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August 2016: On 27 July, in a little noted decision on "Cartography," the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) made a change that will have more impact on the future of Sustainable Development than all the meetings of its High Level Political Forum.
Acting on the report of its Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (GGIM) established just five years earlier, the Council decided to eliminate all its Regional Cartographic Conferences. In their stead, a much strengthened Expert Committee will streamline all UN work related to geospatial information management, especially in relation to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, the 2015-2030 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Small Islands Accelerated Modalities of Action (SAMOA) Pathway.
A prime area of focus will be the development of a global geodetic frame of reference necessary for the efficient use of all aspects of GGIM. The expert committee will oversee all UN System efforts to "strengthen coordination and coherence of global geospatial information management, in capacity-building, norm-setting, data collection, data dissemination and data sharing, among others." It will also help strengthen the integration of statistical and geospatial information management, especially in developing countries, in particular the least developed, landlocked and small island developing States. (Developments in 2017)
With these changes ECOSOC has set in place the integration and harmonization of fundamental geospatial data themes from the national to global levels, building on existing fundamental datasets and identifying strategic priorities. The knowledge-base for geospatial information management will be continuously updated by all users and make critical and relevant information accessible on the Web.
The Expert Committee sees land administration as a predominant theme in its future work. It has noted the increased location-based technological developments around the world that could have an impact on the consideration of legal and policy framework issues relevant to the development of authoritative data. (A "Convention on Geoinformation" proposed by the International Bar Association has been deemed premature.) The framework issues will be important in the collection, use, storage and dissemination of geospatial information.
As usual, the UN has done practically nothing to tell the world about any of this. Young people, especially, should be avidly interested in the prospect that if we don't blow ourselves up in the next few years, the planet will have a living skin of location-specific data accessible from any smart phone. Every phone will also be able to link to the data skin and act as a sensor. We will be a giant step closer to the development of a "global brain" noted in our article on A United Nations for the 21st Century.
The End of Mega-Corporations
We are looking at a future when all the economies of scale that favored mega corporations will be reversed.
International Organizations
The first international organizations were created to deal with the need for trans-border cooperation created by new technologies like the telegraph and railroads (which multiplied the volume of mail many times). But when European Powers went to war in their competition for colonies and it escalated into the First World War, it was necessary to create the League of Nations. It failed and the biggest European Powers started up the Second World War, joined by Japan in Asia. It ended with nuclear bombs and the founding of the United Nations, now very much like the League when it failed.
A First Century map telling of the sea route from Mediterranean Europe to India is one of the earliest examples of the use of geospatial information. It puts in perspective the dramatic new uses of such information in a digitally connected world (see article).
Scientific Rebellion
None of the early European rationalists who rebelled against the rigidities of scholasticism thought they were giving birth to the primary force driving modern civilization.
Plummeting Solar Prices Will Transform All Economies
The sharp drop in the price of solar energy in recent years means more than the end of Big Oil. Because solar allows decentralized production, it also means the end of industry-driven urbanization. Without a steadily growing demand for new housing, the real estate market will undergo an unprecedented transformation. Without factory-scale production, world commodities trade will fall into different regional patterns.
Below: There will also be a range of beneficial effects as heavy industry becomes a thing of the past and programs caring for the planet gain momentum.
The Age of Industry
The early phase of industry in Europe was a harsh, grimy age with execrable human rights standards and poisonous to the world of Nature. But at its end humanity had learned a new role: planetary caretaker
16 September 2017: All of us have heard people complain about God. Most of us probably know some who don't believe in God at all. If challenged, they are likely to roll out a long list of reasons why God must be a figment of our imaginations because surely, if one did exist, there would be no war, or opioid crisis, no rape.
The usual problem in reconciling the bitter trail of human experience with the existence of a compassionate God is in how we envisage divinity. If we think of God as magically all-powerful there can be no reconciliation. However, as that idea of God cannot be reconciled with the world of Science either, it is no great loss.
God Acceptable to Science
An idea of God acceptable to Science would have to fit into the concept of causality, the fundamental element of the scientific method. In short, it cannot be magical. That is a perspective conveyed to children in an Indian fable about the inviolability of Karma (causality).
Shiva and Parvati are looking down from Kailas at a poor old man trudging along a desert road, hungry, thirsty and wretched.
"Why don't you help him?" Parvati asks.
"I can't" says Shiva. "It's his karma."
"You are almighty God. Surely, you can bend the laws of karma to give him some food and water and money."
"Watch this," says Shiva waving his hand.
On the road directly in front of the man a table appears with a pot of gold and a feast.
Just then the old man thinks to himself, 'All my life I've walked with my eyes open. Here I am on this straight desert road with nothing to see. Let me walk with my eyes closed.' He closes his eyes and walks past the table.
God in that perspective can only work through karma, as the essence of beneficial causality in a universe of laws.
Does History Make Sense?
The first step in reconciling the diverse evils of human history with the concept of a compassionate God is to see how the negative can be part of a positive narrative. Fortunately, this is not difficult to do at a time when the terrible experience of industrialization resulted in a growing awareness of the need for people to engage in reversing the damage done to the Earth. The harsh experiences of our history are clearly meant to teach us.
If we look with that perspective at humanity's progress from its African exodus to the world of the Internet and the Worldwide Web we find that it has been a purposeful evolutionary process. Little in it is without meaning and much that seems irreconcilable with the idea of a compassionate God can be seen as the Life Force negotiating its karmic passage away from our savage animal ancestry.
The Divine Spur
Ideas of divinity have been a major spur to history. They have driven pacific, cohesive and violently disruptive conceptualizations of reality that have rippled down the millennia with unexpected results. Some examples:
A World Economy
The emergence of a world economy in the wake of the ocean crossings of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama at the end of the 15th Century was a brutal, soul-killing affair of enslavement, genocide and colonization that a Christian Europe could not have engaged in but for the new economic mechanism of the joint-stock company and the stock market. The first joint-stock corporation, the East India Company, was formed in 1600; as such organizations multiplied, stock markets developed as the go-to place for raising and managing capital.
That arrangement distanced investors and corporate managers alike from the murderous activities necessary for profit. The man-made famines of the East India Company killed hundreds of millions of Indians, the Africa Company was established for the sole purpose of capturing and transporting slaves across the Atlantic to the Americas, and Britain's two "Opium Wars" spread drug addiction to a quarter of the Chinese population.
When Christian pressure in the United States eventually ended the slave trade, some 14 million had been taken from Africa to the Americas and an equal number killed in their capture and transportation. The flow of slaves was then replaced by that of indentured labor from China and India, a process that killed as many or more. The workers supplied by Africa and Asia replaced many uncounted millions of Native Americans wiped out by settler colonists. In Australia and New Zealand, the indigenous peoples gave way to Europeans.
Bloody and greed-driven as these processes were, they served an epochal purpose: for the first time, all segments of the dispersed and differentiated human family were brought into contact, intermixed, and engaged in one economic system. All the great variety of human genes flowed into one pool.
Shaping the Modern World
The industrialization into which Europe led the world was also a grim and oppressive process that produced great wealth on the backs of exploited workers, including millions of children; mines and factories poisoned earth, water and air across the planet, sullying everything natural. While that was happening the greedy competition for resources and markets also engaged the leading Powers of the world in continuous war, their weapons growing exponentially in destructive scale and horror.
Under such depredations the human race should have dwindled in numbers, but instead it multiplied at an explosive rate. The five centuries over which the world economy expanded and industrialized saw the human race grow from a few hundred million to over seven billion. That growth is projected to continue for another century, raising the world population to over 10 billion by the end of the 21st Century, unless we reduce the pace of growth by rapid economic development.
Learning to Behave
What is the meaning of those five centuries of ravening greed and gore? What is the significance of industrialization?
The answers are obvious. The bloodiest, most tumultuous and oppressive period of human history unified the species and focused its attention on stark evolutionary choices. Three World Wars (I, II and Cold), a spiking extinction rate of species and the prospect of climate change have shown the need for self-control.
Unlike a century ago, it is now widely recognized that all-out war among major Powers is no longer an option of statecraft, for it can send humanity the way of the dinosaurs in a few minutes. The continued utility of armed conflict is now restricted only against and among the poor. Industrialization has provided a complex instruction in human planetary responsibility. As with war, it has been an abject lesson in good behavior.
Setting the Rules
Setting the specific rules of human behavior has been taken up through international organizations. The first organizations were responses to the need for cooperation imposed by the trans-border use of standardized technologies like the telegraph, railways and shipping. In the face of the problems described above they evolved into an effort to prevent war and deal with a range of global security, developmental and environmental issues.
The League of Nations and the United Nations represent that broadening scope of cooperation. Although stymied in their primary tasks by elite international power struggles the two organizations have laid the legal foundations for a peaceful world and established the framework of values necessary to sustain it. The global connectivity of the Information Age now offers international organizations the opportunity to network around the elite quarrels that block the path to peace.
End of the Industrial Age
Two trends that have picked up speed in the last decade will accelerate the demise of the industrial age.
One is 3D printing, a layering technology that can produce any shape of product in a growing number of materials; those now in use include plastics, polymers, resins, titanium, concrete, food and human tissue. Since the first 3D printer debuted in 1992, there has been astonishingly rapid progress.
