Study Confirms no Smoking after Forty Almost as Good as Total Abstinance

This is welcome news of course for the many who have dabbled. It also is expected but now confirmed. After all the indications are that smoking is a cumulative disease and toxicity is also better handled by the young, it is most likely that the negative effects will strike in the aging smoker as is observed.

It is also observed that several years of abstinence appears good enough to allow the full recovery of the body although that is moot if a cancer has been established.

The point of all this is that it is obviously stupid to smoke at all and it is doubly stupid to continue after reaching age forty.

Smokers who quit before age 40 live almost as long as people who never smoked: Ontario study

Jason Rehel Jan 24, 2013

http://life.nationalpost.com/2013/01/24/smokers-who-quit-before-age-40-live-almost-as-long-as-people-who-never-smoked-ontario-study/

Young people who give up smoking tobacco before reaching the age of 40 can reasonably expect to live nearly as long as others who’ve never smoking cigarettes at all, a new groundbreaking study of U.S. health and death records has shown.

Smoking, which can cut at least 10 years off someone’s lifespan, ensnares 30 million young adults each year (about half of all young men and 10% of young women) and most do not quit.

“Quitting smoking before age 40, and preferably well before 40, gives back almost all of the decade of lost life from continued smoking,” said Dr. Prabhat Jha, head of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

“That’s not to say, however, that it is safe to smoke until you are 40 and then stop,” said Jha. “Former smokers still have a greater risk of dying sooner than people who never smoked. But the risk is small compared to the huge risk for those who continue to smoke.”

The findings were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Jha’s used data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey, which includes a cross-section of the population that’s surveyed every year about many health topics. More than 200,000 survey participants were linked to the National Death Index, which includes death certificate information for all Americans since 1986.

Researchers working with Jha found that people who quit smoking between ages 35 and 44 gained about nine years and those who quit between ages 45-54 and 55-64 gained six and four years of life, respectively. This survey of existing data is considered a more accurate gauge than similar studies in the past that were skewed by data collected mainly from nurses or other health care workers.

Smoking, which was responsible for the early deaths of 100 million people in the 20th century, is expected to claim one billion lives in the 21st century, mainly in the developing world. Jha says that without a push to increase taxes on cigarettes as has been successfully deployed in France and here in Canada, governments should expect their epidemics of smoking-related diseases to worsen.

Taxation is the single most effective step to get adults to quit and to prevent children from starting, he said.

Giant Tobacco Plants That Stay Young Forever

We do not need unlimited amounts of tobacco, but potatoes will certainly do. There we can go to a year round tropical growing season and pump out a full weight every two months or an easy two fold in productivity. Globally doubling the productivity of root crops appears feasible.

Followers of my blog also know that all practical tropical soils are actually available for agriculture through the application of biochar methods. Thus we are a long way from running out of food as the present abundance should make clear. The days of relying on the family garden are long gone just about everywhere.

In fact by now, it should be rather clear that this world is completely able to feed itself handily and do it at vastly higher levels of population. I have found ways to take our population to one hundred billion without been too clever at all.

Giant tobacco plants that stay young forever

by Staff Writers

Munster, Germany (SPX) Jan 15, 2013

http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Giant_tobacco_plants_that_stay_young_forever_999.html

Tobacco plants bloom when they are just a few months old - and then they die. Now, researchers have located a genetic switch which can keep the plants young for years and which permits unbounded growth. In short, an ideal source of biomass. The life of tobacco plants is short. They grow for around three to four months, followed by flowering and then die. Their size is also limited, with plants only growing to about one-and-a-half to two meters tall.

Now, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME in Munster have located the tobacco plant's very own fountain of youth, which means they can keep it forever young.

The Munster-based researchers discovered a genetic switch which can prevent the plants from change blooming to flowering.

This also averts the plants' early change demise to senescence - and suppresses the factor that halts growth.

"The first of our tobacco plants is now almost eight years old but it still just keeps on growing and growing," says Professor Dirk Prufer, head of the Department of Functional and Applied Genomics at the IME.

"Although we regularly cut it, it's six-and-a-half meters tall. If our greenhouse were a bit higher, it would probably be even bigger. Its stem is already ten centimeters in diameter."

Whereas in normal tobacco plants the leaves, which grow from the bottom of the stem, soon turn yellow and drop off, the IME plant's leaves stay healthy and green. This is why the scientists have christened their modified plant species "forever young".

But what exactly do researchers do to give the plants eternal youth and make them capable of unbounded growth?

"We modify the expression of a certain gene - or rather, the information contained within it - so that the plant's flowering is delayed," explains Prufer. Researchers then insert the modified gene back into the plant using a bacterium. The role of the bacterium is to act as a sort of shuttle service for the modified gene.

Producing more biomass

The principle is transferable and could be used on other kinds of plants; at the moment, the scientists are working also on potato plants on behalf of a Japanese chemical company. They use their knowledge to get crops to yield a far greater amount of biomass. In the case of potatoes, this means a great deal more starch.

"If we want to guarantee security of supply for foodstuffs and plant-based raw materials, the yield per hectare will have to double by 2050, claims the German Bioeconomy Council. This new technology brings us a great deal nearer to that target," reckons Prufer.

"However, our method is only likely to deliver success as long as the flowers of the plant in question play no significant role - sugar beet, for instance. It would make no sense to use the technique on rapeseed."

