Coffee protein mimics effects of morphine

coffee that mimics effects of morphine

Brazilian scientists have discovered a protein in coffee that has effects similar to pain reliever morphine, researchers at the state University of Brasilia (UnB) and state-owned Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation Embrapa said Saturday.

Embrapa said its genetics and biotech division, teaming up with UnB scientists, had discovered “previously unknown protein fragments” with morphine-like effects in that they possess “analgesic and mildly tranquilizing” qualities.

The company added tests on laboratory mice showed that the opioid peptides, which are naturally occurring biological molecules, appeared to have a longer-lasting effect on the mice than morphine itself.

Embrapa said the discovery has “biotechnological potential” for the health foods industry and could also help to alleviate stress in animals bound for the slaughterhouse.

In 2004, Embrapa managed to sequence coffee’s functional genome, a major step towards efforts by the firm and UnB to combine coffee genes with a view to improving grain quality.

Head transplants could be a reality by 2017

Head Transplant

 

 

Transplanting a human head onto a donor body may sound like the stuff of science fiction comics, but not to Italian doctor Sergio Canavero. He has not only published a paper describing the operation in detail, but also believes that the surgery could be a reality as early as 2017.

Canavero, Director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, initially highlighted the idea in 2013, stating his belief that the technology to successfully join two severed spinal cords existed. Since then he’s worked out the details, describing the operation in his recent paper, as the Gemini spinal cord fusion protocol (GEMINI GCF).

To carry out the transplant, a state of hypothermia is first induced in both the head to be transplanted and the donor body, to help the cells stay alive without oxygen. Surgeons would then cut into the neck tissue of both bodies and connect the blood vessels with tubes. The next step is to cut the spinal cords as neatly as possible with minimal trauma.

The severed head would then be placed on the donor body and the two spinal cords encouraged to fuse together with a sealant called polyethylene glycol, which Canavero notes in his paper, has “the power to literally fuse together severed axons or seal injured leaky neurons.”

After suturing the blood vessels and the skin, the patient is kept in a comatose state for three to four weeks to discourage movement and give both spinal stumps time to fuse. The fusion point will also be electrically stimulated to encourage neural connections and accelerate the growth of a functional neural bridge. The patient will additionally be put on a regime of anti-rejection medications.

According to Canavero, with rehabilitation the patient should be able to speak in their own voice and walk within a year’s time. The goal is to help people who are paralyzed, or whose bodies are otherwise riddled with degenerative diseases and other complications. While the procedure sounds extremely complex and disturbing on multiple levels, Canvero tells us he’s already conducting interviews with volunteers who’ve stepped forward.

“Many are dystrophic,” Canavero says “These people are in horrible pain.”

The most well-known example of a head transplant was when Dr. Robert White, a neurosurgeon, transplanted the head of one rhesus monkey onto another in 1970. The spinal cords, however, were not connected to each other, leaving the monkey unable to control its body. It subsequently died after the donor body rejected the head.

Current technology and recent advances hold out more promise. Canavero plans to garner support for the project, when he presents it at the American Academy of neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons conference in Annapolis, Maryland, later this year. Understandably his proposal has generated incredible controversy, with experts questioning the specifics and ethics of the procedure, even going as far as calling it bad science.

 

Source:   gizmag.com

Brains communicate from thousands of miles away

Brain study

 

Brain-to-brain communication study conducted in coordination with Harvard Medical School has proven that extrasensory mind-to mind interaction can happen over great distances by leveraging different pathways in the mind. (Technological telepathy)

The study, coauthored by Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Director of the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, found that information can be successfully transmitted between two intact human brains from distances over 5000 miles apart.

The following is excerpt from an article featured on Smithsonian Mag:

An international research team develops a way to say “hello” with your mind

In a recent experiment, a person in India said “hola” and “ciao” to three other people in France. Today, the Web, smartphones and international calling might make that not seem like an impressive feat, but it was. The greetings were not spoken, typed or texted. The communication in question happened between the brains of a set of study subjects, marking one of the first instances of brain-to-brain communication on record.

The team, whose members come from Barcelona-based research institute Starlab, French firm Axilum Robotics and Harvard Medical School, published its findings earlier this month in the journal PLOS One. Study co-author Alvaro Pascual-Leone, director of the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a neurology professor at Harvard Medical School, hopes this and forthcoming research in the field will one day provide a new communication pathway for patients who might not be able to speak.

“We want to improve the ways people can communicate in the face of limitations—those who might not be able to speak or have sensory impairments,” he says. “Can we work around those limitations and communicate with another person or a computer?”

Pascual-Leone’s experiment was successful—the correspondents neither spoke, nor typed, nor even looked at one another. But he freely concedes that the test was more a proof of concept than anything else, and the technique still has a long way to go. “It’s still very, very early,” he says, “[but] we can show that this is even possible with technology that’s available. It’s the difference between talking on the phone and sending Morse code. To get where we’re going, you need certain steps to be taken first.”

Indeed, the process was drawn out, if not downright inelegant. First, the team had to establish binary-code equivalents of letters; for example “h” is “0-0-1-1-1.” Then, with EEG (electroencephalography) sensors attached to the scalp, the sender moved either his hands or feet to indicate a 1 or a 0. The code then passed to the recipient over email. On the other end, the receiver was blindfolded with a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) system on his head. (TMS is a non-invasive method of stimulating neurons in the brain; it’s most commonly used to treat depression.) The TMS headset stimulated the recipient’s brain, causing him to see quick flashes of light. A flash was equivalent to a “1” and a blank was a “0.” From there, the code was translated back into text.

 

Source:   earthweareone.com

Roundup Herbicide 125 Times More Toxic

Roundup Herbicide 125 Times More Toxic Than Regulators Say:

 

Roundup Herbicide 125 Times More Toxic Than Regulators Say

A highly concerning new study published in the journal Biomedical Research International reveals that despite the still relatively benign reputation of agrochemicals such as Roundup herbicide, many chemical formulations upon which the modern agricultural system depend are far more toxic than present regulatory tests performed on them reveal. Roundup herbicide, for instance, was found to be 125 times more toxic than its active ingredient glyphosate studied in isolation.

Titled, “Major pesticides are more toxic to human cells than their declared active principles,” the study evaluated to what extent the active principle (AP) and the so-called ‘inert ingredients,’ i.e. adjuvants, in globally popular formulations account for the toxicity of 9 major pesticides: 3 herbicides, 3 insecticides, and 3 fungicides.

The Deceptive Semantics of Pesticide Formulations And Their Regulation

The paper describes how the agrochemical industry conceals the true toxicity of their chemical formulations by focusing on the health risks associated with only one so-called ‘active principle’ (AP) in their complex formulations, and sets the public up for mass poisoning through the determination of an ‘acceptable level of harm’ via the calculation of the so-called ‘acceptable daily intake (ADI)’ based on the toxicological risk profile of only a single ingredient:

“Pesticides are used throughout the world as mixtures called formulations. They contain adjuvants, which are often kept confidential and are called inerts by the manufacturing companies, plus a declared active principle (AP), which is the only one tested in the longest toxicological regulatory tests performed on mammals. This allows the calculation of the acceptable daily intake (ADI)—the level of exposure that is claimed to be safe for humans over the long term—and justifies the presence of residues of these pesticides at “admissible” levels in the environment and organisms. Only the AP and one metabolite are used as markers, but this does not exclude the presence of adjuvants, which are cell penetrants.”

The problem of underestimated toxicological risk is so severe that the researchers describe previous research which found unexpected toxicity in so-called ‘inert’ adjuvants that were up to 10,000 times more toxic than the so-called active principle glyphosate itself, revealing them to be a greater source for secondary side effects than the main ingredient itself. They also note that this ‘synergistic toxicity’ may explain the results of previous long-term animal research where glyphosate-based formulations showed toxicity in the parts-per-trillion range (.1 part per billion) that could not be explained by glyphosate alone.

Dr. Kelly Brogan, MD, commented on this phenomena in connection with the study recently on her blog: “Similar to the non-placebo-controlled trials on vaccines, adjuvants and preservatives are considered innocent bystanders in the consideration of risk profile.” According to Dr. Brogan, an understanding of “Toxicant synergy has exploded the simplistic notion of “the dose makes the poison.””

The Test Method and Results

In order to ascertain the toxicity of various chemical formulations and their ingredients, the researchers used embryonic (HEK293), placental (JEG3), and hepatic (HepG2) human cell lines, “because they are well characterized and validated as useful models to test toxicities of pesticides, corresponding to what is observed on fresh tissue or primary cells.”  They noted, “these cells lines are even in some instances less sensitive than primary cells, and therefore do not overestimate cellular toxicity.”

The researchers describe the their method of determining toxicity:

We assayed their mitochondrial succinate dehydrogenase (SD) activity (MTT assay) after 24h pesticide exposure, which is one of the most accurate cytotoxicity assays for measuring the toxicity of pesticide adjuvants such as surfactants. Cytotoxicity was confirmed by the measurement of apoptosis and necrosis, respectively, by caspases 3/7 activation and adenylate kinase leakage after membrane alterations

The results of the study were clear. Except for one pesticide (Matin), “All formulations were cytotoxic and far more toxic than their APs [active principles].”

Key findings included:

• On human cells, among the tested products, fungicides were the most toxic, being cytotoxic from doses 300–600 times lower than agricultural dilutions, followed by herbicides (except Matin) and then insecticides.
• In all cell types, fungicides were the most toxic (mean LC50 12ppm).
• The herbicide Roundup (LC50 63ppm) was next in toxicity to fungicides, twice as toxic as Starane, and more than 10 times as toxic as the 3 insecticides, which represent the less toxic group (mean LC50 720ppm).