The second trend is the increase in the use of renewable energy at historically unprecedented rates despite a dramatic decline in global fossil fuel prices. Renewable sources are now a mainstream source of energy, accounting in 2014 (excluding hydropower) for 48 per cent of newly added electricity generating capacity. By 2030, the use of clean energy will probably be double the level of 2014, with solar energy accounting for the largest share.
Other Radical Changes
The plummeting price of off-grid renewable energy and increasingly sophisticated 3-D printing portend the capacity to produce the highest quality of industrial product off grid and in the remotest locations. Coinciding with the decreasing economic viability of mega-corporations, it will quicken the end of centralized factory-scale production and cause a range of other radical changes:
Without mass production, there will be no need to concentrate labor, energy and other commodities at particular locations. That means the trade and industry-driven urbanization of the last four centuries will cease and large cities will experience major changes in real estate use and valuation.
As decentralized small scale production replaces centralized factories the need for long distance movement of goods and commodities will fall dramatically, transforming the economics of the entire transportation infrastructure from railroads and roads to airlines and pipelines.
The predominance of small and medium manufacturing will revive the historical dependence on locally available raw materials; global commodities trade will be reoriented into regional patterns.
These broad changes will reduce all forms of industrial environmental damage, especially emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Meanwhile, small and medium enterprises rooted in their own communities are likely to be far more sensitive to pollution issues than mega-corporations. In sum, not only will industrial scale activity end, the legacy damage of the last century will be able to heal.
The Information Age
Towards the end of the 20th Century, swift advances in computerized information processing and satellite communications enabled revolutionary changes in economic and social interactions. The most stunning progress has been in global connectivity: by 2016, basic mobile telephone service was accessible to almost the entire world population. Over 3.5 billion people – half the world population – now have broadband access to the Internet. The world's largest data processor, Google, was dealing in 2016 with 3.5 billion search requests per day and storing 10 exabytes (10 billion gigabytes) of data.
Total Internet traffic grew from approximately 100 GB of traffic per day in 1992 to 100 gigabytes per second (GBps) in 2002 and to more than 20,000 GBps in 2015. Global IP traffic in 2015 was an estimated 2.5 quintillion bytes of data (2.5 followed by 18 zeros); by 2020, that is projected to increase to 2.3 Zetabytes (add another three zeros) per year. To put those figures in more comprehensible terms, by 2020, the gigabyte equivalent of all movies ever made will cross the global Internet every two minutes and it would take more than 5 million years to watch all the video shared in a month.
To deal with the enormous flow of information governments have made a rapidly accelerating effort in the last six years to create a system for global geospatial information management (GGIM). They envisage a global geodetic frame of reference to manage data through a network of location-specific centers integrating all available economic, social, environmental and cultural information (see article at top right of page).
It will give the planet a skin of information accessible to any smart phone in perspectives ranging from Big Data visuals to weather forecasts and local entertainment listings. Smart phones could also be programed to report automatically to the nearest database on a variety of variables, including environmental conditions; that would make the analogy to "skin" exact.
A New Capitalism
The rapid onset of global connectivity, the age of Big Data brought in by the Information and Communications Revolutions, and the decentralized world economy point to the need for a new system to govern the use of capital. The joint-stock company and the stock market, the core of the free market system since the mercantile era, face unprecedented challenges in a period of global connectivity.
As growing numbers of small and medium enterprises locate and cater to niche clusters of demand, they will disaggregate markets shaped by advertising to sustain mass production of branded goods. That will deprive mega-corporations of the economies of scale and make their own size a factor of inefficiency in adjusting to changes in market conditions. Stock markets will also face a secular challenge from new mechanisms that enable Web-based crowd-funding.
These developments do not signify an end to the need to raise and manage massive amounts of capital. On the contrary, the infrastructural changes that will be necessary in the scenario outlined above and the multi-trillion dollar cost of erasing poverty under the United Nations Agenda 2030 plan will require both functions to be efficiently performed; but it will require new instruments.
Globalization as Evolution
Globalization is a phenomenon as old as the temperature gradients that circled the cooling planet and created its atmosphere and oceans. It has been driven by a great diversity of forces, from unicellular life to plants and animals. If the entire history of life on earth were reduced to a single 24 hour day, humanity would enter the stage a few seconds before midnight. In those few second, Homo sapiens left Africa driven by changing climate, spread around the world impelled by every kind of trouble and tribulation, yet managed to share its advances towards civilization across continents and oceans. Traders, missionaries of every cause, adventurers, writers, teachers, imperial monarchs, all played their part.
Now, as we face a world increasingly frenzied in its interactions, with the stakes of nuclear war and environmental devastation higher than ever but also with the promise of the future brighter than at any time, we must ask about the meaning of it all. It is time to ask who we are as a species and what we have learned in our global passages. We must raise again the question that has haunted us from the earliest days, the issue of God.
The Nature of Life
The Upanishads of ancient India set out the world's most comprehensive explanation of universal reality. Scientists have provided factual statements paralleling parts of it, especially the Big Bang that sets the universe on its multi-billion-year life. In Sanskrit the Big Bang is Hiranyagharba, the Golden Egg that bursts from the utter darkness of Brahma's night and in a flash manifests Creation.
Scientists have not touched parts of the Hindu schema closer to humanity stating the identity of the human soul and the Universal Self; it is that sameness of substance that allows the individual to be reborn in an endless succession of bodies.
Two scientific advances of the 20th Century allow that phenomenon to be presented in factual terms. One is the discovery that matter and energy exist in an unbreakable continuum of particle and wave, that neither can be destroyed, only transformed into the other.
The second discovery is that the genetic code embedded in the human cell determines at the moment of conception every aspect of the body that will grow from it.
In combination, those concepts can be read as scientific endorsement of the idea that when the material human body dies its genetic code will float free in its energy form. As a radio wave can carry the human voice and replicate it exactly on meeting an antenna tuned to receive it, so the code/soul of an individual will come to life upon contact with a cell at the moment of conception that is perfectly in karmic tune.
Unavoidable Conclusions
Looking back at history and keeping in mind that the force we call God must work through causality, every human trial and tragedy can be chalked down to karma. Violence, greed, rage and every ill-considered emotion we feel are the price we pay to separate from our animal ancestors. The vast difference among individuals in how they handle emotions points to the nature of their own karma.
What about war? No animal fights wars.
War can be seen as a means to discipline our monkey brains, the most fecund source of technological innovation, and now the only way violent tribal societies learn the need for peace. If they do not learn, if the tribal instincts of the Middle East or North Korea should unleash nuclear war, the world economy will collapse, nuclear winter will set in, and the current phase of the human experiment will come to an abrupt end.
On the bright side, what can we expect from a firm sense that God exists, that each individual soul is divine and immortal? I would expect the following:
A fourth-generation international organization (see UN/Globenet) will be able to wind up the world drug trade, end terrorism, promote disarmament and negotiate an end to all the tribal conflicts now plaguing the planet.
And Then What?
The consonance between the universal and individual souls suggests an answer to the question by physicist Erwin Schrodinger: is human thought individually generated or do we get it preformatted?
If thought is individually generated it would be virtually impossible to envisage broad movements like the Industrial and Technological Revolutions or the Information and Communications Revolutions.
If our thoughts are preformatted, such movements would be easy to explain.
The latter would also firm up the scientific expectation that at some point the density of digital activity surrounding the planet will generate an autonomous awareness in much the same way that the development of a baby's neural network in the womb makes it conscious.
The global brain humanity is growing will be supported by an enormous ancillary presence of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things. God alone knows what altogether new chapter of human evolution we will embark upon.
2 May 2017: The United Nations is now in the situation of the League of Nations in the 1930s when the world was slipping from the Great Depression into the Second World War, says a new study. In the wake of the Great Recession, national leaders fixated on their own interests are now ignoring vivid signs of a serious breakdown in world order.
The problem is not that the United Nations has suddenly become useless. It continues to do an enormous amount of good. But in the critical area of international peace and security it has no traction, and that is extremely dangerous.
In the case of the League, many people saw the war coming but did nothing. Planning for the United Nations did not begin until after the killing had begun. Some 60 million were dead in countries around the world by the time the United Nations was established in 1945. An unrestricted conflict today could have far more disastrous results.
With that in mind, the new 34-page study by veteran journalist and former UN staff member Bhaskar Menon proposes that planning for a successor organization to the United Nations begin now. It suggests that UN member States move to transform the United Nations System into a network that can be the central node of global networks (UN/Globenet).
It is not just the prospect of war that requires such a transformation. The global spread of digital connectivity is causing a fundamental shift in economic realities as it enables small and medium enterprises to find and serve niche markets. That will inevitably disaggregate the mass markets essential for the survival of mega-corporations. As mass production becomes uneconomic, a host of other changes will kick in, and unless they are firmly taken in hand the result could be market turmoil.
Mainstream economists have reported on this evolving scene in fragmentary ways, but no one has yet provided an overview. The rapid job loss afflicting traditional American retail is probably a clear indication of what waits in the wings for big corporations in most sectors of the economy.
Decentralization a Major Trend
As the trends towards off-grid renewable energy and 3D printing mature they will revive traditional community-level production but unless precautionary policies are put in place it will be at enormous cost to the legacy cities of the industrial era.
