High (David Hallyday song)

"High" is a 1988 song recorded by French artist David Hallyday. It was the second of the four singles from his debut studio album True Cool. Released in November 1988, the song was a hit in France, becoming David Hallyday's first number-one single.

Song information

The song was composed by Lisa Catherine Cohen and the music composed by the singer himself. As for the rest of the album, lyrics are in English-language. The music video was shot in a church, Hallyday playing the organ, while a chorus composed of women chanted 'high' during the refrains. With this vigorous song, Hallyday presents "a musical style at the joint of Californian rock and pop".

In France, the single debuted on the singles chart at #45 on November 19, 1988, climbed quickly and entered the top ten in its fourth week. It topped the chart for five consecutive weeks, then almost didn't stop to drop on the chart and totaled 15 weeks in the top ten and 23 weeks in the top 50. Although it was not certified by the SNEP, the French certifier, its sales made the song the 440th best-selling single of all time in France. The song was the most successful from the album True Cool and the second one in Hallyday's career, behind "Tu ne m'as pas laissé le temps".

High (The Blue Nile album)

High is the fourth studio album by Scottish band The Blue Nile, released on 30 August 2004 on Sanctuary Records. A single, "I Would Never", was released one week prior to the album: a second song, "She Saw the World", was made available as a promotional single, but never released officially.

"Soul Boy" had already been recorded by former Spice Girl Melanie C for her album Reason the previous year.

Critical reception

The album received generally favourable reviews, with many critics considering High to be a stronger album than their previous effort Peace at Last. AllMusic said "the Blue Nile have returned with a more balanced album [than Peace at Last] and Buchanan is broken-hearted again, thank the stars. He's been struggling with fatigue and illness and as selfish and inconsiderate as it sounds, it's brought the spark back to his writing... given the time to sink in, the album fits well in their canon."The Guardian believed that with High "the emotional commitment of Peace at Last is combined with the observational detachment of the earlier work... In pop, most people do their best work within five or six years. How extraordinary, then, that after more than two decades of activity, the Blue Nile remain on course, their range expanded, their focus more refined, unshaken in their determination to proceed at their own measured pace."

High (Knut Anders Sørum song)

"High" was the Norwegian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 2004, performed in English by Knut Anders Sørum.

The song is a dramatic ballad, with Sørum expressing his desire to bring an unnamed person "high". The lyrics suggest that this person has been beset by problems, and that Sørum believes he can go some way to curing them.

As Norway had finished the Eurovision Song Contest 2003 in the top 10, the song was pre-qualified for the final. Here, it was performed third, following Austria's Tie Break with "Du bist" and preceding France's Jonatan Cerrada with "À chaque pas". At the close of voting, it had received 3 points, placing 24th (last) in a field of 24, thus requiring Norway to qualify through the semi-final at the next Contest.

The low score, and long wait before Norway scored any points at all, led Australian commentator Des Mangan to jokingly offer money for anyone prepared to vote for the country. Initially, this was "a thousand bucks", later climbing to "ten thousand bucks and my house". Mangan explained during this commentary that he did not want Norway to further extend its unwanted record of failing to record a point on the most occasions.

Bloodhype

Bloodhype (1973) is a science fiction novel written by Alan Dean Foster. The book is eleventh chronologically in the Pip and Flinx series, though it was written second, and it is an oddity for the characters since they only appear in the last third of the book. Foster originally started the novel as a stand-alone work, but was encouraged by his publishers to include the characters from his previous novel. Although it was written as a second novel, it logically falls -after- Orphan Star, where he meets the aliens who build him his ship, the Teacher.

The novel takes its title from a deadly and addictive drug, for which there is no known antidote, which causes instant addiction followed by a long, slow, painful death unless the user continues to take increasingly greater doses.

Plot

The Vom is an intergalactic intelligence described as a large black blob not unlike a gigantic amoeba, impervious to almost all energy and physical attack. Following years of battle with the Tar-Aiym it has sheltered on a planet where it has gone dormant for 500,000 years, waiting for an opportunity to escape the Tar-Aiym Guardian orbiting in space above it. Carmot MMYM a commander in the AAnn Empire discovers the Vom and brings it to the planet Repler for study at a concealed AAnn base.