Chemists produced artificial plastic cell

First Plastic Cell With Working Organelle:

Chemists have successfully produced an artificial cell

It is hard for chemists to match the chemistry in living cells In their laboratories.  In a cell many complex reactions are taking place in an overfull Simultaneously , small container , in various compartments and incredibly efficiently. This is why chemists attempt to imitate the cell in various ways. In doing so , they hope to learn more about the origin of life and the transition from chemistry to biology.

Jan van Hest and his PhD candidate. Their organelles Ruud Peters created by tiny spheres filling with chemicals and placing these inside a water droplet . They then cleverly covered the water droplet with a polymer layer – the cell wall . Using fluorescence , They were able to show the planned cascade of reactions, it did in fact take place . This means that they are the first polymer chemists to create a working cell with organelles . Just like in the cells in our bodies , the chemicals are able to enter the cell plasma following the reaction in the organelles , to be processed elsewhere in the cell .

Creating cell-like structures is currently very popular in the field of chemistry , with various methods being tried at the Institute for Molecules and Materials (IMM ) . Professor Wilhelm Huck, for example , is making cells from tiny droplets of solutions very similar to cytoplasm , and Van Hest ‘s group is building cells using polymers .

Competing groups are working closer to biology , making cells from fatty acids. We would like to do the same in the future . Another step would be to make cells produce their own energy supply . Also we are working on ways of controlling the movement of chemicals within the cell, organelles towards . By simulating these things , we are able to better understand living cells. One day we will even be able to make something that looks very much like the real thing.

Artificial bionic hand gets real feelings

New artificial, bionic hands start to get real feelings:

New artificial, bionic hands start to get real feelings

Simple tasks, like plucking the stem off a cherry, are still monumental challenges for artificial hands. With a bill of materials perhaps a few hundred components long, it is not surprising that their functionality is low compared with one assembled from trillions of components. A new prosthetic bionic hand, designed and built by researchers at Case Western University is now capable of using measurements from 20 sensor points to control the grip force of its digits. Incredibly, the sensor data is linked directly to the sensory nerves in the patient’s forearm. The control for the grip closure is then extracted myoelectrically from the normal biological return loop to the muscles in the forearm.

The key to making this device work is an instrument known as a cuff electrode. While these electrodes have been under development for decades for use as stimulators for the optic nerve, it has been difficult to get them to reliably stimulate axons for extended periods of time. The new cuffs used here are able to target individual groups of axons without actually penetrating the protective sheaths that segregate particular groups of them. As you can see in the picture below, a nerve has a complex cross section where individual channels exchange members continuously along their length. When multiple cuffs are eventually used on the same nerve, this particular feature of nerve bundles will come in handy because it provides a way to target different axons at different points in the nerve.

If for example, the first cuff stimulates more axons than is actually desired, the second cuff could, at least in theory, provide sub-threshold current to shunt particular axons that can be better targeted at the second cuff — in effect acting as firefighters do when they intentionally burn select areas to preempt the advance of an out-of-control forest fire, only a lot faster. In the forearm, there are three major nerves, the median, radial, and ulnar, which connect both motor and sensory axons within various funiculi. Just to clarify here, a nerve bundle, or funiculus, is in turn composed of several smaller nerve fasciculi. For now, the researchers use just one cuff per nerve, with the data from the 20 sensor points shared between them.

The key to targeting axons deep in the interior of the nerve is to filet them out like the header on a ribbon connector by using a flat cuff, instead of the traditional round design. It appears that the nerves can handle this seeming trauma because the two patients outfitted with these devices have shown good performance now for 18 months. We just heard that the world’s first official cyborg, Neil Harbisson, had his cybernaut status minted with a government seal of approval. He is even permitted to have his passport photo taken with head-mounted hardware. Provided this new bionic hand continues to function for the long haul, it seems that at least two more names might soon be added to that list.

Internet kill’s brains

Does The Internet Make You Dumb? Top German Neuroscientist Says Yes – And Forever:

Does The Internet Make You Dumb? Top German Neuroscientist Says Yes – And Forever

Dr. Manfred Spitzer knows that people find his arguments provocative. In his first book, he warned parents of the very real dangers of letting their children spend too much time in front of the TV. Now, in a second book called Digitale Demenz [Digital Dementia], he’s telling them that teaching young kids finger-counting games is much better for them than letting them explore on a laptop.

Spitzer, 54, may be a member of the slide-rule generation that learned multiplication tables by heart, but his work as a neuropsychiatrist has shown him that when young children spend too much time using a computer, their brain development suffers and that the deficits are irreversible and cannot be made up for later in life.

South Korean doctors were the first to describe this phenomenon, and dubbed it digital dementia – whence the title of Spitzer’s book. Simplistically, the message can be summed up this way: the Internet makes you dumb. And it is of course a message that outrages all those who feel utterly comfortable in the digital world. In the aftermath of the publication of Spitzer’s book, they have lost no time venting their wrath across Germany.

And yet Spitzer has accumulated a wealth of scientific information that gives his thesis solid underpinnings, and the studies and data he draws on offer more than enough room for consternation.

Everything leaves traces in the brain

According to his study, many young people today use more than one medium at a time: they place calls while playing computer games or writing e-mails. That means that some of them are packing 8.5 hours of media use per day into 6.5 hours. Multitasking like this comes at the cost of concentration – experiments by American researchers have established this. And to Spitzer, those results mean just one thing: “Multitasking is not something we should be encouraging in future generations.”

Because everything a person does leaves traces in the brain. When development is optimum, memory links are formed and built on during the first months and years of life, and the structure adds up to a kind of basic foundation for everything else we learn. Scientists call this ability of the brain to adjust to new challenges “neuroplasticity.” It is one of the reasons for the evolutionary success of the human species. Spitzer also sees it as a source of present danger.

When drivers depend exclusively on their navigation technology, they do not develop the ability to orient themselves, although of course the brain offers them the possibility of learning how to do so. The same applies to children who use electronic styluses on a SMART board instead of learning how to write — the brain is kept in check. And because computers take over many classrooms and other functions that are actually good practice for kids, “it inevitably has a negative effect on learning,” Spitzer argues.

Digital media should be banned from classrooms

Stating that there have so far been no independent studies “that unequivocally establish that computers and screens in the classroom makes learning any more effective,” Spitzer goes so far as to recommend that digital media be banned from the classroom. Even more drastically, he writes: “In reality, using digital media in kindergarten or primary school is actually a way of getting children addicted.” Strong stuff for the generations who take computers and the Internet for granted, using them as a source of information and a space to communicate via social networks — and who enjoy doing so. The Internet has become the fourth cultural technology, alongside reading, writing and arithmetic.

Spitzer quotes Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), who wrote that the process of learning involves the heart along with the brain and the hands. He believes it would be better if kids learned finger games to help them deal with numbers, instead of relying on computers. In a country like Germany, whose major resource is smart people and innovative ideas, maybe we should be taking Spitzer’s warnings more seriously.

What the internet is doing to our Brains:

Analytics engine will read your mind

Computation knowledge engine will soon be able to read your mind:

COMPUTATION KNOWLEDGE ENGINE

Wolfram Alpha will soon be able to read your mind, its creator Stephen Wolfram said at the South By Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin today.

Speaking at the US technology conference on Monday, Wolfram predicted that his analytics engine will soon work pre-emptively, meaning it will be able to predict what its users are looking for.

“Wolfram Alpha will be able to predict what users are looking for,” Wolfram said. “Imagine that combined with augmented reality.”

Speaking during a talk on the future of computation, Stephen Wolfram – the creator of Wolfram Alpha and the mastermind behind Apple’s Siri personal assistant – also showed off the engine’s new ability to analyse images.

Wolfram said, “We’re now able to bring in uploaded material, and use our algorithm to analyse it. For example, we can take a picture, ask Wolfram Alpha and it will try and tell us things about it.

“We can compute all sorts of things about this picture – and ask Wolfram Alpha to do a specific computation if need be.”

That’s not the only new feature of Wolfram Alpha, as it can also now analyse data from uploaded spreadsheet documents.

“We can also do things like uploading a spreadsheet and asking Wolfram [Alpha] to analyse specific data from it,” Wolfram said.

He added, “This is an exciting time for me, because a whole lot of things I’ve been working on for 30 years have begun converging in a nice way.”

This upload feature will be available as part of Wolfram Alpha Pro, a paid-for feature where Wolfram hopes the analytical engine will make most of its money. Wolfram Alpha Pro costs $4.99 per month, or $2.99 if you’re a student.

Wolfram also showed off Wolfram Alpha’s ability to analyse data from Facebook, a feature that was announced last August.

New light on how Genes turn off and on

New insights into how genes turn on and off:

New insights into how genes turn on and off

 

Researchers at UC Davis and the University of British Columbia have shed new light on methylation, a critical process that helps control how genes are expressed. Working with placentas, the team discovered that 37 percent of the placental genome has regions of lower methylation, called partially methylated domains (PMDs), in which gene expression is turned off. This differs from most human tissues, in which 70 percent of the genome is highly methylated.

While PMDs have been identified in cell lines, this is the first time they have been found in regular human tissue. In addition to enhancing our understanding of epigenetics, this work could influence cancer research and help illuminate how environmental toxins affect fetal development. .

Since it was unraveled more than ten years ago, the human genome has been the focus of both popular interest and intense scientific focus. But the genome doesn’t act alone; there are many factors that influence whether genes are turned on or off. One of these is an epigenetic process called methylation, in which a group of carbon and hydrogen atoms (a methyl group) attaches to DNA, adjusting how genes are expressed.

“I like to think of epigenetics as a layer on top of your genetic code,” said senior author Janine LaSalle, professor of medical microbiology and immunology. “It’s not the DNA sequence but it layers on top of that — and methylation is the first layer. Those layers provide a lot of information to the cells on where and when to turn on the genes.”