The trend towards decentralization will make life easier for poor countries for they will not need to build the big infrastructure now considered essential to development. Another major benefit of the digital economy will be the possibility for poor countries to crowd-fund their own development and create the jobs needed to employ the 1.5 billion youth bulge that will turn 15 before 2030.
About the Author
Bhaskar Menon is a writer and editor who was a United Nations staff member in New York for two decades before quitting in 1990 to return to journalism. He published the weekly International Documents Review for a decade, then The Undiplomatic Times, now a widely-read web magazine. For a decade, he edited Disarmament Times published by the UN NGO Committee on Disarmament. He is the author of several books, including the seminal "Bridges Across the South" (Pergamon) on cooperation among developing countries. For most of the last 15 years he has been a consultant to the United Nations, drafting reports on South-South Cooperation.
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21 October 2016: The United Nations is now in the same situation as the League of Nations was in the 1930s when power struggles among major nations began to push the world towards the Second World War. Its Charter is badly out of date, its decisions and commands have no real traction and its member States do not engage in cooperative action on anywhwere near the scale necessary to deal with the challenges they face. The Organization's leadership over the past decade has shown no inclination to grapple with any of those issues; worse, in the face of some of the most lurid scandals and corruptions of UN history the Secretary-General has been unresponsive and unaccountable.
That state of affairs is comparable to that of the League of Nations in the lead-up World War II. Although it was widely obvious that the League had become worse than useless under Joseph Avenol, its fascist toady Secretary-General, no one sounded the alarm or did anything effective to turn things around. Talk of reforming the League continued even after the war had begun. It was not until the Allies were confident of victory that Franklin Roosevelt initiated plans for the United Nations.
In 2016, with nuclear arsenals distributed around the world, we cannot expect to repeat that experience. Once power struggles develop to the point of direct conflict among major countries – Syria being a perilous case in point – it will be too late to plan anything. If there is to be an effective successor organization to the UN planning must begin now, urgently.
Can't the UN be reformed? Can't a new and energetic Secretary-General remedy its faults?
That prospect is unrealistic. The UN's problems, as with the League in its day, are related to tectonic changes in international relations and the failure of elite groups to deal creatively with critical issues. The following points summarize the situation:
The Charter: Two months after the UN Charter was agreed to in San Francisco in June 1945, the nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki upended the strategic paradigm underlying the Security Council. The Cold War that began in 1946 completely nullified the Council and by the time it became operational in 1989, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the rise of new Powers had made its capacities largely fictional. There is no way those factors can be remedied; we need a new concept of security and a new way of reaching for it.
International Security: The UN's primary aim is to maintain international peace and security by minimizing use of armaments. Not only has that been impossible, military expenditures today are about 70 per cent higher than at the peak of the Cold War and the permanent members of the Security Council are the world's largest arms producers and exporters. The UN has been unable to even report on that situation. Its Conference on Disarmament in Geneva has been in a state of suspended animation for two decades. None of this is even on the UN reform agenda.
Economic and Social: Cooperation in solving economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems, and promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms are primary aims of the UN. Efforts to those ends have been so problematic for 70 years that nations have grown cynical; the annual debates on those issues are not geared to any meaningful action. The situation now is extreme. There are over 60 million refugees and displaced people in the world today, set adrift by conflict and unbearable economic and social distress. The going price to "buy" a human being from a trafficker is $90. Some of the worst abusers of human rights sit on the UN Human Rights Council for purely defensive reasons. None of this can be "reformed."
Environmental: The legacy of the industrial era has been a poisoned planet with a growing fever that is projected to melt the polar ice caps and raise sea levels, drowning the coastal areas where most of humanity lives. Current plans to deal with this critical situation are grossly inadequate and deeply conflicted. Even as governments pledge action to transform global production and consumption patterns they are engaged in desperate efforts to revive the world economy in its most destructive configurations. The UN Environment Program cannot even bring this overall picture into perspective, much less mobilize action on the requisite scale.
Institutional: International institutions to deal with this complexity of interrelated problems are relics of a past age. At a time when the greed of a handful of bankers can throw the world economy into crisis, when social media can mobilize public opinion globally, the United Nations System is wedded structurally and procedurally to 19th Century diplomatic traditions. The elite groups in charge of the UN seem to be entirely unaware of this situation even though it is obvious that the Organization has very little traction on world events. In all the talk of "revitalizing" the General Assembly there has been no talk of measuring the effectiveness of its actions outside UN walls. The UN's idea of outreach to billions of young people is to appoint a "representative" on the issue and occasionally invite a token "youth" into its meetings. In selecting a new Secretary-General this year, the UN did not conduct an active search for someone with the requisite expertise and vision to engage with a newly networked and connected world; it asked the very governments responsible for the current mess to nominate candidates. At the "informal" meeting of the General Assembly at which the S-G designate heard of the concerns of member States, few of the points above found voice. It is clear the UN membership is not adequately cognizant of the dire situation of the Organization.
The common problem underlying all the disabilities of the UN is the incapacity of national elites to update their expectations and behavior during a period of transformative change in global realities. A successor organization must be able to deal with that by bringing to life the visionary Preamble to the Charter that begins with the words "We the Peoples of the United Nations;" to that end it must engage a global public and mobilize a supportive democratic groundswell. The existing forums and framework of the UN must be incorporated into the networks of that mobilization.
As the UN itself is incapable of directing this process it must be taken in hand by an independent body led by someone with unquestioned political ability and wide credibility. President Barack Obama should consider heading this effort after he quits the White House.
Modern Islamist Violence
The travails of the Islamic world are analogous to those of medieval Christianity and will hopefully resolve itself in a shedding of anachronistic attitudes and expectations. Until then the ride is likely to be rough.
East India Company
The world's first joint-stock company was also the most famous of its age and perhaps the most influential one of all time. Unfortunately, almost everything it did was immoral and harmful to millions.
Population Explosion
Hundreds of millions were killed in the 5 centuries of European global expansion, but instead of dropping the world population exploded more than seven-fold. The long term implication is worth thinking about, for it is quite wonderful.
Global Architects
Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama opened the doors to the world economy six years apart, not knowing the enormous changes they would let loose upon the world.
3D Printing & Off Grid Renewable Energy Spell Revolution
The technology for 3D printing evolved from the ink-jet printers of the 1980s. They layer not paint but structural materials that can be made to harden. This means that once the technology is advanced, it will be able to produce the highest quality of industrial product on the smallest scale. When powered by off-grid renewable energy, 3D printing should be able to print anything anywhere -- including outer space, where it can run off the replacement for a damaged part or create a new one.
Learning That War is Bad
It took the nuclear bomb to teach European statesman that war is not diplomacy by other means. But not everyone has learned yet, and everyone could end up paying the price: going the way of the dinosaurs
The Vedas
The Vedas were created before writing and were carried in memory for millennia. The earliest manuscripts are in Sanskrit, written on palm leaves with an iron stylus.
Islam as Historic Force
Islam was one of the seminal forces of the modern world not only by disrupting India and Europe violently but by serving as an invaluable transmitter of learning from one to the other
The Africa Company
The Africa Company was founded for the sole purpose of carrying on the slave trade. By the time the trade ended, 14 million Africans had been taken across the Atlantic. A larger purpose had also been served: the world population was mixed as never before


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Articles by Helena Kandárová
In JoVE (2)
Other Publications (28)
- Taehan Naekwa Hakhoe Chapchi = The Korean Journal of Internal Medicine
- Pediatriia
- The Lamp
- Digestive Diseases and Sciences
- Life Sciences
- Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA
- Toxicology in Vitro : an International Journal Published in Association with BIBRA
- Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA
- Zhonghua Liu Xing Bing Xue Za Zhi = Zhonghua Liuxingbingxue Zazhi
- Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA
- Clinical Nuclear Medicine
- Mutation Research
- Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA
- Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA
- Contact Dermatitis
- Indian Journal of Cancer
- Indian Journal of Nuclear Medicine : IJNM : the Official Journal of the Society of Nuclear Medicine, India
- Hellenic Journal of Nuclear Medicine
- Nuclear Medicine Communications
- Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA
- Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA
- Interdisciplinary Toxicology
- Hellenic Journal of Nuclear Medicine
- Chemical Communications (Cambridge, England)
- Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology : RTP
- Interdisciplinary Toxicology
- Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA
Articles by Helena Kandárová in JoVE
גירוי מבחן העין (EIT) לסיכוני זיהוי כימיקלים עיניים מעצבנים באמצעות אפיתל דגם רקמות כמו-קרנית משוחזר אדם (RHCE) Yulia Kaluzhny1, Helena Kandárová2, Laurence d'Argembeau-Thornton1, Paul Kearney1, Mitchell Klausner1 1MatTek Corporation, 2MatTek In Vitro Life Science Laboratories פיתחנו מבחן גירוי בעיניים אשר מנצל מודל רקמת האפיתל שלושה כמו קרנית-ממדי משוחזר אנושי (RHCE). המבחן הוא מסוגל להבחין בין גירוי העיני וחומרים מאכלים (קטגוריות GHS 1 ו -2 משולבים) ואלה שאינם דורשים תיוג (GHS אין קטגוריה).
