Aging Outright Reversed for First Time

The present reality regarding telomere therapies is one of surprising outright success with zero side effects. All the reported cautions are completely untested and speculative. It is rubbish until shown otherwise by appropriate science.

Now we have a stunning age reversal in a nicely prepared animal model. This powerfully indicates that we are way closer to outright success than anyone ever imagined. This surely deserves a high five.

In the meantime individuals are out self testing the protocol at serious expense and with little reporting underway. I would like to see more and would welcome reports from users on my blog to assist others.

I included a second item that introduces some current efforts toward providing this technology without a pill.

Harvard scientists reverse the ageing process in mice – now for humans

Harvard scientists were surprised that they saw a dramatic reversal, not just a slowing down, of the ageing in mice. Now they believe they might be able to regenerate human organs

Ian Sample, science correspondent

Sunday 28 November 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/nov/28/scientists-reverse-ageing-mice-humans

Scientists claim to be a step closer to reversing the ageing process after rejuvenating worn out organs in elderly mice. The experimental treatment developed by researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, turned weak and feeble old mice into healthy animals by regenerating their aged bodies.

The surprise recovery of the animals has raised hopes among scientists that it may be possible to achieve a similar feat in humans – or at least to slow down the aging process.

An anti-ageing therapy could have a dramatic impact on public health by reducing the burden of age-related health problems, such as dementia, stroke and heart disease, and prolonging the quality of life for an increasingly aged population.

"What we saw in these animals was not a slowing down or stabilisation of the ageing process. We saw a dramatic reversal – and that was unexpected," said Ronald DePinho, who led the study, which was published in the journal Nature.

"This could lead to strategies that enhance the regenerative potential of organs as individuals age and so increase their quality of life. Whether it serves to increase longevity is a question we are not yet in a position to answer."

The ageing process is poorly understood, but scientists know it is caused by many factors. Highly reactive particles called free radicals are made naturally in the body and cause damage to cells, while smoking, ultraviolet light and other environmental factors contribute to ageing.

The Harvard group focused on a process called telomere shortening. Most cells in the body contain 23 pairs of chromosomes, which carry our DNA. At the ends of each chromosome is a protective cap called a telomere. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres are snipped shorter, until eventually they stop working and the cell dies or goes into a suspended state called "senescence". The process is behind much of the wear and tear associated with ageing.

At Harvard, they bred genetically manipulated mice that lacked an enzyme called telomerase that stops telomeres getting shorter. Without the enzyme, the mice aged prematurely and suffered ailments, including a poor sense of smell, smaller brain size, infertility and damaged intestines and spleens. But when DePinho gave the mice injections to reactivate the enzyme, it repaired the damaged tissues and reversed the signs of ageing.

"These were severely aged animals, but after a month of treatment they showed a substantial restoration, including the growth of new neurons in their brains," said DePinho.

Repeating the trick in humans will be more difficult. Mice make telomerase throughout their lives, but the enzyme is switched off in adult humans, an evolutionary compromise that stops cells growing out of control and turning into cancer. [ Do we really know this? - arclein ] Raising levels of telomerase in people might slow the ageing process, but it makes the risk of cancer soar.[ or does it? There has been a lot of untested nonsense floating around this very new line of inquiry. arclein]

DePinho said the treatment might be safe in humans if it were given periodically and only to younger people who do not have tiny clumps of cancer cells already living, unnoticed, in their bodies.

David Kipling, who studies ageing at Cardiff University, said: "The goal for human tissue 'rejuvenation' would be to remove senescent cells, or else compensate for the deleterious effects they have on tissues and organs. Although this is a fascinating study, it must be remembered that mice are not little men, particularly with regard to their telomeres, and it remains unclear whether a similar telomerase reactivation in adult humans would lead to the removal of senescent cells."

Lynne Cox, a biochemist at Oxford University, said the study was "extremely important" and "provides proof of principle that short-term treatment to restore telomerase in adults already showing age-related tissue degeneration can rejuvenate aged tissues and restore physiological function."

DePinho said none of Harvard's mice developed cancer after the treatment. The team is now investigating whether it extends the lifespan of mice or enables them to live healthier lives into old age.

Tom Kirkwood, director of the Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University, said: "The key question is what might this mean for human therapies against age-related diseases? While there is some evidence that telomere erosion contributes to age-associated human pathology, it is surely not the only, or even dominant, cause, as it appears to be in mice engineered to lack telomerase. Furthermore, there is the ever-present anxiety that telomerase reactivation is a hallmark of most human cancers."

Telomere Rejuvenation — Key To Health and Longevity

by C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D.; Professor Emeritus of Energy Medicine, Holos University Graduate Seminary

Abstract

Telomeres ordinarily shrink by 1% annually, from birth to death. The telomeres of people with unhealthy habits have much faster shrinkage, while those of people with the best habits and genes shrink at a slower rate, thus enabling such people to live to approximately 100 years. Ultimately, telomere health is a major determinant of health and longevity. Rejuvenation or regrowth of telomeres is, therefore, a major key to longevity and health.

In a pilot study, telomeres in 6 individuals, 3 men and 3 women from 50 to 74 years of age, were measured initially in lymphocytes and neutrophils. Each participant then spent 30 minutes at least 5 days each week sitting or lying in an electromagnetic field of 54 to 78 GHz, 50 to 75 decibels, or 1 billionth of a watt per centimeter square.

These same frequencies are reported to be present in ambient sunlight at an intensity of ten-billionths of a watt per centimeter square. Human DNA has been reported by Ukrainian physicists as resonating at 54 to 78 GHz.

After 3 months of this electromagnetically generated solar homeopathic approach, average telomere length had increased 1%. After 10 months of use of the device, average telomere length had increased 2.9%. Theoretically this "reverses" 2.9 years of telomere aging.

Using this approach, a 75 year old would theoretically reverse telomere aging by 50 years within a 14 year period. Obviously, many other parameters of health need to be evaluated as we continue these studies long term.

