Seoul to send artistic delegation to Pyongyang in late March A US Air Force F-16 fighter jet lands at the Osan US Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, March 20, 2018. [Photo/Agencies] Combined forces from the Republic of Korea and the United States will launch their joint military exercises from April 1, Seoul's Defense Ministry said on Tuesday, with speculation that this year's drills might be toned down. The springtime exercises, code-named Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, will be carried out in a similar scale with last year as agreed upon by defense ministers of the two countries, according to the ministry. Meanwhile, Yonhap news agency said the main exercise will be shortened by a month as a diplomatic thaw with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea gathers pace, quoting a ROK Defense Ministry spokesman. He also mentioned that no aircraft carrier will take part in the exercises, which Pyongyang has condemned as provocative rehearsals for an invasion. With talks under way to set up a ROK-DPRK summit, followed by a proposed face-to-face meeting between US President Donald Trump and DPRK top leader Kim Jongun, some analysts said the drill may be more low-key than in the past. Zhan Debin, director of Korean Peninsula research center at Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, said the length of the exercises has been shortened as Washington and Seoul try to make concessions to the DPRK and avoid damaging enthusiasm for discussions. A similar drill was conducted for two months through March to April last year. This year's exercises had been delayed by Seoul and Washington during the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in the ROK after a diplomatic thaw led the DPRK to send athletes, cheerleaders, artists and political delegations to the event in Pyeongchang. According to Yonhap, Seoul informed Pyongyang of the drill schedules through the restored military hotline in the west region. The Pentagon also said: Our combined exercises are defense-oriented and there is no reason for North Korea to view them as a provocation. Foal Eagle is a series of field training exercises with approximately 11,500 US service personnel taking part, together with 290,000 ROK troops, while Key Resolve is a tabletop exercise using mainly computer-based simulations. According to the ROK's National Security Office Director Chung Eui-yong, who made a visit to Pyongyang earlier this month, Kim Jong-un had said he understands the need for the drills to go ahead. Liu Ming, a researcher at Institute of International Relations at Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said the drill has been shortened in time but is similar in scale. On one hand, it shows that the US and ROK are trying to have a low-key drill in order not to provoke the DPRK in this mood of rapprochement. On the other, they are also showing maximum pressure toward the DPRK for a bargaining chip in future talks. Also on Tuesday, the ROK's Ministry of Unification said the ROK will send a 160-member artistic delegation to Pyongyang from March 31 to April 4 and give two performances. The group will include K-pop girl group Red Velvet and music industry veterans Cho Yong-pil and Lee Sunhee, the ministry said, after talks on the performances between the neighbors' delegations at the truce border village of Panmunjom. Cho was the last ROK singer to perform in the DPRK, at a concert in Pyongyang in 2005. Xinhua and Reuters contributed to this story. silicone wristbands canadadual-layer-wristbandfuck cancer braceletevent wristbandsprinted-wristbandembossed-wristbandcolor-filled-wristband
Scientists in Shanghai say they have made a breakthrough in researching an alternative to chemotherapy that would treat tumors in a safe, efficient way with zero side effects for patients.Chemotherapy has long been used in the treatment of cancer and involves one or a combination of drugs being introduced to the patient's bloodstream to kill cancer cells. Yet it affects healthy cells, too, causing lower immunity to infection, fatigue and hair loss.On Tuesday, a team from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced it has devised a therapy using inorganic, nontoxic nanoparticles that can travel around the body and target only tumors, leaving healthy cells unaffected."Laboratory testing on mice has shown that tumors shrank by 85 percent after receiving the therapy," said Shi Jianlin, lead researcher at the institute.For the tests, researchers give two nanoparticles-Fe3O4 and SiO2, the latter being a transport agent-and glucose oxidase through intravenous injection to mice.The particles target tumor cells owing to special microenvironment of acidity and high glucose content, while the chemical compounds combined will trigger reactions in tumor cells and produce a highly toxic active substance that will kill the cells, Shi said.He said his team of scientists has also created a nanoparticle called Mg2Si, which is nontoxic in a neutral environment of healthy tissue and only triggers a reaction in the acid environment of a tumor."The reaction will consume a large amount of oxygen molecules in the tumor cells and block the vascular system in the tumor cells so as to prevent the supply of oxygen molecules and nutrients from outside. The tumor cells will eventually starve to death," he explained.Papers on the research were published in Chemical Society Reviews in February, Nature Nanotechnology in December and Nature Communications in August."This contribution reports a nice overview of nanoparticle-triggered catalytic chemical reactions for cancer therapy. The authors provide a complete state of the art of the topic emphasizing the different approaches that can be used," reads one peer review in Chemical Society Reviews.Chen Qinfen, a doctor specializing in hematology at Fudan University's Huashan Hospital in Shanghai, said the new therapy sounds exciting."During and after chemotherapy, patients of lymphoma and leukemia will suffer from a decrease in blood platelets or white blood cells, or impairment in the liver, kidney or nervous system. More than half of leukemia patients die of complications after chemotherapy," she said."The particular advantage of nanoparticles is that they are small enough to enter the cytoplasm and nucleus, which makes the treatment more precise and efficient."Shi stressed on Tuesday that the research is still at the stage of lab tests and in the future his team may have to pick the most applicable approach for clinical trials."Lab tests also proved that our therapies are able to prevent tumor metastasis. We hope it will also make contributions clinically," he said.