How and when genes are activated (or inactivated) can have a profound impact on human development, cancer and the biological legacy of environmental toxins. Prior to this research, PMDs had only been found in cultured cell lines, which led some scientists to wonder if they existed outside the test tube. This study confirms they exist in placental tissue, a critically important window into fetal development.

“The placenta is the interface between mother and fetus,” said LaSalle, who is a researcher affiliated with the UC Davis MIND Institute. “It’s a time capsule from when a lot of important methylation events occurred.”

In addition, placental tissue was interesting to study because it has a number of invasive characteristics often associated with cancer. In fact, a number of cancers, such as breast and colon, have widespread PMDs. LaSalle notes that anti-cancer epigenetic therapies that adjust methylation could be refined based on this improved understanding of PMDs.

This work could also enhance our ability to detect genetic defects. Methylation, and other epigenetic data, provides information that cannot be found in the genome alone. For example, the vast majority of cells in the body contain identical genetic code. However, the added information provided by methylation allows scientists to determine where specific DNA came from.

“Methylation patterns are like fingerprints, showing which tissue that DNA is derived from,” LaSalle said. “You can’t get that information from just the DNA sequence. As a result, methylation studies could be a very rich source for biomarkers.”

In the study, PMDs encompassed 37 percent of the placental genome, including 3,815 genes, around 17 percent of all genes. When found in low-methylation regions, these genes were less likely to be transcribed into proteins. Researchers also found that PMDs also contain more highly methylated CpG islands (genomic areas with large numbers of cytosine-guanine pairs), which are often associated with gene transcriptional silencing of promoters.

Because the placental PMDs contained many genes associated with neuronal development, and specifically autism, LaSalle notes that future research could investigate how epigenetics impacts autism genes at birth.

“We are looking for biomarkers that predict neurodevelopmental outcomes,” LaSalle said. “Now we have a series of snap shots from a critical period where we think environmental factors are playing a role in the developing brain.”

Virus kills cancer

Genetically engineered virus kills cancer:

Genetically engineered virus kills cancer

A genetically-engineered virus tested in 30 terminally-ill liver cancer patients significantly prolonged their lives, killing tumours and inhibiting the growth of new ones, scientists reported on Sunday. Sixteen patients given a high dose of the therapy survived for 14.1 months on average, compared to 6.7 months for the 14 who got the low dose. “For the first time in medical history we have shown that a genetically-engineered virus can improve survival of cancer patients,” study co-author David Kirn told AFP. The four-week trial with the vaccine Pexa-Vec or JX-594, reported in the journal Nature Medicine, may hold promise for the treatment of advanced solid tumours. “Despite advances in cancer treatment over the past 30 years with chemotherapy and biologics, the majority of solid tumours remain incurable once they are metastatic (have spread to other organs),” the authors wrote. There was a need for the development of “more potent active immunotherapies”, they noted. Pexa-Vec “is designed to multiply in and subsequently destroy cancer cells, while at the same time making the patients’ own immune defence system attack cancer cells also,” said Kirn from California-based biotherapy company Jennerex. “The results demonstrated that Pexa-Vec treatment at both doses resulted in a reduction of tumour size and decreased blood flow to tumours,” said a Jennerex statement. “The data further demonstrates that Pexa-Vec treatment induced an immune response against the tumour.” Pexa-Vec has been engineered from the vaccinia virus, which has been used as a vaccine for decades, including in the eradication of smallpox. The trial showed Pexa-Vec to be well tolerated both at high and low doses, with flu-like symptoms lasting a day or two in all patients and severe nausea and vomiting in one. The authors said a larger trial has to confirm the results. A follow-up phase with about 120 patients is already underway. Pexa-Vec is also being tested in other types of cancer tumours.

What makes human muscle age

Scientists discover clues on why human muscle ages:

Scientists discover clues to what makes human muscle age

A study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has identified critical biochemical pathways linked to the aging of human muscle. By manipulating these pathways, the researchers were able to turn back the clock on old human muscle, restoring its ability to repair and rebuild itself.

Young, healthy muscle (top row) appears pink and red. In contrast, old muscle is marked by scarring and inflammation, as evidenced by the yellow and dark areas. This difference between old and young tissue occurs both in the muscle’s normal state and after immobilization in a cast.  “Our study shows that the ability of old human muscle to be maintained and repaired by muscle stem cells can be restored to youthful vigor given the right mix of biochemical signals,” said Professor Irina Conboy, a faculty member in the graduate bioengineering program that is run jointly by UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, and head of the research team conducting the study. “This provides promising new targets for forestalling the debilitating muscle atrophy that accompanies aging, and perhaps other tissue degenerative disorders as well.” Previous research in animal models led by Conboy, who is also an investigator at the Berkeley Stem Cell Center and at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), revealed that the ability of adult stem cells to do their job of repairing and replacing damaged tissue is governed by the molecular signals they get from surrounding muscle tissue, and that those signals change with age in ways that preclude productive tissue repair. Those studies have also shown that the regenerative function in old stem cells can be revived given the appropriate biochemical signals. What was not clear until this new study was whether similar rules applied for humans. Unlike humans, laboratory animals are bred to have identical genes and are raised in similar environments, noted Conboy, who received a New Faculty Award from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) that helped fund this research. Moreover, the typical human lifespan lasts seven to eight decades, while lab mice are reaching the end of their lives by age 2. Working in collaboration with Dr. Michael Kjaer and his research group at the Institute of Sports Medicine and Centre of Healthy Aging at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, the UC Berkeley researchers compared samples of muscle tissue from nearly 30 healthy men who participated in an exercise physiology study. The young subjects ranged from age 21 to 24 and averaged 22.6 years of age, while the old study participants averaged 71.3 years, with a span of 68 to 74 years of age. In experiments conducted by Dr. Charlotte Suetta, a post-doctoral researcher in Kjaer’s lab, muscle biopsies were taken from the quadriceps of all the subjects at the beginning of the study. The men then had the leg from which the muscle tissue was taken immobilized in a cast for two weeks to simulate muscle atrophy. After the cast was removed, the study participants exercised with weights to regain muscle mass in their newly freed legs. Additional samples of muscle tissue for each subject were taken at three days and again at four weeks after cast removal, and then sent to UC Berkeley for analysis.

Human muscle stem cell regenerative activity is depicted in green and red. Stem cell responses were incapacitated when researchers inhibited the activation of key biochemical pathways, making the young muscle behave like old muscle. Old cells exhibited regenerative responses when properly triggered by experimental activation of biochemical signals. Morgan Carlson and Michael Conboy, researchers at UC Berkeley, found that before the legs were immobilized, the adult stem cells responsible for muscle repair and regeneration were only half as numerous in the old muscle as they were in young tissue. That difference increased even more during the exercise phase, with younger tissue having four times more regenerative cells that were actively repairing worn tissue compared with the old muscle, in which muscle stem cells remained inactive. The researchers also observed that old muscle showed signs of inflammatory response and scar formation during immobility and again four weeks after the cast was removed. “Two weeks of immobilization only mildly affected young muscle, in terms of tissue maintenance and functionality, whereas old muscle began to atrophy and manifest signs of rapid tissue deterioration,” said Carlson, the study’s first author and a UC Berkeley post-doctoral scholar funded in part by CIRM. “The old muscle also didn’t recover as well with exercise. This emphasizes the importance of older populations staying active because the evidence is that for their muscle, long periods of disuse may irrevocably worsen the stem cells’ regenerative environment.” At the same time, the researchers warned that in the elderly, too rigorous an exercise program after immobility may also cause replacement of functional muscle by scarring and inflammation. “It’s like a Catch-22,” said Conboy. The researchers further examined the response of the human muscle to biochemical signals. They learned from previous studies that adult muscle stem cells have a receptor called Notch, which triggers growth when activated. Those stem cells also have a receptor for the protein TGF-beta that, when excessively activated, sets off a chain reaction that ultimately inhibits a cell’s ability to divide. The researchers said that aging in mice is associated in part with the progressive decline of Notch and increased levels of TGF-beta, ultimately blocking the stem cells’ capacity to effectively rebuild the body. This study revealed that the same pathways are at play in human muscle, but also showed for the first time that mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase was an important positive regulator of Notch activity essential for human muscle repair, and that it was rendered inactive in old tissue. MAP kinase (MAPK) is familiar to developmental biologists since it is an important enzyme for organ formation in such diverse species as nematodes, fruit flies and mice. For old human muscle, MAPK levels are low, so the Notch pathway is not activated and the stem cells no longer perform their muscle regeneration jobs properly, the researchers said. When levels of MAPK were experimentally inhibited, young human muscle was no longer able to regenerate. The reverse was true when the researchers cultured old human muscle in a solution where activation of MAPK had been forced. In that case, the regenerative ability of the old muscle was significantly enhanced. “The fact that this MAPK pathway has been conserved throughout evolution, from worms to flies to humans, shows that it is important,” said Conboy. “Now we know that it plays a key role in regulation and aging of human tissue regeneration. In practical terms, we now know that to enhance regeneration of old human muscle and restore tissue health, we can either target the MAPK or the Notch pathways. The ultimate goal, of course, is to move this research toward clinical trials.”

 

 

One trillion bit-per-second optical chip

IBM’s prototype 5.2 x 5 .8 mm Holey Optochip:

IBM unveils one trillion bit-per-second optical chip

Last Thursday at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference in Los Angeles, a team from IBM presented research on their wonderfully-named “Holey Optochip.” The prototype chipset is the first parallel optical transceiver that is able to transfer one trillion bits (or one terabit) of information per second. To put that in perspective, IBM states that 500 high-def movies could be downloaded in one second at that speed, while the entire U.S. Library of Congress web archive could be downloaded in an hour. Stated another way, the Optochip is eight times faster than any other parallel optical components currently available, with a speed that’s equivalent to the bandwidth consumed by 100,000 users, if they were using regular 10 Mb/s high-speed internet. One of the unique features of parallel optic chips is the fact that they can simultaneously send and receive data. The Holey Optochip capitalizes on that feature, for its record-setting performance. The “Holey” in the name comes from the fact that the team started with a standard silicon CMOS chip, but bored 48 holes into it. These allow optical access to its inside back surface, where 24 separate receiver and transmitter channels are located – for a total of 48 channels. Each of those channels has its own dedicated VCSEL (vertical cavity surface emitting laser) and photodetector, which are used respectively for sending and receiving data. The chip is designed to be coupled to a multimode fiber array, via a microlens optical system.

