCtr(2)
|Nashville, Tennessee, United States, 37203
|United States, Texas
|Baylor Health Care System/Sammons Cancer Center Baylor- Sammons
|Dallas, Texas, United States, 75246
|University of Texas/MD Anderson Cancer Center Thoractic Head/Neck Med.Onc(2)
|Houston, Texas, United States, 77030-4009
|Tyler Cancer Center TCC
|Tyler, Texas, United States, 75702
|Novartis Investigative Site
|Essen, Germany, 45147
|Novartis Investigative Site
|Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1066 CX
|Novartis Investigative Site
|Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain, 08035
|Novartis Investigative Site
|Valencia, Comunidad Valenciana, Spain, 46009
|Novartis Investigative Site
|Valencia, Comunidad Valenciana, Spain, 46010
|United Kingdom
|Novartis Investigative Site
|Manchester, United Kingdom, M20 9BX
|Study Director:
|Novartis Pharmaceuticals
|Novartis Pharmaceuticals
|Responsible Party:
|Novartis Pharmaceuticals
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
|NCT00620594 History of Changes
|Other Study ID Numbers:
2006-004353-23 ( EudraCT Number )
|First Posted:
|February 21, 2008 Key Record Dates
|Last Update Posted:
|February 14, 2017
|Last Verified:
|February 2017
Keywords provided by Novartis ( Novartis Pharmaceuticals ):
breast neoplasms
breast diseases
solid tumors
breast cancer
PI3K Inhibitor
Phosphatidylinositol 3
Additional relevant MeSH terms:
Breast Neoplasms
Hamartoma Syndrome, Multiple
Neoplasms by Site
Breast Diseases
Skin Diseases
Neoplasms, Multiple Primary
Neoplastic Syndromes, Hereditary
Genetic Diseases, Inborn
Antineoplastic Agents, Immunological
Antineoplastic Agents


text:
'98 S-10 + '53 = Fine '53
At 69 years of age, customizing has been a way of life for Bill Stockstill and his wife of 49 years, Dorothy. His most recent build was not because it was cheaper to find an S-10 bed and frame in a wrecking yard, but because it was the look Bill was after. A quick glance at the quality of Bill's '98 Chevy S-10-based '53 Chevy Advance Design and it becomes quite clear doing a graft job was not about saving money. To the contrary, the couple's original goal of not spending more than $25,000 went well to the wayside shortly after Bill and his oldest grandson Zac hauled the '53 back from Kansas City, Missouri, only to discover the truck started its life out in Texas. Being originally from Texas meant that the body on the '53 was relatively rust-free, and that the crew at Mastercraft would be able to focus their talents on other details. Starting with a stock '98 S-10 chassis and then incorporating a few minor touches, the '53's frontend was dropped 3 inches with a pair of 2-inch drop spindles, and 1-inch dropped coil springs from Stylin' Concepts. To guide the '53, the S-10 power-steering box was left intact, but the actual pointing was left to a tilt column modified to fit (snagged from a 2000 Astro Van). For rolling stock in front a pair of 17×8 BC Stingrays are shod with 225/17/50 Nittos, and 17×11 BC Stingrays on 275/50/17 Nittos bring up the rear.
Under the '53's hood sits a '72 327-inch Chevy small-block built by Mastercraft running a mild RV cam with an Edelbrock intake manifold and Edelbrock AFB carburetor to produce an easy 300 hp. On the nose of the 327 motor there's a Frontrunner serpentine setup from Vintage Air to support Vintage Air Gen II Compac air-conditioning that flows through the cab. Inside the cab more room was made by tossing the original '53 unit housed behind the seat, and plugging in the '98 S-10 tank that holds around 19 gallons. With the exception of the tan leather interior stitched by Alfonso Camberos, the bulk of the work done inside the cab was handled by Mastercraft. The steering wheel is a Famosa from Budnik, while all of the detail items, such as pedals and window cranks, are from Billet Specialties. The armrests and rearview mirror are from Big Al Carponents.
Although the '53 was relatively rust-free, there was still a lot time spent on the '53's body, beginning with grafting the S-10 bed to fit right behind the cab. Once the bodywork was handled by the Mastercraft Bodyworks crew in Ovilla, Texas, they hosed on a virtual flood of 2006 Cadillac red, and then gave it a color sand and rub.
