By Maggie Fox, Senior Author, NBC Media More and more individuals are enduring cancer, as a result of a brand new statement and better treatment, and earlier recognition out Wednesday projects the ranks of cancer survivors may increase by very nearly a third over the next a decade. Thatas the good news. The bad news: these 18 million cancer survivors are likely to cost a lot to the health program of money. aThe increase in the number of survivors will undoubtedly be due primarily to an aging of the people. By 2020, we expect that two-thirds of cancer survivors will be age 65 or older,a states Julia Rowland of the National Cancer Institute, which conducted the study. The NCI says 13.7 million people had survived cancer and were still living in the U.S. At the time of Jan. 1, 2012. Very nearly two-thirds of these were considered "cured,a having lasted five years or maybe more. Forty percent had survived 10 years and 15 percent had lived 20 years past their examination. aOver another decade, the number of individuals who have livedAfive years or more after their cancer diagnosis is estimated to increase roughly 37 per cent to 11.9 million,a Rowlandas team writes in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. Patients with some cancers have an especially rosy view. aFor patients with prostate cancer, we have a not quite 100 percent five-year survival rate, and breast cancer has made remarkable strides as well, with five-year survival increasing from 75 percent in 1975 to almost 89 percent in 2012,a said Rowland. ID cancer risk is helped by related: New gene discoveries aHowever, we demonstrably must have better diagnostic tools and better treatments for lung cancer.a five years Only 15 per cent of lung cancer patients stay, mainly as the symptoms are so vague that individuals aren't usually recognized until it has spread. The large development in survivorship is partially driven by better solutions. A larger issue is the aging of the citizenry, the report says. Many studies demonstrate that cancer patients rarely come back to full, completely health. The surgery, radiation and chemotherapy that will save their lives has a toll on their bodies, raising the chance both for 2nd cancers and for other conditions such as cardiovascular disease. aThe growing citizenry of cancer survivors can put pressure on a healthcare system where cancer drug shortages are increasingly common and the demand for oncology companies is positioned to outpace the way to obtain oncologists,a the scientists create. aThe increasing number of older survivors also gift ideas an original problem to the health system since older cancer survivors are far more likely to have multiple chronic illnesses and tend to experience poorer physical functioning than younger survivors.a Meaning a lot of expense. aBy 2020, it's believed that population growth alone can elevate annual costs of cancer care by 27 percent,a the experts wrote,A quoting a review in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. aAmong children who are several year post-diagnosis, annual healthcare expenditures are twice that of the typical population, suggesting that the financial burden of cancer with regards to medical expenditures is both substantial and persistent.a Cancer may be the No. 2 cause of per year death in america, after heart disease, Akilling more than 500,000 people. Linked stories:
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Review: SimCity (PC) - diehard gamefan
One of my brothers once belonged to a computer club in the 1980s. This club was dedicated to the Amiga (Only the Amiga Makes it Possible) and one of the big scoops they came across was a soon to be released game named: SimCity. I fell in love with that game nearly twenty-five years ago (1989). Soon "Sim" branded games were being churned out, but SimCity captured my heart. Can the rebooted franchise from the EA controlled Maxis live up to the franchise's legacy, or is this another The Sims brand extension?
You are the mayor of a town and are tasked with making the town grow. To this end, you control zoning, road building, industrial concerns and most every other aspect of general city establishment one can think of off the top of their heads. That's the story, more or less. Bribes, coke-filled orgies, gambling debts and dead hookers are not involved… or so they say. Basically, you write your own story – mine usually involved the aforementioned things.
Maxis spent quite a bit of time making and modeling Sims to live in your city. The cars, trucks, Sims, trains, weather, tornadoes and meteors come alive with fury and lively colors. Color is the name of the game as zoning depends on the classic green for residential, blue for commercial and yellow for industrial. In addition to those color coded jewels, levels of happiness, utilities coverage, density and a myriad of other charts need colors only modern computers can provide! Actually, more numbers shown in a better way would do wonders instead of graphs, charts and colors. SimCity can be pretty, but rendering all these items takes away from the best part of SimCity – running a city!
I hate Simlish or what ever the name of their dumb language is and I am glad I can mute things. The music is ok; nothing to write home about. Ambient noise and sirens from appropriate services help the atmosphere. You won't miss anything if you decide to listen to music though.
(I have one thing I have to get off my chest immediately: allow me to change servers after I log into one. Having to exit out to pick a new server is rather annoying. Now then, let's start the show.)
