PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea’s power brokers publicly declared Kim Jong Un the country’s supreme leader for the first time at a massive public memorial Thursday for his father, cementing the family’s hold on power for another generation. A somber Kim, dubbed the Great Successor, attended the memorial as he stood with his head bowed at the Grand People’s Study House, overlooking Kim Il Sung Square, named for his grandfather who founded modern North Korea. Read full article > >

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Kim Jong Un declared ‘supreme leader’ of NKorea at father’s memorial in mass show of support

Two large studies of the top-selling cancer drug Avastin released today show that the drug can slow the growth of ovarian cancer when added to chemotherapy. But in a disappointment for patients, neither study found that the expensive drug extends life expectancy. “The amount of improvement seems to be relatively modest,” said Amit Oza, an oncologist at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto who led one of the studies set to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday. Read full article > >

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Avastin for ovarian cancer slows tumors but fails to prolong life

PYONGYANG, North Korea — Tens of thousands of mourners packed Pyongyang’s snowy main square Wednesday to pay respects to late leader Kim Jong Il as North Korea tightened security in cities and won loyalty pledges from top generals for Kim’s son and anointed heir. Women held handkerchiefs to their faces as they wept and filed past a huge portrait of a smiling Kim Jong Il hanging on the Grand People’s Study House, in the spot where a photograph of Kim’s father, North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, usually hangs. Read full article > >

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Thousands gather in snow to mourn Kim Jong Il as North Korea puts troops on alert

The federal government should develop a way to compensate volunteers who are harmed while participating in medical experiments, a presidential commission recommended Thursday. In a 208-page report, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues concluded that existing regulations are sufficient to protect people involved in federally funded research from suffering harm and unethical treatment, both in the United States and overseas. But the commission recommended 14 steps to improve protections, including establishing a uniform compensation system for when harm does occur. Read full article > >

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Bioethics panel urges system to compensate those hurt in medical experiments

At least three popular children’s cereals are packed with more sugar in a one-cup serving than a Hostess Twinkie, and an additional 44 are loaded with more sugar in a cup than three Chips Ahoy cookies, according to a study released Tuesday by the Environmental Working Group. Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, Post Golden Crisp and General Mills Wheaties Fuel rank as the worst offenders based on the Twinkie measure, said the study , which analyzed 84 cereals. Other brands — including Honey Nut Cheerios, Apple Jacks and Cap’n Crunch — are among the 44 cereals that have more sugar in a cup than three Chips Ahoy cookies. Read full article > >

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Some children’s cereals packed with sugar, EWG study finds

On October 23rd, The Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life at UC Santa Barbara held an event to launch it’s new Hamdani World Harmony Lecture Series . Leading the series with “The Role of Women in Promoting Peace and Democracy in the Middle East,” Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Iranian Human Rights lawyer, author, and recent exile Shirin Ebadi, drew a substantial audience at the Santa Barabara campus.

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For Every One Woman They Put in Jail, There are 10 More in Her Place

THE QUESTION Might the physical and mental aspects of yoga help people with chronic back pain? THIS STUDY involved 313 adults, mostly women, who averaged 46 years old and who had had back pain for an average of 10 years. They were randomly assigned to take a once-a-week, 75-minute gentle yoga class or to continue with regular care through their physicians. All participants were given educational material on back pain; the yoga group also received handouts and a CD to help practice yoga stretches and mental relaxation at home. When the classes ended after three months, as well as when participants were evaluated nine months later, little difference overall was found in back pain levels between those who had practiced yoga and those who had not, although 8 percent of the yoga group, vs. 1 percent of the others, noted some increased pain. However, yoga participants on average reported better functioning of their backs, allowing participation in 30 percent more activities than the others and the ability to walk more quickly, stand for a longer time and get dressed without help. Read full article > >

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Yoga may improve functioning in people with back pain, study suggests

A new study of people with a hereditary disposition to colon cancer adds to the growing body of evidence that taking a daily aspirin lowers a person’s risk for that disease, the third-most common cause of cancer in men and women. Among a group of people with what is known as Lynch syndrome, the study found that those who took daily aspirin for two years were 60 percent less likely to develop cancer of the colon or rectum than those not taking the drug. Read full article > >

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Aspirin may reduce colon cancer risk by 60 percent, research shows

More good news on the coffee front: Brand-new research finds that people who drink coffee are at reduced risk of developing basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer. And the more they drink, the lower the risk. The research, presented Monday at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Boston, looked at coffee consumption and the risk of three forms of skin cancer — basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and the rarer and more deadly melanoma — among about 113,000 participants in two long-term health surveys. The data came out of the Nurses’ Health Study out of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Health Professionals’ Follow-Up Study at the Harvard School of Public Health. They found 25,480 incidences of skin cancer, 22,786 of the basal cell carcinoma, 1,953 squamous cell carcinoma and 741 melanoma. Read full article > >

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Coffee cuts skin cancer risk

Professor Paul Wilkinson, one of the world’s leading authorities on the study of terrorism and political violence dies aged 74.