The back of the IBM Holey Optochip, with lasers and photodectors visible through substrate holes All parts of the Optochip are made from commercially-available components, which should keep costs down on a production model. Also, the chip consumes less than five watts when operating – 20 of the devices could run on the power consumed by one 100-watt light bulb. “We have been actively pursuing higher levels of integration, power efficiency and performance for all the optical components through packaging and circuit innovations,” said IBM Researcher Clint Schow. “We aim to improve on the technology for commercialization in the next decade with the collaboration of manufacturing partners.”

Quartz data is stored for Millions of years

Quartz Glass Stores Data For Millions of Years:

Quartz Glass Stores Data For Millions of Years

 

“The volume of data being created every day is exploding, but in terms of keeping it for later generations, we haven’t necessarily improved since the days we inscribed things on stones. The possibility of losing information may actually have increased.” -Hitachi researcher Kazuyoshi Torii To combat this problem, Hitachi is looking towards an unlikely source: slivers of quartz glass. Quartz glass is perfect for data storage due to it’s incredible strength and longevity. Quartz glass is waterproof, chemical resistant, unhindered by radio waves and can withstand temperatures up to 1000° Celsius. “We believe data will survive unless this hard glass is broken,” said Hitachi senior researcher Takao Watanabe. Within quartz glass, digital data is stored in binary form. A laser beam is used to record dots within layers of incredibly thin sheets of quartz glass. An optical microscope, or any computer that understands binary code, can read the stored data in the future. A standard piece of Hitachi’s quartz glass measures less than 1 square inch and is just .08 inches thick! Within each tiny sliver, 40 MB of data can currently be stored. The storage capacity is obviously the main hindrance, but quartz glass has a couple things working in it’s favor. First, a number of these quartz slivers can easily be stacked together without taking up much physical space. Second, the technology has a lot of room for growth. Quartz glass data storage compares nicely to solid state drives or SSDs, which, in their infancy could only store megabytes worth of data, but can now hold terabytes of data. As the news was just announced, it’s uncertain when quartz glass will be commercially available. Dependable long term hard data back-up as a complement to the cloud infrastructure beginning to dominate our lives will certainly be a welcome addition.

Raytheon secret software tracks social media ‘predicts’ future behavior

Rights groups slam Raytheon secret software that tracks social media and ‘predicts’ people’s future behavior:

Rights groups slam Raytheon secret software that tracks social media and ‘predicts’ people’s future behavior

 

A video obtained by the Guardian reveals how an “extreme-scale analytics” system created by Raytheon, the world’s fifth largest defence contractor, can gather vast amounts of information about people from websites including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Raytheon says it has not sold the software – named Riot, or Rapid Information Overlay Technology – to any clients. But the Massachusetts-based company has acknowledged the technology was shared with US government and industry as part of a joint research and development effort, in 2010, to help build a national security system capable of analysing “trillions of entities” from cyberspace. The power of Riot to harness popular websites for surveillance offers a rare insight into controversial techniques that have attracted interest from intelligence and national security agencies, at the same time prompting civil liberties and online privacy concerns. The sophisticated technology demonstrates how the same social networks that helped propel the Arab Spring revolutions can be transformed into a “Google for spies” and tapped as a means of monitoring and control. Using Riot it is possible to gain an entire snapshot of a person’s life – their friends, the places they visit charted on a map – in little more than a few clicks of a button. In the video obtained by the Guardian, it is explained by Raytheon’s “principal investigator” Brian Urch that photographs users post on social networks sometimes contain latitude and longitude details – automatically embedded by smartphones within so-called “exif header data.” Riot pulls out this information, showing not only the photographs posted onto social networks by individuals, but also the location at which the photographs were taken. “We’re going to track one of our own employees,” Urch says in the video, before bringing up pictures of “Nick,” a Raytheon staff member used as an example target. With information gathered from social networks, Riot quickly reveals Nick frequently visits Washington Nationals Park, where on one occasion he snapped a photograph of himself posing with a blonde haired woman. “We know where Nick’s going, we know what Nick looks like,” Urch explains, “now we want to try to predict where he may be in the future.” Riot can display on a spider diagram the associations and relationships between individuals online by looking at who they have communicated with over Twitter. It can also mine data from Facebook and sift GPS location information from Foursquare, a mobile phone app used by more than 25 million people to alert friends of their whereabouts. The Foursquare data can be used to display, in graph form, the top 10 places visited by tracked individuals and the times at which they visited them. The video shows that Nick, who posts his location regularly on Foursquare, visits a gym frequently at 6am early each week. Urch quips: “So if you ever did want to try to get hold of Nick, or maybe get hold of his laptop, you might want to visit the gym at 6am on a Monday.” Mining from public websites for law enforcement is considered legal in most countries. In February last year, for instance, the FBI requested help to develop a social-media mining application for monitoring “bad actors or groups”. However, Ginger McCall, an attorney at the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Centre, said the Raytheon technology raised concerns about how troves of user data could be covertly collected without oversight or regulation. “Social networking sites are often not transparent about what information is shared and how it is shared,” McCall said. “Users may be posting information that they believe will be viewed only by their friends, but instead, it is being viewed by government officials or pulled in by data collection services like the Riot search.” Raytheon, which made sales worth an estimated $25bn (£16bn) in 2012, did not want its Riot demonstration video to be revealed on the grounds that it says it shows a “proof of concept” product that has not been sold to any clients. Jared Adams, a spokesman for Raytheon’s intelligence and information systems department, said in an email: “Riot is a big data analytics system design we are working on with industry, national labs and commercial partners to help turn massive amounts of data into useable information to help meet our nation’s rapidly changing security needs. “Its innovative privacy features are the most robust that we’re aware of, enabling the sharing and analysis of data without personally identifiable information [such as social security numbers, bank or other financial account information] being disclosed.” In December, Riot was featured in a newly published patent Raytheon is pursuing for a system designed to gather data on people from social networks, blogs and other sources to identify whether they should be judged a security risk. In April, Riot was scheduled to be showcased at a US government and industry national security conference for secretive, classified innovations, where it was listed under the category “big data – analytics, algorithms.” According to records published by the US government’s trade controls department, the technology has been designated an “EAR99″ item under export regulations, which means it “can be shipped without a licence to most destinations under most circumstances”.

Chinese law requires registration to access Internet

China may soon require real name registration for access to Internet:

China may soon require real name registration for access to Internet

 

China may require internet users to register with their real names when signing up to network providers, state media said on Tuesday, extending a policy already in force with microblogs in a bid to curb what officials call rumors and vulgarity. A law being discussed this week would mean people would have to present their government-issued identity cards when signing contracts for fixed line and mobile internet access, state-run newspapers said. “The law should escort the development of the internet to protect people’s interest,” Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily said in a front-page commentary, echoing similar calls carried in state media over the past week. “Only that way can our Internet be healthier, more cultured and safer.” Many users say the restrictions are clearly aimed at further muzzling the often scathing, raucous — and perhaps most significantly, anonymous — online chatter in a country where the Internet offers a rare opportunity for open debate. It could also prevent people from exposing corruption online if they fear retribution from officials, said some users. It was unclear how the rules would be different from existing regulations as state media has provided only vague details and in practice customers have long had to present identity papers when signing contracts with internet providers. Earlier this year, the government began forcing users of Sina Corp.’s wildly successful Weibo microblogging platform to register their real names. The government says such a system is needed to prevent people making malicious and anonymous accusations online and that many other countries already have such rules. “It would also be the biggest step backwards since 1989,” wrote one indignant Weibo user, in apparent reference to the 1989 pro-democracy protests bloodily suppressed by the army. Chinese Internet users have long had to cope with extensive censorship, especially over politically sensitive topics like human rights, and popular foreign sites Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube are blocked. Despite periodic calls for political reform, the ruling Communist Party has shown no sign of loosening its grip on power and brooks no dissent to its authority.

Humans carry hundreds of rogue mutations

Humans carry about 3 million mutations, says Tyler-Smith: the 400 “damaging” variants reflect a reassuringly tiny proportion of that total:

We all carry hundreds of rogue mutations

Nobody’s perfect. Even healthy people have at least 400 faulty genes, including a few that could lead to life-threatening diseases. Chris Tyler-Smith of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues scanned the genomes of 179 healthy men and women from the US, China, Japan and Nigeria. They compared them with a library of 50,000 mutations known to cause disease. The team focused on mutations that are directly linked with a high risk of disease, and also mutations that damage proteins, but with unknown consequences. On average, people had 400 protein-damaging mutations and two or more high-risk mutations. “We can lose a surprising number of genes without any noticeable effects on health,” says Tyler-Smith. And people can stay healthy despite high-risk mutations – such as a variant of the MYBPC3 gene that boosts heart-failure risk – perhaps because they take effect late in life, or are compensated for by other genes.

DNA finally photographed

 

DNA directly photographed for the first time:

DNA directly photographed for the first time

Fifty-nine years after James Watson and Francis Crick deduced the double-helix structure of DNA, a scientist has captured the first direct photograph of the twisted ladder that props up life. Enzo Di Fabrizio, a physics professor at Magna Graecia University in Catanzaro, Italy, snapped the picture using an electron microscope. Previously, scientists had only seen DNA’s structure indirectly. The double-corkscrew form was first discovered using a technique called X-ray crystallography, in which a material’s shape is reconstructed based on how X-rays bounce after they collide with it.

