Published: 2 Feb 2015 13:00

COLLEGE chiefs have been given 70,000 to study the future of the campus in Greenock with the Sugar Sheds touted as an alternative location.

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Bosses at the West College Scotland (WCS) Finnart Street facility have been given the sum from the Scottish Government to investigate the fabric of the building.

Local MSP Stuart McMillan has raised the issue on several occasions as to what support will be provided to make improvements.

The SNP man also mooted the idea of the college relocating to Greenocks historic Sugar Sheds to bring the building back into use should the Finnart Street campus be deemed no longer suitable.

Two years ago Mr McMillan wrote to the then James Watt College (JWC) management and various agencies, including the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) the governments higher and further education funding body calling for a feasibility study to be carried out to look into the idea.

The MSP is now happy that financial support to the tune of 70,000 has been provided to explore the future of the Greenock site.

Mr McMillan said: I am pleased to learn from the Scottish Government that funding of 70,000 has been provided to help undertake a business case outlining options for the Greenock campus.

Alongside this, the Scottish Government has invested 26.6 million of capital funding to the SFC to support infrastructure investment across the sector.

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Sugar Sheds touted as new college home

A new study involving researchers at The University of Nottingham has revealed how children with an aggressive cancer predisposition syndrome experience a never before seen flood of mutations in their disease in just six months.

The syndrome, called 'biallelic mismatch repair deficiency' (bMMRD) causes multiple brain tumours, lymphomas and gastrointestinal cancers by the age of 10. As a result these children rarely survive into adulthood.

While most cancers grow progressively, developing genetic mutations over many years, researchers at The Hospital for Sick Kids in Toronto, Canada, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Children's Brain Tumour Research Centre in Nottingham, were shocked to find that children with this syndrome develop more mutations than any human cancers by far -- as many as 20,000 mutations in as little as six months.

The new paper, published online in Nature Genetics, suggests a previously undiscovered mechanism for cancer progression which could lead to more targeted treatment for these patients and indeed for more common cancers.

Children with biallelic mismatch repair deficiency, or bMMRD, have mutations in the genes responsible for mismatch repair and therefore cannot fix mistakes in DNA while the cell is dividing (or replicating). This study identifies a secondary mutation which occurs only in tumour cells in an enzyme called polymerase, which is a second safeguard that helps to effectively repair mutations while the DNA replicates. The combination of these two mutations leaves patients with no ability to repair mistakes that may occur while DNA is replicating, and causes a rapid wave of cancer that the investigators have dubbed the "great flood."

Professor Richard Grundy from the University's Children's Brain Tumour Research Centre said: "This study provides a major step forwards in understanding why certain children are more susceptible to developing multiple cancers and can screen for this eventuality. In turn, this study allows us to begin to understand the steps that lead to cancer developing. Ultimately, we hope this leads to treatments to avoid the presently inevitable consequences of this predisposition syndrome"

Dr Uri Tabori, co-principal investigator of the study from Genetics & Genome Biology at SickKids, Toronto said: "In other cancer predisposition syndromes like BRCA1 and Li Fraumeni syndrome, we know that there is a genetic mutation that predisposes the individual to cancer, but we do not know the secondary mutation, or genetic driver that actually causes the cancer to occur. Our findings indicate the genetic driver that causes this 'great flood' of cancer mutations in patients with bMMRD. The secondary mutation in the enzyme polymerase causes a unique signature of mutations that is present in 100 per cent of the cases. This has important implications for both diagnosis and targeted treatment of this devastating disease."

The Children's Brain Tumour Research Centre in Nottingham is part of an international consortium run by SickKids, Toronto, that offers free genetic testing, genetic counseling and surveillance of cancers in children and family members with bMMRD. Using genetic and clinical information and tumour samples gathered from each patient, the research team was able to take a deeper look at this cancer predisposition syndrome and for the first time they are able to tell the story of how this cancer develops.

"We were able to describe how many mutations develop, how fast they occur, how many mutations the tumour can sustain, and the type of mutation that occurs, which we found is unique to bMMRD cancers," says Dr Adam Shlien, lead author of the study and Associate Director of Translational Genetics and Scientist in Genetics & Genome Biology at SickKids.

"Additionally, by studying a rare cancer syndrome we were able to have an unobstructed view on how cancer develops and learn not only about how we can help these patients, but also about cancer progression in general."

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Study sheds new light on aggressive cancer in children

Date:

February 3, 2015

Source:

Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience

Summary:

Using multiphoton imaging, researchers are now able to move beyond characterizing the properties of individual cells to investigate how communication among neurons changes over the course of development. In a new paper, researchers report substantial developmental changes in communication among cells that significantly improve the information processing capabilities of the brain.

Previous work, including studies performed in the Fitzpatrick Lab at MPFI, has shown that individual brain cells refine their responses to stimuli with experience so they can better discriminate between similar features in their environments. However, the signals of individual brain cells can be noisy and imprecise which means our brains cannot rely solely on the activity of single neurons to make accurate decisions about our world. Instead, we combine the activity of thousands to millions of neurons to ensure a more accurate message, which makes effective communication amongst large populations of neurons a central feature of the brain.

This study demonstrates that, over development, neural circuits reorganize themselves to decrease noise and improve the fidelity of communication amongst each other. The critical role these changes play in brain development highlights the importance and urgency in understanding neural circuits in more detail and suggests new avenues for investigating the underlying causes of developmental disorders such as autism.

