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Comic-Con Unveils New Teaser For ‘The Walking Dead’

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Comic-Con Unveils New Teaser For ‘The Walking Dead’

A new teaser for the new season of The Walking Dead has been unveiled at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con. We’re expecting a longer trailer later today, but this was unveiled in Southern California yesterday at the world’s biggest comic convention.

The Walking Dead stars Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Lauren Cohan, Chandler Riggs, Danai Gurira, Melissa McBride, Lennie James, Alanna Masterson, Josh McDermitt, Christian Serratos, Seth Gilliam, Ross Marquand, Austin Amelio, Tom Payne, Xander Berkeley, Khary Payton, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. It airs on AMC Stateside, who debuted the teaser, and the Fox cable channel in the UK.

The Walking Dead returns to screens later this year.

Urea dysfunctions in the liver may signal cancer

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Urea dysfunctions in the liver may signal cancer

A new study, now published in the journal Cell, suggests that the way in which the human body processes nitrogen may be key to finding new ways of detecting and destroying cancer.

Nitrogen is a gas that is vital for all organisms. Both plants and animals need it in order to make proteins.

When our body processes nitrogen, it generates a substance called urea as waste; the body later eliminates this substance through urine.

This metabolizing process is called the urea cycle, and it takes place in the liver.

New research suggests that dysregulations in the urea cycle could be a marker of cancer. The new study was led by Dr. Ayelet Erez, from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

Studying urea dysregulations and tumors
Dr. Erez and colleagues altered the genetic expression of urea cycle enzymes in the colon cancer tumors of rodents and compared their urea levels with those of control mice.

The mice whose urea cycle had been interfered with had lower blood levels of urea and higher levels of a substance called pyrimidine in their urine.

The scientists also examined the medical records of 100 children who had been diagnosed with cancer at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.

“We found that on the day of their admission to the hospital,” explains the lead researcher, “children with cancer had significantly decreased urea levels in their blood, compared with documented levels of urea in healthy children of the same age.”

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Finally, the researchers also analyzed large genomic sets in search of DNA mutations that could indicate disruptions in the urea cycle.

They found mutations in DNA, RNA, and proteins, which indicates an excess of pyrimidine. This is produced through the synthesis of nitrogen and can, in turn, promote the growth of cancer cells.

Overall, the findings suggest that dysfunctions in the urea cycle may be a good indicator of cancer.

“Standard laboratory tests check for high levels of urea in blood, but we are now showing that low levels can also signal a problem,” says Dr. Erez. “Cancerous cells don’t waste anything, they make use of as much nitrogen as possible instead of disposing of it in the form of urea, as do normal cells.”

Making tumors vulnerable to immunotherapy
As the researchers explain, high levels of pyrimidine represent both good news and bad. The bad news is that it could make the cancer spread faster and more aggressively, but the good news is that the mutations that are related to excessive pyrimidine could make cancer cells more vulnerable to an attack from the immune system.

Therefore, malignancies characterized by a dysregulated urea cycle could be destroyed more easily with immunotherapy.

To test this hypothesis, Dr. Erez and colleagues examined melanoma tumors and found that the tumors that had dysregulated urea cycles responded better to immunotherapy. Dr. Erez and colleagues conclude:

“Taken together, our findings demonstrate that [urea cycle dysregulation] is a common feature of tumors that profoundly affects carcinogenesis, mutagenesis, and immunotherapy response.”

Moreover, say the researchers, the results could lead to better tools not only for diagnosing cancer, but also for treating it.

“Yet another possibility worth exploring,” Dr. Erez says, “is whether genetic manipulation of the tumor to induce such dysregulation prior to immunotherapy can increase the therapy’s effectiveness.”

Diets ‘devoid of vegetable matter’ may cause colon cancer

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Diets ‘devoid of vegetable matter’ may cause colon cancer

A new study emphasizes the importance to gut health of eating plenty of vegetables such as cabbage, broccoli, and kale.
selection of greens
Eating brassicas such as collards, kale, and broccoli may protect against colon cancer.
Researchers from the Francis Crick Institute in London, United Kingdom, found that keeping mice on a diet rich in a compound known as indole-3-carbinol (I3C) — which comes from such vegetables — prevented the animals’ intestines from becoming inflamed and developing colon cancer.

They report the study in a paper now published in the journal Immunity.

“Seeing the profound effect,” says study senior author Dr. Brigitta Stockinger, a group leader at the Francis Crick Institute, “of diet on gut inflammation and colon cancer was very striking.”