Other articles by Helena Kandárová on PubMed
Gastrointestinal Endocrine Cells in an Animal Model for Human Type 2 Diabetes Digestive Diseases and Sciences. May, 1999 | Pubmed ID: 10235607 Endocrine cells were investigated in various parts of the gastrointestinal tract in an animal model for human type 2 diabetes, namely the homozygous obese mouse. As controls, age- and sex-matched homozygous lean mice were used. The different endocrine cell types were stained by using immunocytochemistry and quantified by computerized image analysis. The numbers of PYY- and enteroglucagon-immunoreactive (IR) cells were decreased in the colon of obese diabetic mice vis-Ã -vis controls. Serotonin-IR cells were significantly decreased in numbers in the duodenum and colon. Furthermore, colonic serotonin cells had a high cell secretory index (CSI), but an unchanged nuclear area, indicating an impaired cellular release of this amine. There was no statistical difference between obese diabetic mice and lean controls regarding the numbers and CSI of antral gastrin/CCK-, somatostatin- and serotonin-; and duodenal secretin-, gastric inhibitory peptide (GIP)-, CCK/gastrin-, and somatostatin-IR cells; nor was there any difference regarding nuclear area, with the exception of the antral somatostatin- and duodenal GIP-IR cells. It is concluded that the abnormalities in gut endocrine cells observed in the present study might explain the gut dysmotility reported in animal models for human diabetes. They may also be of importance in gastrointestinal dysfunction occurring in diabetes patients.
Interleukin-18 Reduces Expression of Cardiac Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha and Atrial Natriuretic Peptide in a Murine Model of Viral Myocarditis Life Sciences. Feb, 2002 | Pubmed ID: 11883701 Heart failure is generally believed to begin with myocyte damage caused by a variety of insults, including ischemia, toxin or myocardial infection. The proinflammatory cytokine, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), has been hypothesized to play a pathogenetic role in the transition from compensated to decompensated heart failure. Interleukin-18 (IL-18), a recently cloned cytokine synthesized by Kupffer cells, activates macrophages. We examined the therapeutic effect of IL-18 on the modulation of TNF-alpha gene expression in failing heart in a murine model of heart failure caused by viral myocarditis. The heart weight (HW)/ body weight (BW) ratio in IL-18 treated mice 7 days after viral inoculation was significantly lower (P
Optimisation of the EpiDerm Test Protocol for the Upcoming ECVAM Validation Study on in Vitro Skin Irritation Tests ALTEX. 2004 | Pubmed ID: 15329774 An ECVAM-funded prevalidation study (PV) was conducted during 1999 and 2000 to identify in vitro tests capable of reliably distinguishing between skin irritants (I) and non-irritants (NI) according to European Union risk phrases ("R38" or no classification). The tests evaluated were EpiDerm, EPISKIN, PREDISKIN, the non-perfused pig ear method, and the mouse skin integrity function test (SIFT). Whereas reproducibility of the two human skin model tests and SIFT was acceptable, none of the methods was deemed ready to enter a formal validation study due to their low predictivity. The ECVAM Skin Irritation Task Force therefore suggested improvements of protocols and prediction models for these tests. Furthermore, it was agreed that experience gained with the two human-skin models be shared, and a common protocol should be developed for EpiDerm and EPISKIN (Zuang et al., 2002). When we applied an improved EPISKIN protocol (Portes et al., 2002) to the EpiDerm model, an acceptable specificity (80%) was achieved, whereas the sensitivity (60%) was far too low. In 2003, the EPISKIN protocol was further refined by extension of the post-incubation period following chemical exposure. In the current study, we evaluated this EPISKIN refinement by applying it to EpiDerm. In addition, we developed technical improvements for the application of the test chemicals and rinsing procedure, which reduced the variability of results and increased the percentage of correct predictions. A set of twenty non-coded reference substances from the ECVAM prevalidation study phase III (Fentem et al., 2001) was tested with the final protocol in three independent runs. Both high sensitivity (80%) and high specificity (78%) were achieved, and the statistical probability of correct classifications was high, so that the test is now regarded ready for formal validation.
The EpiDerm Test Protocol for the Upcoming ECVAM Validation Study on in Vitro Skin Irritation Tests--an Assessment of the Performance of the Optimised Test Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA. Aug, 2005 | Pubmed ID: 16185104 During the past decade, several validation studies have been conducted on in vitro methods for discriminating between skin irritating and non-irritating chemicals. The reconstructed human skin models, EpiDerm and EPISKIN, provided the most promising results. Based on experience of the similar performance of the two skin models, it was suggested that a common test protocol and prediction model should be developed for the prediction of skin irritation potential with the two models. When the EPISKIN protocol was applied with the EpiDerm model, an acceptable specificity (80%) was achieved, whereas the sensitivity (60%) was low. In 2003, the EPISKIN protocol was further refined by extending the post-incubation period following exposure to test chemicals. This extension and additional technical improvements to the EpiDerm protocol were evaluated with 19 chemicals from the prevalidation study. With the new test design, high sensitivity (80%) and specificity (78%) were obtained. The statistical probability for correct classifications was high, so the test was considered to be ready for formal validation. However, since test optimisation had been conducted with the same test chemicals as were used in the ECVAM prevalidation study, it was decided that the optimisation of the protocol had to be verified with a new set of chemicals. Thus, in the current study, 26 additional chemicals (10 rabbit irritants and 16 non-irritants), which had previously been selected and tested by LOREAL with EPISKIN, were evaluated in three independent experiments with EpiDerm. With this unbalanced testing set, a specificity of 94%, and a sensitivity of 60% were obtained, while the positive and negative predictivity and accuracy remained almost unchanged (around 80%) in comparison to the in vivo rabbit data. Overall, 45 chemicals (20 irritants and 25 non-irritants) were tested according to the final protocol. The resulting high positive (82%) and negative predictive values (79%) confirmed the reliability (accuracy of 80%) of the improved test protocol of the EpiDerm model.
Assessment of the Human Epidermis Model SkinEthic RHE for in Vitro Skin Corrosion Testing of Chemicals According to New OECD TG 431 Toxicology in Vitro : an International Journal Published in Association with BIBRA. Aug, 2006 | Pubmed ID: 16455230 Based on two successfully completed ECVAM validation studies for in vitro skin corrosion testing of chemicals, the National Co-ordinators of OECD Test Guideline Programme endorsed in 2002 two new test guidelines: TG 430 'Transcutaneous Electrical Resistance assay' and TG 431 'Human Skin Model Test'. To allow all suitable in vitro human reconstructed (dermal or epidermal) models to be used for skin corrosion testing, the OECD TG 431 defines general and functional conditions that the model must meet before it will be routinely used for skin corrosion testing. In addition, the guideline requires correct prediction of 12 reference chemicals and assessment of intra- and inter-laboratory variability. To show that the OECD TG 431 concept works, in 2003 ZEBET tested several chemicals from the ECVAM validation trials on the SkinEthic reconstituted human epidermal (RHE) model. Based on knowledge that reconstructed human skin models perform similarly in toxicological studies, it was decided to adopt the validated EpiDerm skin corrosion test protocol and prediction model to the SkinEthic model. After minor technical changes, classifications were obtained in concordance with those reported for the validated human skin models EPISKIN and EpiDerm. To allow adequate determination of inter-laboratory reproducibility, a blind trial was conducted in three laboratories -- ZEBET (D), Safepharm (UK) and BASF (D), in which the 12 endorsed reference chemicals were tested. Results obtained with the SkinEthic epidermal model were reproducible, both within and between laboratories, and over time. Concordance between the in vitro predictions of skin corrosivity potential obtained with the SkinEthic model and the predictions obtained with the accepted tests of OECD TG 430 and TG 431 was very good. The new test was able to distinguish between corrosive and non-corrosive reference chemicals with an accuracy of 93%.
Assessment of the Skin Irritation Potential of Chemicals by Using the SkinEthic Reconstructed Human Epidermal Model and the Common Skin Irritation Protocol Evaluated in the ECVAM Skin Irritation Validation Study Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA. Aug, 2006 | Pubmed ID: 16945007 Currently, two reconstructed human skin models, EpiDerm and EPISKIN are being evaluated in an ECVAM skin irritation validation study. A common skin irritation protocol has been developed, differing only in minor technical details for the two models. A small-scale study, applying this common skin irritation protocol to the SkinEthic reconstructed human epidermis (RHE), was performed at ZEBET at the BfR, Berlin, Germany, to consider whether this protocol could be successfully transferred to another epidermal model. Twenty substances from Phase III of the ECVAM prevalidation study on skin irritation were tested with the SkinEthic RHE. After minor, model-specific adaptations for the SkinEthic RHE, almost identical results to those obtained with the EpiDerm and EPISKIN models were achieved. The overall accuracy of the method was more than 80%, indicating a reliable prediction of the skin irritation potential of the tested chemicals when compared to in vivo rabbit data. As a next step, inter laboratory reproducibility was assessed in a study conducted between ZEBET and the Department of Experimental Toxicology, Schering AG, Berlin, Germany. Six coded substances were tested in both laboratories, with three different batches of the SkinEthic model. The assay results showed good reproducibility and correct predictions of the skin irritation potential for all six test chemicals. The results obtained with the SkinEthic RHE and the common protocol were reproducible in both phases, and the overall outcome is very similar to that of earlier studies with the EPISKIN and EpiDerm models. Therefore, the SkinEthic skin irritation assay test protocol can now be evaluated in a formal "catch-up" validation study.