The authors of the study said the key question moving forward is to understand what specific changes in brain circuitry give rise to the effects observed in this study. Where do these changes manifest themselves within the circuit and what molecular processes do they utilize? We know that a number of structural changes also occur during this developmental period, and we now can attempt to link those changes to the changes in circuit function.

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New research sheds light on neural circuit development

Bought by Columbus Nova, Sony Online Entertainment becomes an independent game development studio

Sony has sold Sony Online Entertainment, an Internet games company it established in the 1990s, to investment firm Columbus Nova.

SOE has been renamed Daybreak Game Company and will operate as an independent game development studio producing titles for the PlayStation and Xbox, according to a statement on its forum.

"All of our games are still here and will continue to be," Daybreak president John Smedley wrote in a message on Twitter, adding that the company is still working on EverQuest Next, the latest sequel to 1999's EverQuest, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

With an emphasis on PC games, the company had been in the shadow of Sony's more popular video game hardware business including the hit PlayStation 4 console, as well as the recent rise of games for mobile platforms.

"We determined it was in the best interest of both entities to allow the studio to realize its full potential as a multi-platform online gaming company," Sousuke Kamei, a spokesman at Sony's Tokyo headquarters, said via email.

"The environment surrounding the game industry is always challenging, and we are doing a review of our business on a regular basis. As part of it, we decided to sell SOE for strengthening the overall business quality in order to increase higher profitability," Kamei said.

SOE is the latest business to be shed by the struggling manufacturer, which sold its Vaio PC business and pulled out of e-readers last year.

Tim Hornyak covers Japan and emerging technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Tim on Twitter at @robotopia.

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Sony sheds online game unit known for EverQuest

Day 24: Perez sheds a tear for Nadia
His BFF - and pretty much only ally - has gone, but how is Perez reacting. There are tears (we think), but are they genuine?

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Day 24: Perez sheds a tear for Nadia - Video

Seven Sheds Paradise Pale - All Grain Brewday
Seven Sheds Paradise Pale - All Grain Brewday My 10L batch recipe (13L post boil less 3L deadspace) 2kgs Golden Promise Malt 500gms Wheat Malt 350gms Munich ...

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Seven Sheds Paradise Pale - All Grain Brewday - Video

Thomas Surprise Eggs In The Sheds Pocoyo Play Doh Kinder Avengers Assemble Disney Cars Toys
Thomas pushes 5 Surprise Eggs out of the sheds. James takes them with Play Doh to be opned by Pocoyo and Pato. What will be inside? Subscribe to This Channel here ...

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Thomas Surprise Eggs In The Sheds Pocoyo Play Doh Kinder Avengers Assemble Disney Cars Toys - Video

Queenstown police plan to release CCTV footage later today of an assault which left a man with facial injuries.

The victim was knocked unconscious outside Devil Burger restaurant, Church Street, at 2.45am on Saturday.

Police said he then received several blows while unconscious on the ground.

Acting Sergeant Jason Reid said: "We're waiting for the medical report but it appears he had blood coming from his ear and sustained facial injuries, particularly around his left eye, which is possibly fractured."

The victim was taken to Lakes District Hospital.

Acting Sgt Reid said there were no suspects as yet.

"We'll be releasing CCTV footage this afternoon hoping to identify people we want to speak to, including a girl who was standing nearby who we believe witnessed the assault."

Yesterday, police released an image of a man in a dark T-shirt and dark skinny jeans who they want to question.

Anyone with information should contact Detective Matt Jones at Queenstown police station.

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Hope footage sheds light on Queenstown assault

The Australian dollar is one US cent weaker after interest rate cut expectations for February pushed the currency down to a fresh five-and-a-half year low.

At 1700 AEDT on Friday, the local unit was trading at 77.91 US cents, down from 78.98 cents on Thursday.

Speculation that the Reserve Bank of Australia would cut the cash rate next week, or at least start signalling possible cuts this year, sparked a sell-off.

The currency fell as low as 77.20 US cents on Friday morning, its weakest level since July 2009.

Financial markets are now pricing a February rate cut as a two in three chance, hurting the Australian dollar, Commonwealth Bank currency strategist Joseph Capurso said.

'There's significantly more weakness in the Aussie to come,' he said.

A healthy set of US economic growth figures for the December quarter, due for release on Friday night, was expected to boost the greenback and further weaken the Australian dollar.

Mr Capurso said the local currency was likely to fall to 75 US cents by the end of March as the US Federal Reserve considered raising its rate.

'It pushes the US dollar up against every currency, it pushes the Aussie down,' he said.

AAP

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$A sheds one US cent on rate cut hopes

BRITT|When it comes time for his building trades class, Kole Ross likes not having to sit in a desk.

Instead, the West Hancock High School senior is usually working on a project in the shop or on a shed at a job site.

"It's more hands-on," he said of teacher Paul Francis' class. "It's a lot easier to learn than sitting in a classroom listening to the teacher lecture."

"We get to go build an actual building," Ross said.

And on an actual job site.

The West Hancock students recently completed a made-to-order shed for Ray Tlach. The 16 by 16 by 13 foot shed was built on Tlach's farm near Duncan.

"It's one of the bigger and nicer ones we've done," Francis said.

The building trades students usually build two to three sheds a year. The sheds are made-to-order and sold to area customers.

Francis was impressed with the work the students put into completing the larger shed for Tlach's farm.

The students measured the site and then came back to the West Hancock shop to build the walls and rafters. The completed pieces were hauled out to Tlach's farm on a trailer and assembled on site.

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West Hancock building trades class builds sheds