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University terrorism expert dies

A long-running obsession of Washington’s fraternity of government management gurus is how to overhaul the Commerce Department, the sprawling agency responsible for, among other things, the census, telecommunications, fisheries and the weather. Shut it down, some say, and divide its parts among other Cabinet departments. Spin off the U.S. Census Bureau . Move the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service over to the Interior Department . On Thursday, President Obama will receive the results of a six-month study on how to close, merge or recast at least some of the 12 federal export and trade offices run by Commerce or the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative , according to administration officials familiar with the study. Officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Read full article > >

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Trade offices targeted in reorganization plan

A study released this week revealed that 47% of Facebook users have swear words on their pages. A survey last week, meanwhile, showed that undergraduate men who talk about alcohol on Facebook tend to have more friends — the study hypothesized that references to booze may lead to more social acceptance by peers.

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Booze, exes and cursing on Facebook

In case you needed one, here’s another possible reason to have that cup of coffee in the morning: Men who regularly drink coffee appear to be less likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer , especially the most lethal kind, according to new research . Lorelei Mucci of the Harvard School of Public Health and colleagues analyzed data collected from 47,911 U.S. men who participated in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, a large, ongoing examination of a variety of health issues for men. As part of the study, the men reported their coffee consumption every four years between 1986 and 2008. During that period, 5,035 cases of prostate cancer were reported, including 642 fatal cases. Read full article > >

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Coffee drinking may cut prostate cancer risk

Across the political spectrum, from right to left and in the middle, Americans have become more doctrinaire and ideological in their political views, according to a major new study by the Pew Research Center. “Staunch Conservatives” and “Solid Liberals,” two groups identified in the study with strong allegiance to the Republican and Democratic parties, are more ideologically consistent internally while sharing almost nothing in common with one another on major political issues. Those findings are emblematic of the deep polarization that now shapes American politics. Read full article > >

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Pew study finds a nation divided and doctrinaire

Shale gas, a promising clean energy solution, faces a major challenge from a new study that concludes it may have a heavier greenhouse gas footprint than coal. A Washington consensus formed over the past couple years about what the immediate energy future for the country might look. Recent discoveries and technical advances in extracting gas from shale rock formations had analysts and politicians thinking that they could simply frack their way out of our nation’s energy problems. After all, natural gas plants are fairly inexpensive to build, the resources were domestic, and burning gas has about half the carbon footprint of coal, so why not bet the near future of our nation’s electric grid, gas proponents said. But fracking, the nickname for hydraulic fracturing, the process by which inaccessible gas is made available, has always been a questionable environmental practice . Locals in areas where this particular type of resource extraction is occurring have sometimes called its “clean energy” status into question. Now, The Hill reports that Bob Howarth, a Cornell ecologist and biogeochemist, will release a study declaring that the lifecycle emissions from shale gas development and combustion are worse than coal’s . If verified by other scientific studies, the finding could force a major rethink of the use of shale gas as a tool in our kit to combat climate change. As of yet, we’re not sure exactly what the methodology of the study might be, but we do know that Howart claims that the methane emissions caused by shale gas development offset the gas’ carbon advantage over coal. The slide above is drawn from a talk that his team delivered at Cornell on March 30 of this year. It shows that, according to their calculations, shale gas is substantially greenhouse gas-heavier than coal. This estimate takes a 20-year time horizon into account because methane is a more potent greenhouse gas on shorter time-scales, but even at the 100-year level, Howart’s team found shale gas to be comparable to coal in total greenhouse gas impact. UPDATE : While the Howart paper appears to be working its way through the peer review process, a preliminary set of conclusions has been available. It’s also worth noting that these types of estimates are generally the subject of contentious debates between various interest groups. So far, fossil fuel developers and environmentalists have found some common ground in natural gas. It’s not emission free, but it’s not coal either. And in the name of battling climate change, many greens have been able to justify support for shale gas under the “anything but coal” banner. Now, just the appearance of the the study may cause the unlikely bedfellows who’ve been supporting shale to wake up and realize with surprise that they’ve been consorting with the enemy.

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Washington Energy Consensus Could Be Splintered by Shale Gas Carbon Footprint