Preventing plants from flowering presents a significant advantage, in that no flowering means no production of seeds or pollen. As a result, plants have no way of reproducing, which means they cannot spread into the environment in an unplanned way.

In the future, the researchers want to go further and be able to disable plants' growth limits using chemical mutagenesis as well - that is to say, using normal growing techniques. This process involves using chemical additives to bring about changes in a seed's DNA sequence.

The advantage is that a plant grown in this way would no longer be genetically modified but simply a plant grown using standard techniques.

"But in order to be able to do that, we first need to gain a better understanding of the deregulation of genes," says Prufer, who hopes cultivation experiments might begin next year. Then perhaps normal plants will be in a position to grow tall, too.

The Third Eye

Skip the cannabis and learn to do meditation. The objective of meditation is to experience the white light and it is not uncommon at all which is why devotees come back and stick with it. It takes time and effort to achieve though I would suggest that children often are able to do it much easier.

Drug use allows meddling without guidance and perhaps acceleration of some aspects of the experience but no development of both discipline and correctly developed neuronal synapses which take time and effort. It is far better to keep working at it with a master who can aide and guide you as needed.

There is a sense that the third eye is an access point to something significant which is why innterest is unflagging.

Conjecture: The third eye accesses the physical 'overmind' or GOD created by humanity many thousands of years ago and serves us. A few have learned how to ask with some success.

I hate to say it, but it looks for all the world like a CMOS with an internet connection and we do not even know how to use email even if the whole operating system is downloaded and humming.

Cannabis & The Pineal Gland: Turn On The Third Eye

Chris Bennet, January 14, 2013

http://www.wakingtimes.com/2013/01/14/cannabis-the-pineal-gland-turn-on-the-third-eye/

The Pineal Gland or the ‘Seat of the Soul’ as described by Rene Descartes, is the focal point of our spiritual guiding system which makes us go beyond the five senses of rationality and become multisensory, tuned into and aware of higher dimensions of consciousness within a holographic cosmos. Cannabis or Marijuana among other psychedelics facilitates the activation of the pineal gland and helps turn on the third eye or the mind’s eye directing our spiritual evolution to wholeness.

The pineal gland, located in the centre of the brain, is about a quarter of an inch in size, reddish-gray, and weighs about one-tenth of a gram. Unlike other parts of the brain which come in pairs, the pineal gland is singular. Its location in the center of the brain and presence in other species indicates it is an older part of humanity’s evolutionary brain system.

The pineal gland is present in all lower vertebrae. In other species, like birds, reptiles and frogs, the pineal gland is called the parietal eye or “third-eye” as its functions closely resemble that of an actual eye. In these other species, the pineal gland has components of an actual eye, with a cornea, rod and cone. It is considered to be the vestige of a functional sense organ of early primitive vertebrates.

Directly affected by the light taken in through the eyes, the pineal regulates sleep, menstrual cycles, mating seasons, hibernation, seasonal flight patterns and many other “instinctual” behaviors.

Tryptamine Trippiness

Psychedelic researcher Dr Rick Strassman has explained how the pineal gland “is quite active in synthesizing compounds related to serotonin, an important neurotransmitter in the brain. Neurotransmitters are the chemical messengers allowing communication among individual nerve cells. Most typical psychedelic drugs, such as LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, and DMT are active in brain sites which are also affected by serotonin. In addition, most of these drugs are similar in their chemical structure to serotonin.”

Strassman states that most of the above substances belong to the “tryptamine” class of drugs, and proposed that the pineal gland produces “one or two endogenous tryptamines found in human blood and cerebrospinal fluid. This latter fluid continually bathes the brain, and compounds found in it most likely affect brain function.”

Strassman also explains how “psychedelic drugs, meditational states, spontaneous near-death experiences and other phenomena which may induce stereotypic death/rebirth and paradisal/hellish states act via the pineal gland.

Lyttle points to the universal mystic vision of God as an all-consuming white light, and postulates that on a physiological level, this experience is produced from chemical reactions in the pineal gland which is extremely light sensitive. “Light, the eyes and the ‘third eye’ or pineal gland form a triad which directly controls and regulates normal or altered consciousness and many bodily functions? these three factors are also directly related to, or implicated in, mystical states and the ‘psychedelic’ experience.”

Visions of white light are not only associated with mysticism and psychedelic explorations, but are also a prevalent image recorded by those who experience the near-death state. A reason for this recurring theme in near-death states may be found with Dr Strassman, who suggests that after death, as the pineal gland shuts down, some of the chemical present in it may turn into “psychedelic” drugs!

According to Dr Strassman, the pineal gland may not only play an important role in death, but also in birth, possibly even in rebirth…

The pineal gland first becomes visible in the human fetus at the same time as does the clear differentiation of the fetus into female or male gender. The time for both of these events is 49 days, the period of time that, according to several Buddhist texts, the life force of a deceased individual coalesces around its next corporeal existence. If the life force does indeed enter through the pineal, the manifestation of this coming and going would be the release of psychedelic tryptamines, which would mediate the visionary experiences associated with near-death, and near-birth states.

[ this actually provides us with a scientifically reasonable basis for defining the start of a human life. After 49 days you are interrupting an established human life if abortion is undertaken. I am loath to even go anywhere near this debate but now we actually know were to draw that line in the sand. - Arclein ]

Spiritual Traditions

Certain initiatory cults, such as Tantrism, Kundalini and Gnosticism, acknowledged the role of the pineal gland in the spiritual process. The spiritual/instinctual life force was seen as a serpent, due to its physical structure extending from the genitals, through the spine and up into its single all-seeing eye in the pineal gland.

