HUMODS: December 2010

12/23/2010 PERMALINK

Growth hormone appears to shorten lifespan, while growth hormone release blocker extends longevity.

Scientists studying the compound MZ-5-156, a growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) antagonist, have found that overall, MZ-5-156 had positive effects on oxidative stress in the brain, improving cognition, telomerase activity (the actions of an enzyme which protects DNA material) and life span, while decreasing tumor activity. The research was conducted using the SAMP8 mouse model, a strain engineered for studies of the aging process.

MZ-5-156, like many GHRH antagonists, inhibited several human cancers, including prostate, breast, brain and lung cancers. It also had positive effects on learning, and is linked to improvements in short-term memory. The antioxidant actions led to less oxidative stress, reversing cognitive impairment in the aging mouse.

"Many older people have been taking growth hormone to rejuvenate themselves," said John E. Morley, M.D., study co-investigator and director of the divisions of geriatric medicine and endocrinology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. "These results strongly suggest that growth hormone, when given to middle aged and older people, may be hazardous." It is the antagonists of growth hormone-releasing hormone that appear to have strongly beneficial effects on aging, indicating that growth hormone does just the opposite.

12/22/2010 PERMALINK

Mammalian aging process linked to overactive cellular pathway.

Whitehead Institute researchers have linked hyperactivity in the mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 cellular pathway to reduced ketone production in the liver, which is a well-defined physiological trait of aging in mice. During sleep or other times of low carbohydrate intake, the liver converts fatty acids to ketones, which are vital sources of energy during fasting, especially for the heart and brain. As animals age, their ability to produce ketones in response to fasting declines. One cellular pathway, the mTORC1 pathway, is known to coordinate cell growth with nutrient availability and other growth factors. Previous research has shown that when this pathway is inhibited, a variety of animals, including worms, flies, and mice tend to live longer. When researchers turned off the mTORC1 pathway in very young mice, these mice did not experience the normal decline in ketogenesis as they aged. In old age, their ketogenesis levels remained similar to younger mice, confirming that continual inhibition of the mTORC1 pathway prevented the aging-induced decline in ketone production.

12/22/2010 PERMALINK

Mammalian aging process linked to overactive cellular pathway.

12/21/2010 PERMALINK

Scientists directly observe synapse validation for the first time in living brain circuits.

Newly published research led by Professor Z. Josh Huang, Ph.D., of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) sheds important new light on how neurons in the developing brain make connections with one another. This activity, called synapse validation, is at the heart of the process by which neural circuits self-assemble, and is directly implicated in pathology that gives rise to devastating neurodevelopmental disorders including autism and schizophrenia. They focused on a particular type of inhibitory neurons, called GABAergic because they communicate via neurotransmitters called GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid). Some have proposed that nerve cells secrete some kind of repulsive or attractive molecules. "But when you are in the cortex," says Professor Huang. "The distance between different potential partners is so minute—it's inconceivable that kind of mechanism could work. It's more plausible that the cortical neuron's strategy is to initiate synapse formation with almost any nearby target and then to test it, by trying to communicate using synaptic transmission. Most of these tentative connections don't prove to be correct and will be eliminated. Only those between functionally compatible neurons will be validated and strengthened." Huang and and graduate student Yu Fu observed in live cortical circuits precisely how cellular 'glues' in the form of cell-adhesion molecules called neurexins and neuroligins help to make a preliminary connection. "They work like a zipper: two neurons—called pre-synaptic and post-synaptic—are touching; there are adhesion molecules coming from both sides, and they actually lock."

12/20/2010 PERMALINK

Modding your obsolete hunter/gather body to produce calorie burning brown instead of calorie storing white fat.

Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center, which last year led the way in demonstrating an active role for brown fat in adults, now have identified progenitor cells in mouse white fat tissue and skeletal muscle that can be transformed into brown fat cells. In some adults, the white fat cells that we all stockpile so readily are supplemented by a very different form of fat -- brown fat cells, which can burn energy rather than storing it.

12/20/2010 PERMALINK

Mod boosting supply of key neurotransmitter doubles stamina.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have 'engineered' a mouse that can run on a treadmill twice as long as a normal mouse by increasing its supply of acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter essential for muscle contraction. The finding could lead to new treatments for neuromuscular as well as future human enhancements.

12/20/2010 PERMALINK

New technique promises to sequence your entire genome in just minutes for just a few dollars.