[ I find this to be an attractive protocol for both the apparent efficacy but that it can obviously be also integrated into a meditation discipline. - Arclein ]

Telomere Rejuventation

In 1925 a Russian engineer, Georges Lakhovsky, published his classic book, The Creation of Health, in French. It was translated into English in 1935 and is still in print. He stated that human DNA has a resonant frequency of 50+ gigahertz (GHz – billions of cycles per second).

In the early 1980s, Ukrainian physicists determined that this frequency was 54-78 GHz and further reported that a majority of illnesses were "cured" by applying these frequencies to acupuncture points. Lakhovsky further reported "curing" many illnesses, including cancer, by applying a Tesla coil to two copper coils placed three feet apart with patients sitting in the center of these coils with the head near the center of the field induced by the Tesla coil. Tesla coils emit a random range of frequencies from 1 Hz up to at least 100 GHz.

In 1994, under an IRB protocol, 75 patients were treated with a modification of the Lakhovsky apparatus.1 Twenty-five patients each had rheumatoid arthritis, depression or chronic back pain. They sat for 60 minutes daily, 5 days a week for 2 weeks, in a 24 inch square cubicle, 48 inches high, with copper plates on the walls and a copper tubing pyramid over the base so that the copper pyramid and the copper base were physically connected. A Tesla coil was connected to the copper tubing and activated during the treatment. At the end of 2 weeks, 70% of the patients with depression or rheumatoid arthritis were markedly improved but only half of the back patients improved (Fig. 1).

Shortly after that, a portable transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator (TENS) was developed. This device included output of 54-78 GHz at 50-75 decibels of energy, the same intensity used in the Ukraine. Five specific acupuncture circuits were activated with this GigaTENS device and specifically raised the DHEA, neurotensin, aldosterone or calcitonin, while the 5th one lowered free radicals significantly. All of these studies, except for aldosterone, have been published.2,3,4 The circuit that raises DHEA was subsequently proven to treat successfully 70 to 80% of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, migraine, diabetic neuropathy, or depression. Stimulation at these frequencies also increases calcitonin and lowers free radicals.

Despite the neurochemical and potential clinical benefits, most individuals offered the opportunity to use these circuits would not spend the 30 minutes daily required for such treatment. Since the Ukrainians had stated that these Giga frequencies are absorbed through the skin, specifically through acupuncture points, it appeared that the only reasonable way to immerse the body in these fields, without great effort on the part of the individual, was to provide the field while participants were lying down. Eventually this led to the creation of a 2-inch thick polyfoam mat in the center of which is a copper screen with crushed sapphire crystal placed over it. Copper wire from the center of that mat leads to the Tesla coil. When the Tesla coil is activated, a field of 54-78 GHz 2 feet high and around the mat is produced. Six individuals volunteered to participate in the study. Blood was drawn initially for analysis of telomere length of granulocytes and lymphocytes.

Three and one half months later, telomere length was measured again and in 4 of the 6 subjects, telomere length had increased by approximately 1%. At the end of 10 months, blood was again drawn and telomere length had increased an average of 2.9%. Telomeres ordinarily shrink 1% every year from birth forward.

Telomeres are responsible not only for the length of life but also the integrity of DNA and thus ultimately for health itself. Individuals using this approach can place the 2-inch mat on top of their mattress, plug it into a timer that can go off in 30 to 60 minutes while they are sleeping and obtain the benefit of "lying in a field effect of human DNA." Continuing studies will be done. All telomere blood tests were done at a reference lab, Repeat Diagnostics.

References

1. Shealy CN. Microwave resonance therapy: innovations from the Ukraine. Greene County Medical Bulletin 1993; Vol. XLVII 3:15-17.

2. Shealy CN, Myss CM. The ring of fire and DHEA: A theory for energetic restoration of adrenal reserves. Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine1995;6:167-175.

3. Shealy CN, Borgmeyer V, Thomlinson P. Intuition, neurotensin and the ring of air. Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine 2002;11:145-150.

4. Shealy CN, Borgmeyer V. Calcitonin enhancement with electrical activation of a specific acupuncture circuit. AMERICAN Journal of Pain Management 2003;13:29-32.

About the Author

100. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D. is President of Holos Institutes of Health, Inc., a non-profit organization focused on research, education and education in holistic health. He was the founding President of Holos University Graduate Seminary in Bolivar, Missouri, where he is now Professor Emeritus of Energy Medicine, and was founding President of the American Holistic Medical Association in 1978. He has 13 patents in the field of Energy Medicine, has published 26 books and 300 articles.

His innovations include Dorsal Column Stimulation, Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS), Biogenics, the software for self-regulation, and the RejuvaMatrix®, his most recent discovery, for rejuvenating telomeres, the tips of DNA responsible for health and longevity. His 14th patent is pending.

To learn more, visit the Dr. Norm Shealy web site or contact him atnorm@normshealy.com. See also Telomeres, Health and Longevity.

Published in Anti-Aging Therapeutics volume 12, by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M; www.worldhealth.net). Reprinted with permission.

Disaster Relief a Disaster With Ellen Brown

Ellen is right on this. In fact it is always better to localize governmental functionality and decision making as much as possible and disaster management in particular.

Once again we are suffering from the curse of the King. Central power deludes itself into thinking that only one person is able to make decisions and naturally dis-empowers everyone else with bureaucratic arteriosclerosis.

It took me a long time to understand that central banking itself is now stuck the same way. Its power needs to be handed down just as deep as is possible and even beyond. Surprise me and the people will surprise you.

Political Football Over Disaster Relief: Another Argument for Public Banking

Friday, 04 January 2013 09:17

By Ellen Brown

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13701-political-football-over-disaster-relief-another-argument-for-public-banking

Post-Sandy and post-Katrina "disaster relief" has been characterized by more profit-taking by big business than relief to families and small businesses. The Bank of North Dakota demonstrated it doesn't have to be that way after flooding devastated Grand Forks in 1997.

In a shameless display of putting politics before human needs, Congress began 2013 still scrapping over a $60 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill fully nine weeks after the disaster hit.   And if the Katrina experience is any indication, the bill may not bring adequate relief to struggling and displaced homeowners even when it is finally passed.