These spiritual systems focussed around the raising of this primordial serpentine energy, based in the genitals and at the core of the pro-creative process. Through certain yogic practices this energy can be reversed and forced to travel up the spine into the brain, where it is reputed to cause “enlightenment”.

In the Kundalini system, which has seven distinct energy centers, the pineal gland has been variously identified with the “Ajna Chakra” and alternatively the “Sahasrara Chakra”. Both pre-Christian Mithraic and second century Gnostic texts also distinctly refer to the pineal gland in relation to seven distinct energy centers and this serpentine energy.

Not surprisingly, a common experience of those who have successfully raised their kundalini is the vision of all-consuming white light. More importantly, the devotee who successfully raises the kundalini experiences a radical switch in consciousness, obliterating the sense of individuation, and enters Nirvana.

Another potential reference to this curious little gland may occur at the end of the New Testament book of Revelation, where we find that the elect will know God intimately, “his name will be in their foreheads,” which is where the pineal deeply lies. Noting the gland’s strong connection with light, the rest of the passage is interesting: “There will be no more night; they will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light.”Likewise in the Qabalistic tradition, the primordial archetypical man, Adam Kadmon, shines forth with a light from his forehead that was rich in complex patterns and linguistic symbols. Similar imagery occurs in the Persian tradition of the light-like sacred fluid, the “vivifying and spermatic” xvarenah. “Ahura Mazda is preeminently the possessor of xvarenah, but this ‘flame’ also springs from the forehead of Mithra and like a solar light emanates from the heads of sovereigns.”

This mind-light from the forehead is also identical with the 3rd Eye of Shiva, which when opened in the individual burns away the concept of ego-bound consciousness, and when opened collectively has the potential to burn away the ties and fetters of the Old World Order.

Perhaps if enough modern psychonauts achieve the pineal experience we can push this new frame of mind onto the rest of ego-bound humanity. Here at the turning of the millennia, in the apocalyptic year of 1999, never has the potential for the state of mind which has been the goal of yogic sages, and psychedelic voyagers alike been so possible to attain for humanity as a whole.

Another Signal Bigfoot Encounter

We are seeing more outright encounters in which the Sasquatch and the witness actually live on overlapping and outright repetitive interactions take place.  It appears that the creature is becoming comfortable with our presence although still wary. Again no one has done the obvious and established gift exchange with a bushel of apples.

Because this creature is a human hybrid communication is plausible.  Thus trade is plausible.  From that it will be possible to establish a common language and continuing interaction through first contact and actual assistance.

We need then to harvest the developing excess of deer and wild turkey and they need us to provide a deep winter refugia.  Any barn will do.  With that they can support a large population.

Who knows?  They could become a common sight.

They are our natural allies for forest management and research to say nothing about other nocturnal carnivores that we have discovered far too much about already.

In the meantime we get additional confirmation that they hunt deer and establish field shelters as needed to avoid drenching rain.  This Sasquatch did not scare of until he had hunted out the local deer and like most primates, did not hesitate to toss objects to warn us off.  It was completely in his power to kill here and he clearly chose not too.  

What needs to be understood is that the Sasquatch is no threat to humanity by their specific choice.

Bigfoot encounter

1st sighting. Feb 6th approximately 11:30 PM.

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=33979

Went out on the back deck to smoke a cigarette. There was a full moon and around four inches of snow on the ground. The temperature was in the single digits. My family have been living at this location and I am familiar with the wildlife and sounds in the woods. I first heard movement in the woods that sounded like something extremely large. The snow was crunching and large branches and small trees were being broken. ( loud cracks like a gun fire) I was saying aloud: "what the hell is out there!). As it moved closer I could see some of the smaller tree tops shaking. This activity continued until it was about 20 feet from the woodline. At that point it stopped. The full moon reflecting off the snow illuminated the entire area enough to play a baseball game but I could not see what was within the woodline. I vocalized aloud: " why can't I see it". Then another ash tree began to shake near the fence line. The ten acres of woods on my property is surrounded by another 50 heavily wooded acres as well so there is plenty of mature forest and dense cover. Then I heard a loud crack and a small ash tree slowly fell along the fence line. I still did not have a clue as to what this could be. (bigfoot did not even come into consideration). After the tree fall I went into the house, locked the door and went upstairs to alert my wife and see if we could get a better look from the second floor window. I woke my wife and raised the window facing the wooded area. My wife and I both could hear movement in the woods which was clearly bi-pedal, again large branches breaking. My wife suggested that I go out in the morning and look for prints in the snow to identify it. We do not have bear in this region of Ohio so I was mystified as to what it could be.

The next morning I went out to investigate and discovered 9inch wide by 17 inch long bigfoot tracks. I could not believe it! I used a carpenters square and to reference the size and took digital pictures of the foot prints in the snow.