Our digestive system produces I3C when we eat vegetables from a “large and diverse group” of plants known as brassicas.

Brassicas include, but are not limited to: broccoli, cabbage, collards, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, swede, turnip, bok choi, and mizuna.

Colon cancer typically starts as a growth, or polyp, in the lining of the colon or large intestine. It can take many years for the cancer to develop from a polyp and not all polyps become cancerous.

Cancer of the colon or rectum is the third most commonly diagnosed in both women and men in the United States, not counting skin cancer.

The American Cancer Society (ACS) estimate that there will be 97,220 new cases of diagnosed colon cancer in the U.S. in 2018.

‘Concrete evidence’ of hidden mechanism
Despite a lot of evidence about the benefits to our digestive system of a diet rich in vegetables, much of the underlying cell biology remains unknown.

The new findings are the first to give “concrete evidence” of how dietary I3C — through its effect on a cell protein known as aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) — protects the gut from inflammation and cancer.

AhR has several roles, and for it to work properly, it has to be activated by a compound that binds to it uniquely. I3C is such a compound.

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One of AhR’s jobs in the gut is to pick up environmental signals and pass them on to immune cells and other cells in the lining. These signals are important for protecting the digestive tract from inflammation-promoting signals that come from the “trillions of bacteria” that live in it.

Another important role that AhR plays is helping stem cells convert into specialized gut lining cells that produce protective mucus and help extract nutrients from food.

When AhR is absent or does not work properly, the stem cells do not convert into working cells in the gut lining but “divide uncontrollably.” Uncontrolled cell division may lead to abnormal growths that can become malignant, or cancerous.

Importance of ‘plant matter’ in diet
Dr. Stockinger and her colleagues saw that normal laboratory mice that ate “purified control diets” developed colon tumors within 10 weeks, while those that ate standard “chow” containing grains and other ingredients did not develop any.

Purified control diets are tightly controlled to include precise amounts of protein, fat, carbohydrate, fiber, minerals, and vitamins. They are designed to exactly match nutritional requirements without including germs, allergens, and other substances that might introduce spurious variables in experiments.

The new study suggests that because purified control diets contain less plant matter, they have fewer compounds that activate AhR, compared with standard chow diets or diets enriched with I3C.

Dr. Chris Schiering, of Imperial College London, remarks that “even without genetic risk factors,” it would seem that “a diet devoid of vegetable matter can lead to colon cancer.”

‘Significantly fewer tumors’
The researchers used mice and organoids, or “mini guts,” grown from mouse stem cells, in their experiments. These revealed that the ability of intestinal epithelial cells to replenish themselves and repair the gut lining after infection or chemical damage was “profoundly influenced” by AhR.

The team also found that genetically engineered mice whose intestinal epithelial cells had no AhR — or could not activate the protein — failed to control an infection from a gut bacterium called Citrobacter rodentium. The animals developed gut inflammation and then colon cancer.

“However, when we fed them a diet enriched with I3C, they did not develop inflammation or cancer,” remarks first author Dr. Amina Metidji, also of the Francis Crick Institute.

Additionally, notes Dr. Metidji, when they switched mice that were already developing colon cancer to a diet rich in I3C, they found that those animals developed “significantly fewer tumors” and that those tumors were less likely to be malignant.

In discussing their results, the researchers raise the issue of whether it is the high fat content or the low consumption of vegetables in high-fat diets that explains the link to colon cancer.

The scientists now expect to continue the work on I3C and AhR with organoids grown from human gut tissue extracted in biopsies. Eventually, they expect the work to lead to human trials.

Vitamin D: Recent research uncovers new benefits

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Vitamin D: Recent research uncovers new benefits

As much of the world experiences a record-breaking heat wave, this Spotlight turns its attention to vitamin D, the so-called sunshine vitamin. Here, we inspect the latest research.
Tropical sun
The “sunshine vitamin” has a range of surprising benefits.
Vitamin D is a hot topic currently, with a raft of studies proclaiming its benefits for a variety of serious conditions.

Conversely, other recent studies have been more cautious, questioning its perceived usefulness for treating some illnesses.

Vitamin D is a nutrient that is synthesized in our skin when it is exposed to sunlight, and it is also present in some foods.

Sunlight is the best source of vitamin D, but in the winter months, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommend topping up vitamin D levels by eating vitamin D-containing foods each day. These include oily fish, fortified milk, beef liver, egg yolks, mushrooms, and fortified breakfast cereals.