A bundle of DNA is supported by two silicon pillars.

DNA’s double-helix structure is on display for the first time in this electron microscope photograph of a small bundle of DNA strands.

But Di Fabrizio and his colleagues developed a plan to bring DNA out of hiding. They built a nanoscopic landscape of extremely water-repellant silicon pillars. When they added a solution that contained strands of DNA into this scene, the water quickly evaporated and left behind cords of bare DNA that stretched like tightropes between the tiny mesas. They then shone beams of electrons through holes in the silicon bed, and captured high-resolution images of the illuminated molecules. Di Fabrizio’s images actually show a thread of several interwoven DNA molecules, as opposed to just two coupled strands. This is because the energy of the electrons used would be enough to destroy an isolated double helix, or a single strand from a double helix. But with the use of more sensitive equipment and lower energy electrons, Di Fabrizio thinks that snapshots of individual double helices will soon be possible, New Scientist reports. Molecules of DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, store the genetic instructions that govern all living organisms’ growth and function. Di Fabrizio’s innovation will allow scientists to vividly observe interactions between DNA and some of life’s other essential ingredients, such as RNA (r ibonucleic acid ). The results of Di Fabrizio’s work were published in the journal NanoLetters.

Universe Is A Computer Simulation

Physicists May Have Evidence Universe Is A Computer Simulation:

Physicists May Have Evidence Universe Is A Computer Simulation

Physicists say they may have evidence that the universe is a computer simulation. They made a computer simulation of the universe. And it looks sort of like us. A long-proposed thought experiment, put forward by both philosophers and popular culture, points out that any civilisation of sufficient size and intelligence would eventually create a simulation universe if such a thing were possible. And since there would therefore be many more simulations (within simulations, within simulations) than real universes, it is therefore more likely than not that our world is artificial. Now a team of researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany led by Silas Beane say they have evidence this may be true. In a paper named ‘Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation’, they point out that current simulations of the universe – which do exist, but which are extremely weak and small – naturally put limits on physical laws. Technology Review explains that “the problem with all simulations is that the laws of physics, which appear continuous, have to be superimposed onto a discrete three dimensional lattice which advances in steps of time.” What that basically means is that by just being a simulation, the computer would put limits on, for instance, the energy that particles can have within the program. These limits would be experienced by those living within the sim – and as it turns out, something which looks just like these limits do in fact exist. For instance, something known as the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin, or GZK cut off, is an apparent boundary of the energy that cosmic ray particles can have. This is caused by interaction with cosmic background radiation. But Beane and co’s paper argues that the pattern of this rule mirrors what you might expect from a computer simulation. Naturally, at this point the science becomes pretty tricky to wade through – and we would advise you read the paper itself to try and get the full detail of the idea. But the basic impression is an intriguing one. Like a prisoner in a pitch-black cell, we may never be able to see the ‘walls’ of our prison — but through physics we may be able to reach out and touch them.

MIT discovers a new kind of magnetism

MIT discovers a new state of matter, a new kind of magnetism:

MIT discovers a new state of matter, a new kind of magnetism

Researchers at MIT have discovered a new state of matter with a new kind of magnetism. This new state, called a quantum spin liquid (QSL), could lead to significant advances in data storage. QSLs also exhibit a quantum phenomenon called long-range entanglement, which could lead to new types of communications systems, and more. Generally, when we talk about magnetism’s role in the realm of technology, there are just two types: Ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism. Ferromagnetism has been known about for centuries, and is the underlying force behind your compass’s spinning needle or the permanent bar magnets you played with at school. In ferromagnets, the spin (i.e. charge) of every electron is aligned in the same direction, causing two distinct poles. In antiferromagnets, neighboring electrons point in the opposite direction, causing the object to have zero net magnetism (pictured below). In combination with ferromagnets, antiferromagnets are used to create spin valves: the magnetic sensors used in hard drive heads.

In the case of quantum spin liquids, the material is a solid crystal — but the internal magnetic state is constantly in flux. The magnetic orientations of the electrons (their magnetic moment) fluctuate as they interact with other nearby electrons. “But there is a strong interaction between them, and due to quantum effects, they don’t lock in place,” says Young Lee, senior author of the research. It is these strong interactions that apparently allow for long-range quantum entanglement. The existence of QSLs has been theorized since 1987, but until now no one has succeeded in actually finding one. In MIT’s case, the researchers spent 10 months growing a tiny sliver of herbertsmithite (pictured above) — a material that was suspected to be a QSL, but which had never been properly investigated. (Bonus points if you can guess who herbertsmithite is named after.) Using neutron scattering — firing a beam of neutrons at a material to analyze its structure — the researchers found that the herbertsmithite was indeed a QSL. Moving forward, Lee says that the discovery of QSLs could lead to advances in data storage (new forms of magnetic storage) and communications (long-range entanglement). Lee also seems to think that QSLs could lead us towards higher-temperature superconductors — i.e. materials that superconduct under relatively normal conditions, rather than -200C. Really, though, the most exciting thing about quantum spin liquids is that they’re completely new, and thus we ultimately have no idea how they might eventually affect our world. “We have to get a more comprehensive understanding of the big picture,” Lee says. “There is no theory that describes everything that we’re seeing.”

Nutrition and Health based on flimsiest evidence.

The Surprising Reason People Get Fat:

 

The Surprising Reason People Get Fat

 

“I want to convince you that the conventional wisdom about weight gain is wrong,” declared Gary Taubes. The idea that eating too much and exercising too little is the culprit is, he said, “as obsolete as the belief that the sun rotates around the earth.” Thus began the most revolutionary presentation in the five-year history of the Nutrition and Health Conference, an annual three-day event co-sponsored by the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine (founded by Dr. Weil in 1994). Held most recently in Phoenix, Arizona in April of 2008, it attracted some 500 health care professionals from around the world, and the packed house at Arizona Grand Resort made it clear that Taubes was a headliner. The writer, trained in applied physics at Harvard and aerospace engineering at Stanford, specializes in parsing hot science controversies in articles and books (such as 1993’s Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion). He is widely credited with kicking off the national low-carb diet trend with his July 2002 New York Times Magazine article, What If It’s All Been a Big, Fat Lie? In 2007, he published Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control and Disease, a book that led the New York Times to assert that “Gary Taubes is a brave and bold science journalist” who shows that “much of what is believed about nutrition and health is based on the flimsiest evidence.” Taubes’ message: political pressure and sloppy science over the last 50 years have skewed research to make it seem that dietary fat and cholesterol are the main causes of obesity and heart disease, but there is, in fact, little or no objective data to support that hypothesis. A more careful look (Taubes researched his book for five years, its 450 pages include 60 pages of footnotes) reveals that the real obesity-epidemic drivers are increased consumption of refined carbohydrates, mainly sugar and white flour. Further, as he stated in his conference presentation, obesity is not “a disorder of energy imbalance,” in which weak-willed people eat too much and exercise too little, but rather “a disorder of excess fat accumulation” in which the body, not the brain, is the primary culprit. Eating too much and exercising too little are side effects, not causes, of the active role of carbohydrate-driven hormones on the whole organism, including the brain. Much of Taubes’ presentation was devoted to illustrating the central role that glucose and insulin – both of which are products of carbohydrate metabolism – play in fat deposition. A chemical compound derived from glucose, he said, turns fatty acids – the “burnable” kind of fat – into triglycerides, the “storable” form of fat. Consequently, “Anything that works to transport glucose into fat cells works to deposit fat.” And what transports glucose into fat cells? Insulin. “When insulin is secreted or chronically elevated, fat accumulates in fat tissue,” he said. “When insulin levels drop, fat escapes from fat tissue and the fat depots shrink.” Bottom line: “Carbohydrate is driving insulin is driving fat deposition.” So when it comes to accumulating fat, carbohydrates are indeed “bad calories,” as they are the only ones that boost insulin and make fat accumulation possible. Highly refined carbohydrates are even worse, as they lead to insulin surges and subsequent drops, which creates a hunger for more – hunger so voracious that, for most people, it can’t be overcome by willpower. Refined carbohydrates, Taubes contends in his book, are literally addictive. So what’s the scientific weight-loss solution? Taubes asserted that since the fewer carbohydrates we eat, the leaner we will be, our diets should emphasize meat, fish, fowl, cheese, butter, eggs and non-starchy vegetables. Conversely, we should reduce or, preferably, eliminate bread and other baked goods, potatoes, yams, rice, pasta, cereal grains, corn, sugar (both sucrose and high fructose corn syrup) ice cream, candy, soft drinks, fruit juices, bananas and other tropical fruits, and beer. Excluding carbohydrates from the diet, he said, derails the insulin peak/dip roller coaster, so one is never voraciously hungry, making weight loss and healthy-weight maintenance easy. “When you eat this way, the fat just melts off,” he said after his speech – and Taubes is indeed a lean fellow. While Dr. Weil agrees with most of Taubes’ research, he draws the line at the writer’s specific dietary recommendations: “I don’t agree that the way to respond to this information is to eat a diet that is mostly meat and no carbohydrate.” He said instead that people should eat animal protein two to three times per week – mostly as fatty, cold-water fish to reap the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids – and otherwise eat carbohydrate foods that rank low on the glycemic load scale. “All carbohydrates are not the same, nor do all people react to them in the same way,” he said. “That needs to be taken into account.” But overall, Dr. Weil, like the other assembled health-care professionals, came away impressed. “I invited Gary to speak, and I’ve been recommending the book to my medical colleagues and students. It’s important to get this information out to the medical community, because a lot of the ways that we try to prevent and treat obesity are based on assumptions that have no scientific evidence.”

