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March 2017

Israelis develop a blood test to diagnose lung cancer by Dr. Itay Gal

Lung cancer is one of the most violent types of cancer, responsible for the death of 1.6 million patients each year; a first of its kind blood test, developed in Israel, succeeds in diagnosing the cancer long before it spreads in the body.

The new test is able to diagnose the disease long before it spreads in the body, thus increasing the chance of survival, as many patients usually die within a few months of the diagnosis.

Each year, approximately 1.8 million new lung cancer patients are diagnosed, a 1.59 million of whom will die within the first year post-diagnosis. Most cases are discovered by chance, after a screening test, or due to abnormal symptoms such as prolonged cough, bloody cough, breathing difficulties or weight loss.

Diagnosis of the disease is usually done via a CT scan, but its level of accuracy is not high, and in 25 percent of the cases, the lung scan shows lesions of which only 3% are indeed cancerous.

The new test was developed by Dr. Elon Ganor, CEO of Nucleix, in collaboration with his colleagues Dr. Danny Frumkin, Dr. Adam Wasserstrom and Dr. Ofer Shapira. The test is based on the genetic characterization of cancer.

Cytosine is one of the four main bases found in DNA and it is held together by three hydrogen bonds.

A study by Prof. Haim Cedar from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that the three hydrogen bonds molecule serves as a kind of on/off switch that activates (or deactivates) different genes and has a decisive effect on our susceptibility to cancer and other diseases. When a certain change occurs on the same molecule, a wild division of uncontrolled cells begins, resulting in the formation of cancerous tumors.

The Israeli researchers were able to isolate the specific change on that three-bonds molecule and designed a unique blood test that identifies it. To examine the efficacy of the development, two studies were conducted, involving 170 volunteers in each study: 70 were lung cancer patients and 100 were healthy, but belonged to groups at high risk for lung cancer, such as heavy smokers.

The results showed a specificity of 94% (i.e., 94% of the healthy subjects were indeed identified as healthy), and a sensitivity of 75% (i.e., 75% of the patients were indeed identified as diseased). This is a very high level of accuracy.

Nuclear Weapons: Trust But Modernize (Part II), by Peter Huessy

The United States is planning to modernize its nuclear deterrent over the next 25 years, an effort already two decades late in implementation. That delay, a procurement holiday, resulted in all elements of our nuclear enterprise-the warheads, the communications, the submarines, the land based missiles and the bombers and their associated cruise missiles-reaching the end of their service life nearly simultaneously.

The new modernization effort will thus take many years to complete and it is going to cost $27 billion this year. By the middle of the next decade probably $36 billion a year. In embarking on this effort, the new administration has said let’s have a “Nuclear Posture Review”, a review also done previously in 2010, 2003, and 1994.

Here is some advice for the review consisting of a Baker’s Dozen of nuclear “facts” we first have to get right.

The nuclear Triad is not a jobs program. It is not an invention of the secret so-called “military industrial complex”. As General Bernard Schriever told me some 35 years ago, we first developed the early versions of both the sea and land based intercontinental ballistic missiles we have today in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik. Our very national survival was at stake. How did we know in advance both new missile types would work? No missile with a 2000 kilometer or more range had previously been deployed that could be fired from a submarine and no solid-fueled reliable land based missile based in the USA could yet reach the Soviet Union.

But we deployed Polaris submarines in 1959 and Minuteman missiles in 1962. Schriever helped direct both breakthrough technologies in record time. It was no conspiracy. It was actually a miracle.

We now know that nuclear deterrence-based on the Triad-works. It’s value should not be recklessly discarded or minimized. As former USAF Chief of Staff General Larry Welch explained in a 2015 speech “Nuclear deterrence has worked 100% of the time for 70+ years. It’s been perfect”. There is a reason he could say this. We got nuclear deterrence right.

Our nuclear armed missiles are also not on computer hair trigger alert. Just the opposite. As President Kennedy told the nation, our just deployed Minuteman missiles were his “ace in the hole” in preventing the Cuban missile crisis from ending up in doomsday. So stable have our nuclear missiles been, they have been on alert a collective 67 million minutes and never ordered to be launched by an American President.

So much for being in danger of being launched “accidentally” or on “hair trigger.”

Ivy League, Inc. – Special Report on FOX News Ivy League payments and entitlements cost taxpayers $41.59 billion over a six-year period

http://www.openthebooks.com/openthebooks_oversight_report_-_ivy_league_inc/OUR KEY FINDINGS – IVY LEAGUE, INC:

Ivy League payments and entitlements cost taxpayers $41.59 billion over a six-year period (FY2010-FY2015). This is equivalent to $120,000 in government monies, subsidies, & special tax treatment per undergraduate student, or $6.93 billion per year.

The Ivy League was the recipient of $25.73 billion worth of federal payments during this period: contracts ($1.37 billion), grants ($23.9 billion) and direct payments – student assistance ($460 million).

