Rare Earth Minerals Chart - China seeks World Domination

Rare Earth Minerals Chart.

China's largest rare earths producer said Tuesday it would suspend output at some plants for another month, extending a halt started in late October to try and stem falling prices.

Baotou Steel Rare-Earth will halt firing, smelting and separation of rare earths at its factories in Baotou in the northern region of Inner Mongolia for one more month, it said in a statement filed with the Shanghai bourse.

"The rare earth market recovered slightly in the two months when production ... was suspended. But there has been no fundamental turnaround," it said.

The firm, also called Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-earth (Group) Hi-tech, on October 23 started halting production at almost all of its plants, including two in the eastern province of Jiangxi.

China produces more than 95 percent of the world's rare earths, 17 elements crucial for making a range of hi-tech products including iPads and wind turbines.

The country's control over the sought-after resources -- through production caps and export quotas -- has sparked a dispute with major trading partners.

The price of praseodymium-neodymium oxide, a rare earths compound used for ceramics and magnetic materials, has slid to around 300,000 yuan ($48,000) per tonne, less than one fourth the level at the highest point last year, the official Xinhua news agency said Tuesday.

Baotou Steel Rare-Earth implemented a similar month-long production halt in October last year, but failed to reverse the downtrend in global and domestic prices of rare earths.

Researchers Chart Genomic Map Spanning Over 2 Dozen Cancers

An international team of researchers has created a genome-scale map of 26 different cancers, revealing more than 100 genomic sites where DNA from tumors is either missing or abnormally duplicated compared to normal tissues.

The study, the largest of its kind, finds that most of these genetic abnormalities are not unique to one form of cancer, but are shared across multiple cancers. The work appears in the February 18 issue of the journal Nature.

"Our findings show that many genome alterations are universal across different cancers. Although this has been known for some types of changes, the degree to which so many alterations are shared was pretty surprising to us," said senior author Matthew Meyerson, a professor of pathology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and senior associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

"It suggests that, in the future, a driving force behind cancer treatment will be common genomic alterations, rather than tumors' tissue of origin."

Today, cancers are characterized largely by their symptoms: the organ in the body in which they first arise and the appearance of tumour cells under a microscope.

Although this information is valuable, it fails to highlight cancers' molecular underpinnings, which could be used in the laboratory to discover new, more effective cancer therapies and in the clinic to improve diagnosis and treatment.

A goal of modern biomedical research is to fill this knowledge gap and describe all cancers based on what drives them - that is, the genetic aberrations that initiate and maintain tumor growth.