VOM (punk rock band)

VOM was conceived in 1976 as a self-described beat combo featuring the renowned writer and critic Richard Meltzer on vocals, with Gregg Turner on second vocals and "Metal" Mike Saunders (under the pseudonym "Ted Klusewski") on drums. The band also featured Dave Guzman on "tuneless rhythm guitar", Lisa Brenneis ("Gurl") on bass guitar, and Phil Koehn on lead guitar. The name VOM was an abbreviation for "vomit", as their early live act was said by Meltzer and Turner to have included throwing various viscera, cow parts and food substances at the audience to provoke a reaction.

Both Meltzer and Saunders had already contributed to music as a whole in very distinct conduits. Richard Meltzer had written The Aesthetics of Rock (written in '68 but published in '70) which was certainly the first serious discussion of rock music in long format as an art form. Mike Saunders was credited for coining the term "heavy metal" as a music genre while writing for Rolling Stone. In 1970, he wrote: "Here [Humble Pie] were a noisy, unmelodic, heavy metal-leaden shit-rock band, with the loud and noisy parts beyond doubt," in a review of As Safe As Yesterday Is. "This album," he continues, "more of the same 27th-rate heavy metal crap, is worse than the first two put together, though I know that sounds incredible." Although Saunders himself states that the title is "right there" in Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" ("heavy metal thunder...") and the term predates even this in William S. Burroughs' novel The Wild Boys, Saunders was the first to lend it to the new hard rock of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

Vatalanib

Vatalanib (INN, codenamed PTK787 or PTK/ZK) is a small molecule protein kinase inhibitor that inhibits angiogenesis. It is being studied as a possible treatment for several types of cancer, particularly cancer that is at an advanced stage or has not responded to chemotherapy. Vatalanib is orally active, that is, it is effective when taken by mouth.

Vatalanib is being developed by Bayer Schering and Novartis. It inhibits all known VEGF receptors, as well as platelet-derived growth factor receptor-beta and c-kit, but is most selective for VEGFR-2.

Development

Vatalanib was discovered through high-throughput screening. It has been extensively investigated in Phase I, II and III clinical trials. Two large, randomized controlled Phase III trials have studied the effect of adding vatalanib to the FOLFOX chemotherapy regimen in people with metastatic colorectal cancer: CONFIRM-1, whose participants had not yet received any treatment for their cancer; and CONFIRM-2, in which participants had received first-line treatment with irinotecan and fluoropyrimidines. Vatalanib produced no significant improvement in overall survival (the primary endpoint of the studies), although it did significantly increase progression-free survival in CONFIRM-2. Both trials found that progression-free survival was improved in people with high levels of lactate dehydrogenase, an enzyme used as a marker of tissue breakdown; the reasons for and implications of this difference are still unclear.

PTK2

PTK2 protein tyrosine kinase 2 (PTK2), also known as Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK), is a protein that, in humans, is encoded by the PTK2 gene. PTK2 is a focal adhesion-associated protein kinase involved in cellular adhesion (how cells stick to each other and their surroundings) and spreading processes (how cells move around). It has been shown that when FAK was blocked, breast cancer cells became less metastatic due to decreased mobility.

Function

This gene encodes a cytosolic protein tyrosine kinase that is found concentrated in the focal adhesions that form among cells attaching to extracellular matrix constituents. The encoded protein is a member of the FAK subfamily of protein tyrosine kinases that included PYK2, but lacks significant sequence similarity to kinases from other subfamilies. With the exception of certain types of blood cells, most cells express FAK. FAK tyrosine kinase activity can be activated, which plays a key important early step in cell migration. FAK activity elicits intracellular signal transduction pathways that promote the turn-over of cell contacts with the extracellular matrix, promoting cell migration. FAK is required during development, with loss of FAK resulting in lethality. It seems to be a paradox that FAK is not absolutely required for cell migration, and may play other roles in the cell, including the regulation of the tumor suppressor p53. At least four transcript variants encoding four different isoforms have been found for this gene, but the full-length natures of only two of them have been determined.