Bill stated that if it wasn't for the Chovanetz family (owners of Mastercraft) the '53 would have never come out so nice, and he really wanted to thank everyone for their support and help.


text:
"....resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ
Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge." Col. 2:2-3. Also, "All things came into being through
Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into
being." John 1:3. I suppose the mystery will be clarified the day you
die or when humans know all there is to be known through science or
otherwise. Moorad
-----Original Message-----
From: Shuan Rose [mailto:email@example.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 1:51 PM
To: george murphy; Michael Roberts
Cc: email@example.com; Asa@Calvin. Edu
Subject: RE: The Problem of Liberal Theology
Hey, George:
LStart the party. How do you take a Christ-centered approach to the
science-religion problem?
-----Original Message-----
From: firstname.lastname@example.com [mailto:email@example.com]On
Behalf Of george murphy
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 7:53 AM
To: Michael Roberts
Cc: email@example.com; Asa@Calvin. Edu
Subject: Re: The Problem of Liberal Theology
Amen to Michael's remarks. But with regard to science-religion
there is not just a problem with liberal theology.
I think that one major cause of the problem is a failure to focus
Christ in theology & especially in connection with science. This is
true across
the spectrum of science-religion discussions, including ASA. By this I do
mean that people do not believe in Christ, accept him as savior &c but
that their reflection on the faith & its implications, especially
with regard to
science, does not begin with Christ & often has little to do with Christ.
Instead, concentration tends to be on "God" or the Bible. If
the former
then the discussion is susceptible to the idea that "we all believe in the
God" & anything peculiar to Christian belief becomes of secondary
This kind of thing is very popular - indeed, seems to be favored - in
Foundation sponsored science-religion activities. ("Spirituality" is
popular ersatz Christianity.)
If the Bible is the focus of attention then interminable debates
place about the historicity of Genesis, concordism, &c & again the
features of Christianity do not play a major role. Even when christological
considerations are invoked, it is usually to validate certain ideas about
Bible - Jesus "taught" that Genesis was historical &c.
So most religion-science discussions, including those on this list,
could go on with little modification if everything relating to distinctively
Christian faith were removed. They are theistic (whether traditional,
panen, pan, or whatever) but not trinitarian.
How does a christological focus make any difference in practice?
take just one example, in his recent debate with Blake Nelson, Glenn Morton
referred to the "necessity" of God in connection with belief in a temporal
origin of the universe (a belief which, BTW, I am strongly inclined to
In what sense is God "necessary"? If the character of God is most fully
revealed in the one who "did not think equality with God a thing to be
but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" then one can argue that
God as the creator should not be understood to be "necessary". As
puts it, God "lets himself be pushed out of the world onto a cross".
One of the
implications of this is that the world can be understood "though God were
given" - i.e., the methodological naturalism which is crucial for science.
Thus, e.g., the true God is not to be understood as one who "left his
fingerprints all over the evidence".
1) I certainly do not think that I have _proven_ the claims
that I make
in the last paragraph. At this point I'm simply trying to raise the issue
christological focus as fundamental. For more details on the specific
see my article in the March 2001 PSCF.
2) I am not trying to pick on Glenn here. The belief of
philosophical theism that God is "necessary" is very common.
3) To say that God should not be considered as "necessary" does
mean that God is simply "unnecessary" - a careful discussion of the sense in
which one is speaking of "necessity" is important. Juengel makes the case
(connecting his argument profoundly with a theology of the cross) that God
should be considered "more than necessary".
4) To forestall the usual question, yes, I believe in the
resurrection. But if it isn't the resurrection of the crucified then
it doesn't
mean squat.
George L. Murphy
"The Science-Theology Interface"
Michael Roberts wrote:
> Can I put in a change of direction?
> Blake Nelson wrote;
> In fact, I think the depradations of
> > someone like Spong are silly, because Spong has
> > adopted a pastiche of modern scientific methodology to
> > scripture which is unwarranted and only barely misses
> > adopting a completely materialist metaphysic. IMHO,
> > those folks, generally, do as much harm to
> > Christianity as the YEC crowd.
> As I am in a broad church which covers the whole range of theological
> opinion - The Church of England (I was in the Church of Wales til last
> August and was one of the ultra-conservatives!) - I see and feel the
> done by extreme liberals.
