Stand Up 2 Cancer…

Stand Up To Cancer is an initiative created to accelerate groundbreaking cancer research that will get new therapies to patients quickly and save lives. SU2C’s goal is to bring together the best and the brightest in the cancer community, encouraging collaboration instead of competition. By galvanizing the entertainment industry, SU2C creates awareness and builds broad public support for this effort.

This is where the end of cancer begins.

More on the SU2C Mission

Here we stand, on the verge of unlocking the answers that will finally conquer the devastation that is cancer.

We now understand the very biology that drives cancer. With knowledge gained from the mapping of the human genome, we can now target the genes and pathways that are involved in turning normal cells into cancerous ones. We are on the brink of possessing a toolbox full of new, advanced technologies just waiting to be adapted to benefit patients. Right before us, so close we can almost touch them, are scientific breakthroughs in the prevention, detection, treatment and even reversal of this disease.

For the first time we can envision the possibility of stopping cancer in its tracks. But just when science is on the verge of giving us the breakthroughs that can end cancer, the will and the funding to do so are disappearing from the national agenda and from our collective consciousness.

Cancer takes one person every minute. One life in a moment. They are our brothers, our sisters, our fathers and mothers, our husbands and wives, our best friends, our children, ourselves. Every day in America 1500 people die and yet the means to save them are literally within our reach. To wait any longer for someone else to save our lives and the lives of those we love is unforgivable.

Inspired to act by our own personal experiences with cancer, we recognize that we can no longer rely on the current system alone to give us the breakthroughs we need. So, we are calling on the public to help take matters into our own hands, investing in a revolution that will change the way scientist and clinicians work to understand and treat these diseases. Stand Up To Cancer is more than a rallying cry. It is a galvanizing force created to urgently move cancer research forward.

This is where the end of cancer begins: when we unite in one unstoppable movement and Stand Up To Cancer.

HOW?

Working with the top experts in cancer research, Stand Up To Cancer is forging a new way to develop breakthroughs that will end cancer. We’re putting together the best and the brightest minds in cancer research – those on the edge of accomplishment – investing in their projects and taking the bureaucratic obstacles out of their way. We are building interdisciplinary “Dream Teams” of scientists, clinicians, technicians and other experts, who will focus on a specific cancer problem. We’ll track their progress in real time, so that everyone who invests can see how their participation is creating real change.

Funds will be administered by the American Association for Cancer Research, the largest scientific organization in the world focusing on every aspect of high-quality, innovative cancer research. Together with their scientific Blue Ribbon Advisory Committee, comprised of world-class scientists across several disciplines and patient advocates, the most promising projects will be identified.

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Cradle to Cradle. (by William McDought and Michael Braungart) Review by Elena Valero

Author: William McDought, an architect and Michael Braungart, a chemist.
Genre: Environment and design.  Published by: Dura ISBN-13:978-0-86547-8

It is a book for people fond of environmental issues and concerned about global warming. Nature is based on a cradle to cradle model, everything taken from nature returns to nature, not what happens in industry. It has createda cradle to grave model where resources are extracted, shaped into products, sold and eventually disposed fo in a “grave” of some kind. The title supports the main idea of the book: remaking the way we produce things into a cradle to cradle model.

This book is based on eco-design, the authors propose a different way pf producing things.
They suggest that there are two different types of materials: biological nutrients, designed to return to the biological cycle and technical nutrients, designed to return to the technical cycle.
The objective is not to mix them in a way that in the future, when the product’s life is over, they cannot be separated and recycled in an ecological way.
“Cradle to cradle” tries to concern people about how important the environment is and why they should contemplate a product as part of a service that is going to be reused by generations and generations rather than in a object.
In this way, we will use fewer raw materials, w will exploit fewer natural resources and we will avoid disastrous global warming.
All this information is treated in an enjoyable colloquial way, full of examples and facts about how exciting and viable it could be to put eco-effectiveness into practice and how everyone could be involved in it the process.
The way the authors expose such difficult information is involved by one of the most practical and ecological advantages, from my modest point of view, which is publishing the information in a book that isn’t made from a tree. It is printed on synthetic paper, it does not use any wood pulp or cotton fibre but is made from plastic resins and organic fillers.
This turns the book into a service: a product that can be broken down and circulated infinitely in industrial cycles, made and remade as paper or other products.
It is obvious that this book is the perfect book to read, to analise and to buy.
To read in order to learn more about ecology and environment.
To analise in order to explore a world unknown by lot of people.
And last, but not least, to buy in order to promote a new way of producing books.

SEND YOUR REVIEWS

THIS IS A REMINDER TO NA-1 AND NA-2

STUDENTS TO UPLOAD YOUR BOOK REVIEWS

ON YOUR YAHOO! PAGE.