 

Intelligence Linked to Ancient Genetic Accident

Origin of Intelligence and Mental Illness Linked to Ancient Genetic Accident

 

Researchers have identified the moment in history when the genes that enabled us to think and reason evolved. This point 500 million years ago provided our ability to learn complex skills, analyse situations and have flexibility in the way in which we think. Professor Seth Grant, of the University of Edinburgh, who led the research, said: “One of the greatest scientific problems is to explain how intelligence and complex behaviours arose during evolution.” The research, which is detailed in two papers in Nature Neuroscience, also shows a direct link between the evolution of behaviour and the origins of brain diseases. Scientists believe that the same genes that improved our mental capacity are also responsible for a number of brain disorders. “This ground breaking work has implications for how we understand the emergence of psychiatric disorders and will offer new avenues for the development of new treatments,” said John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust, one of the study funders. The study shows that intelligence in humans developed as the result of an increase in the number of brain genes in our evolutionary ancestors. The researchers suggest that a simple invertebrate animal living in the sea 500 million years ago experienced a ‘genetic accident’, which resulted in extra copies of these genes being made. This animal’s descendants benefited from these extra genes, leading to behaviourally sophisticated vertebrates — including humans. The research team studied the mental abilities of mice and humans, using comparative tasks that involved identifying objects on touch-screen computers. Researchers then combined results of these behavioural tests with information from the genetic codes of various species to work out when different behaviours evolved. They found that higher mental functions in humans and mice were controlled by the  same genes. The study also showed that when these genes were mutated or damaged, they impaired higher mental functions. “Our work shows that the price of higher intelligence and more complex behaviours is more mental illness,” said Professor Grant. The researchers had previously shown that more than 100 childhood and adult brain diseases are caused by gene mutations. “We can now apply genetics and behavioural testing to help patients with these diseases,” said Dr Tim Bussey from Cambridge University, which was also involved in the study.

 

Ill boy send’s robot to school

Boy sends robot to school in his place:

Boy sends robot to school in his place

A seven-year-old boy who is too ill to go to school has sent a robot to class in his place. Devon Carrow, from New York in America, uses the £3,000 ‘robo-swot’ to answer his teachers’ questions and take part in group discussions, all from the comfort of his home. The high-tech gadget uses HD cameras to show Devon his classroom and he can signal when he wants to give an answer with a flashing light.

The robot even has its own desk! Devon has lots of allergies, which mean it is dangerous for him to be around other children. His Mum says that the equipment helps him feel included and realise that he still has to go to school the same as anyone else.

Viruse not the cause Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Viruses not to blame for chronic fatigue syndrome after all:

Viruses not to blame for chronic fatigue syndrome

Contrary to previous findings, new research finds no link between chronic fatigue syndrome and the viruses XMRV (xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus) and pMLV (polytropic murine leukemia virus). A study to be published on September 18 in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, reveals that research that reported patients with chronic fatigue syndrome carried these two viruses was wrong and that there is still no evidence for an infectious cause behind chronic fatigue syndrome. “The bottom line is we found no evidence of infection with XMRV and pMLV. These results refute any correlation between these agents and disease,” says Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, a co-author on the study. Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), is a disabling condition in which sufferers experience persistent and unexplained fatigue as well as any of a host of associated problems, including muscle weakness, pain, impaired memory, and disordered sleep. Medical treatment for CFS/ME costs as much as $7 billion every year in the U.S. alone. The possible causes of CFS/ME have been argued and researched for years with no success. Results from separate studies in 2009 and 2010 that reported finding retroviruses in the blood of patients with CFS/ME created a sensation among patients and the medical community and offered hope that a tractable cause for this disease had finally been found. Since then, other investigators have been unable to replicate the results of those studies, casting doubt on the idea that these viruses, XMRV and pMLV, could be behind CFS/ME. Lipkin says the National Institutes of Health wanted conclusive answers about the possible link. “We went ahead and set up a study to test this thing once and for all and determine whether we could find footprints of these viruses in people with chronic fatigue syndrome or in healthy controls,” says Lipkin. The study in mBio® puts the speculation to rest, he says. Scientists were wrong about a potential link between chronic fatigue syndrome and these viruses. The study authors recruited almost 300 people, 147 patients with CFS/ME and 146 people without the syndrome, to participate. Researchers tested blood drawn from these subjects for the presence of genes specific to the viruses XMRV and pMLV, much in the way the earlier studies had done. But in this study, researchers took extraordinary care to eliminate contamination in the enzyme mixtures and chemicals used for testing, which may have been the source of viruses and genes detected in the earlier studies. XMRV and pMLV are commonly found in mice but there has never been a confirmed case of human infection with these viruses. The authors of this study include many of the authors of the original papers that reported finding XMRV and pMLV in the blood of CFS/ME patients. This is an important point, says Lipkin, as their participation should lend credibility to the pre-eminence of these newer results over the flawed earlier studies, which offered a certain amount of false hope to the CFS/ME community. Research on the causes of CFS/ME will continue, says Lipkin. “We’ve tested the XMRV/pMLV hypothesis and found it wanting,” he says. But, he says, “we are not abandoning the patients. We are not abandoning the science. The controversy brought a new focus that will drive efforts to understand CFS/ME and lead to improvements in diagnosis, prevention and treatment of this syndrome.”

 

Alzheimer’s as Type 3 diabetes

Alzheimer’s could be reclassified as Type 3 diabetes:

Alzheimer’s could be reclassified as Type 3 diabetes

Growing evidence that Alzheimer’s is primarily a metabolic disease has led some researchers to propose reclassifying it as Type 3 diabetes, according to the Guardian. Such a revelation could have profound implications on the role that the junk food industry plays in causing Alzheimer’s. Today an estimated 35 million people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease around the world, and as many as 346 million people suffer from diabetes. Both numbers are expected to rise exponentially over the next several decades — rises that also happen to be correlated with increasing obesity rates. The correlation is so uncanny that many scientists are investigating a causal relationship between all three epidemics, with staggering results. Type 2 diabetes has already been strongly linked with obesity and diet as well as with dementia and Alzheimer’s. For instance, Type 2 sufferers are two to three times more likely to get Alzheimer’s than the general population. The link between Alzheimer’s and obesity has been studied less, but a growing cacophony of research is filling that gap. For instance, studies have strongly linked midlife obesity to Alzheimer’s. Fitness and a better diet have also been linked to a decreased occurrence of dementia. Now new studies are suggesting a link even more profound: that Alzheimer’s may be caused directly by the brain’s impaired response to insulin. A 2005 report found that levels of both insulin and insulin-like growth factors in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients were lower than normal, with the lowest levels being found in the brain regions most devastated by the disease. Meanwhile, a report released just last year found that an insulin spray helped improve memory skills in people with Alzheimer’s. Insulin has a well-defined role in the brain’s chemistry. It helps regulate the transmission of signals between neurons. It’s not difficult to begin connecting the dots at this point. A causal relationship between Alzheimer’s and the brain’s insulin regulation isn’t difficult to imagine and detail. Of course, more research needs to be done to know for sure, but if Alzheimer’s and other kinds of dementia are proven to be another form of diabetes, then the obesity epidemic — and the junk food industry that fuels it — could have consequences on public health that are even more profound than previously realized.

Antibody prevents and cure’s flu

Single antibody found to both prevent and cure flu

Single antibody found to both prevent and cure flu

A single antibody has been found to prevent the influenza virus from taking hold of host cells, as well as cure animals that are already infected, UT San Diego reported. Researchers from the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., examined thousands of proteins in order to identify the antibody.  After analyzing the influenza virus in its 3-D crystalline form, the scientists discovered the antibody attacks a structure of the virus that is used to take hold of healthy cells. Study author Ian Wilson, a professor of structural biology at Scripps, said this discovery of focused binding has “never been seen before.” “It gives us some good idea about designs for vaccines and therapies,” Wilson said. The study involved collecting bone marrow from patients exposed to different strains of the influenza virus.  According to UT San Diego, bone marrow essentially acts as a storage facility for all the antibodies a person’s body has ever produced, so the study’s researchers knew the antibody they were looking for would be there. Next, the researchers created a catalogue of billions of flu antibodies, allowing them to pinpoint Co5 – an antibody able to bind to influenza A viruses.  Added to petri dishes of healthy cells and influenza A, Co5 stopped the cells from getting infected.  Mice studies echoed the same results, with Co5 preventing influenza in mice.  Also, when mice were given Co5 after having contracted the flu, all were cured. “Clearly, the holy grail is a universal flu vaccine, and this is another important step toward that,” Wilson said

 

‘heroin-like’ medicine crush’s major depression

 

Non-addictive, ‘heroin-like’ medicine may soon crush major depression:

Non-addictive, ‘heroin-like’ medicine may soon crush major depression

What could easily be the most important advance in the pharmacologic treatment of major depression and anxiety disorders is now unfolding. A new investigational drug, currently known as ALKS 5461, could deliver all the mood-enhancing and anxiety-lowering effects that lead people to use opiates like heroin and Oxycontin—without the potential for getting high or addicted. That’s right:  ALKS 5461 could be a non-abusable, non-addictive heroin-like compound. ALKS 5461 is actually a combination of two molecules. The first is buprenorphine, which is already used to provide some of the benefits of opiates, without many of the worst side effects, allowing people to get off of street drugs (as an alternative to methadone). The second molecule is now known as ALKS 33—and that’s the magic part. ALKS 33 interferes with the binding of buprenorphine to the receptors that are involved in making people feel euphoric. Those are the receptors also involved in getting people to crave opiates like alcoholics crave alcohol. In a double-blind, placebo controlled study (meaning, the participants had no idea whether they were getting ALKS 5461 or a sugar pill), ALKS 5461 was rapidly effective in relieving symptoms in 32 patients with major depression.  All 32 patients responded to the medicine—with results evident by seven days. What’s more, all of them had failed to respond adequately to traditional antidepressants like Prozac or Effexor. Ultimately, I believe ALKS 5461 could revolutionize the pharmacologic treatment of major depression and panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. It should come as no surprise that ALKS 5461 is the brainchild of scientists at Alkermes Pharmaceuticals, the same company, which invented and markets Vivitrol, a monthly injection that can take away the “high” of using alcohol and street drugs—and in my opinion, ought to be something that every family member of every addict clamors to get their loved one to take. If ALKS 5461 comes to market (and I believe it will), then that scourge we call major depression will be dealt a massive blow.  It will still be imperative to use insight-oriented psychotherapy to get to the bottom of what unique psychological issues have fueled each person’s depression, but that should be easier—not harder—when folks aren’t struggling just to get out of bed and over to their psychiatrists’ offices. This is a really big deal.