Let me tell you the tale, or tales to be honest. The very first city I built was known as Fun Town. I found the need to connect to the big freeway a tad annoying, mainly due to the limited size of cities. When you begin the game, you'll see a cut along the dashes style white outline (or a really poor chalk outline if you want to be morbid). That is the entirely of space you get to build your city on. Nevermind that some of it may be mountainous or comprised of water. No, you only get this much land and must connect to this arbitrarily placed large road before you can begin.
Hindered by a this bottleneck solo opening, and restrained by a rather annoying land limitation, I dropped my power plant and sewer pipe in the corner I could reach cheapest. See, since there are different road options, you have to watch your beginning dollar amount carefully. Spend too much on roads that can be upgraded those that can handle a massive amount of traffic? You'll be skint in no time. Try to take the cheap route? You'll be uber congested. What a great plan! Another choke point decision early in your city's life is that no one has even moved in and you're already having to adjust plans for congestion and population.
Oh, and the sewage? It pollutes the ground (of course), which has consequences. You see, you also have to take care of water. Unlike previous SimCity games, you don't have to lay down power lines or water lines. However, your water supply can become polluted easily, meaning that you'll eventually have to found your water supplies in different places until you can upgrade to a water treatment plant. You're beholden to the water table so, not only do you have to make sure your sewer is far away from folks (so they won't complain about the stink), you also have to judge whether or not you can afford the loss of the available water underneath the pipes. You'll eventually suck the water dry and lower the amount you gain. Therefore if you pollute precious aqua, you're screwing yourself over (kind of like how you did by buying this game… but more on that in a bit).
As I expanded my cities to the limits allowed, I found the need to be online to save (coupled with the lack of an undo button), led to either leaving not well enough alone or bulldozing entire city blocks. ****** City was ravaged, left in shambles because one block needed to have better roads thanks to massive congestion. Essential services could not save lives, stop crime or fight fires thanks to little old ******** running to the Asbestos Pajama plant to get factory rejects. I get that some features always need online gameplay (supposedly), but full on punishment like this does no one any good. This is so frustrating, especially to perfectionists who want well laid out roads but end up with a mess due to a snap point messing up.
As my solo play went on, I found that the budget just didn't keep up with the pricey features folks wanted. Why did my city, ****** City on **** Island (along with its sister city Pound Town), need so many police officers just because gambling happened to be its main source of income? Sure, I get that gambling attracts ne'er-do-wells, but my casinos actually sucked. They rarely brought in cash. Later, I learned casinos must be placed near the entrances of your city, or else they won't get traffic.
The aggressive usage of land, coupled with the amount of land you have, makes pre-planning so important. You can't just expand, expand, expand – you have to take into consideration just where you are expanding, as well as what you are going to do once you are able to build new, better facilities. For instance – my sewage pipe made a large section of Hookertown a brown mess (two dimes gets you a lot in Hookertown), but when I built a sewage treatment plant, I was told they weren't necessary. I 'dozed them (all the cool kidz say 'dozed) and placed more industry there. I had to save a large chunk of land, in advanced, to make sure I had room for the plant. I couldn't have it near my Sims (whose primary form of entertainment seemed to be protesting outside City Hall). Oh no, these Sims are too good for poop smell. Hoity-toity bunch of namby pambies! Instead, I placed it close, but not too close, to my new water treatment facility. This bordered my train station and new, higher class casino. This was my third or fourth game and I finally learned that I will be stuck having figure out a way to process poop without disturbing the precious Sims who wander about like nincompoops everywhere. While somewhat enjoyable, this means you can build yourself into a corner rather easily.
The control set up is fine, with pictograms instead of words and representations of the buildings listed. This helps when you need to see all the new goodies that become available once your Town Hall expands. Once you expand your Town Hall, you can build additions and unlock new, better utilities and civil services. Upgraded facilities would have been fantastic for Hookertown if, at the time of my multiplayer, they were shared amongst the players. Each building has four upgrade slots and, by not having sharing enabled, I was forced to use all of mine on what was tantamount to necessary infrastructure. Instead of working on taxes, I had to get transportation and emergency services. My Sims would not get educated either, since the other two upgrades were already spoken for.
The UI is clean, self explanatory and perfectly functional. It's everything else that crumbles due to ineffective game parameters. At launch, EA had six or seven servers, I forget. Why do I forget? Because I couldn't get into any of them unless it was between midnight and 4am Pacific Standard Time!. This always on requirement basically prevented me from playing the game. I had to wait for ages to be able to go in and try the damnable thing.