What does vitamin D do?
Scientists know that vitamin D is essential for many aspects of maintaining good health and that deficiency is linked with problems for both physical and mental health.

Perhaps most notably, vitamin D helps to regulate the levels of calcium in our bodies, strengthening our bones and preventing bone-weakening conditions, such as osteoporosis.

Increasingly though, studies are also suggesting that vitamin D might have protective benefits against heart failure, diabetes, cancer, respiratory tract infections, autoimmune disease, and even hair loss.

A surprisingly large number of people have insufficient levels of vitamin D. For instance, according to one study, more than 40 percent of adults in the United States are deficient. Because of its prevalence, it is important to determine what the public health implications of this epidemic might be.

Symptoms of vitamin D deficiency can vary between individuals, but they typically include pain in the joints, muscles, or bones; fatigue; breathing problems; and low mood or seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

Below, we run through a number of intriguing recent studies that investigate associations between vitamin D and an assortment of illnesses.

Vitamin D and heart failure
Several studies have suggested that vitamin D could offer protective benefits against cardiovascular illness, but scientists have yet to pinpoint what mechanisms are driving this association.

Recently, though, Medical News Today reported on a study that used a mouse model to investigate how a type of vitamin D, called 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3, affects heart cells. In particular, the researchers looked at the cells responsible for developing scar tissue following a heart attack, called cardiac colony-forming unit fibroblasts (cCFU-Fs).

cCFU-Fs are an important area of study because, when heart tissue is scarred, the heart has a harder time pumping blood, which can lead to heart failure.

The researchers behind the study found that vitamin D inhibited the action of cCFU-Fs, which prevented scar tissue from building around the hearts of the mice in the study, potentially preventing blockages in the cardiovascular system.

“With further study,” wrote the authors, “vitamin D could prove to be an exciting, low-cost addition to current treatments, and we hope to progress these findings into clinical trials for humans.”

Vitamin D and cancer
Breast cancer and bowel cancer have both been linked with cases of vitamin D deficiency in recent studies. One of these analyzed data from two randomized clinical trials and a prospective cohort study.

The researchers found that high levels of vitamin D were inversely associated with risk of breast cancer among women who were cancer-free at baseline.

Pink ribbon blue background
Studies suggest that vitamin D impacts breast cancer risk.
According to the study results, the higher the levels of vitamin D, the lower the risk of breast cancer.

This relationship remained significant even after the results were adjusted for confounding factors, such as age, body mass index (BMI), intake of calcium supplements, and smoking habits.

Although a link between vitamin D deficiency and colorectal cancer has previously been reported, not all studies have been able to replicate these findings. A new, large-scale study attempted to settle this by drawing on data from three continents, including 5,700 colorectal cancer cases and 7,100 controls.

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The researchers calculated that people whose levels of vitamin D fall below those specified in the current guidelines have a 31 percent increased risk of developing bowel cancer. By contrast, those with vitamin D levels above the current recommended levels were 22 percent less likely to develop this cancer.

Vitamin D and belly fat
Another recent study examined a previously observed link between obesity and lower levels of vitamin D, focusing in particular on how different types of body fat might interact with vitamin D.

The study authors reported that having excess belly fat was linked with lower levels of vitamin D:

“[T]he strong relationship between increasing amounts of abdominal fat and lower levels of vitamin D suggests that individuals with larger waistlines are at a greater risk of developing deficiency and should consider having their vitamin D levels checked.”

However, the study was not able to prove whether a deficiency in vitamin D causes fat to be stored around the belly, or if having belly fat somehow contributes to a deficiency in vitamin D. The researchers say that future studies will attempt to determine cause and effect in this relationship.

Vitamin D and Alzheimer’s disease
A systematic review from researchers in Australia recently attempted to settle the debate surrounding vitamin D’s ability to protect against Alzheimer’s. The systematic review analyzed more than 70 studies looking at the association.

They concluded that there was no significant association between vitamin D deficiency and risk of Alzheimer’s.

Intriguingly, the authors did suggest that — based on their systematic review — there may be an association between exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays and protection against multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s, but that this may be independent of vitamin D production.

The authors said that further studies would be needed to confirm these links and identify the mechanism responsible for such associations.

Vitamin D and chronic pain
Over the years, some scientists have theorized that low levels of vitamin D might cause or worsen chronic pain.