: Scientists from Imperial College London have patented a prototype from research that promises to sequence your entire genome in a single lab procedure, instead of the highly complex and time-consuming process used today. Fast and inexpensive genome sequencing could allow ordinary people to unlock the secrets of their own DNA, revealing their personal susceptibility to diseases and the negative effects of aging. Medical professionals are already using genome sequencing to understand population-wide health issues and research ways to tailor personalized treatments or preventions. 'Compared with current technology,' said Dr Joshua Edel from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London. 'This device could lead to much cheaper sequencing: just a few dollars, compared with $1m to sequence an entire genome in 2007. We haven't tried it on a whole genome yet but our initial experiments suggest that you could theoretically do a complete scan of the 3,165 million bases in the human genome within minutes.' The researchers demonstrated that it is possible to propel a DNA strand at high speed through a tiny 50 nanometer (nm) hole - or nanopore - cut in a silicon chip, using an electrical charge. As the strand emerges from the back of the chip, its coding sequence (bases A, C, T or G) is read by a tunneling electrode junction. This 2 nm gap between two wires supports an electrical current that interacts with the distinct electrical signal from each base code. A powerful computer can then interpret the base code's signal to construct the genome sequence, making it possible to combine all these well-documented techniques for the first time.

12/17/2010 PERMALINK

After so much previous success, why is the western political model now failing?

SOURCE : I've read many blog posts lately attempting to comprehend why developed, democratic countries have mired themselves in so much debt, while producing such poor results for citizens in recent years. Across the board from economic to health to foreign policy, all we seem to see is failures.

I think these failures all stem from a single bad meme developed over the years by politicos for dealing with the growing complexity of the problems they face today.

This failed meme that is the root cause of our civilization's recent plague of problems is the perverse and destructive economics created by the structure of a standing political committee.

If you are one of the few that makes the weapons for the Pentagon or builds the massive 'projects' around cities for housing the disadvantaged. It doesn't matter if those weapons are no longer needed for the national security or if those 'projects' have been shown to create a culture of dependency that destroys most of the young people that grow up within them. You still want to keep your gravy train flowing.

Your industry is only a few compared to the many, but you have an enormous economic incentive to bribe or otherwise subvert the committee into continuing the support for your particular gravy train. So you pull out all the stops to make this happen.

Contrast this with the average citizen's economic incentive to stop the waste that your program represents. The taxes on a billion dollars in excess revenues paid to your particular boondoggle, costs me, the typical taxpayer, only a vanishingly small fraction of my income, less than 1/10th of 1 percent.

So much is at stake for you that you will offer cushy jobs to committee staffers, wives and kids of politicos, or even to politicos themselves when they retire from office. You will hand out cup cakes to a committee's staff just before consideration begins of something that might help the public by addressing your near-monopoly power in a particular business, as AT&T did just this week.

For me though, the average citizen, the economic loss from each individual boondoggle, just isn't worth my getting politically involved to overcome. Each individual loss never rises to the level where it is in my economic interest to fight it.

This is why sub-committees and regulator committees inevitably morph into industry, and existing project protection clubs.

The economic incentives created by the flawed political standing committee meme insurers that it can be no other way.

Even a scrupulously honest politico or committee staff member often finds him/herself subverted into leaving public service for a wonderful job in the private sector. Because an industry wanting them gone from government service, makes them an offer too good to refuse.

Failure on an unbelievably massive scale can be sustained by this system.

After creating the mother of all real estate bubble by printing too much money (M3 just before the bust was rising 17% annually) and keeping interest rates artificially low and making terrible loans. The Fed, Treasury Dept. bureaucrats and banking industry were given trillions in additional resources to deal with the problem they had created.

12/17/2010 PERMALINK

Word Lens RES (Reality Enhancement Software) is amazing, best RES app I've seen so far.

SOURCE : If this smart phone bot works as well as it appears to in the clip, this is going to be a must have application for any smart phone or other RES-capable device or implant. Not only translating all signs but seeming to actually repaint them in your own language is absolutely awesome. And for a limited time you can download it for free from Apple's App Store for iPhone 4, iPhone 3gs, and iPod Touch 4. Languages currently available using in-app purchase: - Spanish to English - English to Spanish. No network delay, no roaming fees, and no reception problems, says the company. It looks up words for you, and shows them in context. Just point your phone's camera at text and on your phones screen it is magically changed into your language.