> Blake cited dear old Bish Spong, who actually has not 'adopted a pastiche
> modern scientific methodology ' but rather is stuck in an old mind set
> is dependant on the conflict thesis of science and religion, in which any
> conservative theolgy has to be rejected as it is assumed that
> means literal. We have several similar sorts in Britain, There is Bish
> Rcihard Holloway who delights in taking a radical position. In his 60s as
> the Presisding Bishop of Scotland he took drugs to see what it was like.
> books sell a bomb especially among anglican clergy. I reckon every time
> opens his mouth scores leave the church either to agnosticism or
> fundamentalism (one may as well be hung for a sheep than a loaf of bread)
> Then there is Don Cupitt - a Cambridge theolgian who started the Sea of
> Faith Movenment for people who dont believe in God but cling to
> Christianity. He argues for a non-realist view of God. His book "The Sea
> Faith" is classic conflict thesis of science and religion and he uses
> rise of science to "prove" his non-realist view of God. However he gets
> history of science absolutely and utterly wrong - completley
> William Smith according to Torrens the Briish auhtority of Smith,
> Hugh Miller and gets Darwin wrong.
> Lastly Paul Badham a Welsh theologian wrote a book 'The Challenge of
> Modernist Theollgy' and claimed that in 1890 there had to be modernism to
> provide an intellectually viable restatemnet of Christianity which
> science to counteract the 6 day literlaism of orthodox Prots. His histroy
> plain woeful to be charitable yet it has had glowing reviews except for
> hatchet job in the Expository Times in 2000.
> And dont forget some science and religion exponents like Arthur Peacocke
> though brilliant in his attack on reductionism has a closed universe
> denies any miraculous. We also see in it Keith Ward who is very
> and like so many liberals ditches the whole uniqueness of Christ. One can
> also note that the atonement went a long time ago, there is no empty tomb
> and now the divinity of Christ is under question. Since Sept 11 some feel
> must be inclusive to other faiths especially islam and not try to uphold
> mention the unique claims of Christ.
> All this is very confusing to the average Christian and tends to unsettle
> their faith. Blake is absolutely right to say they do as much harm to
> Christianity as YEC.
> What we are being offered by such is a general transendence in contrast
> the reductionism of Dawkins et al but none of it will put fire in our
> and is simply a featherbed to catch a falling Christian (an expression
> by grandad Erasmus Darwin to describe Unitarianism)0
> Now there are many issues raised by liberal theology but ones which
> us on the ASA list is the portrayal of Trad orthodoxy as literalism, the
> conflict thesis of science and Christianity, the issue of miracles or
> the involvemnt of God in his Creation, and the necessity of Creation ex
> nihilo (Yes Burgy I have read loads on the subject)
> At the risk of offending some or rather putting a stone to stumble on,
> these issues are related,
> Frankly in contrast to wooly liberalism Young earth fundamentalism does
> its attractions!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 07 2002 - 14:19:54 EDT


text: Consternation with Markets October 4, 2013 05:12 AM Tweet In the Corn Belt, August brought a great deal of variability to ear development, even from stalks next to each other. © Ed Clark TAGS: Marketing, Overseas December 18, 2014 By Farm Journal Editors Email Crop tour confirms producer insights, slows advance sales After seeing late developing crops with good yield potential in multiple states on Pro Farmer's Midwest Crop Tour in August, those farmers who rode along and took the pulse of crop conditions are shifting marketing gears. "I don't feel the need to make sales after seeing the corn crop," says crop scout Tim Gregerson. Still, the Herman, Neb., corn and soybean producer was open to making a small percentage of sales within weeks of results, but only if the market factored in stress from late summer heat wave indexes hitting triple-digits. "The corn market has more work to do," Gregerson says. "The 2013 weekly crop condition ratings have not been accurate. USDA has overestimated the good to excellent crop ratings." Seeing the Midwest crops up close in combination with the long-range weather outlook has Gregerson delaying most of his corn sales until winter, when he expects prices and basis to be more attractive. "I won't feel the need to market anything during harvest," he says. Gregerson, who uses options, cash sales and futures, is far less forward sold than he typically is—a story echoed by nearly all farmers throughout the seven-state swing from South Dakota to Ohio. Some farmers began shifting their marketing strategy for 2013 early on. "We are taking a different marketing approach this year," says Richard Guse, who farms 3,900 acres of corn and soybeans near Waseca, Minn. "We have no cash corn sold for the new crop," Guse says. "However, back in January, I bought a bunch of puts, so I'm 100% covered at about the $6 level." Guse found less corn than he expected as he went through the Eastern Corn Belt, which could mean rock-bottom prices won't be reached. "We expected to see fantastic things in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio," he says. "It's not bad, but it's not what I was expecting." Realistic, but Optimistic. Still, Guse is plugging far lower prices into his crop models. He thinks prices in 2014/15 could hit $4, if not dip below. For that bearish scenario to ring true, it will take two good back-to-back crops. "A lot of people are predicting $3.25 to $3.40 corn, but I think the thing they are missing is that Brazil is going to cut back quite a bit this winter," Guse explains. "The numbers don't