I followed the tracks thru the woods which looked like a tornado passed through. 6 inch diameter hardwood trees broken over, briar brush flattened ending at the 5 foot tall barbed wire fence at the rear of my property crushed down to a foot high. The barb wire was broken and stretched out straight as a frozen rope. We have a heavy deer population and I believe it was pursuing a deer. I found a hair sample on the barb wire. ( concealed as evidence in a zip lock bag. )

From there I found additional tracks which lead me to a fresh deer kill. There is no hunting on my property or the adjacent properties. The first thing that I noticed was the legs on the deer had been removed and the lower jaw was ripped off . All of the internal organs were missing yet no entrails or blood were found. I taking pictures of deer carcass and the bigfoot prints near the deer when I noticed the lower portions of the deer legs stacked together against a large tree. all of the legs were in the same direction like a bundle of dowel rods and there was clearly an imprint in the snow where ths sasquatch sat down in the snow against this tree and enjoyed his meal and neatly stacked the lower portions by the tree. At that point I turned to take a picture for evidence when a large stick flying end over end hit me on the back of my head and knocked my ball cap off. Thats when I realized this bigfoot is still out here. I grabbed my cap and ran out of the woods to the house. This story is just the beginning of an amazing six months of encounters and upclose sightings of an eight foot tall bigfoot that was very comfortable on my property and my family. I would be happy to share the other experiences and the evidence that I have collected.

ALSO NOTICED: I found a primitive lean too built in the woods with the leg bones and fur from the deer kill. The bones have large teeth gouges in them. I have recorded rock pounding sounds. It also communicated with me thru wood knocking.

OTHER WITNESSES: Myself (visual) Wife (audible sounds) My children had rocks thrown at them and heard roars.

OTHER STORIES: Yes sightings just week prior of a10 foot tall bigfoot just 20 miles north of my home and sightings of juvenile bigfoot near Tipp City on the little miami river by a family fishing.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: First occurences were between 11:30 PM to 1:30 additional events have occured during the day as well. most were nocturnal .

ENVIRONMENT: Hardwood forests and farm land. Small spring fed creek runs thru the woods in the winter. Land is also documented shawnee indian land with rock walls and artifacts on property. (Tecumseh)

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Steve Nystrom:

In late August 2012, I conducted a follow-up investigation with the witness regarding his numerous encounters with a Sasquatch from early February to late August 2009. When I arrived, the witness proceeded to show me the deer bone fragments, possible hair samples, and numerous pictures of the deer carcass, destroyed fence, and tracks that he had discovered throughout his property. The witness's residence is located north of Dayton, Ohio in a very heavily wooded area surrounded by farms, cornfields and small creeks.

The Sasquatch encounters started on evening of 6 February 2009, around 11:30 PM. It was a calm night with a full moon, and there was approximately 2 – 3 inches of snow on the ground. The witness had just stepped out on his back deck to enjoy a cigarette before bedtime, when he heard what appeared to be a large animal walking through the woods, breaking branches as it moved, about 100 yards from is back deck near a fence line that separated his property from his neighbor's property. The large animal appeared to be getting closer to his back deck, finally stopping at the edge of the wood line, near the horse gate adjacent to his neighbor's property. In addition, his neighbor’s horses had now become very restless, neighing and moving about frantically in the barn. (The horse barn and adjoining corral are located near the fence line, not far from the movement.) Finally, the witness heard the suspected Sasquatch start to rattle the horse gate.

Not sure of what it was that was approaching his house and rattling the horse gate, the witness went upstairs and notified his wife. Both he and his wife opened one of the bedroom windows on the back of the house facing the woods and the fence line, to possibly see what was causing the commotion. Even though it was a calm, moonlit night neither the witness nor his wife could really see the suspected Sasquatch. However, they heard the Sasquatch starting to move back into the woods away from the house and noticed some of the larger tree tops moving as though they were being brushed against or deliberately shaken. When they could no longer hear or see any movement activity, the witness and his wife went to bed.

The next day, the witness and his wife were still talking about what it was that they had seen and heard the night before. The witness’ wife suggested that he go out and investigate what it was they had seen, because there was two to three inches of snow on the ground and whatever it was may have left some tracks. The witness agreed and proceeded to walk along the wood line and immediately noticed several large, humanlike foots prints in the snow in the vicinity where they had heard and seen something moving the night before. He immediately went back to the house and grabbed both his camera and carpenters square and proceeded to take several photographs of the dozen or so tracks that were clearly visible in the snow. Using the carpenter’s square for reference, each of the tracks was approximately 17 inches long and 11 inches wide.

The witness followed the tracks to fence line at the edge of his property, and noticed more large tracks criss-crossing the area. In addition, he noticed that the wire fence at the edge of his property, which was approximately five feet high, had been pushed down almost to the ground. More amazingly, this was a relatively new fence that had a strand of barbwire on the top that had not only been snapped, but completely ripped from the fence pole. Basically, the barbwire was not cut – it was forcibly snapped!



It appeared that the Sasquatch pushed down the fence to step over it, so it could enter the witness’ property the night before while probably pursuing deer. (The witness also informed me that he had seen deer jump the fence numerous times in route to the surrounding cornfields. He has also seen black bear tracks along the road on the other side of this fence, but black bears had never damaged the fence in an attempt to enter his property.)

After photographing the damaged fence, the witness followed the large tracks for about 60 – 70 yards, whereby he noticed a deer carcass on the ground. Interestingly enough, the deer’s upper jaw had been ripped off, three legs had been torn off, and the rib cage appeared to have been smashed. 

He immediately noticed that the three missing legs had been stacked against a nearby tree – which was very unusual for a normal predator kill. Also, the witness saw a distinct impression in the snow next to the deer carcass - where the Sasquatch had probably sat down. A few seconds later, the witness had his ball cap knocked off of his head by a large stick that was thrown at him. He suddenly realized that the Sasquatch had probably been observing him the whole time and he proceeded to walk calmly, but briskly back toward his house.