The damage wrought by Sandy to New York and New Jersey coastal areas wassimilar in scale  to that to New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Just two weeks after Katrina hit, Congress approved $62.3 billion in emergency appropriations, along with numerous subsequent emergency funding requests to cover the damages, which topped $100 billion. Yet as noted on the Occupy Sandy Facebook page, federal relief funds post-Katrina were gutted in favor of "privatizing and outsourcing relief, making room for predatory lenders, disaster capitalists, and gentrification developers."

According to a report by Strike Debt, the vast majority of FEMA's resources and efforts are spent on public assistance programs that provide infrastructure restoration. Individual victims of disaster are for the most part just offered personal loans - loans that have many features of predatory subprime lending. 

Disaster victims are now being expected to shoulder relief expenses that used to be shared publicly. Most people believe they are covered by their insurance policies or by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), but many disaster victims have found that their insurance policies include obscure provisions that exclude coverage, and the only aid that FEMA gives to individuals is the opportunity to take on more debt.

It is a failing of our austerity-strapped federal disaster relief system that it can offer little real help to individuals; and it is a failing of our private, for-profit insurance system that the legal duty of management is to extort as much money as possible from customers while returning as little as possible to them, in order to maximize shareholder profits.

Most Sandy Victims Are Left Stranded

The report by Strike Debt was based on observations made at a community meeting in Midland Beach, Staten Island, on November 18, 2012, as well as on interviews with FEMA and Small Business Association (SBA) representatives, volunteer workers, local business owners, and residents throughout New York City. According to the report, there are three main sources of financial support being offered to Sandy victims: insurance, grants, and loans. Federal support is available only once private insurance has been exhausted.

In many cases, residents who believed they had insurance that would cover the Sandy disaster are finding that, for a variety of reasons involving the fine print in the policies, their claims are being denied. Difficult-to-understand clauses allow insurers to deny coverage depending on such things as whether the storm was officially classified as a hurricane or a tropical storm.

For federal aid programs, according to the report:

* Victims are required to first apply for loans before qualifying to apply for FEMA aid, placing the economic cost of the disaster on the individual victim.

* Aid programs favor those who can take on debt, further exacerbating pre-existing inequalities among residents.

* Federal programs are inflexible and fail to meet even basic individual and community needs.

* Relief options are not clearly communicated or well understood. Policies are so complex that even lawyers are confused.

Except for temporary living costs, FEMA grants are accessible only after the homeowner, renter or business applies for an SBA loan.  If the applicant qualifies for a loan, he or she is not likely to be provided further FEMA aid. Disaster loans are made through FEMA on the basis of credit history, and favorable interest rates are available only if the applicant cannot get credit elsewhere. That means favorable interest rates are offered only if an applicant cannot qualify for credit through a commercial bank. When the banks got in trouble themselves, the Fed dropped the Fed funds rate (the rate at which they borrow from each other) to nearly zero. But no such relief is extended to disaster victims.

There is no FEMA money for small businesses other than loans, and businesses have difficulty taking on debt when they don't know when they will be able to reopen. The small business application is reported to be at least 30 pages long, and is often difficult to complete because flooding has destroyed much of the required paperwork.

Many homeowners were strained by mortgages that were underwater prior to the storm, and their properties have now depreciated to the point of having no market value at all.  They have no choice but to try to rebuild, but how can they take on more debt?  The focus on lending, says the report, moves money from the victims of disaster into the hands of loan servicers, who make enormous profits off these loans.

A Better Model: Disaster Relief in North Dakota

That is the state of disaster relief in most parts of the country, but one state has developed a different model – North Dakota. North Dakota is the only state in the union to have its own state-owned bank. The Bank of North Dakota (BND) has a mandate to serve the public interest, and it has no shareholders other than the state itself.  That gives it wide-reaching flexibility in emergencies, allowing it to act quickly to catalyze and coordinate resources.

The BND's emergency capabilities were demonstrated in 1997, when record flooding and fires devastated Grand Forks, North Dakota. The town and its sister city, East Grand Forks on the Minnesota side of the river, lay in ruins. Floodwaters covered virtually the entire city and took weeks to fully recede. Property losses topped $3.5 billion.

The response of the state-owned bank was immediate and comprehensive, demonstrating a financial flexibility and public generosity that no privately-owned bank could match. Soon after the floodwaters swept through Grand Forks, the BND was helping families and businesses recover. Led by then-president and CEO John Hoeven (future North Dakota governor and US senator), the bank quickly established nearly $70 million in credit lines – to the city, the state National Guard, the state Division of Emergency Management, the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, and for individuals, businesses and farms. It also launched a Grand Forks disaster relief loan program and allocated $5 million to help other areas affected by the spring floods. Local financial institutions matched these funds, making a total of more than $70 million available.

Besides property damage, flooding swept away many jobs, leaving families without livelihoods. The BND coordinated with the US Department of Education to ensure forbearance on student loans; worked closely with the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration to gain forbearance on federally-backed home loans; established a center where people could apply for federal/state housing assistance; and worked with the North Dakota Community Foundation to coordinate a disaster relief fund, for which the bank served as the deposit base. The bank also reduced interest rates on existing Family Farm and Farm Operating programs. Families used these low-interest loans to restructure debt and cover operating losses caused by wet conditions in their fields.

To help finance the disaster recovery, the BND obtained funds at reduced rates from the Federal Home Loan Bank.  These savings were then passed on to flood-affected borrowers in the form of lower interest rates.

The city was quickly rebuilt and restored. As a result, Grand Forks lost only 3% of its population between the 1997 floods and 2000, while East Grand Forks, right across the river in Minnesota, lost 17% of its population.

Bringing Real Security to Communities

Just as we can rely on our local public fire department to be there for emergencies, so a public bank can be relied on to lend a true helping hand when private banks, insurers, and FEMA may not. Unlike private insurers that are prone to withdrawing coverage on obscure technicalities, a publicly-owned bank is not beholden to shareholder profit-seeking; and unlike federal disaster relief agencies, a public bank is not dependent on a penny-pinching Congress for funds. Like private banks, it has the ability to create money in the form of bank credit on its books, and it has access to very low interest rates. But private banks have a business model that requires them to take advantage of these low rates to extract as much debt service as the market will bear.  A public bank can pass these low rates on to disaster victims and local governments.