[Study on the Incidence and Spatiotemporal Dynamic Variation of Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome in Shandong Province] Zhonghua Liu Xing Bing Xue Za Zhi = Zhonghua Liuxingbingxue Zazhi. May, 2007 | Pubmed ID: 17877177 To study the incidence and spatiotemporal dynamic variation of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) in Shandong province.
The ECVAM International Validation Study on in Vitro Tests for Acute Skin Irritation: Report on the Validity of the EPISKIN and EpiDerm Assays and on the Skin Integrity Function Test Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA. Dec, 2007 | Pubmed ID: 18186667 ECVAM sponsored a formal validation study on three in vitro tests for skin irritation, of which two employ reconstituted human epidermis models (EPISKIN, EpiDerm), and one, the skin integrity function test (SIFT), employs ex vivo mouse skin. The goal of the study was to assess whether the in vitro tests would correctly predict in vivo classifications according to the EU classification scheme, "R38" and "no label" (i.e. non-irritant). 58 chemicals (25 irritants and 33 non-irritants) were tested, having been selected to give broad coverage of physico-chemical properties, and an adequate distribution of irritancy scores derived from in vivo rabbit skin irritation tests. In Phase 1, 20 of these chemicals (9 irritants and 11 non-irritants) were tested with coded identities by a single lead laboratory for each of the methods, to confirm the suitability of the protocol improvements introduced after a prevalidation phase. When cell viability (evaluated by the MTT reduction test) was used as the endpoint, the predictive ability of both EpiDerm and EPISKIN was considered sufficient to justify their progression to Phase 2, while the predictive ability of the SIFT was judged to be inadequate. Since both the reconstituted skin models provided false predictions around the in vivo classification border (a rabbit Draize test score of 2), the release of a cytokine, interleukin-1alpha (IL-1alpha), was also determined. In Phase 2, each human skin model was tested in three laboratories, with 58 chemicals. The main endpoint measured for both EpiDerm and EPISKIN was cell viability. In samples from chemicals which gave MTT assay results above the threshold of 50% viability, IL-1alpha release was also measured, to determine whether the additional endpoint would improve the predictive ability of the tests. For EPISKIN, the sensitivity was 75% and the specificity was 81% (MTT assay only); with the combination of the MTT and IL-1alpha assays, the sensitivity increased to 91%, with a specificity of 79%. For EpiDerm, the sensitivity was 57% and the specificity was 85% (MTT assay only), while the predictive capacity of EpiDerm was not improved by the measurement of IL-1alpha release. Following independent peer review, in April 2007 the ECVAM Scientific Advisory Committee endorsed the scientific validity of the EPISKIN test as a replacement for the rabbit skin irritation method, and of the EpiDerm method for identifying skin irritants as part of a tiered testing strategy. This new alternative approach will probably be the first use of in vitro toxicity testing to replace the Draize rabbit skin irritation test in Europe and internationally, since, in the very near future, new EU and OECD Test Guidelines will be proposed for regulatory acceptance.
Bronchoalveolar Carcinoma of Lung Masquerading As Iodine Avid Metastasis in a Patient with Minimally Invasive Follicular Carcinoma of Thyroid Clinical Nuclear Medicine. Jan, 2008 | Pubmed ID: 18097252 A 52-year-old man with follicular thyroid carcinoma was administered 182 mCi of radioiodine (I-131) a month after total thyroidectomy. Post-therapy scan revealed diffuse uptake of radioiodine in the apical left lung. CT-guided biopsy of this mass revealed mucinous bronchoalveolar carcinoma. Immunohistochemistry for thyroglobulin was negative. An FDG PET scan showed avid uptake in the lung mass. Surgery was ruled out, so he was given chemotherapy, without benefit. The lesion continued to show I-131 uptake even while on daily T3 substitution, suggesting that the mass was thyroid stimulating hormone-independent. Because the mass showed I-131 uptake and chemotherapy was not beneficial, it was decided to treat with I-131. He was continued on T3 substitution therapy and was given 209 mCi of I-131. Follow-up CT scan a few weeks later reported a 1-cm all round reduction of the mass. I-131 scan showed avid tracer uptake in the mass. This case suggests the possibility of this therapeutic option in nonthyroidal tumors that may concentrate radioiodine.
Micronuclei Frequency in Peripheral Blood Lymphocytes of Thyroid Cancer Patients After Radioiodine Therapy and Its Relationship with Metastasis Mutation Research. Apr, 2009 | Pubmed ID: 19386245 In most cancers peripheral blood lymphocytes exhibit DNA damage. In the case of thyroid cancer the micronucleus (MN) assay has been used to assess DNA damage before and after exposure to iodine-131 ((131)I). The aim of our study was to use this method to assess DNA damage in peripheral blood lymphocytes of thyroid cancer patients and search for its relationship with metastasis as well as (131)I exposure. A significant increase in micronuclei frequency was observed in peripheral blood lymphocytes of 54 thyroid cancer patients in comparison to 38 controls (p=0.000). Further analysis revealed significant elevation in micronuclei index from 48.5 MN/1000 BN cells (range: 25.1-111.2, n=25) in patients without metastasis to 68.1 MN/1000 BN cells (range: 26.2-135.5, n=29, p=0.001) in group of patients with metastasis to one or more sites. There was no clear correlation between the micronuclei frequency and the therapeutic (131)I dose ranging from 0.41 to 31.5 GBq with the exposure interval of
The MatTek Story - How the Three Rs Principles Led to 3-D Tissue Success! Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA. Dec, 2009 | Pubmed ID: 20104997 MatTek Corporation has been working diligently for over 15 years to replace traditional animal-based toxicity and efficacy tests with alternative test methods based on human-cell derived, three-dimensional (3-D) tissue models. First discussed in detail by W.M.S. Russell and R.L. Burch 50 years ago in their book, The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique, and now fully integrated into forward-looking publications such as Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy, the concept of replacing animals in test procedures with human cells and/or human cell-derived in vitro 3-D tissues is being embraced by the world's research scientists and toxicologists at an ever-increasing rate. 3-D in vitro models are being utilised not only for humanitarian reasons, but also because human 3-D tissues, in particular, produce more-physiologically relevant scientific data. Early on in MatTek's efforts to develop this alternative test method, senior management sought the assistance of experts within the in vitro testing and animal rights communities, to help define the specific in vitro human 3-D tissue products needed and navigate the regulatory landscape, especially in Europe where the replacement of animal-based testing with non-animal alternative test methods was well underway. MatTek was fortunate to receive that expert assistance on both fronts from Professor Michael Balls, who at that time was the newly-elected first director of ECVAM. In 1997, with the guidance and support of Professor Balls and others in the animal rights community, MatTek began the effort to validate several of its human 3-D tissue-based alternative test methods. Today, two MatTek human cell-derived 3-D tissue-based test methods are validated as full replacements for existing animal-based tests, with more tests in the validation pipeline. In addition, MatTek in vitro tissue models are in use worldwide by chemical, pharmaceutical and consumer product companies, as evidenced by citations in hundreds of patents and scientific articles from these industries. This article concludes with MatTek's thoughts on the direction that human 3-D tissue-based in vitro testing will take in the future.
In Vitro Skin Irritation Testing: Improving the Sensitivity of the EpiDerm Skin Irritation Test Protocol Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA. Dec, 2009 | Pubmed ID: 20105002 A skin irritation test (SIT) utilising a common protocol for two in vitro reconstructed human epidermal (RhE) models, EPISKIN and EpiDerm, was developed, optimised and evaluated as a replacement for the in vivo rabbit skin irritation test in an ECVAM-sponsored validation study. In 2007, both RhE models were recognised by an independent peer-review panel and the ECVAM Scientific Advisory Committee (ESAC) as validated for use with the common SIT protocol. The EPISKIN SIT was endorsed as a full replacement of the in vivo rabbit test. Since the EpiDerm SIT proved to be less sensitive than the in vivo test and the EPISKIN SIT, the test was recognised as a validated component of a tiered testing strategy, in which positive results are accepted and negative results require further confirmation. The ESAC, in its April 2007 statement, also recommended increasing the sensitivity of the EpiDerm SIT, in order to gain the full acceptance. Analysis of the EpiDerm and EPISKIN data from the ECVAM validation study indicated that the lower sensitivity of the EpiDerm SIT might be linked to the more robust barrier properties of the EpiDerm model. This hypothesis was also in line with results published previously. To overcome the relatively low sensitivity of the EpiDerm protocol as a hindrance to full regulatory acceptance, a modification of exposure conditions was introduced into the protocol to achieve better agreement with the in vivo rabbit data. In the Modified EpiDerm SIT protocol, the test chemical exposure time was increased from 15 minutes to 60 minutes. In addition, part of the exposure was performed at 37 degrees C. When the 3-[4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) viability assay endpoint was used for classification, a significant increase of sensitivity was obtained (86.1%), whilst maintaining the high specificity of the method (76.3%). With the change to the EU classification system, which now uses higher cut-off for the classification of irritants, the sensitivity of the Modified EpiDerm SIT increased to above 90%. The measurement of interleukin (IL)-1alpha release did not further contribute to improvement of the method. The results demonstrate that the modified EpiDerm SIT protocol has the required sensitivity and specificity to be accepted as a stand alone method for complete replacement of the in vivo rabbit test.