Around 11:30PM that evening, the witness stepped out onto his back deck to see if the Sasquatch had returned. He noticed a large dark figure, about 100 feet from his back deck along the wood line. The figure then started to walk a few feet toward the house, stopping behind a large tree. It then repeatedly peaked around the large tree whereby the witness was able to see the dark outline of its head, as well as the reflection of its eyes. After a few minutes, he got somewhat nervous and went into his house to retrieve his shotgun. The witness stepped back out onto the deck with his shotgun and proceeded to chamber a round. The figure then started walking back into the woods toward the location of the deer carcass. The next night, around 11:30PM the witness again went out onto his back deck and could hear the something walking around in the woods. However, it did not approach the edge of the wood line, so he could not see it.

No additional encounters occurred until early March 2009. By this time the snow had melted and the witness decided to walk back to the edge of his property to see if there was any more Sasquatch evidence. He walked throughout his property and did not notice any tracks. As the witness approached a small stream that fills up each spring with winter melt, he noticed a primitive lean-to built from small sticks on the northwest edge of his property, on the opposite side of the creek. He looked under the lean-to and notice five deer bones and some deer fur on the ground. The witness retrieved the deer fur and five bones from under the lean-to and noticed strange scrapes or teeth marks on each of the bones. He kept them at his house and showed me during our follow-up investigation.

Later that summer in early June 2009, the witness’ daughter and son were playing on the swing set in the backyard in the early afternoon. His daughter suddenly noticed that someone or something was throwing small rocks at them from the woods. The witness’ daughter went to the front of the house where he was working in the garage and told him about the rock throwing. Concerned, he went to the backyard to see what was going on. Just then, a larger rock about the size of a baseball was hurled at them from the wood line. The witness yelled “look-out” and then grabbed his two children and went immediately into their house.

Around 1:00 AM that evening, the witness decided to go on to his back deck to see if the Sasquatch had possibly returned. He turned on his deck light and stepped out onto the deck saw the Sasquatch standing behind the swing set. From the few seconds that he observed it, the witness estimated that the Sasquatch was about 8 – 9 feet tall. (The swing set was approximately six feet high at the top of the crossbar, and the Sasquatch was about 2 ½ - 3 feet taller.) After about four or five seconds, the Sasquatch darted into the woods.

In early July 2009, the witness and his daughter were in their backyard near the wood line picking up sticks to burn in their fire pit. Just then – he and his daughter heard a loud vocalization that sounded like a “lion’s roar.” The witness and his daughter ran into the house and his daughter immediately told her mother what had happened and wondered if the noise had been made by one of the neighbor's horses. The witness and his wife decided that the children should not go outside into the back yard for a while. A few days later, while he was outside the witness heard wood knocking coming from the woods. A few weeks later, the witness and his wife had just retired for the evening when they heard something walking on the gravel driveway near the garbage cans, which are located near the front of the house. (During the investigation, I walked on the gravel driveway and confirmed the noise. The sound would have been amplified during the evening hours when its generally quieter and could easily have been heard in various sections of the house – especially during the summer when the windows are opened.)

The witness went downstairs, turned on his front light and stepped outside. He immediately noticed the Sasquatch standing next to his garbage cans. The Sasquatch saw the witness and started to walk away, towards the back yard. After a few minutes, he decided to go walk out onto his back deck and could hear the Sasquatch walking in the woods.

Finally, in mid-August 2009 there was another possible Sasquatch encounter. Around 11:30 PM the witness could hear his neighbor’s hunting dogs barking at someone or something. This was not unusual because the neighbor’s dogs periodically got loose and would run around in the woods for a several minutes before eventually returning home. Not thinking much of it, the witness stepped outside and could hear something large walking in the woods between his property and his neighbor’s property. After several minutes, the noise stopped and the witness’ neighbor pulled up on his ATV. His neighbor had also heard something moving in the woods and the witness then proceeded to inform his neighbor of the various encounters that had occurred during the past year.

The next day the witness and his neighbor proceeded to investigate the area of the woods where they had both heard the noises. They were not able to find any meaningful evidence until his neighbor’s dog found and retrieved a deer leg. Both the witness and his neighbor continued the search on their properties whereby they discovered the remains of a deer carcass. The deer had been torn apart with both the head and hind legs having been removed.

Since August 2009, the witness and his family have not had any similar encounters or found any additional evidence.

A hair sample was provided to me. The sample consists of some deer hair - but there are three visible longer, black hairs that might be from a Sasquatch. The hair has been sent to a veterinarian who specializes in the identification of hair, and we will update this report accordingly. 

Based on the follow-up investigation, photographs, bones and hair samples that the witness provided, I sincerely believe that he is a very credible individual. The witness is a matter-of-fact person who has lived in the Dayton, Ohio area all of his life. He is currently employed as a government contractor working on advanced systems at Wright-Patterson AFB, near Dayton, Ohio. 

---

About BFRO Investigator Steve Nystrom:

Steve Nystrom is an active member of the BFRO. He enjoys investigating reports of Sasquatch encounters and vocalizations throughout the Midwest. Mr. Nystrom is a Senior Analyst with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He has had a number of leadership, staff and analyst positions throughout his career, which also includes deployments to Iraq in 2008 and 2010.