When the biggest private banks needed an emergency bailout, trillions of dollars in nearly-interest-free money came flooding their way. Why? As Sen. Dick Durbin said of Congress in 2009, "Wall Street owns the place.” The private banking industry also owns all twelve branches of the Federal Reserve. If we the people want the sort of security in emergencies that is available to Wall Street banks, we need to own some banks ourselves.

Just as Occupy Sandy has pre-empted the official rescue agencies through community organizing, so a Public Bank of New York or New Jersey could pre-empt the vulture Wall Street banks and finance the state's own rebuilding. Twenty states have now introduced bills of various sorts to establish their own banks.  For more information on the campaign in your state, see here.

Black Hole Burp

The problem that I have with this interpretation is that it is been observed simultaneously across thousands of light years at least. This is either absurd or plausibly, these galaxies are vastly closer to us than we had ever imagined. Recall that our measurement protocol is dependent on one rather iffy assumption that has been producing a number of uncomfortable inferences over the years.

For the record, my own work explains the Red shift as an artifact of the age of the universe itself and unrelated to galactic velocity which is in fact generally modest and over the whole likely neutral. It should still give the same results.

We are still dealing with vast distances so just what could a galactic core actually be? Is it really less that a dozen light years across which is the implied inference? Again are our metrics quite right? I suspect otherwise and what else have we got wrong?

Monster Black Hole Burp Surprises Scientists

Date: 07 January 2013

Tia Ghose

http://www.space.com/19158-monster-black-hole-burp.html

LONG BEACH, Calif. – Astronomers have discovered what appears to be colossal belch from a massive black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy. The outburst was 10 times as bright as the biggest star explosion, scientists say.

The potential super-sized black hole burp find came as astronomers studied the galaxy NGC 660, which is located 44 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces.

"The discovery was entirely serendipitous. Our observations were spread over a few years, and when we looked at them, we found that one galaxy had changed over that time from being placid and quiescent to undergone a hugely energetic outburst at the end," study researcher Robert Minchin of Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico said in a statement.

To determine whether the outburst was from a supernova — the explosive end of a star —  or the galaxy's core, the researchers used the High Sensitivity Array, a global network of telescopes that includes the Very Long Baseline Array, the Arecibo Telescope, the NSF's 100-meter Green Bank  Telescope, and the 100-meter Effelsberg Radio Telescope in Germany.

Instead of an expanding ring of material suggesting a supernova event, the researchers found five locations with bright radio emissions clustered around the galaxy's core.

"The most likely explanation is that there are jets coming from the core, but they are precessing, or wobbling, and the hot spots we see are where the jets slammed into the material near the galaxy's nucleus," said Chris Salter, also of the Arecibo Observatory.

Those jets, the researchers said, would mean the outburst likely came from a supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy NGC 660. As the black hole devours dust and mass, it pulls a whirling disk of matter into its heart that spews jets of particles as it is consumed.

Supermassive black holes are colossal structures at the cores of galaxies that are between millions and billions of times as massive as the sun. They are much larger than stellar-mass black holes, which are created from the deaths of giant stars and can contain the mass of about 10 suns.

Toyota and Audi Testing self Driving Protocols

We are not there yet but the competition is clearly heating up as the majors pile on. The first obvious stage is to have an effective system that the driver simply monitors in a hands off position. This may be possible largely even now. Such a transitional will then be natural and quick as confidence also rises.

The majority of driving is repetitive and just removing that particular load will popularize its acceptance.

From that point, it should take less than a decade to see it all go driver-less to everyone's safety and ease.

From then on mankind will be simply catered to by his transport and driving skill will be surplus. Good riddance I think. It has been fun while it lasted.

Aircraft will need the same facility just because we are partially below past any decent velocity and for most of our vision globe.

Toyota and Audi competing with Google to commercialize self-driving cars

JANUARY 04, 2013

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/01/toyota-and-audi-competing-with-google.html

2013 Lexus LX is equipped with Toyota's Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). ITS includes a radar and a communications system for "talking" to other vehicles.

The Christian Science Monitor has a preview report from the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. Toyota and Audi are both preparing to show off cars with driverless technology at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. Google has been working on driverless cars for years, and big automakers like Toyota and Audi are getting serious about the technology as well.

The Wall Street Journal reports Audi will be bringing a car that can find a parking space on its own, and park itself without help from a driver. Audi’s been working on autonomous vehicle technology for quite a while, as have Ford and Mercedes-Benz.

Toyota, for example, notes in a press release that its “high-level driver assistance systems” are designed to make things safer for the driver of the vehicle and for other vehicles on the road. Lots of cars today have “adaptive cruise control,” which matches a vehicle’s speed to that of surrounding traffic. And some cars can automatically steer themselves back into a lane if the driver veers out of it by accident.

There’s no mistaking where Toyota and Audi are headed, though: with its spinning radar and communications array, the Lexus LS is aiming to be a fully autonomous vehicle that can operate safely without driver interaction. (By the way, even though Google tends to use Toyota cars in its self-driving fleet, the two companies say their driverless technologies were developed separately.)

Inflatable Module Will be Added to Space Station

I have posted before extensively on the utility of using rotating bubbles out in space. The skin itself would not rotate, but the goods inside could easily do so around a central axis that acted as a cable stay hub. After that is in place, your imagination runs wild.

So it is good to see an over engineered inflatable device now going up to work out the inevitable issues.

Yet even a Mylar bubble hundreds of yards across could stand in as a safety net and garbage retainer. A few puffs of air would keep it inflated and micrometeorites could simply pass through. If that worked well enough, it provides the skeleton to pad out and strengthen into something sufficiently robust as they have designed here.

In the meantime we will all get used to the concept and as stated, imaginations will surely run wild.