Comparison of Human Skin Irritation Patch Test Data with in Vitro Skin Irritation Assays and Animal Data Contact Dermatitis. Feb, 2010 | Pubmed ID: 20136894 Efforts to replace the rabbit skin irritation test have been underway for many years, encouraged by the EU Cosmetics Directive and REACH. Recently various in vitro tests have been developed, evaluated and validated.
Exploring the Role of FDG-PET in the Assessment of Bone Marrow Involvement in Lymphoma Patients As Interpreted by Qualitative and Semiquantitative Disease Metabolic Activity Parameter Indian Journal of Cancer. Oct-Dec, 2010 | Pubmed ID: 21131749 Bone marrow biopsy (BMB) is currently the standard method to evaluate marrow involvement in malignant lymphomas. However, there exist a number of pitfalls in this technique that can have important implications for initial staging, prognostification, and treatment of the disease. The present study was undertaken to investigate the utility of FDG-PET imaging in the detection of bone marrow involvement in untreated lymphoma patients. Forty untreated patients (36 males and 12 females) with either Hodgkin's disease (HD) (n = 17) or non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) (n = 31) underwent whole body FDG-PET study for disease evaluation. Bone marrow uptake of FDG was graded as absence or presence of disease activity at marrow sites by qualitative assessment. Semiquantitative analysis involved deriving disease metabolic index (DMI) using the following formula: DMI = SUV max of suitable circular ROI over PSIS or trochanteric region/ SUVmax of similar ROI over adjoining background. Findings of BMB and FDG-PET were compared for final analysis. Eleven out of 17 HD patients (12 males and 5 females) demonstrated concordance between FDG PET findings and BMB reports. Remaining 6 cases showed discordance of FDG-PET demonstrating presence of marrow involvement at marrow sites and uninvolved marrow on BMB. Twenty six of the 31 NHL cases (24 males and 7 females) demonstrated concordance between FDG PET findings and BMB reports. Remaining 5 cases showed discordance of FDG-PET demonstrating presence of marrow involvement at marrow sites and uninvolved marrow on BMB. All the BMB positive patients (2 of HD and 5 of NHL) demonstrated disease activity in bone marrow on FDG-PET study. All patients with absence of disease activity at marrow sites on FDG-PET scan (9 of HD and 21 of NHL) had histology proven uninvolved marrow. The quantitative assessment by DMI showed a mean of > 2.5 in HD and NHL patients at the PSIS region and the trochanteric region bilaterally in cases of bone marrow involvement by the disease. FDG-PET is a useful adjuvant to BMB for the evaluation of bone marrow involvement in lymphoma patients. The disease metabolic index of > 2.5 at the marrow sites can serve as a semiquantitative parameter for such diagnosis on FDG-PET in untreated patients of lymphoma.
Metastatic Involvement of the Spleen in Differentiated Carcinoma of Thyroid Indian Journal of Nuclear Medicine : IJNM : the Official Journal of the Society of Nuclear Medicine, India. Oct, 2010 | Pubmed ID: 21712914 Splenic metastasis in differentiated thyroid carcinoma is rare occurrence. We describe an unusual case of diffuse metastatic splenic involvement with normal hematological indices in differentiated thyroid carcinoma demonstrated by post-therapy whole body radioiodine scan.
'Reverse Discordance' Between 68Ga-DOTA-NOC PET/CT and 177Lu-DOTA-TATE Posttherapy Scan: the Plausible Explanations and Its Implications for High-dose Therapy with Radiolabeled Somatostatin Receptor Analogs Nuclear Medicine Communications. Jul, 2011 | Pubmed ID: 21654355 In this technical note, an unusual discordance between diagnostic and posttherapeutic scan resulting from the use of different somatostatin receptor ligands in two settings is described. Such observation, we believe, is multifactorial, but most importantly arises due to different receptor affinity profile of the ligands and different somatostatin receptor subtype expression in different tumors. It is important for the treating physician to be aware of this phenomenon that would aid in improving our understanding of complex ligand-receptor interactions in various somatostatin receptor-positive tumors with its possible implications for therapeutic decision making with radiolabeled somatostatin receptor analogues.
Development of the EpiOcular(TM) Eye Irritation Test for Hazard Identification and Labelling of Eye Irritating Chemicals in Response to the Requirements of the EU Cosmetics Directive and REACH Legislation Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA. Sep, 2011 | Pubmed ID: 21942547 The recently implemented 7th Amendment to the EU Cosmetics Directive and the EU REACH legislation have heightened the need for in vitro ocular test methods. To address this need, the EpiOcular(TM) eye irritation test (EpiOcular-EIT), which utilises the normal (non-transformed) human cell-based EpiOcular tissue model, has been developed. The EpiOcular-EIT prediction model is based on an initial training set of 39 liquid and 21 solid test substances and uses a single exposure period and a single cut-off in tissue viability, as determined by the MTT assay. A chemical is classified as an irritant (GHS Category 1 or 2), if the tissue viability is ≤ 60%, and as a non-irritant (GHS unclassified), if the viability is > 60%. EpiOcular-EIT results for the training set, along with results for an additional 52 substances, which included a range of alcohols, hydrocarbons, amines, esters, and ketones, discriminated between ocular irritants and non-irritants with 98.1% sensitivity, 72.9% specificity, and 84.8% accuracy. To ensure the long-term commercial viability of the assay, EpiOcular tissues produced by using three alternative cell culture inserts were evaluated in the EpiOcular-EIT with 94 chemicals. The assay results obtained with the initial insert and the three alternative inserts were very similar, as judged by correlation coefficients (r²) that ranged from 0.82 to 0.96. The EpiOcular-EIT was pre-validated in 2007/2008, and is currently involved in a formal, multi-laboratory validation study sponsored by the European Cosmetics Association (COLIPA) under the auspices of the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM). The EpiOcular-EIT, together with EpiOcular's long history of reproducibility and proven utility for ultra-mildness testing, make EpiOcular a useful model for addressing current legislation related to animal use in the testing of potential ocular irritants.
In-house Validation of the EpiOcular(TM) Eye Irritation Test and Its Combination with the Bovine Corneal Opacity and Permeability Test for the Assessment of Ocular Irritation Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA. Sep, 2011 | Pubmed ID: 21942548 In 2009, the Bovine Corneal Opacity and Permeability (BCOP) test was accepted by the regulatory bodies for the identification of corrosive and severe ocular irritants (Global Harmonised System [GHS] Category 1). However, no in vitro test is currently accepted for the differentiation of ocular irritants (GHS Category 2) and non-irritants (GHS No Category). Human reconstructed tissue models have been suggested for incorporation into a tiered testing strategy to ultimately replace the Draize rabbit eye irritation test (OECD TG 405). The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the EpiOcular(TM) reconstructed cornea-like tissue model and the COLIPA pre-validated EpiOcular Eye Irritation Test (EpiOcular-EIT) could be used as suitable components of this testing strategy. The in-house validation of the EpiOcular-EIT was performed by using 60 test substances, including a broad variety of chemicals and formulations for which in vivo data (from the Draize rabbit eye irritation test) were available. The test substances fell into the following categories: 18 severe irritants/corrosives (Category 1), 21 irritants (Category 2), and 21 non-irritants (No Category). Test substances that decreased tissue viability to ≤ 60% (compared to the negative control tissue) were considered to be eye irritants (Category 1/2). Test substances resulting in tissue viability of > 60% were considered to be non-irritants (No Category). For the assessed dataset and the classification cut-off of 60% viability, the EpiOcular-EIT provided 98% and 84% sensitivity, 64% and 90% specificity, and 85% and 86% overall accuracy for the literature reference and BASF proprietary substances, respectively. Applying a 50% tissue viability cut-off to distinguish between irritants and non-irritants resulted in 93% and 82% sensitivity, 68% and 100% specificity, and 84% and 88% accuracy for the literature reference and BASF proprietary substances, respectively. Further, in the EpiOcular-EIT (60% cut-off), 100% of severely irritating substances under-predicted by the BCOP assay were classified as Category 1/2. The results obtained in this study, based on 60 test substances, indicate that the EpiOcular-EIT and the BCOP assay can be combined in a testing strategy to identify strong/severe eye irritants (Category 1), moderate and mild eye irritants (Category 2), and non-irritants (No Category) in routine testing. In particular, when the bottom-up strategy with the 60% viability cut-off was employed, none of the severely irritating substances (Category 1) were under-predicted to be non-irritant. Sensitivity for Category 1/2 substances was 100% for literature reference substances and 89% for BASF SE proprietary substances.
Alternative Methods in Toxicology: Pre-validated and Validated Methods Interdisciplinary Toxicology. Sep, 2011 | Pubmed ID: 22058651 The development of alternative methods to animal experimentation has progressed rapidly over the last 20 years. Today, in vitro and in silico methods have an important role in the hazard identification and assessment of toxicology profile of compounds. Advanced alternative methods and their combinations are also used for safety assessment of final products. Several alternative methods, which were scientifically validated and accepted by competent regulatory bodies, can be used for regulatory toxicology purposes, thus reducing or fully replacing living animals in toxicology experimentation. The acceptance of the alternative methods as valuable tools of modern toxicology has been recognized by regulators, including OECD, FDA and EPA.This paper provides a brief overview of the topic "alternative methods in toxicology" and focuses on pre-validated and validated alternative methods and their position in the modern toxicology.