In monetary terms, the ‘government contracting’ business of the Ivy League ($25.27 billion – federal contracts and grants) exceeded their educational mission ($22 billion in student tuition) FY2010-FY2015.

The eight colleges of the Ivy League received more money ($4.31 billion) – on average – annually from the federal government than sixteen states: see report.

The Ivy League endowment funds (2015) exceeded $119 billion, which is equivalent to nearly $2 million per undergraduate student.

As a non-profit, educational institution, the Ivy League pays no tax on investment gains. Between FY2011-FY2015, the Ivy League schools received a $9.6 billion tax break on the $27.3 billion growth of their endowment funds. In FY2014, the tax-free subsidy on endowment gains amounted to $3.4 billion, or nearly $60,000 per student.
With continued gifts at present rates, the $119 billion endowment fund provides free tuition to the entire student body in perpetuity. Without new gifts, the endowment is equivalent to a full-ride scholarship for all Ivy League undergraduate students for 51-years, or until 2068.
In FY2014, the balance sheet for all Ivy League colleges showed $194,332,115,120 in accumulated gross assets. This is equivalent to $3.35 million per undergraduate student.

The Ivy League employs 47 administrators who each earn more than $1 million per year. Two executives each earned $20 million between 2010-2014. Ivy League employees earned $62 billion in compensation.

In a five-year period (2010-2014) the Ivy League spent $17.8 million on lobbying, which included issues mostly related to their endowment, federal contracting, immigration and student aid.

http://www.openthebooks.com/openthebooks_oversight_report_-_ivy_league_inc/

Connecting the Middle East dots Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Video#39: http://bit.ly/2mT25Ri; Entire mini-seminar: http://bit.ly/1ze66dS

According to the Saudi Arabian-based newspaper, Arab News, “the Arab Spring is not about seeking democracy, it is about Arabs killing Arabs… about hate and sectarian violence…. The Arab Spring is an accumulation of years of political corruption, human rights violations, sectarianism and poor education systems…. The Arabs were never united and are now divided beyond anybody’s imagination. Arabs hate each other more than they hate the outside enemy. Syrians are hurting Syrians and the Israelis are the ones who treat the Syrian wounds [in an Israeli field hospital built on the Golan Height].”

2. Connecting the dots of the increasingly boiling Arab Street highlights the 1,400 year reality of intense intra-Arab violent intolerance, hate education, transient (one-bullet) regimes, tenuous policies, non-compliance with intra-Arab agreements, explosive unpredictability and the absence of intra-Arab peaceful coexistence.

3. Since the 7th century appearance of Islam, the Arab street has never experienced freedom of religion, speech, press, association or movement, which are prerequisites for free elections and peaceful coexistence. Arab societies are ruled by – and the will of the majority is subjugated by – non-democratic, minority rogue regimes.

4. The Arab Street is dominated by domestic, regional, national and intra-Arab subversion and terrorism. Ethnic cleansing in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Tunisia, the Sudan and Libya reflects the lack of national cohesion on the Arab street and the merciless intra-Arab/Muslim fragmentation along ethnic, tribal, cultural, geographic, ideological and religious lines. The misperception of the national cohesion of two of the most powerful Arab countries throughout the 20thcentury – Iraq and Syria – has collapsed, setting them on a chaotic course of disintegration. Studying the fate of minorities in Arab countries, reveals the devastating Arab/Muslim attitude towards the “infidel” Christians, Jews, Hindus or Buddhists.

5. The current increasingly, turbulent Arab Tsunami, which erupted in 2010, has intensified anxiety and panic among the pro-US regimes of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Bahrain, which are inherently susceptible to domestic upheaval. They are aware that Egypt’s Mubarak, Libya’s Kaddafi, Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Yemen’s Salah (possibly joined by Syria’s Assad) were perceived to be Rock of Gibraltar-like regimes, but were overthrown by Islamic mobs. They are cognizant of the clear, present and lethal threat posed by Iran and Iran’s adversary, ISIS (the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria”). They are concerned about the lava erupting from the endemic civil war in an intractably fragmented Yemen, which controls the route of oil tankers from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean.

6. The December 2010 Tunisian upheaval fueled the February 2011 Libyan and Egyptian eruptions, which fed the February 2011 turmoil in Yemen and Bahrain, providing a tailwind for the March 2011 surge of the civil war in Syria. The intensification of terrorism and disintegration in Iraq poses an imminent deadly threat to the Hashemite regime in Jordan, which could be transformed into another haven for Islamic terrorism, threatening to sweep through Saudi Arabia and other pro-US Gulf states.

7. The increasingly boiling Arab Street accentuates Israel’s unique roleas the only stable, reliable, effective, democratic and unconditional national-security-producing-ally of the US, whose posture of deterrence – in the face of Islamic terrorism and Iran – is a life insurance policy for pro-US Arab regimes in the Middle East.