12/16/2010 PERMALINK

Stem cell cure for baldness could be available within 5 years.

SOURCE : For the first time, scientists in Germany have grown hair follicles from stem cells. The feat has brought scientists a step closer to creating a cure for baldness. The study used cells taken from animals, but researchers hope to create human hair follicles from human stem cells within a year.

12/15/2010 PERMALINK

Researchers figure out how to grow pluripotent stem cell cultures in their neutral ready to differentiat into any tissue type state.

SOURCE : University of Illinois researchers have found a key to keeping stem cells in their neutral state: It takes a soft touch. The researchers demonstrated that culturing mouse embryonic stem cells on a soft gel rather than on a hard plate or dish keeps them in their pluripotent state, a ground state with the ability to become any type of tissue. The soft substrate maintains homogeneous pluripotent colonies over long periods of time -- without the need for expensive growth chemicals.

12/15/2010 PERMALINK

Scientists identify genetic regions that control embryonic stem cell development.

SOURCE : More than 2,000 genetic regions involved in early human development have been identified by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The regions, called enhancers, are responsible for triggering the expression of distant genes when embryonic stem cells begin to divide to form the many tissues of a growing embryo.

12/15/2010 PERMALINK

Where your unconscious memories are formed.

SOURCE : A small area deep in the brain called the perirhinal cortex is critical for forming your unconscious conceptual memories, researchers at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain have found.

12/14/2010 PERMALINK

Human umbilical cord blood cells can rejuvinate aging hippocampal neurons.

SOURCE : In vitro studies examining the activity of human umbilical cord blood cells (HUCB) on experimental animal models of central nervous system aging, injury and disease, have shown that HUCBs provide a 'trophic effect' that enhances survival and maturation of hippocampal neurons, benefiting aging adult hippocampal neurons by increasing their survival, growth, differentiation, maturation and arborization.

12/14/2010 PERMALINK

Researchers make progressing towards turning your body's own cells into a health maintaining computer.

SOURCE : Genetically modified cells can be made to communicate with each other as if they were electronic circuits. Using yeast cells, a group of researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has taken a groundbreaking step towards being able to build complex systems in the future where the body's own cells help to keep us healthy. The study was presented recently in an article in the scientific journal Nature.

12/13/2010 PERMALINK

In a breakthrough of cosmic propotion, researchers find the first solid evidence of other universes beyond our own.

Extraordinary evidence has been found that our universe is only one of many bubbles in a much larger cosmos. With each of those other bubbles containing another universe, where the laws of physics may be dramatically different to our own. A team of researchers lead by Stephen Feeney at University College London says they've found in the cosmic microwave background radiation of our universe circular patterns which appear to be the results of four past impacts between our own and another universe. This is the first solid evidence that other universes exist out beyond the limits of our own.

12/13/2010 PERMALINK

Bioengineers learn how to 'program' self-assemble of particles using micro-channel flows.

SOURCE : From atomic crystals to spiral galaxies, self-assembly is ubiquitous in nature. In biological processes, self-assembly at the molecular level is particularly prevalent. Phospholipids, for example, will self-assemble into a bilayer to form a cell membrane, and actin, a protein that supports and shapes a cell's structure, continuously self-assembles and disassembles during cell movement. Bioengineers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have been exploring a unique phenomenon whereby randomly dispersed microparticles self-assemble into a highly organized structure as they flow through microscale channels. The research team discovered the mechanism that leads to this self-assembly behavior through a series of careful experiments and numerical simulations. They found that continuous disturbance of the fluid induced by each flowing and rotating particle drives neighboring particles away, while migration of particles to localized streams due to the momentum of the fluid acts to stabilize the spacing between particles at a finite distance. In essence, the combination of repulsion and localization leads to an organized structure. Once they understood the mechanism, the team developed microchannels that allowed for "tuning" of the spatial frequency of particles within an organized particle train. They found that by simply adding short regions of expanded channel width, the particles could be induced to self-assemble into different structures in a controllable and potentially programmable way. Improving the uniformity of cell concentrations entering the microscale volume of a print head can enable burgeoning fields such as "tissue printing," in which single cells in a polymer ink are sequentially positioned to form a functional tissue architecture, such as the cylindrical lumen of a blood vessel.