 

Transhumanism CEO Says A.I. Singularity ‘Very Bad for Humans’

Top Transhumanism CEO Says AI Singularity Will Go ‘Very Badly For Humans’:

Top Transhumanism CEO Says AI Singularity Will Go ‘Very Badly For Humans’

Promises of ‘immortality’ and a disease-free life have led many individuals to long for the hope of artificial intelligence and what is known as Singularity. It is essentially a merging of man and machine, the development of a ‘new species’ — a ‘borg’ of sorts. The subject recently made headlines when a major Russian scientist promised Singularity to the wealthy elite and ruling class by 2045 through the 2045 program, with artificial bodies available as early as 2015. On the surface it may sound enticing to those who are willing to trust their new artificial brains and bodies hooked up to a massive super computer that has control over their every action (through the utilization of RFID-like chips). Even the CEO of one of the largest and most well-known organizations known as the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence admits, however, that the boom in artificial intelligence leading up to Singularity will not go very well for humans. The high-powered CEO admits that not only is the research on artificial intelligence outpacing the safety research that is intended to keep it in check, but that Singularity would actually make humans the ‘prey’ of sorts to the ‘super-human’ AI. While doing an open Q&A on the community website Reddit, CEO Luke Muehlhauser explains that the superhuman AI would end up ‘optimizing’ the entire globe and starving resources from humans. In other words, the AI would suppress humans similar to the premise of iRobot or other similar works. This is particularly interesting when considering that artificial bodies and brains have been promised first to the wealthy elite by the 2045 program creator, allowing world rulers and the financial elite to achieve ‘immortality’ and subsequently a never-ending rule over the humans of the world. Muehlhauser explains how humans would become a ‘prey’ to the ruthless ‘super-human’ AI with the completion of Singularity:

“Unfortunately, the singularity may not be what you’re hoping for. By default the singularity (intelligence explosion) will go very badly for humans… so by default superhuman AIs will end up optimizing the world around us for something other than what we want, and using up all our resources to do so.“

The concerns echo those put forth by researchers and analysts who have been following the concept of Singularity for decades. With the ultimate goal of linking all hyper-intelligent androids into a ‘cognitive network’ of sorts and eventually even forfeiting physical bodies, it’s clear that the Singularity movement even has its top supporters openly speaking out against it in many regards. What’s even more clear, however, is the fact that AI Singularity has no place for humankind — not even in a form of co-existence.

 

Hacking Brain For Under $300

Your Brain Can Now Be Hacked For Under $300:

Your Brain Can Now Be Hacked For Under $300

Cyberpunk and sci-fi films like the Matrix and Brainstorm play around with the idea of gaining access to the human mind. It’s easy to hack a computer, but most people always thought that hacking the human brain was impossible. As it turns out, it’s entirely possible and really cheap to boot. Researchers at Usenix Security Conference have proven that it’s now possible to hack the human brain. What’s terrifying is that it doesn’t require any kind of expensive hardware or technical knowhow. In fact, you could hack somebody’s brain right now for a little under $300. The researchers used a brain computer interface which are commonly used in research that scans brain patterns. The technology has been in use for many years now, but only recently did it come down drastically in price. The current models allow users to control their computers with their thoughts, but the researchers have proven that it goes both ways. The team built a piece of custom software that can essentially read your mind. They were able to effectively use the software combined with the brain scanner to extract sensitive data including, but not limited to, credit card PINs, address, month of birth and more. Thankfully, they were only able to achieve a success rate of 10 to 40 percent. It’s pretty bad when they were successful though. They were able to easily work out private information that only you should know. Of course, you can easily guard against it by not thinking about it. The only problem is that we subconsciously think about a lot of things, including private matters. It’s quite different from what we see in sci-fi films, but the era of brain hacking may soon be upon us. The police and other authorities may be able to get confessions out of people far more easily if it goes into wide spread use. The researchers also warn that hackers could make brain controlled games that make it easier for them to extract sensitive data while you’re busy having fun.

Immortality Offered To Billionaires

Russian Project Offers Immortality To Billionaires:

Russian Project Offers Immortality To Billionaires

Interested in a second life as a robot? The goal is to achieve the ability to upload an individual’s mind into an artificial surrogate, and offer it as a service to the planet’s richest individuals in a decade or so. A Russian entrepreneur who heads a hi-tech research project called ‘Avatar’ has contacted billionaires to offer them immortality. Dmitry Itskov claims he will personally oversee their immortality process, in exchange for an undisclosed fee. Itskov, a media entrepreneur, claims to have hired 30 scientists to reach this goal – and aims to transplant a human brain into a robot body within 10 years. “You have the ability to finance the extension of your own life up to immortality. Our civilization has come very close to the creation of such technologies: it’s not a science fiction fantasy. It is in your power to make sure that this goal will be achieved in your lifetime,” says Itskov in a letter delivered to billionaires listed in Forbes magazine. The initiative is opening its San Francisco office this summer, and will be launching a social media project connecting scientists around the world. ‘The next effort of science will be to create a new body for the human being,’ says Itskov, speaking at the Global Future 2045 conference. ‘It will have a perfect brain-machine interface to allow control and a human brain life support system so the brain can survive outside the body.’

Government Scanners Instantly Know Everything About You

 Hidden Government Scanners Will Instantly Know Everything About You From 164 Feet Away:

Hidden Government Scanners Will Instantly Know Everything About You From 164 Feet Away

Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body. According to the undersecretary for science and technology by the Department of Homeland Security, you might start seeing [these scanners] in airports as soon as 2013.  And, since it’s extremely portable, will this technology extend beyond the airport or border crossings and into police cars, with officers looking for people on the street with increased levels of adrenaline in their system to detain in order to prevent potential violent outbursts? And will your car be scanned at stoplights for any trace amounts of suspicious substances? Would all this information be recorded anywhere?

Human Cells Powerful as Lighting Bolts

Human Cells have Electric Fields as Powerful as Lighting Bolts:

Human Cells have Electric Fields as Powerful as Lighting Bolts

Using newly developed voltage-sensitive nanoparticles, researchers have found that the previously unknown electric fields inside of cells are as strong, or stronger, as those produced in lightning bolts. Previously, it has only been possible to measure electric fields across cell membranes, not within the main bulk of cells, so scientists didn’t even know cells had an internal electric field. This discovery is a surprising twist for cell researchers. Scientists don’t know what causes these incredibly strong fields or why they’ are there. But now using new nanotools, such as voltage-sensitive dyes, they can start to measure them at least. Researchers believe they may be able to learn more about disease states, such as cancer, by studying these minute, but powerful electric fields. University of Michigan researchers led by chemistry professor Raoul Kopelman encapsulated voltage-sensitive dyes in polymer spheres just 30 nanometers in diameter. Testing these nanoparticles in the internal fluid of brain-cancer cells, Kopelman found electric fields as strong as 15 million volts per meter, up to five times stronger than the field found in a lightning bolt. However, this discovery goes beyond being incredibly interesting; the finding will likely change the way researchers look at disease. “They have developed a tool that allows you to look at cellular changes on a very local level,” said Piotr Grodzinski, director of the National Cancer Institute Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer in Technology Review. Grodzinski believes many developments in cancer research, for example, over the past few years have been “reactive” rather than proactive. Despite how far cancer treatments have come, the way that cancer, and other diseases, progresses at the cellular level in the first place is still not well understood. With a better understanding, researchers could improve diagnostics and care. “This development represents an attempt to start using nanoscale tools to understand how disease develops,” said Grodzinski. Kopelman has developed encapsulated voltage-sensitive dyes that aren’t hydrophobic and can operate anywhere in the cell, rather than just in membranes. Because it’s possible to place his encapsulated dyes in a cell with a greater degree of control, Kopelman likens them to voltmeters. “Nano voltmeters do not perturb [the cellular] environment, and you can control where you put them,” he says. The existence of strong electric fields across cellular membranes is accepted as a basic fact of cell biology. The fact that cells have internal electric fields as well, however, is a whole new revelation. Scientists previously did not know of the existence of internal cellular energy fields, and are just in the earliest stages of understand the phenomenon. Kopelman presented his results at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology this month. “There has been no skepticism as to the measurements,” says Kopelman. “But we don’t have an interpretation.” Daniel Chu of the University of Washington in Seattle agrees that Kopelman’s work provides proof of concept that cells have internal electric fields. “It’s bound to be important, but nobody has looked at it yet,” Chu says.