There are Achievements (aka the Chlamydia that has overtaken all of gaming), but I can't be arsed to look them up. There's a screenshot of them. Man, this game sapped my will to live. I played it as an automatic action. I wonder if Will Wright is done with game creation after the Spore debacle? So much promise, so much crap. I hate this. I thought Fight Club was bad, but I expected that game (for the original Xbox) to be a heaping pile of rubbish. This is SimCity. This is a game series that made city planning fun. I wanted to have fun… I wanted fun! GIMME FUN YOU DAFT BASTARDS!
Ahem… I was all set to write a humorous look at SimCity, but this game made me hate Maxis. Even The Sims couldn't do that. Thanks EA/Maxis! You guys are awful and I hope you get double hemorrhoids.
While there are a myriad of stories to be told in the SimCity, most of them end the same: being unable to pick up where you left off or being disconnected from your game. Time and time again did **** City, **** Island, and Giveupville try to soldier on in the face of constant interruption. None of them pressed on.The thing is, I wanted to play more. I put in upwards of twenty hours to give this game a fair shake. There were times where I felt there could be something more in this game. There are possibilities – new cities to build, new regions to try. You can specialize in something different the next time around or use a different street layout. All of this goes out the window when you're prevented from playing due to server load or having to always have an internet connection. Sometimes you have to restart because of a disaster wiping out hours of work.Why would you want to keep on going when you're getting your head shoved in the toilet. Either you're a co-dependent or into some water closet play. I'm not judging, I'm just saying that I'm not with you on either count.
One minute you're seeing a budget surplus and folks are happy. The next, you're suddenly losing people and traffic is a monster. Trying to find the sweet spot in making sure every need is met can be fun when there's more transparency. In SimCity, you just have to go by what you're told and believe your actions will placate the masses.
When you build a casino town, you're going to find out that crime will constantly outstrip your police unless you devote a bloated amount of your budget to police coverage. Fires? Those are caused by dumb Sims who don't know how not to start fires. You're going to need to get them educated so they won't play with matches (seriously).
How is it balanced that the basic idea of "not starting fires" isn't an inborn trait in most Sims? Why are there thousands of workers but only a fraction of them have jobs? (This was later surmised to be the work of phantom sims beefing up the population count).
SimCity gives you an idea of how to make sure all your plates are spinning well, but then tosses that out the window at some points. The game feels undercooked.
The idea of regional hubs with cities specializing adds a new twist to SimCity… in theory. In practice, the times I played multi-player, the perks of different cities did not become available to their region mates. The Great Works and specialization options are intriguing. There are some good ideas here, but the execution… yeah…
There are elements of SimCity that lead one to believe they'll be playing for quite some time. The promise of open-endedness that is assumed with the series is one. The other is the possibilities opened up for multiplayer experiences. However, in its current state, SimCity is too broken to do anything other than break any spell possibly cast on a player. Server disconnects, regional sharing not working, traffic AI issues – they all work against giving the game another chance. SimCity is the bath salts of video games. You may get hooked, but eventually someone's face is going to be eaten.
SimCity veterans will be turned off by the small city size and always on DRM requirement… oh and constant disconnects. New players may be turned confused by the entire concept… and the constant disconnects. Players on the fence can be left wanting by the constant disconnects. In essence – EA made a game that has universally no appeal. There's just not enough good to outweigh the bad when it comes to playing this game.
The botched release really hurt this game, and it isn't as if this game had much going in its favor. It took me ages to be able to even play the damn thing, only to get booted off the server and stuck waiting for twenty minutes. The inane, have to wait to bypass tutorial that tries to start on every server, the utter lack of foresight into the launch, the nanny state against players disguised and lauded as "multi-player features", the DLC that could be had if you bought the Special Super Ultra Limited Amazing Hyper Fighting featuring Virtua edition 2 with Matching Service edition even though there was already a digital deluxe edition.
More and more of EA/Maxis's lies have been exposed. You can read more about them all across the Internet (I recommend Rock, Paper, Shotgun's amazing coverage). Basically, if EA said it, it probably was a lie. The continued existence of The Sims bringing elements of that game along for the ride… the list can go on but really, this is a giant steaming heap of feces.