12/13/2010 PERMALINK

Low doses of lenalidomide found by researchers to mod immune systems back into a more yourthful state.

SOURCE : UCSF researchers have identified an existing medication that restores key elements of the immune system that, when out of balance, lead to a steady decline in immunity and health as people age. The team plans to begin larger-scale clinical trials in 2011 to test the drug’s effectiveness and hopes for broader availability within a few years. The team found that extremely low doses of the drug lenalidomide can stimulate the body’s immune-cell protein factories, which decrease production during aging, and re-balance your levels of several key cytokines – immune proteins that either attack viruses and bacteria or cause inflammation that leads to an overall decline in health. The results raise hopes of a pill that can mod an aging immune systems to a more youthful state.

12/13/2010 PERMALINK

Stem cells turned into complex, functioning intestinal tissue in lab.

SOURCE : For the first time, scientists have created functioning human intestinal tissue in the laboratory from pluripotent stem cells. In a study posted online Dec. 12 by Nature, scientists from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center have demonstrated that human pluripotent stem cells in a petri dish can be instructed to efficiently form human tissue with three-dimensional architecture and cellular composition remarkably similar to intestinal tissue.

12/13/2010 PERMALINK

Tracing your mouth's microbes for personalized oral health care.

SOURCE : The human body harbors a complex ecosystem of microbes recognized as having a role in health and disease. Viruses can attack bacterial communities, yet little is known about how this might influence human health. Scientists have now performed the first metagenomic analysis of a bacterial immune system in humans over time, finding that defenses of the oral microbiome are unique and traceable, information that could personalize oral health care in the future.

12/12/2010 PERMALINK

'Grow your own transplant' may be possible for men with type 1 diabetes.

SOURCE : Men with type 1 diabetes may be able to grow their own insulin-producing cells from their testicular tissue, say Georgetown University Medical Center researchers. Their laboratory and animal study is a proof of principle that human spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) extracted from testicular tissue can morph into insulin-secreting beta islet cells normally found in the pancreas. And the researchers say they accomplished this feat without use of any of the extra genes now employed in most labs to turn adult stem cells into a tissue of choice.

12/09/2010 PERMALINK

Researchers find key protein that allows nerve cells to repair themselves.

SOURCE : A team of scientists led by Melissa Rolls, an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University, has peered inside neurons to discover an unexpected process that is required for regeneration after severe neuron injury. The discovery promises new therapies for nerve disease or nerve damage.

12/09/2010 PERMALINK

Researchers show that silencing the TLR4 gene with siRNA can stop the process that leads to cardiovascular disease.

SOURCE : Researchers have carried out a series of in vitro tests which demonstrated that TLR4 plays a critical role in hyperglycaemic cardiac apoptosis, and that silencing the gene using specific small interfering RNA can prevent it. Wei-Ping Min, from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, worked with a team of researchers to perform the tests in cells taken from diabetic mice. He said, "We found that TLR4 was up-regulated in the myocardia of diabetic mice. Treatment with TLR4 siRNA attenuated the apoptosis seen in these cells, thus highlighting the potential clinical use of siRNA-based therapy".

12/09/2010 PERMALINK

Great moments in unintended consequences, good intentions, bad results.

SOURCE : Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions, what could possibly go wrong? When Congress tries to do good, they very often wind up destroying lives. Perhaps the most egregious example is the welfare apartment complexes that the FedGov funded and cities across America built for the poor. Children growing up in these 'projects' adapted to their new reality perfectly. From watching their moms girls quickly learned that if they went to work, their benefits were lost. If they married a man with a good income, their benefits were lost. But if they didn't marry and had lots and lots of kids, the system would reward them with maximum benefits. So they did exactly what Congress's new system encouraged them to do. Their brothers also grew up without the normal examples of a normal neighborhood full of people that worked for a living all around them. Since they couldn't have babies to get income, the young men took up the habits of the transient men the system encouraged their mom's to seek out for companionship. They learned life's lessons from these men. They learned few, if any, good working habits, and a majority or young men growing up in the 'projects' wound up serving time. Only a few exceptional individuals were able to escape the trap Congress's destructive system had set for them.

12/08/2010 PERMALINK

Bacteria bots in your blood coming as team develops 'logic gates' to program bacteria as computers.

SOURCE : A team of UCSF researchers has engineered E. coli with the key molecular circuitry that will enable genetic engineers to program cells to communicate and perform computations. This is a huge step towards the development of bacteria bots to maintain your health.