work there. If corn stays sub-$5, I think the world's production will fall off. They can't do it for that price, so I don't think it's going to get as ugly as a lot of people think." Illinois farmer Mark Henrichs thinks it's possible corn could fall to $4 per bushel for the next two years, but because of dry conditions he and other producers are experiencing, he says it's more likely that corn will rebound closer to the $6 level. The corn market has more work to do. The 2013 weekly crop condition ratings have not been accurate. —Tim Gregerson, Herman, Neb. However prices shake out, it won't change his marketing strategy. "I never forward sell," says Henrichs, who owns a majority of his 5,200 acres of corn and soybeans near Saunemin, Ill. Instead, he sells his crop nine months after harvest with the hope of more accurate USDA numbers. If Henrichs were to forward sell and be unable to deliver, he would forfeit a bunch of his multi-peril crop insurance check, he explains. "By January or February, USDA will make some truthful adjustments," he says. Henrichs acknowledges that many farmers take a different approach, but says the strategy has worked well for the 35 years he has used it, including during the 2012 drought. Holding Tight. John Orr, who farms near Fayette, Iowa, says he's sold very little 2013 corn. "Typically, I'm 30% sold by August," Orr says. In fact, he's been pre-selling more in recent years with a goal of 60% to 70%. This year has been an exception to that goal. This year's highly unusual spring conditions convinced him otherwise. "Seven out of 10 years, I'm better off selling out of the field at harvest," Orr calculates, noting that he doesn't have enough storage and paying for storage often doesn't pencil out. Additionally, he has observed that a new trend appears to have developed in which prices have plateaued, so there is not the large harvest price discount that there used to be. While he hasn't made a firm decision on the 2013 crop, he's inclined to sell it at harvest. "If I do and the market tightens up, signaling that prices are headed higher, I'll get long calls to give me the upside," Orr says. Frost is a definite wild card. Karl Duncanson, Mapleton, Minn., might have corn that yields 200 bu. plus, but a lot depends on whether frost holds off until the crops are mature in October. "If our corn only yields 140 bu., we might be close to 100% pre-sold," Duncanson says, noting that he doesn't expect average yields to be that low. Marty Tegtmeier, a farmer from Sumner, Iowa, is currently 10% sold on corn, which comprises the majority of his acres. Last year, he was about 40% sold by mid-August, which is his normal. If our Minnesota corn only yields 140 bushels per acre, we might be close to 100% pre-sold. —Karl Duncanson, Mapleton, Minn. Uncertainty Looms. "We are uncertain on yields," Tegtmeier says, and that's why he doesn't have more grain priced. "I don't want to sell more than what I have, and the 40% of expected yields I sold in August last year was pretty close to everything I produced." Tegtmeier says he might have to identify a new target price for marketing. "If it's $4.50, we'll have to take a closer look at all of our input costs and figure out what we can skimp on," he says. With the possibility of soybeans taking a harder hit than corn, marketing them is even more dicey. "The way spring looked, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to fulfill my soybeans contracts," Orr says. "But I'll do that and then some." "I sold futures contracts for soybeans in May," says Ken Eckhardt, Minnesota Lake, Minn. "I sold a lot of soybeans; the price was profitable." However, he has yet to sell corn. "I like to be 50% sold by August, but every year is different," he says. It's a Messy dart board for Projected Prices Soybeans run the potential for even more production challenges than corn. At the conclusion of the Midwest Crop Tour, Pro Farmer estimated corn prices for the 2013/14 marketing year at $5.75 per bushel farm price—on the high side of what many analysts predict. This compares to USDA's projected range of $4.50 to $5.30 per bushel in its Aug. 12 Crop Production report. Pro Farmer estimates corn yields of 154.1 bu. per acre. "We are more optimistic on corn exports than USDA," says Chip Flory, Pro Farmer editor. Larger exports coupled with smaller production than that forecast by USDA leads Flory to believe the 2013/14 carryover will be 1.4 billion bushels, 300 million less than USDA. Despite Flory's optimism compared to USDA and other analysts, he urges caution. "It's going to be a record corn crop, and you have to market accordingly," he says, acknowledging immature ear development and the risk of an early frost. On soybeans, Flory predicts an average farm price of $13.50 per bushel in the coming marketing year, significantly above USDA's $10.35 to $12.35 range. Pro Farmer pegs the soybean crop at 3.158 billion bushels, with an average yield of 41.8 bu. per acre. This is 100 million bushels less than USDA's August forecast that included a yield estimate of 42.6 bu. per acre. "I'm really concerned about the soybean crop," Flory says. Back to news


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The ousting of a president
Although people responsible for the decision said it was in the works for a while, the ouster of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan looked like a bolt from the blue, an unexplained move toward something called "strategic dynamism," whatever that means. Since it broke on a warm Sunday afternoon, June 10, this was a rapidly developing story that moved, for Sullivan, from tragedy to triumph. On the afternoon of Tuesday, June 27, after more than two weeks of student, faculty, and alumni dissent, a chastened and admittedly humbled Board of Visitors unanimously voted Sullivan back into office.