Short Attention Span Summary:Lies, damned lies, and pre-order hype. SimCity 2013 is a game that could have been fun, but is pretty much digitized poop with apologists (both paid robots and Maxis talking heads) saying this was their vision. I don't think any studio sets out to make the worst game ever… except for Color Dreams. Avoid this game until it hits the bargain bin.
More Info: Stress During Pregnancy May Raise Heart Defect Risk for Baby
How researchers are fighting lung cancer using PageRank - GigaOM
Google's PageRank algorithm has forever changed the way we access information by putting the best stuff first, and now researchers are using the same mathematical models that Google uses to fight the spread of lung cancer within the human body. While there's no "best" when it comes cancer cells, the aim is to identify tumors more likely to metastasize and then hit them with targeted treatment before the cells have a chance to spread.
The researchers — who come from the University of Southern California, Scripps Clinic, the Scripps Research Institute, the University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering — combined autopsy data from 163 cancer cases (all from before the advent of radiation therapy in order to analyze the natural spread) with applied mathematics in order to carry out their study. What they found, according to a press release about the research is that
metastatic lung cancer does not progress in a single direction from primary tumor site to distant locations, which has been the traditional medical view. Instead … cancer cell movement around the body likely occurs in more than one direction at a time.
Moreover, they found certain organs tend to spread cancer cells more aggressively, while others tend to act as sponges for cancer cells. These sponge organs might still grow tumors, they just don't disperse the cells.
The mathematics involved here — called Markov chain models — are similar to what Google uses to determine what web pages are the highest-quality for any given search query. Only whereas Google uses the number and quality of links to determine the probability of a web surfer landing on any given page, these researchers are trying to predict the PageRank of tumors, if you will. So, generally speaking, a kidney would likely have a higher PageRank than a liver because the kidney is more likely to spread cancer cells throughout the body (or, in web-search terms, generate a lot of links to itself).
As data volumes proliferate and relationships between data points become more complex, Markov models are actually becoming pretty popular. Netflix uses them in order to predict the movies users will want to watch next.
The weighted connections between various states or web pages or whatever someone is ranking are often expressed as the nodes and edges of a graph. Graphs, of course, have become part of the everyday web lexicon thanks to the various social graphs and interest graphs that analyze who we're connected to (and how) and the types of topics we browse online.
So in the end, perhaps, the most-important contribution of the worldwide web won't be the revolution in terms of how we access information, but the web's function as a proving ground for advanced statistical methods starring very large and complex data sets like those found in the medical world. Already, for example, another group of medical researchers has used a Markov variant in order to create a model they think can prescribe better treatment plans because it analyzes the costs and patient outcomes usually associated with a given treatment for a given symptom.
Last year, a group of Swiss researchers developed an algorithm that, having access to a relatively small amount of data, can track anything from Twitter rumors to disease outbreaks back to their source. A company called Syapse uses the graph structure to chart the relationships among words across different medical specialties.
One would also be remiss in ignoring the computing and data-storage innovation spurred by the web that has improved our ability to handle massive amounts of genetic and other data. As the lung cancer researchers explain in their paper:
One of the strengths of such a statistical approach is that we need not offer specific biomechanical, genetic, or biochemical reasons for the spread from one site to another, those reasons presumably will become available through more research on the interactions between CTCs and their microenvironment. We [have created] a quantitative and computational framework for the seed-and-soil hypothesis as an ensemble based first step, [that] then can be further refined primarily by using larger, better, and more targeted databases such as ones that focus on specific genotypes or phenotypes, or by more refined modeling of the correlations between the trapping of a CTC at a specific site, and the probability of secondary tumor growth at that location.
The long story short is that the more data we have and the easier we can analyze and map it, the better we can treat — and perhaps even cure — cancer and other complicated diseases.
Feature image is a network map of how lung cancer spreads between organs, where each numbered node correlates with a specific organ.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Ziopharm cancer drug fails late-stage trial; shares plunge 66 percent - Yahoo! News (blog)
(Reuters) - Ziopharm Oncology Inc said it will stop developing its drug to treat soft tissue sarcoma after it failed to improve patient survival by keeping the cancer from worsening, wiping out nearly two-thirds of the company's market value.
The drug, palifosfamide, was being tested in a late-stage trial called Picasso 3 as a treatment for metastatic soft tissue sarcoma - a type of cancer of the bone, cartilage, fat or muscles.
"We know that based on (the) progression-free survival (rate), there is no way the drug will get approval anywhere in the world," Chief Executive Jonathan Lewis said.