Genetic recovery with George Church

Here George Church explains the current state of genetic engineering simply and clearly. It is not just practical to produce a mammoth and most other Pleistocene creatures since we have frozen DNA to work with but most likely quite a few others. Certainly those collected before extinction during the Age of Discovery can all be likely recovered this way.

That is the really exciting part of this work. As we fully restore Terra's fecundity through terraforming we will also be able to reintroduce creatures lost to us in a way that keeps them properly protected. That is the real problem because of our nasty friend the rat in particular.

I am looking forward to a refugia holding the full Ice Age menagerie. Maybe we can assign the island of Anticosti in the Gulf of St Laurence to this task.

This method is also capable of recovering the Neanderthal in theory at least although that may turn out to be way too difficult.

George Church talks about resurrecting Neanderthals, engineered longevity and synthetic fuel for about twenty cents per gallon

JANUARY 21, 2013

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/01/george-church-talks-about-resurrecting.html

Der Spiegel has an interview with George Church.
Nextbigfuture has covered George Church's work and his recent book Regensis several times. 
We had previously covered his approach to resurrecting the Wooly Mammoth and Neanderthals which is one of the main focuses of the Der Spiegel interview.
Full blown Genomic Engineering for resurrection the Wooly Mammoth and Neanderthal
This could be done with MAGE (Multiplex automated genomic engineering) technology. MAGE was also developed by George. Genomic Engineering works a few nucleotides at a time. MAGE works in a wholesale fashion.
1. Take the elephant genome
2. Break it into 30,000 pieces of 100,000 DNA units in length
3. Use a reconstructed Mammoth genome as a template
4. Select the important changes to make to the elephant genome
5. Reassemble the changed pieces
6. Transfer into the egg cell for the female elephant to give birth to the new Mammoth clone

The same can be done for the Neanderthal.

However, the important thing is that if the technology of genomic engineering can do these kinds of miracles then other radical biology will also be possible.

Nextbigfuture has also covered the new cheaper and faster approach to gene editing called CRISPR. 

CRISPR is an RNA-guided editing tool for facile, robust, and multiplexable human genome engineering.
CRISPR needs 20 base pairs of RNA for targeting. The previous best genetic engineering method TALE Nuclease used 2000 base pairs for targeting and was about 0.37% accurate for targeting.

CRISPR is 100 times easier to create the targeting and 10 to 20 times more effective at targeting than prior approaches.

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Church on Synthetic Fuel

Church: The fact is that we already have organisms that can produce fuel compatible with current car engines. These organisms convert carbon dioxide and light into fuels by basically using photosynthesis. Synthetic fuel can currently be produced in the tens of thousand of liters. The cost is $1.30 a gallon for synthetic fuel. And the price will go down. Most of these systems are at least a factor of five away from theoretical limits, maybe even a factor of 10.

Synthetic Biology for Medicine

The potential of synthetic life is particularly large in pharmaceuticals. The days of classic, small molecule drugs may be numbered. Actually, it is a miracle that they work in the first place. They kind of dose your whole body. They cross-react with other molecules. Now, we are getting better and better at programming cells. So I think cell therapies are going to be the next big thing. If you engineer genomes and cells, you have an incredible amount of sophistication. If you take AIDS virus as an example ... All you have to do is take your blood cell precursors out of your body, reengineer them using gene therapy to knock out both copies of your CCR5 gene, which is the AIDS receptor, and then put them back in your body. Then you can't get AIDS any more, because the virus can't enter your cells.

Life Extension

Could we improve humans genetically in this way?

There are stem cell therapies already. There are hematopoietic stem cell transplants that are widely practiced, and skin stem cell transplants. Once you have enough experience with these techniques you can start talking about human cloning. One of the things to do is to engineer our cells so that they have a lower probability of cancer. And then once we have a lower probability of cancer, you can crank up their self-renewal properties, so that they have a lower probability of senescence. We have people who live to be 120 years old. What if we could all live 120 years? That might be considered desirable.

In order to find out [which genes to change for longevity], we are now involved in sequencing as many people as possible who have lived for over 110 years. There are only 60 of those people in the world that we know of.

It's too early to say [about results of analyzing supercentenarians]. But we collected the DNA of about 20 of them, and the analysis is just beginning.

SPIEGEL: You expect them all to have the same mutation that guarantees longevity?

Church: That is one possibility. The other possibility is that they each have their own little advantage over everybody else. What we are looking for is protective alleles. If they each have their own answer, we can look at all of them and ask, what happens if you put them all in one person? Do they cancel each other out, or do they synergize?

SPIEGEL: You seriously envisage a new era, in which genes are used as anti-aging-cures?

Church: Why not? A lot of things that were once left to luck no longer have to be if we add synthetic biology into the equation. Let's take an example: virus resistance …

SPIEGEL: ... which is also achievable using synthetic biology?

Church: Yes, it turns out there are certain ways to make organisms of any kind resistent to any viruses. If you change the genetic code …

Church: I certainly respect other people's faith. But, in general, in religion you wouldn't want people to starve. We have 7 billion people living on this planet. If part of the solution to feed those people is to make their crops resistant to viruses, then you have to ask: Is there really anything in the Bible that says you shouldn't make virus-resistant crops? I don't think there's anything fundamentally more religiously problematic about engineering a dog or a cow or a horse the way we have been doing it for 10,000 years versus making a virus-resistant crop.