A Pregnant Woman with Metastatic Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma and Paraplegia: Multiple Considerations Involved in the Management Hellenic Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Sep-Dec, 2011 | Pubmed ID: 22087461 A 35 years old primigravida hailing from a humble, rural background with no previous history related to thyroid carcinoma, presented with acute paraparesis at the last trimester of pregnancy and was diagnosed to harbor metastatic papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) following magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the spine with guided biopsy, which demonstrated near complete collapse of D5 and D10 vertebral bodies with altered signal on the D4 to D6 and D9 to D11 vertebral bodies, in addition to a gravid uterus and a large goiter. There was also evidence of bilateral nodular lesions in the lung parenchyma and a fairly large hepatic lesion in segment 8 of the liver . Histopathology revealed metastatic follicular variant of thyroid papillary carcinoma. This case with challenging presentation had multiple issues to be resolved during its management: a) acute paraparesis and the requirement of radioiodine ((131)I) treatment soon after total thyroidectomy, b) her first valuable pregnancy that required to be managed successfully, c) the poor general condition, d) the abstinence from iodine containing medications, in relation to the Cesarean section planned, e) the timing of total thyroidectomy, f) postnatal care of the newborn and g) radioprotective measures. All were important considerations in the management of this patient. Iodine restricted diet and medications were recommended and were communicated to the obstetricians involved in the patient. The patient underwent Cesarean section and total thyroidectomy at the same sitting. The newborn baby was healthy and was started on artificial feeding. Recombinant TSH primed protocol was not considered immediately in view of a major surgery being undertaken and the poor general condition, so that the patient would not require frequent support during the isolation period. In the first 3 weeks of the postoperative period, she was put on T3 substitution and after a 2 weeks gap was given (131)I and whole body diagnostic scan was undertaken 48h after the administration of (131)I scan dose. Both the diagnostic and post (131)I treatment scan demonstrated multiple foci of (131)I uptake in the skeleton, lungs and liver. Following discharge from the isolation ward, adequate separation from the infant was ensured and the childcare was undertaken by relatives. The patient had a remarkable improvement clinically. During the next 3-½ years she was treated 2 more times with (131)I with cumulative doses of about 25.9GBq. The last post-treatment scan is depicted in. She has been presently ambulatory with complete resolution of paraplegia and a significantly better quality of life without any requirement of support, despite the presence of extensive skeletal disease. A recent review entitled "Approach to the pregnant patient with thyroid cancer", addresses this topic as a separate category. Similar emphasis has also been given by other authors while dealing with these patients. In our experience, patients with PTC metastatic lesions in the vertebrae show better response compared to those with large flat bone metastases likely related to the small size of the former. In conclusion, a teamwork of surgeons, obstetricians, nuclear medicine physicians as well as the strong support by the relatives, was necessary to favorably treat this patient with metastatic PTC, paraplegia and pregnancy.
A Chromenoquinoline-based Fluorescent Off-on Thiol Probe for Bioimaging Chemical Communications (Cambridge, England). Feb, 2012 | Pubmed ID: 22301487 A new chromenoquinoline-based fluorescent off-on thiol probe 2 is reported. In aqueous buffer solutions at physiological pH, the probe exhibited 223-fold enhancement in fluorescence intensity by a Michael addition of cysteine to the maleimide appended to a chromenoquinoline. Cell permeability and live cell imaging of thiols are also demonstrated.
The 3T3 Neutral Red Uptake Phototoxicity Test: Practical Experience and Implications for Phototoxicity Testing--the Report of an ECVAM-EFPIA Workshop Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology : RTP. Aug, 2012 | Pubmed ID: 22687423 This is the report from the "ECVAM-EFPIA workshop on 3T3 NRU Phototoxicity Test: Practical Experience and Implications for Phototoxicity Testing", jointly organized by ECVAM and EFPIA and held on the 25-27 October 2010 in Somma Lombardo, Italy. The European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM) was established in 1991 within the European Commission Joint Research, based on a Communication from the European Commission (1991). The main objective of ECVAM is to promote the scientific and regulatory acceptance of alternative methods which are of importance to the biosciences and which reduce, refine and replace the use of laboratory animals. The European Federation of Pharmaceuticals Industries and Association (EFPIA) represent the pharmaceutical industry operating in Europe. Through its direct membership of 31 national associations and 40 leading pharmaceutical companies, EFPIA is the voice on the EU scene of 2200 companies committed to researching, developing and bringing to patients new medicines that improve health and the quality of life around the world. The workshop, co-chaired by Joachim Kreysa (ECVAM) and Phil Wilcox (GSK, EFPIA) involved thirty-five experts from academia, regulatory authorities and industry, invited to contribute with their experiences in the field of phototoxicology. The main objectives of the workshop were: -to present 'in use' experience of the pharmaceutical industry with the 3T3 Neutral Red Uptake Phototoxicity Test (3T3 NRU-PT), -to discuss why it differs from the results in the original validation exercise, -to discuss technical issues and consider ways to improve the usability of the 3T3 NRU-PT for (non-topical) pharmaceuticals, e.g., by modifying the threshold of chemical light absorption to trigger photo-toxicological testing, and by modifying technical aspects of the assay, or adjusting the criteria used to classify a positive response. During the workshop, the assay methodology was reviewed by comparing the OECD Test Guideline (TG 432) with the protocols used in testing laboratories, data from EFPIA and JPMA 'surveys' were presented and possible reasons for the outcomes were discussed. Experts from cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries reported on their experience with the 3T3 NRU-PT and evidence was presented for phototoxic clinical symptoms that could be linked to certain relevant molecules. Brainstorming sessions discussed if the 3T3 NRU-PT needed to be improved and whether alternatives to the 3T3 NRU-PT exist. Finally, the viewpoint from EU and US regulators was presented. In the final session, the conclusions of the meeting were summarized, with action points. It was concluded that the 3T3 NRU-PT identifies phototoxicological hazards with a 100% sensitivity, and thus is accepted as the tier one test that correctly identifies the absence of phototoxic potential. Consequently, positive results in the 3T3 NRU-PT often do not translate into a clinical phototoxicity risk. Possible ways to improve the practical use of this assay include: (i) adaptation of changed UV/vis-absorption criteria as a means to reduce the number of materials tested, (ii) reduction of the highest concentration to be tested, and (iii) consideration of modifying the threshold criteria for the prediction of a positive call in the test.
Review of Skin Irritation/corrosion Hazards on the Basis of Human Data: A Regulatory Perspective Interdisciplinary Toxicology. Jun, 2012 | Pubmed ID: 23118595 Regulatory classification of skin irritation has historically been based on rabbit data, however current toxicology processes are transitioning to in vitro alternatives. The in vitro assays have to provide sufficient level of sensitivity as well as specificity to be accepted as replacement methods for the existing in vivo assays. This is usually achieved by comparing the in vitro results to classifications obtained in animals. Significant drawback of this approach is that neither in vivo nor in vitro methods are calibrated against human hazard data and results obtained in these assays may not correspond to situation in human.The main objective of this review was to establish an extended database of substances classified according to their human hazard to serve for further development of alternative methods relevant to human health as well as resource for improved regulatory classification. The literature has been reviewed to assemble all the available information on the testing of substances in the human 4 h human patch test, which is the only standardized protocol in humans matching the exposure conditions of the regulatory accepted in vivo rabbit skin irritation test.A total of 81 substances tested according to the defined 4 h human patch test protocol were found and collated into a dataset together with their existing in vivo classifications published in the literature. While about 50% of the substances in the database are classified as irritating based on the rabbit skin test, on using the 4 h HPT test, less than 20% were identified as acutely irritant to human skin. Based on the presented data, it can be concluded that the rabbit skin irritation test largely over-predicts human responses for the evaluated chemicals. Correct classification of the acute skin irritation hazard will only be possible if newly developed in vitro toxicology methods will be calibrated to produce results relevant to man.
The EpiOcular Eye Irritation Test (EIT) for Hazard Identification and Labelling of Eye Irritating Chemicals: Protocol Optimisation for Solid Materials and the Results After Extended Shipment Alternatives to Laboratory Animals : ATLA. May, 2015 | Pubmed ID: 25995013 The 7th Amendment to the EU Cosmetics Directive and the EU REACH Regulation have reinforced the need for in vitro ocular test methods. Validated in vitro ocular toxicity tests that can predict the human response to chemicals, cosmetics and other consumer products are required for the safety assessment of materials that intentionally, or inadvertently, come into contact with the eye. The EpiOcular Eye Irritation Test (EIT), which uses the normal human cell-based EpiOcular™ tissue model, was developed to address this need. The EpiOcular-EIT is able to discriminate, with high sensitivity and accuracy, between ocular irritant/corrosive materials and those that require no labelling. Although the original EpiOcular-EIT protocol was successfully pre-validated in an international, multicentre study sponsored by COLIPA (the predecessor to Cosmetics Europe), data from two larger studies (the EURL ECVAM-COLIPA validation study and an independent in-house validation at BASF SE) resulted in a sensitivity for the protocol for solids that was below the acceptance criteria set by the Validation Management Group (VMG) for eye irritation, and indicated the need for improvement of the assay's sensitivity for solids. By increasing the exposure time for solid materials from 90 minutes to 6 hours, the optimised EpiOcular-EIT protocol achieved 100% sensitivity, 68.4% specificity and 84.6% accuracy, thereby meeting all the acceptance criteria set by the VMG. In addition, to satisfy the needs of Japan and the Pacific region, the EpiOcular-EIT method was evaluated for its performance after extended shipment and storage of the tissues (4-5 days), and it was confirmed that the assay performs with similar levels of sensitivity, specificity and reproducibility in these circumstances.