So, in 2015, a group of scientists set out to collate existing evidence to examine the relationship.

Woman in pain
Could vitamin D ease chronic pain?
The resulting Cochrane review, updated in 2015, explains that:

“Observational and circumstantial evidence suggests that there may be a role for vitamin D deficiency in the etiology of chronic painful conditions.” The team scrutinized the findings from a number of studies.

Following the analysis, they concluded that the available scientific evidence is not strong enough to support a connection between vitamin D deficiency and chronic pain.

The authors write, “Based on this evidence, a large beneficial effect of vitamin D across different chronic painful conditions is unlikely. Whether vitamin D can have beneficial effects in specific chronic painful conditions needs further investigation.”

So, as ever, more work will be needed to finally close the lid on this interaction.

We hope this article has enhanced your understanding of the latest scientific thinking around this fascinating chemical. Please remember, however, that over-exposure to sunlight — especially the hot, midday sun — can result in skin damage and increase risk of skin cancer.

Farsight Security COO Alexa Raad: ‘Be Your Own Champion’

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Farsight Security COO Alexa Raad: ‘Be Your Own Champion’

Alexa Raad is chief operating officer of Farsight Security, based in San Mateo, California. Farsight Security is a provider of real-time actionable Internet threat intelligence solutions.

In this exclusive interview, Raad discusses methods of curbing cybercrime by tracking bad actors through the trails they leave in the domain name system. She also offers some encouraging advice to women and girls interested in breaking into the cybersecurity field.

Farsight Security COO Alexa Raad

Alexa Raad

Chief Operating Officer

Farsight Security

TechNewsWorld: What is Farsight Security’s mission?

Alexa Raad: We believe that everyone is entitled to a safer Internet, and so everything we do starts out with that mission in mind. What we do is provide Internet defenders with very valuable data that they can use to get some context around nefarious acts.

As an example, if you think about Internet threats like phishing and botnets and malware — all of those start with a DNS — a domain name system. And so every kind of nefarious act leaves footprints and fingerprints in the DNS. That’s something that cannot be faked. We provide information that is contextual.

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To give an example, a lot of the new domain names that are registered are typically registered with bad intent, meaning criminals are going to use them to commit some sort of act, like phishing attacks, etc. When a domain name is registered, it’s fine, but when traffic starts going to those sites, it becomes much more dangerous.

When people start actually going to a phishing site, it raises the threat level. We have a global sensor network that picks up these resolutions. We collect this data, but without any personally-identifiable information, which is important.

That information allows people to see what’s actually got some traction, and we also add additional information for guilt by association. If a phishing site is actually hosted where there are lots of other bad actors or bad sites, that provides you with some context. You start to follow that and get a better picture of that attack than you would otherwise.

We provide real-time and historical information, and both are contextual. The real-time data is important, because you have to fight these battles in near real time. The historical information is important because you want to know if this was the first time we ever saw this URL or domain name. A lot of these patterns repeat themselves. It is unlikely that a site was bad six months ago and all of a sudden it’s reformed. Having that contextual information is important.

TNW: Why do you have a passion for cybersecurity? Why do you think it’s an important and vital field?

Raad: I believe in the mission of cybersecurity. I want to leave our kids with a safer Internet. The Internet is such a utility — we all rely on it, and we have to have some modicum of expectation that the Internet is safe.

The DNS is a fabric that’s equalizing. Regardless of where you are on the Internet, you have a voice. We’re learning that if Internet is not taken care of, there will be unintended consequences.

TNW: What are some of the key cybersecurity issues today? What are some prevalent or common problems that we face?

Raad: There’s an increasing number of attacks with the Internet of things. The number of Internet-enabled devices is increasing, and all of these connected devices provide vectors for cybersecurity attacks. The race is on for cheaper devices, but the race isn’t necessarily on to create more secure devices.

TNW: What advice would you give to girls and women wanting to get into the cybersecurity field?

Raad: It’s the ideal field for women. To be really good in cybersecurity, you have to have an inquisitive mind, be a problem-solver, and see things holistically.

For a problem that’s complex, you need to think holistically, you can’t compartmentalize. You have to think, how would a criminal look at your DNS architecture? Women tend to think holistically, and if you do, you will excel in this field.

The other piece of advice I would give is that you have got to be your own champion. Don’t wait for anyone to propose something to you or to give you the promotion that you deserve. You have to speak up. You have to be your own advocate, and you have to lay out the business case.