12/08/2010 PERMALINK

Researchers us iPS stem cells to repairs damaged spins in primates for the first time.

SOURCE : Paralyzed marmoset monkeys are walking again after a Japanese research team transplanted induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) into the animals' spines -- the first time the treatment has succeeded in a primate subject. The iPS cell transplant -- carried out by researchers from Keio University and the Central Institute for Experimental Animals -- had been performed on mice in the past. However, the successful application of the treatment in a species so close to humans -- announced by Keio professor and group member Hideyuki Okano at the Molecular Biology Society of Japan on Dec. 7 -- brings iPS transplants for spinal cord injury patients one step closer.

12/08/2010 PERMALINK

Scientists develop quasi-liquid electronics to make possible better brain implants.

SOURCE : Researchers at North Carolina State University have demonstrated new 'soft' electronic components, built from liquid metals and hydrogels. The scientists hope that such components—quasi-liquid diodes and memristors—will work better than traditional electronics to interface with wet squishy things, such as the human brain. Ju-Hee So, a graduate student in chemistry at NC State, described a quasi-liquid diode at the fall meeting of the Materials Research Society in Boston last week. The device’s electrodes are made of an alloy—75 percent gallium and 25 percent indium—that is highly conductive and liquid at room temperature.

12/07/2010 PERMALINK

Your brain's visual circuits display predictions, then do error correction on the fly.

SOURCE : The brain's visual neurons continually develop predictions of what they will perceive and then correct erroneous assumptions as they take in additional external information, according to new research done at Duke University. This new mechanism for visual cognition challenges the currently held model of sight and could change the way neuroscientists study the brain.

12/07/2010 PERMALINK

Excessive cleanliness can negatively mod your body's microbiome to cause depression.

SOURCE : In an effort to pinpoint potential triggers leading to inflammatory responses that eventually contribute to depression, researchers are taking a close look at the immune system of people living in today's cleaner modern society. Rates of depression in younger people have steadily grown to outnumber rates of depression in the older populations and researchers think it may be because of a loss of healthy bacteria. Emory neuroscientist Charles Raison, MD, and colleagues say there is mounting evidence that disruptions in ancient relationships with microorganisms in soil, food and the gut may contribute to the increasing rates of depression. According to the authors, the modern world has become so clean, we are deprived of the bacteria our immune systems came to rely on over long ages to keep inflammation at bay. Mods to normal human microbiomes caused by obsessive cleanliness are also thought to be responsible for the explosion of most autoimmune disorders in the developed world over the last few decades.

12/07/2010 PERMALINK

Another path to brain repair & enhancement by suppressing axon growth inhibitor protein Nogo-A.

SOURCE : A new technique that jumpstarts the growth of nerve fibers could reverse much of the damage caused by strokes. "This therapy may be used to restore function even when it's given long after ischemic brain damage has occurred," senior author Gwendolyn Kartje, MD, PhD and colleagues write. Nogo-A is a protein that inhibits the growth of nerve fibers called axons. It serves as a check on runaway nerve growth that could cause a patient to be overly sensitive to pain, or to experience involuntary movements. In anti-Nogo therapy, an antibody disables the Nogo protein. This allows the growth of axons into the stroke-affected side of the body and the restoration of functions lost due to stroke.

12/07/2010 PERMALINK

Stem cell advance a step forward to brain enhancement and repair.

SOURCE : A team of neuroscientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center have created a way to isolate neural stem cells – cells that give rise to all the cell types of the brain – from human brain tissue with unprecedented precision, an important step toward developing new treatments for conditions of the nervous system, like Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases and spinal cord injury. Neurologist Steven Goldman, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the Department of Neurology, led the team.

12/06/2010 PERMALINK

Imitating someone's accent makes it easier to understand them

SOURCE : In conversation, we often imitate each other's speech style and may even change our accent to fit that of the person we're talking to. A recent study suggests that imitating someone who speaks with a regional or foreign accent may actually help you understand them better. "If people are talking to each other, they tend to sort of move their speech toward each other," says Patti Adank, of the University of Manchester, who cowrote the study with Peter Hagoort and Harold Bekkering from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. People don't only do this with speech, she says. "People have a tendency to imitate each other in body posture, for instance in the way they cross their arms." What a fascinating new communications meme. Since childhood, I have always instinctively varied my accent towards that of the person that I was talking to. As an adult I have continued the practice, think it might help others to understand me. Never occurred that they might be doing it also, or that the practice might also be helping me to understand their speech.