Telepathy machine repeats your thoughts

Your thoughts may not be private for long: New machine can turn your inner dialogue into speech just by monitoring brain waves:

Telepathy machine reads your mind

Imagine being able to read other people’s thoughts, to hear their inner dialogue. It’s a fantasy that has inspired superhero comic books, movies and science fiction novels, but so far scientists have been unable to prove that such psychic or telepathic powers really exist. Or at least, they have yet to prove that humans are capable of them. Machines are another story. In fact, scientists are currently on the verge of inventing a telepathic machine that can read your mind just by looking at a scan of your brainwaves, then repeat back to you in an electronic voice exactly what you were thinking, according to a report by New Scientist. The technology could be a breakthrough for people like Stephen Hawking, who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease, or people made mute through paralysis or locked-in syndrome, since it can translate the brain waves that we create when we think something into speech. Of course, some others may also be concerned that the technology could one day be used to make our private thoughts not-so-private anymore. Here’s how it works. A team of researchers led by Brian Pasley by the University of California at Berkeley first pinpointed key areas in the brain where speech and sound is processed and generated. They then studied the way that certain neurons are uniquely triggered depending on the frequency of the sound that is heard. “Simply put, one spot [of neurons] might only care about a frequency range of 1000 hertz and doesn’t care about anything else. Another spot might care about a frequency of 5000 hertz,” said Pasley. “We can look at their activity and identify what frequency they care about. From that we can assume that when that spot’s activity is increasing there was a sound that had that frequency in it.” Because they were interested in reconstructing speech sounds specifically, such as spoken words and sentences, the researchers didn’t just study the neural activity of sound frequency. They also considered other important aspects of speech sounds such as the rhythm of syllables and fluctuations of frequencies. They were then able to train an algorithm to interpret the neural activity and then ‘translate’ that neural activity back into the sound that was originally heard. The reason this makes the machine telepathic is that brain activity is believed to be virtually the same whether we hear a sentence or whether we think it. In other words, the algorithm can turn even your inner thoughts into spoken speech using exactly the same method. So far tests on the machine have revealed rudimentary, but promising, results. While the concept behind the machine and the algorithm is fairly basic, real thoughts are extremely complex neurological entities, and will take a lot more effort to fully ‘decode’ into audible speech.

Monsanto’s Protecting GMO Label

Monsanto Threatens to Sue, Requiring GMO Food to Be Labeled:

Monsanto

 

The world’s most hated corporation is at it again, this time in Vermont.  Despite overwhelming public support and the support of a clear majority of Vermont’s Agriculture Committee, Vermont legislators are dragging their feet on a proposed GMO labeling bill. Why? Because Monsanto has threatened to sue the state if the bill passes.  The popular legislative bill requiring mandatory labels on genetically engineered food (H-722) is languishing in the Vermont House Agriculture Committee, with only four weeks left until the legislature adjourns for the year. Despite thousands of emails and calls from constituents who overwhelmingly support mandatory labeling, despite the fact that a majority (6 to 5) of Agriculture Committee members supports passage of the measure, Vermont legislators are holding up the labeling bill and refusing to take a vote.  Instead, they’re calling for more public hearings on April 12, in the apparent hope that they can run out the clock until the legislative session ends in early May.  What happened to the formerly staunch legislative champions of Vermont’s “right to know” bill? They lost their nerve and abandoned their principles after Monsanto representative recently threatened a public official that the Biotech giant would sue Vermont if they dared to pass the bill. Several legislators have rather unconvincingly argued that the Vermont public has a “low appetite” for any bills, even very popular bills like this one, that might end up in court. Others expressed concern about Vermont being the first state to pass a mandatory GMO labeling bill and then having to “go it alone” against Monsanto in court.  What it really comes down to this: Elected officials are abandoning the public interest and public will in the face of corporate intimidation.  Monsanto has used lawsuits or threats of lawsuits for 20 years to force unlabeled genetically engineered foods on the public, and to intimidate farmers into buying their genetically engineered seeds and hormones. When Vermont became the first state in the nation in 1994 to require mandatory labels on milk and dairy products derived from cows injected with the controversial genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone, Monsanto’s minions sued in Federal Court and won on a judge’s decision that dairy corporations have the first amendment “right” to remain silent on whether or not they are injecting their cows with rBGH – even though rBGH has been linked to severe health damage in cows and increased cancer risk for humans, and is banned in much of the industrialized world, including Europe and Canada.  Monsanto wields tremendous influence in Washington, DC and most state capitals. The company’s stranglehold over politicians and regulatory officials is what has prompted activists in California to bypass the legislature and collect 850,000 signatures to place a citizens’ Initiative on the ballot in November 2012. The 2012 California Right to Know Act will force mandatory labeling of GMOs and to ban the routine practice of labeling GMO-tainted food as “natural.”  All of Monsanto’s fear mongering and intimidation tactics were blatantly on display in the House Agriculture Committee hearings March 15-16.  During the hearings the Vermont legislature was deluged with calls, letters, and e-mails urging passage of a GMO labeling bill – more than on any other bill since the fight over Civil Unions in 1999-2000. The legislature heard from pro-labeling witnesses such as Dr. Michael Hansen, an expert on genetic engineering from the Consumers Union, who shredded industry claims that GMO’s are safe and that consumers don’t need to know if their food is contaminated with them.

Cultural stereotypes rooted in Genetic’s

Why the British are freethinking and the Chinese love conformity: It’s all in the genes claim scientists:

Gene DNA

Cultural stereotypes may be deeply rooted in our genetic makeup, say scientists.  Common traits like British individualism and Chinese conformity could be attributed to genetic differences between races according to a new study.  The study, by the department of psychology at Northwestern University in Illinois, suggests that the individualism seen in western nations, and the higher levels of collectivism and family loyalty found in Asian cultures, are caused by differences in the prevalence of particular genes. Common traits like British individualism and Chinese conformity could be attributed to genetic differences between races according to new research.  ‘We demonstrate for the first time a robust association between cultural values of individualism–collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene,’ said Joan Chiao, from the department of psychology at Northwestern University.  Chiao and her colleagues combined data from global genetic surveys, looking at variations in the prevalence of various genes. The findings were matched with other research which ranked nations by levels of individualism and collectivism.  The team focused their attentions on the gene that controls levels of serotonin, a chemical in the brain which regulates mood and emotions.

 

Japanese men praying.  Their studies found that one version of the gene was far more common in western populations which, they said, was associated with individualistic and freethinking behavior.  Another version of the same gene, which was prevalent in Asian populations, they said was associated with collectivism and a greater willingness to put the common good first.  People with this gene appeared to have a different response to serotonin.

 

 A protestor at the Occupy site in front of St Paul’s in London.  If they are confirmed, the findings made by Chiao and her colleagues would suggest that races may have a number of inherent psychological differences — just as they differ in physical appearances.  Chiao suggests that the version of the gene predominating in Asian populations is associated with heightened anxiety levels and increased risk of depression.  She adds that such populations respond by structuring their society to ward off those negative effects.  The success of such social structures would then ensure that the gene would spread.  She added the findings showed how culture could exert a powerful influence on human genetics and evolution.

U.S. diplomats work directly for Monsanto

Leaked documents reveal US diplomats actually work for Monsanto:

Monsanto's

Biotech giant Monsanto has been genetically modifying the world’s food supply and subsequently breeding environmental devastation for years, but leaked documents now reveal that Monsanto has also deeply infiltrated the United States government. With leaked reports revealing how U.S. diplomats are actually working for Monsanto to push their agenda along with other key government officials, Monsanto’s grasp on international politics has never been clearer.  Amazingly, the information reveals that the massive corporation is also intensely involved in the passing and regulations concerning the very GM ingredients they are responsible for. In fact, the information released by WikiLeaks reveals just how much power Monsanto has thanks to key positions within the United States government and elsewhere. Not only was it exposed that the U.S. is threatening nations who oppose Monsanto with military-style trade wars, but that many U.S. diplomats actually work directly for Monsanto.  What the leaked documents reveal — Military style trade wars, government corruption.  In 2007 it was requested that specific nations in the European Union be punished for not supporting the expansion of Monsanto’s GMO crops. The request for such measures to be taken was made by Craig Stapleton, the United States ambassador to France and partner to George W. Bush. Despite mounting evidence linking Monsanto’s GM corn to organ damage and environmental devastation, the ambassador plainly calls for ‘target retaliation’ against those not supporting the GM crop. In the leaked documents, Stapleton states:  “Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits. The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices.”  The undying support of key players within the U.S. towards Monsanto is undeniably made clear not only in this release, but in the legislative decisions taken by organizations such as the FDA and USDA. Legislative decisions such as allowing Monsanto’s synthetic hormone Posilac (rBGH) to be injected into U.S. cows despite being banned in 27 countries. How did Monsanto pull this off?  The Biotech juggernaut managed to infiltrate the FDA positions responsible for the approval of rBGH, going as far as instating the company’s own Margaret Miller as Deputy Director of Human Safety and Consultative Services. After assuming this position, Miller reviewed her own report on the safety and effectiveness of rBGH.  Many US diplomats pawns of Monsanto’s GM agenda.  While it may be shocking to you if you are not familiar with the corrupt influence of Monsanto, the cables also show that many US diplomats are pushing GMO crops as a strategic government and commercial imperative. Interestingly enough, the U.S. focused their efforts toward advisers to the pope specifically, due to the fact that many Catholic figureheads have openly voiced their opposition to GM foods. With this kind of political influence, is it any wonder that many food staples are now predominantly GM? Nearly 93% of U.S. soybeans are heavily modified conservatively, with many other staple crops coming in at similar numbers.  U.S. diplomats have unique opportunities to spread honest and intellectual campaigns that can serve to better mankind and end suffering, however they are instead spreading the roots of Monsanto deeper and deeper into international territory. As a substitute for the betterment of mankind, these paid-off diplomats are now spreading environment desecration and health destruction.  As if there wasn’t already enough information to reveal Monsanto’s corruption, the biotech giant also spends enormous amount of money lobbying government each year. Monsanto spent an astonishing $2 million lobbying the federal government in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone, according to mainstream sources. Why so much cash? The government lobbying focuses on issues like regulations for GM crops and patent reforms. This ‘legal’ form of persuasion is the reason government agencies like the USDA and FDA let Monsanto roam freely.  Satisfying government officials’ financial vested interest is all that matters when dealing with corrupt mega-corporations like Monsanto. As long as these financial ties continue to exist, Monsanto will continue to reign over the food supply and continue to wreak devastation to the environment, ecosystem, and humankind.