SPIEGEL: Virus-resistant crops is one thing. Virus-resistant humans is something altogether different.

Church: Why? In technology, we generally don't take leaps. It's this very slow crawl. We are not going to be making a virus-resistant human before we make a virus-resistant cow. I don't understand why people should be so deeply hurt by that kind of technology.

Eliminating Pesticides From Human Bloodstream

They have successfully scavenged the offending pesticide from the victim's bloodstream. This is an obvious route to exploit fully on all the other pesticides.

Most are victims due to chronic exposure, often quite accidental. After all it is handled often in agricultural circumstances. There is no .one usually there to be properly paranoid.

Agriculture is learning how to operate organically and these pesticides will go out of service. Unfortunately, that will still takes several decades.

New treatment could combat deadly chemical agents

by Staff Writers

Sheffield UK (SPX) Jan 15, 2013

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/New_treatment_could_combat_deadly_chemical_agents_999.html

An enzyme treatment which could neutralise the effects of lethal chemicals responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people across the world has been developed by experts at the University of Sheffield.

Organophosphorus agents (OP) are used as pesticides in developing countries and acute poisoning is common because of insufficient control, poor storage, ready availability, and inadequate education amongst farmers.

It is estimated about 200,000 people die each year across the world from OP poisoning, through occupational exposure, unintentional use and misuse, mostly in developing countries like India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka and through deliberate terrorist activities.

OPs include compounds like Tabun, which was developed in 1936 by German scientists during World War II, Sarin, Soman, Cyclosarin, VX, and VR.

Using a modified human enzyme, scientist Professor Mike Blackburn from the University of Sheffield's Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology collaborated in a consultancy role with Professor Alexander Gabibov of the Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute, Moscow, and Professor Patrick Masson of the Departement de Toxicologie, Centre de Recherches du Service de Sante des Armees, to create a "bioscavenger" which was found to protect mice against the nerve agent VR and showed no lasting effects.

In studies performed at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry in Pushchino, Russia, a total of eight mice were treated with the new enzyme after being subjected to enough of the VR agent to kill several of the animals - about 63 mg - and all survived.

Professor Blackburn said: "This current publication describes a novel method to generate a bioscavenger for the Russian VR organophosphorus agent with the key property of being long-acting in the bloodstream.

"That has been achieved by a combination of chemical surface modification (polysialylation) and biotechnology of production (through the use of an in vitro CHO-based expression system employing genes encoding butyrylcholinesterase and a proline-rich peptide under special promoter control).

Cheap and Easy Gene Snip

It means that research productivity will leap again and results will soon be coming in fast and furiously from the present state of quick enough. Of course it is excellent news and coming close to turning it all into a gold rush were even modestly trained technicians could participate. There is even room for outright stupidity.

It also means that outright gene therapy will now come into its own as a easy to tap tool in the medical industries kit.

This is all great news for human health in the next decade.

Cheap and easy technique to snip DNA could revolutionize gene therapy

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | January 7, 2013

BERKELEY —

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/01/07/cheap-and-easy-technique-to-snip-dna-could-revolutionize-gene-therapy/

A simple, precise and inexpensive method for cutting DNA to insert genes into human cells could transform genetic medicine, making routine what now are expensive, complicated and rare procedures for replacing defective genes in order to fix genetic disease or even cure AIDS.

Discovered last year by Jennifer Doudna and Martin Jinek of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and University of California, Berkeley, and Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine-Sweden, the technique was labeled a “tour de force” in a 2012 review in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

That review was based solely on the team’s June 28, 2012, Science paper, in which the researchers described a new method of precisely targeting and cutting DNA in bacteria.

Two new papers published last week in the journal Science Express demonstrate that the technique also works in human cells. A paper by Doudna and her team reporting similarly successful results in human cells has been accepted for publication by the new open-access journal eLife.

“The ability to modify specific elements of an organism’s genes has been essential to advance our understanding of biology, including human health,” said Doudna, a professor of molecular and cell biology and of chemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at UC Berkeley. “However, the techniques for making these modifications in animals and humans have been a huge bottleneck in both research and the development of human therapeutics.

“This is going to remove a major bottleneck in the field, because it means that essentially anybody can use this kind of genome editing or reprogramming to introduce genetic changes into mammalian or, quite likely, other eukaryotic systems.”

“I think this is going to be a real hit,” said George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and principal author of one of the Science Express papers. “There are going to be a lot of people practicing this method because it is easier and about 100 times more compact than other techniques.”

“Based on the feedback we’ve received, it’s possible that this technique will completely revolutionize genome engineering in animals and plants,” said Doudna, who also holds an appointment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “It’s easy to program and could potentially be as powerful as the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR).”

The latter technique made it easy to generate millions of copies of small pieces of DNA and permanently altered biological research and medical genetics.

Cruise missiles

Two developments – zinc-finger nucleases and TALEN (Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases) proteins – have gotten a lot of attention recently, including being together named one of the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of 2012 by Science magazine. The magazine labeled them “cruise missiles” because both techniques allow researchers to home in on a particular part of a genome and snip the double-stranded DNA there and there only.

Researchers can use these methods to make two precise cuts to remove a piece of DNA and, if an alternative piece of DNA is supplied, the cell will plug it into the cut instead. In this way, doctors can excise a defective or mutated gene and replace it with a normal copy. Sangamo Biosciences, a clinical stage biospharmaceutical company, has already shown that replacing one specific gene in a person infected with HIV can make him or her resistant to AIDS.