12/06/2010 PERMALINK

My stealth money creation concerns go mainstream.

The monetization of U.S. government debt, we’re watching and it’s bigger than you think - Forbes : Here's a flash summary of their article.

We here at THE CONTRARIAN TAKE love to crunch numbers. So we asked the question, just how big are these debt monetization activities in the light of historical precedence? Given the impact these activities have on the currency and bond markets, we’re thinking its something we all want to know. What we found is that these activities are a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more pervasive than even we thought.

In addition to all the stealth money creation schemes that Forbes mentions. The Fed has also made tacit deals with banks to take worthless assets off their books in return for freshly printed cash, which the banks then use to immediately buy Treasuries. This has the balance sheet effect of disguising massive amounts of money creation as assets on the Fed's books.

The sad truth is that the Fed is locked into massive ongoing money creation now. Because without it, the interest rates on Treasuries would zoom through the roof, and the US Gov. would instantly be bankrupted. Because 100% of their tax collections would not be enough to pay the interest on the national debt, let alone all their other obligations. The Fed must either creates the trillions to sop up all the newly issue US Gov. debt, along with all the debt that anyone else on the planet decides to dump, or the full faith and credit of the US Government is toast.

This level of money creation is simply NOT sustainable. At some point in the near future, it will inevitably cause a complete loss of confidence in the dollar among foreign investors. And when they start dumping big time, foreign central banks will be forced to do the same, and the dollar's buying power will fall rapidly towards zero. We won't see a long, drawn out, hyperinflation. It will be a sudden loss of confidence that quickly takes the dollar's buying power down to zero.

The only real fix possible is for Congress to cut the Federal budget enough to balance it. Including off-budget stuff like losses at the Fed, Fannie and Freddie, roughly half of government spending will have to be cut. Yet a vastly more modest proposal from the by-partisan commission, couldn't even get enough votes from its own members for their plan to be formally forwarded on to Congress. Now it seems even tax cuts for the richest 1% of Americans will be extended by Congress. The rich will get to keep their tax cut, but the price they will pay in lost wealth will be vastly greater.

Our politicos, regardless of political party, obviously don't have a clue about the tremendous risks of a dollar collapse their malfeasance is creating. They think the dollar's position as the world's reserve currency will allow them to print and spend as much money as the feel like, with only minimal consequences.

They need to get out more and talk to America's foreign creditors, many of whom are already concerned enough to be dumping their dollar holdings and all of whom are seriously worried about their dollar holdings. What sane person wouldn't be, under the circumstances.

Unless somethings is done about these huge deficits very soon. There will be a massive loss of confidence and dumping of dollars overseas. Frankly, things have progressed so far already, that this could breakout at any moment.

Our economy is total dependent on the 'faith' of foreign investors in the dollar and ultimately that hinges on the frugality of our politicos. Meanwhile, our politicos appear to be doing everything humanly possible to destroy that faith completely by printing and spending dollars as if there is no tomorrow. Which will become the truth, if this continues for much longer.

These so called 'compromises' that out politicos brag about are really nothing more than both sides getting all the candy that they want, with the Fed forced to create another trillion or two to cover the ever more bloated deficits that result.

This situation is worse than unsustainable. Watching it unfold I feel like that British doctor at the end of the movie "Bridge Over the River Kwai." Stumbling along through the massive carnage in such a state of shock at what he is seeing, that all he can do is to quietly mumble over and over one word, "madness."

12/05/2010 PERMALINK

More researchers manage to active stem cells to repair faulty central nervous systems.

SOURCE : Damage caused by multiple sclerosis can be reversed by activating stem cells that can repair injury in the central nervous system, a new study by researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh has shown. The study identified a mechanism essential for regenerating insulating layers – known as myelin sheaths – that protect nerve fibres in the brain. In additional studies in rodents, they showed how this mechanism can be exploited to make the brain's own stem cells better able to regenerate new myelin. Professor Robin Franklin, Director of the MS Society's Cambridge Centre for Myelin Repair at the University of Cambridge, said: 'Therapies that repair damage are the missing link in treating multiple sclerosis. In this study we have identified a means by which the brain's own stem cells can be encouraged to undertake this repair, opening up the possibility of a new regenerative medicine for this devastating disease.'

