October 21, 2013 – GREEK WORLD MEDIA

14 year old boy charged with lighting a fire near a tennis club at Rutherford yesterday

14 year old boy charged with lighting a fire near a tennis club at Rutherford yesterday

Detectives questioning an 11 year old boy over last week’s blaze at Port Stephens, which forced evacs and closed Newcastle Airport

PORT Stephens detectives are interviewing an 11-year-old boy over the fire which burnt out more than 5000 hectares.

The Hank Street fire caused widespread emergency evacuations last Thursday, closed Newcastle Airport for almost a full day, destroyed several sheds and caused widespread traffic chaos as it jumped containment lines and roared towards Williamtown.

It started at Heatherbrae several days beforehand.

Detectives arrested the boy on Monday morning and are expected to charge him with intentionally causing a fire and being reckless about its spread.

Boy in court over fire

A BOY, 14, has been refused bail after being charged with lighting a fire at Rutherford.

Fire crews were called to an area of scrub off the New England Highway after it was set alight on Sunday afternoon.

He will face Broadmeadow Childrens Court on Monday.

PORT Stephens detectives are interviewing an 11-year-old boy over the fire

Source: TheHerald

PORT Stephens detectives are interviewing an 11-year-old boy over the fire which burnt out more than 5000 hectares.

It started at Heatherbrae several days beforehand.

Detectives arrested the boy on Monday morning and are expected to charge him with intentionally causing a fire and being reckless about its spread.

Boy in court over fire

A BOY, 14, has been refused bail after being charged with lighting a fire at Rutherford.

Fire crews were called to an area of scrub off the New England Highway after it was set alight on Sunday afternoon.

He will face Broadmeadow Childrens Court on Monday.

New role for DNA unraveler in preventing brain tumours and other cancers

Source: Cancerresearch.uk

Cancer Research UK Press Release

A molecule originally implicated in DNA repair may also be a crucial factor in preventing tumours such as medulloblastoma, a type of childhood brain tumour, according to research published today in Science (Thursday).

The molecule, called RTEL1, is known to be responsible for maintaining the ends of our chromosomes, the structures that contain the genetic material DNA. Now Cancer Research UK scientists have discovered that it also plays a critical role throughout the entire genome.

Dr Simon Boulton and his team, based at the charity’s London Research Institute, found that RTEL1 works together with another molecule called PCNA. Like a hair tie, RTEL1 helps PCNA as it forms a ring around the DNA allowing it to remove knots and untangle DNA as it gets copied. This process is essential for correctly copying DNA, so that cells can grow and divide without making genetic mistakes.

When RTEL1 contains a fault preventing it from binding to PCNA, DNA replication is disrupted and mistakes are made, which can lead to cancer. When the researchers looked in mice whose RTEL1 gene was flawed in this way, they found a substantial increase in the incidence of several types of cancer, including lymphoma and medulloblastoma, the most common type of childhood brain cancer.

Previous studies had shown that there was a potential link between RTEL1 and brain cancers, although it wasn’t understood why. This study confirms that RTEL1 is definitively involved in preventing cancer by stopping mistakes from being made during DNA replication, but more research is needed to understand why it appears to be particularly associated with brain tumours.

Dr Simon Boulton, based at Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute, said: “This research exemplifies why it’s so important to study fundamental cellular processes in model systems. With the aid of new technologies, we have uncovered an unexpected role for the RTEL1 protein, and shown that this new role in maintaining and replicating DNA may hold the key to some types of cancer.”

Dr Simon Boulton was recently named as one of the recipients of the 2013 Paul Marks Prize for cancer research from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in America.

Dr Kat Arney, Cancer Research UK’s senior science communications manager, said: “Unravelling the inner workings of cancer cells is essential if we are to truly make progress in beating cancer. This is an important step forward in understanding the molecular machinery that copies our DNA and what happens when it goes wrong. And it could open the door to future approaches for prevention, diagnosis or treatment.”

Australia has had the biggest jump in new HIV cases in two decades

Source: News

Australia has had the biggest jump in new HIV cases in two decades, leading experts to call for urgent action to tackle the disease.

David Wilson, program head at the University of NSW’s Kirby Institute, said more than 1250 people were newly diagnosed with HIV last year. NSW led the way with a 24 per cent increase, while Victoria was stable.

The 10 per cent increase nationwide in new HIV cases last year has hit young people particularly hard, with hundreds of people in their 20s diagnosed. HIV groups and infectious disease researchers say urgent action is needed to increase condom use, speed up access to new rapid HIV tests and ensure everyone who needs medications can access them.

“Traditionally, HIV has been diagnosed in the late 30s and early 40s but we are now seeing a trend away from that,” Mr Wilson said. ”These people were not around in the [’80s and] ’90s and didn’t experience the fear campaigns.”

However, figures provided exclusively to Fairfax Media covering the first half of this year show a high-profile campaign to reduce the disease, called Ending HIV, may be starting to have an effect.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said the second quarterly NSW report on new infections shows 179 diagnoses in NSW in the first half of this year, compared with 196 last year and 175 the year before. However, testing levels had also increased. ”These numbers could mean you are bringing in groups that haven’t engaged with testing before and that can be a positive thing,” Ms Chant said. ”But HIV is still present and it’s still at unacceptable levels.”

She said people needed to be tested as soon as possible after exposure, as that was when they were most infectious.
Australasian Society for HIV Medicine president Edwina Wright said that Australia was not doing a good enough job of putting in place key recommendations on reducing HIV transmission, including getting people on treatment early.

”A lot of people are on pensions and, in fact, aren’t able, at times, to afford their antiretroviral therapies,” Ms Wright said.
She said an application was before federal health authorities to subsidise medication for all people with HIV, not just those with progressed conditions.