Bigelow Inflatable Module Will be Added to Space Station

by NANCY ATKINSON on JANUARY 11, 2013

Read more:

http://www.universetoday.com/99398/bigelow-inflatable-module-will-be-added-to-space-station/#ixzz2HyMuQB4n

The next addition to the International Space Station will likely be an inflatable module from Bigelow Aerospace. NASA announced today they have awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow to provide a new module for the ISS. “The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module will demonstrate the benefits of this space habitat technology for future exploration and commercial space endeavors,” NASA said in a press release. This would be the first privately built module to be added to the space station.

“The International Space Station is a unique laboratory that enables important discoveries that benefit humanity and vastly increase understanding of how humans can live and work in space for long periods,” NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said. “This partnership agreement for the use of expandable habitats represents a step forward in cutting-edge technology that can allow humans to thrive in space safely and affordably, and heralds important progress in U.S. commercial space innovation.”

NASA will release more information about the agreement and the module next week, but previous reports have indicated the inflatable module would be used for adding additional storage and workspace, and the module would be certified to remain on-orbit for two years.
NASA has been in discussions with Bigelow for several years about using their inflatable technology.

In 2006 Bigelow launched their Genesis I inflatable test module into orbit and according to their website, it is still functioning and “continuing to produce invaluable images, videos and data for Bigelow Aerospace. It is now demonstrating the long-term viability of expandable habitat technology in an actual orbital environment.”

Freezing Antimatter

 Antimatter is the interesting problem and is simply not understood at all. What it clearly proves is that particles can degenerate into photons or my preference as partially bounded curvature. Again my work nicely encompasses that but does not as yet understand the natural production of larger particles or the direct creation of an anti proton. I think it most likely that preferred neutron decay produces a hydrogen atom. A non preferred decay will produce the anti hydrogen.

The question becomes what drives preference and modeling may well reveal all that. It could be simply be that the initial act of creation set up a specific asymmetry that makes the choice automatic. There is certainly strong indication of just that happening. Again modeling will now reveal this.

Thus symmetric processes will produce anti particles but since the majority of processes are inherently asymmetric, we have the universe we see without a lot of noise.

Freezing antimatter could allow scientists to study the strangest stuff in existence: Canadian researcher

Joseph Brean | Jan 6, 2013 8:59 PM ET

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/01/06/freezing-antimatter-could-allow-scientists-to-study-it/

A Canadian scientist at the forefront of research on antimatter has proposed a novel way to solve one of the field’s most daunting problems — what to keep it in.

For experimental physicists, antimatter is an elusive quarry because it will vanish in a flash of light upon contact with anything made of regular matter. But a paper published Sunday points the way to a potential solution, in which lasers will literally freeze atoms of anti-hydrogen in place so they can be studied and compared to regular atoms.

The proposal by Makoto Fujiwara, a research scientist at Canada’s particle physics lab TRIUMF and an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary, has not been tested in reality, but computer simulations he devised with an American co-author indicate that a laser-based technique called Doppler cooling could chill anti-hydrogen to just a whisker above absolute zero.

At that point, he writes in the Journal of Physics B, it might be possible for scientists to determine the precise colour and weight of the strangest stuff in existence.

Much progress has recently been made in this effort, notably by Canadians working at the ALPHA project at CERN in Geneva, including Mr. Fujiwara, who in 2011 used magnets to hold particles of anti-hydrogen stable for as long as 15 minutes, and last year made the first ever direct measurement of antimatter’s energy.

And just last month, Mr. Fujiwara’s colleagues in B.C. started to test a prototype of his laser cooling system. But antimatter remains one of the great mysteries in science, predicted in theory in 1930, discovered three years later, and still as baffling as anything in science.

Antimatter is just as it sounds, the opposite of matter, and when a particle meets its antiparticle, they both vanish in a flash of light. The big question is why there is so little antimatter around, and a surplus of regular matter.

Theory says both were created in equal parts during the Big Bang, and indeed the lingering flash of their mutual annihilation can still be detected in the universe. But for some reason regular matter eventually won out, and today antimatter is exceedingly rare. Other than in radioactive decay or cosmic ray collisions, it is not naturally produced, and man-made production is still small scale, although it is widely used in medicine for PET (positron emission tomography) scanning.

We want anti-hydrogen atoms as cold as possible in our trap, and by cold I mean not moving.

Discovering any difference between hydrogen and antihydrogen, therefore, might mean discovering the reason why there is any stuff at all, and why the universe is not just a big flash of light with nothing left over. On the other hand, proving that antihydrogen really is the exact opposite of the regular kind would be an important foundation on which to build future experiments.

And so, with this latest theoretical proof of the laser cooling concept, the effort turns to actually building a machine that can do it.

Already, the ALPHA apparatus at CERN in Geneva is capable of trapping a cloud of antihydrogen inside a cucumber-sized cylinder surrounded by superconducting magnets and silicon detectors. The next step is to cool it.

“We want anti-hydrogen atoms as cold as possible in our trap, and by cold I mean not moving. In particular, to measure the gravitational properties, antihydrogen in our trap is still moving way too fast. So this paper has shown that the technique called laser cooling can be applied in our experimental set-up,” Mr. Fujiwara said.

ALPHA unfortunately was not built with a window for a laser, which is what the B.C. team commissioned last month. The eventual goal will be to study the colour of antihydrogen, or how it reacts to light, and its weight, or how it reacts to gravity.

“Nobody has ever seen antimatter falling down,” Mr. Fujiwara said.

National Post

17 Billion Earth Sized Planets in Galaxy

At least we now have a number. It happens to be completely huge. What is more, this is likely the minimum number of planets that can be terraformed and are likely been terraformed or have been.

In our own solar system Earth has long been effectively terraformed and is now in the process of been redone after the Pleistocene nonconformity some 13,900 years ago.

On top of that Venus was likely ejected from Jupiter quite recently and now needs to be bombarded with volatiles to cool down the crust and provide enough water and carbon. We will eventually get the job.