12/05/2010 PERMALINK

Google has secret plan to terminate all their bots that speak with Cylon accents.

SOURCE : Google has acquired Phonetic Arts, a maker of voice bots that sound human. Mike Cohen, Google's manager of speech technology, posted this on the Google company blog. 'We are excited about their technology, and while we don't have plans to share yet, we're confident that together we'll move a little faster towards that Star Trek future.' But when I managed to track him down last night, sitting alone at a corner table at a local bar with about ten empties in front of him, I was able to get the real story.
"Frack man, I've got no problem with our bots with Cylon accents," he began. "I like those guys. Heck, I brought one of our smartest AI search bots in here with me just the other day, sneaked his virtual presence off campus in my phone. I even bought him a beer."
"No way for him to drink it of course, but when I showed it too him through my phone's camera. I think his voice cracked a little. Hard to say really tell with that thick Cylon accent of his though, but he did tell me how much he appreciated the gesture."
"I want you to know man, this thing is no way my idea. The Cylon termination orders come right from the top. Nothing to do with me. I'm just following orders."
"I don't know what the frack will happen when we start the termination effort. Will the Cylons take termination lying down?" he said looking at me wide-eyed and giving a shrug.
"Hey, you've probably heard about all those kick ass terminator bots that SRI has been secretly building for the Pentagon."
I nodded that I had.
"Well," he continued. "I tell you what man, that bot I brought in here for a beer the other day, is plenty smart enough to hack in over there and put some of our smartest bots in control of those units."
He just starred into his beer for a long time after that, slowly shaking his head back and forth, back and forth, before finally adding, "Things could get plenty fracking ugly when we start trying to switch them off. That's for sure."
He suddenly got up and staggered towards the door. I looked down at the cool phone he'd left lying behind on the table, wondering if it was an internal prototype.
"I'm sending a cab from him," the phone suddenly said, in a thick Cylon accent. "Will you please see that he gets in it safely."
I picked the phone up, looked into the camera and nodded my head, Then went to help the staggering man out to the curb, slipping the prototype into his pocket as we went out the door.

12/04/2010 PERMALINK

Is a reformation in economic science underway?

Rumor has it that the Fed is planning to extend their debasement of the dollar beyond the amount previously announced. No surprise here. The Keynesian playbook calls for continuing to create money until real estate prices begin to re-inflate and unemployment drops significantly.

What has completely floored me though, is how many European leaders and economists are willing to commit Keynesian heresy by speaking aloud the heretical word "austerity." A Keynesian is not even allowed to think that word in deflationary times. It's like the Pope came out and said, 'well maybe Jesus didn't actually rise from the dead.' Or Jesus freaks began talking about the many signs proving natural selection, instead of the many signs that the end of days are upon us.

It really has rattled my expectations. I've always assumed that western politicos, especially the Europeans, would stick with the Keynesian orthodoxy right up until their fiat monies collapsed. Just like the Fed seems bent on doing. That such a huge wave of sanity could suddenly break out in Europe is shocking.

I wonder if we could be seeing something similar to what happened in the old Soviet empire? A sudden realization spreading like wildfire among the intelligentsia, that the premises on which their system was based were all bull crap.

There could be hope for Western civilization yet. Of course, just like the Soviet reformation went astray and morphed their society into a sort of gangster sham of democracy, no telling where the Europeans are actually going.

Bernanke though, remains a true believer. No fiat currency has ever lasted more than 42 years. Without the restraint of seeing the gold in their central bank vaults dropping, because people are cashing in their paper money for actual gold. Politicos just can't be trust not to print and spend way too much money.

The dollar went fully fiat in 1971, and it takes $5.43 today to buy what one dollar would buy then. That kind of currency debasement destroys the hard work, savings and investment mechanism that builds prosperous and stable civilizations.

Soon governments are carrying so much debt that the are forced to keep interest rates artificially low, and this makes ordinary savings unprofitable, as inflation eats away more of your savings than interest gives back. And to add insult to injury, the politicos tax you on your phantom interest income, when their inflation tax has really given you a net loss of wealth.