(photo by Denny King)
|Sullivan oustermath: A timeline of UVA in tumultPublished on Jun 25th, 2012Some believe that UVA's Rector needs to step down. Late May to early June - In the "why we can't afford to wait" emails later obtained by the Cavalier Daily, Rector Helen...read more
|Watch the "Rally on the Lawn" at UVA live!Published on Jun 24th, 2012Broadcasting live with Ustream 'Hoos across town and across the country will be watching this afternoon's rally on the Lawn in front of the Rotunda, thanks to the folks who...read more
|Alums for Sullivan: Dragas' top employee sends out emotional videoPublished on Jun 23rd, 2012"Maybe it was a mistake," says Carol Wood, the spokesperson for UVA, who sent out a link on Saturday morning to an emotional video of alumni standing up in support of ousted...read more
|'Strangely silent'? Republican lawmakers weigh in on UVA crisisPublished on Jun 22nd, 2012Nearly two weeks after UVA Rector Helen Dragas' June 10 announcement that President Teresa Sullivan resigned because of "philosophical differences," local Republican...read more
|McDonnell to BOV: Make a final decision or elsePublished on Jun 22nd, 2012Gov. Bob McDonnell issued a statement today demanding a decision from the UVA Board of Visitors on who will be President of the University by Tuesday, or else he will demand...read more
|Decision time: Zeithaml steps back, Cohen suggests reinstatement likelyPublished on Jun 22nd, 2012Following a June 22 press conference called by Carl Zeithaml, the McIntire School of Commerce dean who was tapped by Rector Helen Dragas to be interim president after Teresa...read more
|Dragas' digs: Rector's new farm suggests plan to stick aroundPublished on Jun 22nd, 2012Even if Helen Dragas doesn't remain UVA rector into a second term, she'll have a place fit for a billionaire to entertain friends and colleagues near Charlottesville. Sources...read more
|Message to the RectorPublished on Jun 22nd, 2012A passerby gives two thumbs up to a statement painted on Beta Bridge. read more
|Zeithaml suspends presidency: Will wait until BOV votes on Sullivan reinstatementPublished on Jun 22nd, 2012The man tapped as the interim president of the University of Virginia has decided to go back to work as the dean of the University's McIntire School of Commerce and cease...read more
|Fast-moving day: Sullivan reinstatement could be happeningPublished on Jun 21st, 2012The people in the Hook newsroom were trying to write some thoughtful analysis for next week's issue, but then we checked around and realized that events are happening so fast...read more


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The final stretch of the BarIII Flea Market Tour has come to an end, and I can gladly say that it's been a good one. Last weekend, we circled back to NYC for the Hester Street Fair and Green Flea Market. The weather held out (for the most part), and enjoyed another weekend of unusually delicious foods and fun vintage finds. We had a bunch of visitors at the Hester Street Fair including Karen from DBA and Jace of The Grungy Gentleman. Thank you to all the readers of WeWoreWhat and Song of Style who came out to show their support throughout this tour. Just because our tour is over, definitely does not mean my vintage treasure hunting is finished. Keep an eye out for me at the flea!
Photo: Courtesy Danielle Bernstein