Both the zinc finger and TALEN techniques require synthesizing a large new gene encoding a specific protein for each new site in the DNA that is to be changed. By contrast, the new technique uses a single protein that requires only a short RNA molecule to program it for site-specific DNA recognition, Doudna said.

In the new Science Express paper, Church compared the new technique, which involves an enzyme called Cas9, with the TALEN method for inserting a gene into a mammalian cell and found it five times more efficient.

“It (the Cas9-RNA complex) is easier to make than TALEN proteins, and it’s smaller,” making it easier to slip into cells and even to program hundreds of snips simultaneously, he said. The complex also has lower toxicity in mammalian cells than other techniques, he added.

“It’s too early to declare total victory” over TALENs and zinc-fingers, Church said, “but it looks promising.”

Based on the immune systems of bacteria

Doudna discovered the Cas9 enzyme while working on the immune system of bacteria that have evolved enzymes that cut DNA to defend themselves against viruses. These bacteria cut up viral DNA and stick pieces of it into their own DNA, from which they make RNA that binds and inactivates the viruses.

UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science Jill Banfield brought this unusual viral immune system to Doudna’s attention a few years ago, and Doudna became intrigued. Her research focuses on how cells use RNA (ribonucleic acids), which are essentially the working copies that cells make of the DNA in their genes.

Doudna and her team worked out the details of how the enzyme-RNA complex cuts DNA: the Cas9 protein assembles with two short lengths of RNA, and together the complex binds a very specific area of DNA determined by the RNA sequence. The scientists then simplified the system to work with only one piece of RNA and showed in the earlier Science paper that they could target and snip specific areas of bacterial DNA.

“The beauty of this compared to any of the other systems that have come along over the past few decades for doing genome engineering is that it uses a single enzyme,” Doudna said. “The enzyme doesn’t have to change for every site that you want to target – you simply have to reprogram it with a different RNA transcript, which is easy to design and implement.”

The three new papers show this bacterial system works beautifully in human cells as well as in bacteria.

“Out of this somewhat obscure bacterial immune system comes a technology that has the potential to really transform the way that we work on and manipulate mammalian cells and other types of animal and plant cells,” Doudna said. “This is a poster child for the role of basic science in making fundamental discoveries that affect human health.”

Doudna’s coauthors include Jinek and Alexandra East, Aaron Cheng and Enbo Ma of UC Berkeley’s Department of Molecular and Cell Biology.

Doudna’s work was sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

HIV Vaccine Brakes Disease for Year

 Not a cure of course, but certainly it is a useful tool to apply to the problem. Considering the side effects and costs of all the present protocols, getting a year's relief is great.

It may also lead to something permanent.

The tool kit now available for HIV is now surprisingly large and optimism abounds that a cure is both possible and perhaps sooner than appears obvious. At least victims are all now living out their lives in the developed world with some occasional damage and are actually drifting into old age and succumbing to other causes often not related at all.

Scientists say vaccine temporarily brakes HIV

by Staff Writers

Madrid (AFP) Jan 03, 2013

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Scientists_say_vaccine_temporarily_brakes_HIV_999.html

A team of Spanish researchers say they have developed a therapeutic vaccine that can temporarily brake growth of the HIV virus in infected patients.

The vaccine, based on immune cells exposed to HIV that had been inactivated with heat, was tested on a group of 36 people carrying the virus and the results were the best yet recorded for such a treatment, the team said.

"What we did was give instructions to the immune system so it could learn to destroy the virus, which it does not do naturally," said Felipe Garcia, one of the scientists in the team at Barcelona University's Hospital Clinic.

The therapeutic vaccine, a shot that treats an existing disease rather than preventing it, was safe and led to a dramatic drop in the amount of HIV virus detected in some patients, said the study, published Wednesday in Science Translation Medicine.

After 12 weeks of the trial, the HIV viral load dropped by more than 90 percent among 12 of the 22 patients who received the vaccine. Only one among the 11 patients who received a control injection without the vaccine experienced a similar result.

After 24 weeks, the effectiveness had begun to decline, however, with seven of the 20 remaining patients receiving the vaccine enjoying a similar 90-percent slump in viral load. No-one in the control group of 10 patients experienced such a decline in the virus.

The vaccine lost its effectiveness after a year, when the patients had to return to their regular combination therapy of anti-retroviral drugs.

Researchers said the results were similar to those achieved with a single anti-retroviral drug, used to block the growth of HIV.

"It is the most solid demonstration in the scientific literature that a therapeutic vaccine is possible," they said in a statement.

The vaccine allowed patients temporarily to live without taking multiple medicines on a daily basis, which created hardship for patients, could have toxic side-effects over the long term and had a high financial price, the team said.

"This investigation opens the path to additional studies with the final goal of achieving a functional cure -- the control of HIV replication for long periods or an entire life without anti-retroviral treatment," the researchers said in a statement.

"Although we still have not got a functional cure, the results published today open the possibility of achieving an optimal therapeutic vaccine, or a combination of strategies that includes a therapeutic vaccine, and could help to reach that goal," they said.

The team said it took seven years to get to this point, and the researchers would now work on improving the vaccine and combining it with other therapeutic vaccines over the next three or four years.

According to latest UN figures, the number of people infected by HIV worldwide rose to 34 million in 2011 from 33.5 million in 2010.