If you want to be promoted, for instance, you have to say, this is what I’ve done, this is what I’ve accomplished, this is what I can do more of, and this is why it’s in your own best interest to promote me. There is an imbalance in the number of women in power, and it’s also at the executive level. Very few women are CEOs or in the c-suite or on the board, and there is a lot that women can offer and do.

Whether it’s because companies recognize the need to hire more women or they have a policy to do so, the opportunities for women are there. The security industry is growing. There aren’t enough people to fill the jobs available, and a lot of them are high-paying, with good benefits. You just need to be your own champion.

TNW: What new cyberthreats are emerging, and how can businesses prepare themselves to face them?

Raad: You see a lot of ransomware. Just a few weeks ago I was at my dentist, and he told me that he had just been the victim of a ransomware attack, and he ended up paying it. You wouldn’t have thought he would be the victim of an attack like that, but someone in his organization had clicked on a link, and all of his patient records were frozen until he paid the ransom.

You will see more of this because it pays well, and it targets people who aren’t well-versed in security hygiene. We’ll see more and more of the security issues and attacks that come because of insecure devices like wearables and Internet-connected devices.

There isn’t an incentive for manufacturers to create more security. The economic incentive is more toward creating devices that are cheaper and more affordable than more security, but it really has to be both. It requires both better engineering and better policy

Oracle Releases Second Half of Autonomous DB

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Oracle Releases Second Half of Autonomous DB

A lot of people might have thought Oracle’s announcement of the autonomous database at last year’s OpenWorld and its subsequent release earlier this year were the whole story, but there’s a lot more, and Tuesday’s webcast featuring Larry Ellison was proof.

Ellison must find his CTO role — since he handed the CEO reins to Safra Catz and Mark Hurd — to be stimulating and liberating at the same time. Being CTO gives Ellison the ability to be highly creative in a part of the industry that plays to his strengths. It’s a highly technical field where few septuagenarians make a mark, and it gives him access to lots of smart people to trade ideas.

His evident joy was on display Tuesday as he introduced the second part of the autonomous database. The announcement this spring focused on autonomous data warehousing, or ADW. Tuesday was all about autonomous transaction processing, or ATP.

Oracle vs. Amazon
Some of the messaging was the same: The database provisions, maintains and repairs itself, for example. “There’s nothing to do,” Ellison said more than once, suggesting that database administrators’ jobs surely will be redefined by the announcement.

Nothing to do extends to nothing to break, and an embedded expert system very well might do a better job than the average DBA.

Toward the end of his talk, Ellison showed a graphic that provided all the proof you might need to accept the efficacy of the automation. It involved the NetSuite database. After 20 years, it has been well refined — yet even for it, the expert system found ways to improve performance.

The autonomous database is an important economic milestone of sorts too. Database technology solidified in the 1970s and there has been little progress in automating the tasks of keeping a database operating — until now.

Automation, which this product offers in spades, is a sign that we’re late in the life of a disruptive innovation (i.e., the relational database). It’s a sign of commoditization, and an indicator that we’re dealing with the biggest quantities — and market share is essential for turning profits.

That’s why I think Ellison took such delight in making invidious comparisons between Oracle’s database and Amazon’s.

A Few Caveats
Amazon has a market share lead, and Oracle badly wants to reverse the situation. That’s why there’s so much emphasis on price and performance.

For example, Oracle has introduced a guarantee that it can lower a customer’s Amazon bill by half, and Ellison has boasted that his database competitors all use Oracle for their own data.

There’s no doubt this market has been commoditizing, and that only the biggest and most efficient producers will survive. Naturally, Oracle and Ellison expect to be in the winner’s circle.

It takes more than software to deliver the 99.995 percent up time promised. All of the autonomous database functionality requires Exadata hardware, and because it is fault tolerant, multiple servers are at the ready.

In the cloud configuration supported by Oracle data centers, customers experience serverless conditions — meaning that when the database is not in use, it uses no server time and incurs no server costs. Oracle also has made provisions for big customers that can afford all of the hardware and who wish to keep all data processing in-house.

That said, the autonomous database represents a new era in IT, in which the default position is cloud. The assumption is that business will be unimpeded, or at least less impeded, by IT systems that are slow or hard to change.

With the full release of the autonomous database and its associated security capabilities announced earlier this year, we’ve reached the end of the line for common legacy applications. They will be around for years, but it’s hard to see how very many new ones will be made or sold

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