subset: commoncrawl


text: Eidos is a luxury menswear label born and based in Italy. Renowned for its fine craftsmanship, expertly made timeless all-occasion pieces and immaculate attention to detail, this brand offers everything from knits to outerwear to shirting to suiting and more. Eidos' line of jackets will instantly elevate your everyday wardrobe. From laid-back yet sophisticated checked wool blazers to luxurious and functional fur-trimmed parkas to crisply cut suit blazers perfect for elegant occasions, look to this line of jackets for instant sophistication an and effortlessly cool vibe.


text: How cute are these wedding favors created by Something Turquoise? They do look like sea glass, are tasty and at $1.15 for each 2 oz favor they are not only pretty but a bargain to boot! Yes, they may be time consuming to make, but aren't most DIY projects? Jen of Something Turquoise did an amazing job with her step by step tutorial including helpful hints and photos. Check it out here.


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Co-founders of The Wellington Chocolate Factory Gabe Davidson and Rochelle Harrison want to travel to a cocoa farm in Bougainville and obtain Criollo beans rarely used for chocolate production to give chocolate lovers a shake up in the flavour they're used to.
There are three types of cocoa beans used in the production of the chocolate worldwide: the Criollo, the Forastero and a hybrid between the two called the Trinitario.
"Currently 90% of the chocolate in the world are are made from this one bean from West Africa. There's one generic flavour that we're used to," Davidson says. He describes Bougainville chocolate's taste as "really bright and fruity".
The Wellington Chocolate Factory already imports cocoa beans from places such as Peru, which Davidson says has flavour notes of apricot and honey and Madagascar, which he says has a berry jam flavour.
Davidson says the majority of US$100 billion chocolate industry worldwide is made from the Forastero bean. The Wellington Chocolate Factory only uses higher quality Criollo (which accounts for only 1% of chocolate made in the world) and Trinitario beans (9%).
More than one kind of bean
In a TEDx talk held in September in Wellington, Davidson likened the lack of diversity in the industry to imagining if all of the wine in the world was made from one grape.
"This is what it's like in the chocolate industry at the moment."
The Wellington Chocolate Factory's concept is bean-to-bar chocolate, made under one roof, using traditional micro-processing in batches to unlock the best flavours.
Davidson plans to sail by ship to Bougainville, made famous by the award-winning book and movie, Mr Pip, to collect The Wellington Chocolate Factory's first tonne of Bougainville beans directly from a farm there.
He and his co-founder are hoping the crowd from Kickstarter will help fund the sailing trip to Bougainville.
"We want to introduce a never- before-tasted chocolate flavour to the world," Davidson says.
Money from the crowd goes to...
The company has raised $12,399 of their $36,000 or more goal and have 23 days left to reach their target.
Those who pledge to be a part of the campaign are being offered several prize tiers, such as joining the sailboat trip and touring the cocoa plantation, hosting a private function at the Wellington Chocolate Factory, chocolate making classes and being sent the new Bougainville bar when it's created.
The money raised will go towards the transporting of the maiden shipment in a sailboat across the Pacific, as well as rebuilding Bougainville's cocoa legend James Rutana's facilities to produce better quality cocoa.
In the future, the company hopes to buy a boat to continue direct shipments from Bougainville to New Zealand, rather than tranship through Papua New Guinea, Davidson says.
There is no direct trade between Bougainville and New Zealand, despite a connection between the two countries from New Zealand helping to broker a peace deal for Bougainville in 1997 that led to the end of the civil war.
"If we can't get a shipping route to do it, we'll do it ourselves," Davidson says.
The chocolate industry is on shaky ground due to cocoa farmers being some of the poorest paid farmers in the world.
According to makechocolatefair.org, cocoa growers receive about 6% of the price consumers in rich countries pay for their chocolate.
Davidson says they'll be buying fair trade chocolate at a price that gives Bougainville farmers their money's worth, paying two to three times the amount cocoa farmers in Bougainville are currently getting, which is a standard $3.50 a kilogram, regardless of the quality.
He believes that it could have a huge impact on the country's population of 200,000.
Worldwide chocolate shortage
Due to diseases killing cocoa plants, poor pay and a lack of education of farmers to keep up with the demand, there is a looming chocolate shortage worldwide.
Confectionery giant Mars predicted a major chocolate shortage by 2020 and began buying certified chocolate in 2011, aiming to reach 100% certified chocolate by 2020.
If the Wellington Chocolate Factory's venture is successful, Davidson says they will expand their fair trade business model to the South Pacific and combat the cocoa bean shortage, as farmers in countries such as Samoa and Fiji have approached them.
Davidson calls this the "chocolate revolution", as he says each region's cocoa beans have their own unique flavour and many people don't realise it.
The Kickstarter ends on 10 December, 2014 and if all goes to plan, the boat will set sail in 2015.
More information about the voyage can be found here
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Dear St. Luke's Parishioners,
When I came back from vacation on Friday afternoon July 21, we went from Ames where it was raining and 79 degrees to West Des Moines - no rain and 102 degrees!
Vacation in Iowa was great! It was very relaxing and enjoyable. We did not have to travel long distances to anything. Fr. Ken Gross and I left on Monday July 10 in the morning and went first to the Neil Smith Prairie Reserve near Prairie City, Iowa. They have a great visitor center to share lots of information about Iowa when it was a prairie. Buffalo Elk are there as well but they were in the shade because of the heat.
We traveled to Honey Creek State Park on Lake Rathbun. The next day to Ottumwa to lunch at the "Canteen," a loose meat restaurant since 1936, then to Kalona to visit the Historical Village and Museum telling about the Amish and their settlement there.
We visited the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, and the Maquoketa Caves State Park. On Friday 7/14, we stopped at the Bellevue State Park overlooking the Mississippi and the river lock. We enjoyed watching the locks in action and finding out about their history.
We stopped at the town of St. Donatus and visited the church and outdoor Stations of the Cross. In Dubuque we visited the Mississippi River Museum, walked the river walk, rode the Fenelon outdoor elevator up the bluff, and hiked in Eagle Point Park.
On Sunday 7/16, we traveled to visit the New Mallory Trappist Monastery. It is a beautiful place - nice and peaceful. Then we went back to the river to Pike's Peak State Park outside McGreggor. It has the best views of the bluffs and river as well as the barge traffic.
Monday 7/17 we traveled to near Harper's Ferry, Iowa to the Effigy Mounds National Monument. Centuries ago, Indian settlements built large burial mounds in the shape of familiar animals. From there we went on to Decorah staying over night there. The next morning, we traveled 10 miles south to Spillville, to go to the Biley Clock Museum and Antonin Dvork Museum. Well worth the trip. Coming back, we visited the Vesterheim Norwegian–American Museum. It was interesting to get a flavor of a different nationality in their settlement in Iowa.
July 19 found us coming to the West Bend, Iowa Grotto of the Redemption. It is an amazing work of art - so many scenes that told the story of our Redemption. Then we made our way the following day to Remsen and St. Mary's and their restored church. Beautiful stained glass, altars from the early 1900's. We stopped to visit Trinity Heights in Sioux City with its 33' high statues of Mary and Jesus and other outdoor and indoor displays. We concluded the day at Preparation State Park in the Loess Hills near Pisgah, Iowa.
The last day of vacation, we stopped at the Boone Scenic Railway for a 1:30 pm ride. And Bill Dolezal from St. Luke's was our volunteer Conductor. Thanks Bill. This is a short version of the vacation. Iowa has lots of very interesting places and things to see. It is worth your time.
With August now on us, all kinds of things that begin in the Fall are very close at hand. Let me know if you know of anyone interested in the RCIA. Peter Haack our new Faith Formation Director is looking for catechists. Let the parish office know about either of these.
Fr. Larry Hoffmann


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Sometimes it's the smallest decisions that can change your life forever. Keri Russell
15 comments:
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You always look so beautiful! I love the stripes. Stunning!ReplyDelete
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Melnbaltie outfit ir mani mīļākie! Vienmēr tik skaisti un klasiski izskatās! :)ReplyDelete
Man ļoti patīk Tava blūzīte!
Hey girl! I'm sorry it took me a little while to respond to you, life has been a little hectic the past few weeks but thank you for the lovely comment on my blog! I love your blog as well and would love for us to follow each other! I'll start now, I hope you can do the same. Stay in touch! Best, CD. ican'taffordmylifestyleReplyDelete
Thanks for the comments. I read every single one. :)
You can also ask me questions in Latvian, English, German and Russian languages, but I'll answer Latvian or English :)