An independent committee recommended that the patients be followed to test the improvement in their overall survival, but the company said it does not expect to continue the follow-up.
Brinson Patrick Securities analyst Vernon Bernardino said the company's decision to stop the drug's development was "drastic" but noted that the company had "burned" a lot of money on the project, and would probably need to raise money later in the year.
As a part of the review, it will convert another ongoing study - testing the drug as a treatment for small cell lung cancer - into a mid-stage trial, CEO Lewis said. Ziopharm began the study, called Matisse, in June last year after completing an early-stage trial.
Analyst Bernardino said the move to convert the Matisse study into a mid-stage trial did not come as a surprise. He said Ziopharm had expected to turn Matisse into a mid-stage study, if Picasso were to fail.
"It was rather aggressive of them to go right to a late-stage study (in Matisse) because they used early-stage data as a bridge to the late-stage trial," he said.
The company expects to get survival data from Matisse by the middle of the second half of this year, for which Bernardino said he had high hopes.
"I think it will show efficacy and definitely show safety in the trial. A mid-stage study is a lower hurdle for the company, with less risk."
Ziopharm also said it would now focus more resources on its synthetic biology program, which creates DNA-based drugs that enable controlled delivery of genes producing proteins to treat cancer.
Link: The human brain manages to distinguish syllables 3 months before birth
Diabetes Tied to Dementia in Latinos - MedPage Today
Register Today Make Free CME Credits by studying the most recent medical newsin your niche. 38062 Published: March 25, 2013 Mexican Americans under treatment for diabetes had a better threat of dementia or other cognitive impairment than their colleagues without diabetes, researchers found. Through up to decade of follow-up, patients under treatment for diabetes had about twice the risk of developing dementia or other cognitive impairment after accounting for the competitive risk of death and other factors (HR 2.05, 95% CI 1.41 to 2.97), based on Mary Haan, DrPH, of the University of California San Francisco, and peers. Though there was a similar trend seen with untreated diabetes, the relationship was not statistically significant after adjustment for the competitive risk of death (HR 1.55, 95% CI 0.93 to 2.58), the scientists described online in Diabetes Care. "Screening and treatment for diabetes that changes success among those with type 2 diabetes may affect future dementia incidence rates," they wrote, writing that death rates among patients with diabetes have declined lately. "The potential effect... will depend on the factors inducing the decrease in the mortality rate," they wrote. If the decline results from assessment and better administration of the condition, dementia rates may additionally drop, they observed. But, if the decrease in mortality rates is not a representation of paid off disease severity, "and if more dementia risk is influenced by severe diabetes,... dementia rates among individuals with diabetes might increase," they continued. Some previous studies have linked type 2 diabetes to a better danger of dementia and other cognitive impairment in older adults, but none has considered the relationship specifically among Mexican Americans, who have high costs of diabetes, poor glycemic get a grip on, and more problems compared with non-Hispanic whites. Haan and colleagues explored the problem using data from the Sacramento Area Latino Study on Aging. Participants were included 1,617 by the current analysis ages 60 to 98 (mean age 70) have been free from dementia or cognitive impairment at baseline. Follow-up survived around a decade and averaged 6.5. Over all, 41.9% of the players had diabetes at baseline or developed it during follow-up, 9.8% developed dementia or cognitive impairment during the study, and 22.3% died. The mortality rate was higher among those with diabetes (26.9% versus 19%) and those with dementia or other cognitive impairment (39.6% versus 20.4%). After adjustment for sex, education, time-dependent waist area, and time-dependent swing, there was a larger threat of death among those with handled diabetes (HR 2.15, 95% CI 1.58 to 2.95), untreated diabetes (HR 2.12, 95% CI 1.65 to 2.73), and dementia or cognitive impairment without dementia (HR 2.48, 95% CI 1.75 to 3.51). In entirely adjusted designs that didn't account for competitive risk of death, both untreated and treated diabetes were associated with risk of developing dementia and other cognitive impairment (HRs 2.38 and 1.88, respectively). The association was rendered by adjustment for the competing risk of death with untreated diabetes nonsignificant. "Those with treated diabetes within our sample have higher glucose and insulin, [a higher rate of] hypertension, and more comorbid cardiovascular disease, and may have more severe diabetes than those that were untreated," the authors observed. "This might explain why their dementia risk is greater, considering the fact that the risk of death is similar in both groups." They accepted some limits of the research, including selection bias arising from the requirement that individuals survive to at least 60 years of age, some attrition that would have biased the results, the usage of self-report to measure stroke and physical exercise, and the potential residual confounding. The study was supported by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Digestive and Diabetes and Kidney Diseases, and the American Health Assistance Foundation. The authors noted which they had no conflicts of interest. Primary source: Diabetes CareSource reference:Mayeda E, et al "Type 2 diabetes and 10-year risk of dementia and mental impairment among older Mexican Americans" Diabetes Care 2013; DOI: 10.2337/dc12-2158. Sponsored Resources ADVERTISEMENT ResourcesA( from Industry) Movie Collection Medical Education (Non-CME) Most Examine Stories ADVERTISING
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47) Little Furs Productions HD Bon Jovi “Bad Medicine”
47) Little Furs Productions. Video by Pandr. Artwork by Tavi Munk. Bon Jovi "Bad Medicine". Cute Drawings like always when it comes to Little Furs Productions video whit Tavi Munks art. I hope he newer going to stop to draw this cute drawings.