HELP OTHERS TO CHOOSE THE BOOK THEY

WOULD LIKE TO READ.

“A Ragman’s Anagrams” 10

ANAGRAM:
feces floor hush summons voodoos
CLUE:

Be another/a different kettle of fish

If you say that something or someone is a different kettle of fish, you mean that they are completely different from something or someone else that has been talked about.

EXAMPLES:

Andy was never very interested in school, but Anna, now she was a completely different kettle of fish.

I’d driven an automatic for years but learning to handle a car with gears is another kettle of fish altogether.

N.B. DO NOT CONFUSE WITH ” A FINE KETTLE OF FISH”

Now, this expression is completely different. It refers to a troublesome situation; a vexing problem. (Usually appears in the expression, This is a fine kettle of fish!)

EXAMPLES:

This is a fine kettle of fish. My husband is not here to meet me at the train station, and there’s no phone here for me to call him.

Alan: Oh, no! I’ve burned the roast. We don’t have anything to serve our guests as a main dish.

Jane: But they’ll be here any minute! This is a fine kettle of fish we’ve got ourselves into.

Advanced 1 – High Risk Sports

The Social Implications of High Risk Sports

High risk sports have always been controversial. Society pays a price when something goes wrong – taxpayers pay for rescue missions and rescuers risk their lives. In a civilized society, even a dead body must be retrieved. What is even harder to understand is why such athletes risk their lives when they have family, especially young children.

Dan Osman’s story is legendary among rock climbers. Already famous for speed climbing and solo climbing (climbing without ropes or other safety gear), he pioneered the very extreme sport of “controlled free-falling” – jumping off a cliff only attached to ordinary climbing rope. In November 1998 he attempted a 335 metre jump which was meant to be his last, a decision prompted by his 12 year old daughter’s distress about his safety. He chose to jump at a different angle, which proved fatal. In Andrew Todhunter’s book about him called Fall of the Phantom Lord, published earlier that same year, Dan expressed his concerns.

“By dying, I would be letting everybody down – my family, my friends…My daughter will manage, she’ll be okay…but I’d be robbing her,” he said (source: Outside online)

Deaths this year from extreme activities include another renowned rock climber Todd Skinner who left behind a wife and three children, and Australian BASE jumper Adam Gibson who died whilst on his honeymoon.

Base jumping

The families of such athletes are torn between supporting them and stopping them from harming themselves.

Rosmarie Frank confesses she’d rather not know what her son Oliver, an extreme sports enthusiast, is doing in his spare time. Rock climbing, ice climbing, mountaineering, windsurfing – she is not happy with any of those

“It all started with windsurfing. The waves had to be bigger and bigger, and the winds had to be stronger and stronger!” she exclaimed.

In her opinion, ice climbing is the most dangerous as it is the most unpredictable.

“Because I grew up in the mountains (Swiss Alps), I guess I am biased. I often heard the rescue helicopters,” she admits.

Ice climbing

Search and rescue is a service the Australian government provides to its citizens, mostly funded by taxpayers. It is widely deemed as noble and necessary when someone is in trouble, unless it involves extreme sports that are not well accepted like BASE jumping. In September 2005 a BASE jumper fell 150m in the Blue Mountains and needed to be rescued at a cost of almost $20,000. This was the second time he was rescued that year for a BASE jumping incident, resulting in calls for him to be fined and pay for the costs (courtesy smh.com.au).

Community reaction to such rescues is always mixed. When people were asked their opinion, most supported more responsibilty by those who chose to do these risky sports.

Kite surf

Wingsuit

White water surfing

Parkour (Street running)

How To Be Good (by Nick Hornby) Review by Rebeca Rodríguez

Publisher: Penguin Fiction

How To Be Good was published in 2001, it was “The No. 1 best seller”. It was written by Nick Hornby who also wrote High Fidelity, About a Boy, A Long Way Down, and so on. He won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, the E.M Forster Award and the Writer’s Writer Award.

This book is fiction but it can be understood as if it was based on real life, it is about a standard couple and the relationship between all the members of the main characters’ family.

The author writes in an amazing way, he uses a lot of swear words. Sometimes the vocabulary is extremely colloquial. However, the grammatical structures are advanced.

The main character is Katie who is also the narrator. She is married to David. They have two children, Molly and Tom.

They have been married for around 20 years and they are not a happy couple. They are accustomed to each other, but they are not actually in love. They make love as if they were parts of a machine.

Katie talks about her life without wanting to be courteous, polite, moral or accurate. She is very honest. She talks seriously about her deep worries and vital questions. She is suffering from an existential crisis. Katie questions her behaviour as a mother.