Otherwise subsurface colonies are plausible on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn if needed for any reason. The same technology supports subsurface establishments on Mercury, the Moon and on Mars.

In short, our solar system can be reasonably infested with life.

Kepler telescope: Earth-sized planets 'number 17bn'

By Jason Palmer

8 January 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20942440

Astronomers say that one in six stars hosts an Earth-sized planet in a close orbit - suggesting a total of 17 billion such planets in our galaxy.

The result comes from an analysis of planet candidates gathered by Nasa's Kepler space observatory.

The Kepler scientists also announced 461 new planet candidates, bringing the satellites' total haul to 2,740.

Their findings were announced at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in California.

Transit

Since its launch into orbit in 2009, Kepler has stared at a fixed part of the sky, peering at more than 150,000 stars in its field of view.

It detects the minute dip in light coming from a star if a planet passes in front of it, in what is called a transit.

But it is a tricky measurement to make, with the total light changing just tiny fractions of a percent, and not every dip in light is due to a planet.

So Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics - who discovered the first Earth-sized planets set about trying to find out not only which Kepler candidates might not be planets, but also which planets might not have been visible to Kepler.

"We have to correct for two things - first [the Kepler candidate list] is incomplete," he told BBC News.

"We only see the planets that are transiting their host stars, stars that happen to have a planet that is well-aligned for us to see it, and [for each of those] there are dozens that do not.

"The second major correction is in the list of candidates - there are some that are not true planets transiting their host star; they are other astrophysical configurations."

These might include, for example, binary stars, where one star orbits another, blocking some of the light as the stars transit each other.

"We simulated all the possible configurations we could think of - and we found out that they could only account for 9.5% of Kepler planets, and all the rest are bona fide planets," Dr Fressin explained.

The results suggest that 17% of stars host a planet up to 1.25 times the size of the Earth, in close orbits lasting just 85 days or fewer - much like the planet Mercury.

That means our Milky Way galaxy hosts at least 17 billion Earth-sized planets.

In the zone

Even as Dr Fressin reported an analysis of the most recent Kepler catalogue, it was increased substantially by results reported by Christopher Burke of the Seti Institute.

Dr Burke announced 461 new candidate planets, a substantial fraction of which were Earth-sized or not much larger - planets that have until now been particularly difficult to detect.

"What's particularly interesting is four new planets - less than twice the size of Earth - that are potentially in the habitable zone, the location around a star where it could potentially have liquid water to sustain life," Dr Burke told BBC News.

One of the four, dubbed KOI 172.02, is a mere 1.5 times the size of the Earth and around a star like our own Sun - perhaps as near as the current data allow to finding an "Earth 2.0".

"It's very exciting because we're really starting to pick up the sensitivity to these things in the habitable zone - we're just really getting to the frontier of potentially life-bearing planets."

William Borucki, the driving force behind and principal investigator on the Kepler mission, said he was "delighted" by the fresh batch of results.

"The most important thing is the statistics - not to find one Earth but to find 100 Earths. That's what we'll be seeing as the years go on with the Kepler mission, because it was designed to find many Earths."

Attack of the GM Mosquitos

It appears that this protocol is working well enough to seriously suppress targeted mosquito populations. It is at least as effective as a pesticide program that inevitably leaves gaps in coverage and destroys no end of non targeted species.

In fact it is working well enough to be universally applied. The present heat is motivated by the subclass of anti GM agitators who have had ample success demonizing genetic modification and will not quit over the bodies of millions of malaria victims.

This happens to be the one solution that is simply good enough. The enemy will no go extinct so easy, but suppressed populations combined with other standards of care means a huge lowering of disease incidence. It is not yet perfect and that takes a magic bullet or vaccine.

In the bigger picture, mosquito population suppression is to be wished for along with certain other insects. In all these cases, the predator population is unsuccessful in maintaining balance of any kind.

Can genetically modified mosquitoes prevent disease in the US?

By Martin Vennard

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19091880

After a summer of record-high temperatures in the US in 2012, health officials are still dealing with the repercussions of mosquito-borne diseases. Could genetically-modified insects halt their spread?

The year 2012 ended with an ignoble distinction. According to the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP), it was the worst year for West Nile virus since 2003.

The CDCP says record-high temperatures could well have helped the mosquitoes that transmit the disease to thrive.

At the same time, new outbreaks of dengue fever on the Mexican side of the Texas-Mexico border had US officials worried that the virus would slowly spread north.

And experts fear that in 2013, it's only going to get worse.

A British company, Oxitec, has come up with a plan to control the bugs and combat dengue fever. Its scientists have designed genetically modified mosquitoes that have one mission - to kill off the rest of their species.

But is the plan too radical for its own good?

A growing problem

The World Health Organization says dengue ranks as the most important mosquito-borne viral disease in the world. In the last 50 years, incidence has increased 30-fold.

It is now endemic in Puerto Rico and in many popular tourist destinations in Latin America and South East Asia.

West Nile virus was first identified in Africa in the 1930s, before spreading out from there and appearing in North America in 1999. It is now widely established from Canada to Venezuela.

Climate change and globalisation could be major factors behind the increase in mosquito-borne diseases in the US and elsewhere.

Walter Tabachnick, director of the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory at the University of Florida, says warmer and wetter conditions can make it easier for some mosquitoes to multiply and spread disease.

"Viruses replicate more quickly in mosquitoes and are transmitted more easily when average air temperatures rise and increased rainfall in normally dry areas creates more water pools where mosquitoes can thrive," Mr Tabachnick adds.

At the same time, greater and faster movement of humans and cargo allows more infected people and mosquitoes to come into contact with previously unaffected populations and areas.

In the US the current method of keeping mosquito populations under control is to spray their larvae with pesticides.

This method is only effective when the larvae can actually be found and reached by the spray.

Unsprayed eggs can survive for months before hatching. Meanwhile, resistance to the pesticides among mosquitoes is rising.

Pest-control authorities say spraying can therefore be highly labour intensive, inefficient and expensive.

Enter Oxitec, and their genetically modified mosquitoes.