MSU's Payne inspired by cancer battle of 7-year-old friend - Detroit Free Press
EAST LANSING -- As he has transitioned from enticing prospect to burgeoning star on the basketball court, Adreian Payne's life has become the source of growing public attention -- and it's just getting started.
The Michigan State junior forward's media crowd was the biggest and stayed longest after Monday's practice, as the Spartans prepared for Friday's Sweet 16 game against Duke at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. He talked about overcoming a learning disability and becoming the team's top upperclassman student, putting himself in position to graduate a semester early if he wants.
"Next year I will not have a full schedule like a normal senior. I could graduate early, but I wouldn't be able to play (my senior season)," said Payne, who must be enrolled to be eligible.
He talked about the loss two years ago of his grandmother, who raised him after his mother died when he was a child. He talked about his growth from a freshman who wouldn't watch film to a junior who stood up and apologized to his team after what he deemed a lackluster effort in Thursday's NCAA tournament-opening win over Valparaiso.
And he talked about a recent, major addition to his life, who also happened to be at Monday's practice. Lacey Holsworth, a 7-year-old from St. Johns who is battling cancer, was there with her family to watch practice, then spend some time with Payne afterward.
"I'm real close to them," Payne said of the Holsworths. "She calls me her big brother and I call her my little sister. We're very, very close. It's helped me build another relationship. ... It's just another thing God blessed me with, to be able to help other people."
Lacey had some back pain and was diagnosed in December 2011 with neuroblastoma, a "football-sized tumor" found in her abdomen, said her father, Matt.
About a month later, the MSU basketball team visited Lacey at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing. She immediately latched on to Payne. The two started spending time together over the summer and now text and talk regularly.
"He doesn't have a lot of family support, losing his mom and his grandma, so we do the best we can to be there to support him," Matt Holsworth said of Payne. "He's a young man with a big heart, and he's helped Lacey a lot."
Before it was removed, the tumor wrapped around Lacey's spine and left her paralyzed for a few months, but she now can use both legs again. Matt and his wife, Heather, are meeting with doctors at U-M Hospital in Ann Arbor today to determine when to schedule a needed bone marrow transplant.
Lacey has had chemotherapy and radiation treatments, but the hope is that the transplant will clear her of the cancer. Doctors are "pretty positive," Matt said, after an initial diagnosis that was not nearly as positive.
The Big Ten Network, which did a story on Payne and Lacey this season, got the family -- Lacey has three other siblings -- tickets for the Big Ten tournament in Chicago. As thrilled as she was, her presence also makes a difference for Payne.
"It gives me something other than basketball to do and think about," Payne said. "Even though I've got other family, but just helping her is, I can't even tell you. It's just something I do and I enjoy."
Payne will be a big part of MSU's push this weekend to win two games and advance to the Final Four in Atlanta. MSU coach Tom Izzo said Monday that Payne has grown "as much as any player I've had since (Morris) Peterson."
That growth includes the quest for a degree his late grandmother, Mary Lewis, badly wanted for him. That quest could keep Payne in East Lansing longer than some might expect.
"I'm very excited," Payne, who has not ruled out an early jump to the NBA, said of graduating. "I didn't ever really think I would be able to go to college and graduate when I was playing in that creek (in Dayton, Ohio) and throwing beer bottles at my brothers. So it's just ... a blessing from heaven."
Contact Joe Rexrode: 313-222-2625 or jrexrode@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @joerexrode. Check out his MSU blog at freep.com/heyjoe.