Katie is a doctor and she says this is enough to be considered a good person, but she is actually very concerned about her behaviour. She analyzes anything she does and she feels guilty most of the time. Her marriage does not work and she has many doubts about it.

Her husband, David, is a writer. He writes a column in a newspaper, called “The angriest man in Holloway”. His taste is to criticize everything he wants to. Katie does not like her husband’s work because she considers David usually behaves as if he was really “The angriest man in Holloway”. He is always fed up with many things, he is too arrogant and unkind.

However, at a given moment Katie has an affair, which introduces new points in the story. Things will never be the same. Katie feels bad. She does not understand why things have developed as they have done. She starts to think she does not want to live the life she has.

When David finds out Katie has had a fling, he changes completely. But he changes thanks to Good News. Good News is a kind of healer who cures others by putting his hands on the pain. He gives David good energy, positivity and strength to make a better world. David is very much influenced by Good News. David gives up writing and starts to think and to behave as a good person.

This disturbs Katie a lot, because she is not able to understand that someone can change so much in a short space of time. Katie does not like Good News and she does not believe that he is really able to cure.

By working together, David and Good News decide to write a book called How To Be Good in order to state their criteria about how to become a good person.

The intended audience is any adult wanting to reflect about who we really are and how to be better human beings.

SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM YOUR TEACHER!!

This message is motivated by a message left by “Pat” but is addressed to anyone else interested!
Congratulations to all of you (NA-1 and NA-2)  for your tremendous effort this year.

Remember COMMUNICATION IS THE GOAL!

Errors are NOT A PROBLEM as long as they don’t interfere with meaning or understanding.

So DO BE daring and adventurous and DON’T BE scared to participate or make mistakes.

We have now passed the half-way stage of the course and, although I know English is only ONE of the many interests you all have, I hope to inject enough love of the language in you all to get you through the course.

BEST OF LUCK and KEEP ON WORKING HARD

F2F PREFIXES

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (Stieg Larsson) Review by David Corell

Stieg Larsson, a Swedish journalist who used to write about nazism and racism in his previous articles, wrote a trilogy (this is the first part of it) and died before it was published, without knowing it was going to be a best-seller. So this was his first novel, although nobody would say it after reading it. “The girl with the dragon tattoo” is a detective novel, full of crimes, unsolved mysteries, nazism, violence against women and an international economical fraud, with a tender love story in the background.

Mikael Blomkist, a Swedish financial journalist (as was the author), has been convicted of libelling a wealthy industrialist named Wennerström. He was given false information about the industrialist, which he published in his magazine (Millenium). But he still keeps thinking that Wennerström “is a gangster in an Armani suit”, but he can not prove it.

Henrik Vanger, who is 82 years old, is a former CEO of the Varger Corporation, a well-reputed family business, who wants to hire Mikael to investigate an unsolved crime committed 40 years ago. Harriet, his 14-year-old grand-niece, vanished from Hedeby island, an island which was almost exclusively inhabited by Vanger family members. She was “the apple of my eyes” as Henrik said and wishes to find her. Besides, the day when she disappeared, the only bridge of the island was inoperative due to a traffic collision.

At the beginning, Mikael is unlikely to be hired to solve this mystery, but not only does Henrik promise him a big amount of money, but also he will tell him a secret about Wennerström which may send his enemy to jail. So finally, he takes the challenge and moves to the island to try to find out what happened to Harriet. And this is when Lisbeth Salander comes into the picture. She is the star researcher of Milton Security and she works with Mikael in the investigation. She is the heroine of the novel, but she is anything but normal: she is an extremely thin girl, with a pierced nose and eyebrows and with several tattoos covering her body (she has a dragon tattoo on her shoulder blade which gives the tittle to the book). But she also has amazing computer skills and a survival instinct that scares anyone who gets in her way.

Finally, after several months of investigation, the mystery of Harriet’s disappearance is solved.

In my opinion, I would strongly recommend this book. No sooner had I read its first chapter, than I was absolutely hooked on it. I seldom read detective novels, but this is different. It is “a sort of locked-room mystery is island format” as the author said, with a brilliant story-line. The characters seem to be real people (Stieg Larsson must have been like Mikael Blomkist: both journalists who write about nazism, violence against women or financial frauds). Even Lisbeth Salander, who is a kind of Pipi Longstocking, seems to be like any teenager and she just needs a chance to show her useful skills. The book could be too long (over 500 pages) but it is worth reading. This is just the first part of the trilogy and I am looking forward to reading the following books. And even though it is a translated book (the one I read was translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland and was published by Maclehose Press in Great Britain in 2008), I think it is not a very hard book to understand.