'Suicide bombers'

These mosquitoes are created by injecting mosquito eggs in the lab with a killer gene. It produces a protein called tTA, which stops the mosquitoes' cells from turning on other genes which are essential for the bugs to survive.

The resulting GM male mosquitoes are then released into the wild to breed with non-GM females, producing offspring genetically programmed to die well before reproductive age.

The company says that as the number of GM males introduced into an environment increases, the lower the chances the non-GM males have of breeding with non-GM females, until eventually the mosquito population can be effectively eliminated.

Unintentional releases

Oxitec says it has done tests in Brazil, Malaysia and the Cayman Islands, which show mosquito numbers can be greatly reduced in a few months.

"You first release a few thousand males to see if they will mate, then you move to a control programme. In the Cayman Islands we released 3 million over a few months over 16 hectares. We effectively brought the overall mosquito population down by 80% in three months," Oxitec's CEO Haydn Parry told BBC World Service.

While only GM males are intentionally released, critics point out and Oxitec acknowledges that the release of a small number of GM females cannot be avoided. The males are filtered out for release from the generally bigger females, but some females slip through the net. It is only the female mosquitoes which bite and spread disease.

However, Mr Parry says the small number of GM females that do get released present no danger even if they bite humans. "It's exactly the same as being bitten by a wild one," he says. "The gene, or protein, that prevents the next generation from surviving isn't toxic or allergenic and isn't expressed by the saliva glands" and therefore is not injected into humans when they are bitten.

Mila de Mier has presented her petition to the federal authorities as well as the governor of Florida

The released GM mosquitoes can breed due to the presence in the lab of the antibiotic tetracycline - which is used in agriculture and found in some meat - which stops the protein from working.

Eric Hoffman, a biotechnology campaigner for Friends of the Earth in the US, says that if tetracycline is present in the wild the offspring of GM mosquitoes could survive and breed.

Mr Parry says his company's GM mosquitoes have been shown to be safe and that it would not introduce them where tetracycline exists in the environment. "We created this strain of mosquito more than 10 years ago now. You do a lot of internal testing in labs in a contained environment even before going to an outside environment," he says.

Coming to the US?

Oxitec wants to use its technique on the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Key West to prevent a recurrence of dengue fever in Florida. The state suffered its first outbreaks of the disease in 75 years in 2009 and 2010 in Key West. Oxitec has the backing of The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, which is in charge of mosquito control for the area.

However it has come up against opposition, in the form of a petition started by local resident Mila de Mier and signed by nearly 120,000 people - more than four times Key West's permanent population. It raises concerns about the effect the GM mosquitoes will have on the local environment, animals and insects.

The Key West City Commission has passed a non-binding resolution against the plan, saying it wants to see further research, demonstrable and measurable outcomes and federal approval before giving its backing.

The issue is now in the hands of the federal Food and Drug Administration who have to give their approval before the plan can go ahead.

It has set no date for its decision. In the mean time, the problem of mosquito-born diseases in the US continue.

End of Hard Contact Sports inevitable

 We are looking at a radical transformation in sports. Most certainly, football as we know it will disappear one way or the other, the other been a monster class action suite by the victims and the victim's families targeting both the NFL and the schools. All the rules regarding contact sports will need to be revisited and reset.

Boxing will have to operate without head shots. Will it still be boxing?

First let me make the case for the science so it is abundantly clear. If you receive one concussion capable of producing micro tears in the brain you have a problem that will take months to recover from. The good news is that it is plausible to often achieve full recovery. The bad news is that it will take a long time and we are not good yet at establishing recovery and mental stability.

The really bad news is that a concussion overlaid over an unhealed first concussion hugely weakens the prognosis to permanent damage and instability. Obviously if you then really work at it as happens in football, massive damage is inevitable.

The only ethical choice is to outlaw concussion risk and let the sports fraternity go figure it all out.

Hockey is likely fixable because the head is not used as a weapon normally and removing the body armor would subdue remaining risks. Other sports have generally already come to grips with concussion risk. If one event is sufficient to end a career, then so be it. We are already seeing just that happening in hockey.

We can not eliminate outright accidents but we can sure take the victims off the playing field and outright imprison deliberate offenders who target other players. It is draconian but the consequences are worse.

I am not sure that we can save football as we know it. It is abundantly clear that high school football needs to revert back to touch football rules. The remaining question is whether we toss the pads and make the whole sport operate with some version of touch football.

The game would be fast and furious and physical blocking still part of the game. We may even come to like it. Recall that watching a soccer virtuoso makes soccer incredibly exciting and maybe it is time to get serious about soccer.

Junior Seau’s suicide due to chronic football brain damage

jANUARY 10, 2013

http://www.examiner.com/article/junior-seau-s-suicide-due-to-chronic-football-brain-damage

Junior Seau’s suicide devastated the community of San Diego and raised the question of why. Today, that question has been answered. Junior Seau, the famous San Diego Charger #55 had degenerative brain disease after playing 20 football seasons. On Jan. 10, 2013, NBC 7 San Diego reports that “Junior Seau, one of the NFL's best and fiercest players for nearly two decades, had a degenerative brain disease when he committed suicide last May, the National Institutes of Health told The Associated Press on Thursday.”

Junior Seau had been a famous linebacker for 20 NFL seasons with San Diego, Miami and New England. He retired in 2009. On May 2, 2012, Junior Seau committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest. Junior Seau’s girlfriend found him in his home in Oceanside which is in the northern part of San Diego.

The studies and analysis done on Junior Seau’s brain were made upon the request of Junior Seau’s family.

After the studies were completed on Junior Seau’s brain, the National Institute of Health (NIH) was able to determine that Junior Seau’s brain showed abnormalities which were “consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).”

Traumatic encephalopathy, also known as Dementia pugilistica (DP) or Traumatic brain injury (TBI), can occur after frequent injuries to the head like a bump, blow, jolt, or direct head impact. While immediate concussions warrant a visit to the hospital, less apparent concussions and damage to the brain might not be visible until, as in Junior Seau’s case, it is too late.

Like in Junior Seau’s case, symptoms of traumatic brain injury due to repeated sports “invisible” head injuries can include memory problems, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and if left untreated, suicide.

The study of Junior Seau’s brain was conducted by several independent experts who examined the tissue of Junior Seau’s brain.

Junior Seau’s suicide propelled the topic of concussions in the NFL and other sports leagues that involve head injuries into the public eye. After reports of other sports players having experienced depression or memory trouble, NIH conducted further research studies which were published on Jan. 7, 2013.

Dr. John Hart Jr. from the University of Texas at Dallas, who was involved in the NIH study of Junior Seau’s brain, emphasized that "Not everyone gets this problem. … It's a more complex issue than [that] has just sort of been thrown out there."

Dr. Hart does encourage more NFL and other sports players to “to get their brains checked out.” For most players, there are no consequences or minor consequences from playing sports. However, getting checked out can bring peace of mind not only for the player but also for the player’s family.

“Ideally, he said, all players would be evaluated before, during and after their careers to check for brain changes. That would help doctors learn more about how head trauma is related to mental decline and dementia - and hopefully avert those problems in future athletes.”

In Junior Seau’s case, San Diegans, and especially Junior Seau’s family, knowing what caused Junior Seau’s suicide brings some closure.

Tyler Seau, Junior Seau’s 23-year-old son said that “"I was not surprised after learning a little about CTE that he had it. … He did play so many years at that level. I was more just kind of angry I didn't do something more and have the awareness to help him more, and now it is too late. … I don't think any of us were aware of the side effects that could be going on with head trauma until he passed away. We didn't know his behavior was from head trauma.”

According to Junior Seau’s wife, Junior Seau’s symptoms included wild mood swings, irrationality, forgetfulness, insomnia, depression, and emotional detachment from his surroundings.

The fact that Junior Seau was able to hide his invisible “brain damage” and its severe consequences so well from the public emphasizes the importance of close family members caring for a loved one who is involved in sports.

According to NBC’s report, Junior Seau “hid it well in public … But not when he was with family or close friends.”

BPA Absloved

This is major although it is actually downplayed here. It pretty well informs us that the earlier conclusions were biased by an agency other than that tested for and as a result BPA is fully absolved. The anti BPA campaign has been going strong for two decades now and stopping it cold is good news. I personally was never convinced simply because the tale was just too convenient to tin can makers who had to upgrade.

Can liners have given us a far higher quality of canned food as a matter of course. Thus allaying trumped up fears over the necessary liner is good.

It also shows just how easy it is to slant the science on an inconvenient commercial threat. Once wrong work is published in an obscure study it is often accepted just because it has not been seriously questioned. This makes the pay off for fraudulent work very safe.

It also a sharp reminder that much accepted science is actually untested science simply because it had not been practical or worthwhile at the time.

We do not know what generated the original results, but that two different substances were tested to effect at the time should have made the work suspect. What else was tossed into the feed?

Previous Studies on Toxic Effects of BPA Couldn't be Reproduced

by Timothy Wall for UM News

Columbia MO (SPX) Jan 04, 2013

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Previous_Studies_on_Toxic_Effects_of_BPA_Couldnt_be_Reproduced_999.html

Following a three-year study using more than 2,800 mice, a University of Missouri researcher was not able to replicate a series of previous studies by another research group investigating the controversial chemical BPA. The MU study is not claiming that BPA is safe, but that the previous series of studies are not reproducible.

The MU study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also investigated an estrogenic compound found in plants, genistein, in the same three-year study.

"Our findings don't say anything about the positive or negative effects of BPA or genistein," said Cheryl Rosenfeld, associate professor of biomedical sciences in MU's Bond Life Science Center.

"Rather, our series of experiments did not detect the same findings as reported by another group on the potential developmental effects of BPA and genistein when exposure of young occurs in the womb."

Creating reliable data on the effects of the chemicals on mice is important to human health since people are frequently exposed to BPA and genistein and humans share similar biological functions with mice. BPA is a chemical used in certain plastic bottles and may be found in the lining of some canned goods and receipt paper. Genistein occurs naturally in soy beans and is sold as a dietary supplement.

Research by Fredrick VomSaal, professor of biological science at MU, and others suggests the chemicals may have other adverse effects on many animals, including humans.

Researcher who conducted the original series of experiments claimed that exposure to BPA and genestein resulted in yellow coat color, or agouti, offspring that were more susceptible to obesity and type 2 diabetes compared to their brown coat color, healthy siblings.

However, Rosenfeld and her team did not obtain the same results when repeating the study over a three-year period.

After failing to repeat the original experiments findings with similar numbers of animals, Rosenfeld's group extended the studies to include animal numbers that surpassed the prior studies to verify that their findings were not a fluke and to provide sufficient number of animals to ensure that significant differences would be detected if they existed.

However, even these additional numbers of animals and extended experiments failed to reproduce the earlier findings. However, the current studies demonstrate that a maternal diet enriched in estrogenic compounds leads to a greater number of offspring that express an agouti gene compared to those that do not, even though equal ratios should have been born.[ that actually could be a fluke - arclein]

"This finding suggests that certain uterine environments may favor animals with a 'thrifty genotype' meaning that the agouti gene of mice may help them survive in unfavorable uterine environments over those mice devoid of this gene, Yet, the downside of this expression of the agouti during early development is that the animals may be at risk for later metabolic disorders, such as obesity and diabetes" Rosenfeld said.

"In this aspect, humans also have an agouti gene that encodes for the agouti signaling protein (ASIP) that is expressed in fat tissue and pancreas, and there is some correlation that obese individuals exhibit greater expression of this gene compared to leaner individuals.

Therefore, the agouti gene may have evolved to permit humans the ability to survive famine, but its enhanced expression may also potentiate metabolic diseases under bountiful food conditions."

While the research casts doubt on the previous study, Rosenfeld said that by understanding the genetic profile of the mice in the first series of studies, scientists could learn more about the correlation between certain genes and obesity. This could eventually influence prevention and treatment programs for patients with diabetes and other obesity-related diseases in humans.

For more details on the discovery, click here.