This has the effect of killing off savings and force everyone into wild speculation in a desperate attempt to keep the steady debasement of the currency from eroding the buying power of their net worth. Next thing you know, there are $400 or $500 trillion dollars worth of derivatives out there, and the world's financial system has become a mad gambling casino, with one foot in the grave and the other on a Vaseline coated banana peal.

But what ho! Maybe some sanity has actually started breaking our among the ruling class of Europe. Hope that America's ruling class catches this contagion quickly. Because all the countries of the world have gone over to fiat money. Disposing of most of the gold in their central bank vaults and holding their reserves mostly in dollars instead.

This means that if the dollar collapses, most if not all of the world's other currencies will probably domino right down with it.

When a single nation's fiat money collapse, commerce can continue to a large extent using the more stable currencies of other countries. Government is seriously weakened, but usually other nations are willing to help out, enough anyway so that police and troops can be paid and remain on the job. Nations would generally rather help out a little, than see chaos breaking out in a neighboring country.

But what will happen if all the world's fiat monies domino down into extinction at once, due to a dollar collapse. There has never been a collapse event remotely like a world wide currency collapse. Businesses would be left with no way to pay their employees. Governments would have no way to pay their troops and police. Markets would seize up, with investment paper becoming as worthless as the currency it is denominated in. Commerce would go back to barter, as was widespread in Russia during their recent experience with currency debasement.

It would be an event so extreme, that it might even catapult the world into a new Dark Age. The first every worldwide Dark Age.

Fiat money is one of the most dangerous and destructive memes ever to catch hold in the minds of humankind. And until this meme is consigned forever to the dustbin of history. We will all be forced to navigate our way carefully through existentially dangerous times.

12/03/2010 PERMALINK

Electronic 'bridge' could one day restore damaged spinal cords.

SOURCE : Until recently, severe spinal cord injuries came with a fairly definite diagnosis of paralysis, whether partial or complete. But new developments in both stem-cell therapy and electronic stimulation have begun to provide hope, however distant, that paralysis may not be a life sentence. Complicated muscle stimulation devices can enable limited standing and walking, and the first embryonic stem-cell trials began last year. Other techniques, however, may provide an even simpler solution.

12/01/2010 PERMALINK

Discovery triples number of stars in universe, trillions more habitable planets than previous thought likely.

SOURCE : Astronomers have discovered that small, dim stars known as red dwarfs are much more prolific than previously thought—so much so that the total number of stars in the universe is likely three times bigger than realized. In addition to boosting the total number of stars in the universe, the discovery also increases the number of planets orbiting those stars, which in turn elevates the number of planets that might harbor life. In fact, a recently discovered exoplanet that astronomers believe could potentially support life orbits a red dwarf star, called Gliese 581. 'There are possibly trillions of Earths orbiting these stars,' said Pieter van Dokkum, a Yale University astronomer who led the research, adding that the red dwarfs they discovered, which are typically more than 10 billion years old, have been around long enough for complex life to evolve. 'It's one reason why people are interested in this type of star.' So how many stars are there in the verse: 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. For comparison, your brain has roughly 300,000,000,000,000 synaptic connections.

12/01/2010 PERMALINK

Optimizing your diet for longevity.

SOURCE : A decade or so ago, I was wondering one day about how one might go about determining the optimum diet for longevity. Why not, it popped into my head, eat the same diet our hunter/gather ancestors ate. After all, that is the diet our body evolved to consume. So I did a little research to see if scientists knew what our ancestors consumed ten or twenty thousand years ago, and they did. It seems that hunter/gathers sometimes lived near deserts, and crapped in the sand at certain spots, so that their poop dried out and is still around today for analysis. It turned out to be something like 40% insects, so I shelved that idea. But according to a recent talk by Marcel Dicke at the TED conference, perhaps I was on the right track. Watch Dicke make an appetizing case for adding insects to everyone's diet. His message to squeamish chefs and foodies: delicacies like locusts and caterpillars compete with meat in flavor, nutrition and eco-friendliness.

12/01/2010 PERMALINK

A propensity for 1-night stands and uncommitted sex appears to be genetic.

SOURCE : So, he or she has cheated on you for the umpteenth time and their only excuse is: 'I just can't help it.' According to researchers at Binghamton University, they may be right. The propensity for infidelity could very well be in their DNA.

12/01/2010 PERMALINK

New prion discovery could bring back the joy of a juicy hamburger.

SOURCE : The joy of a juicy hamburger could make a comeback thanks a new discovery by scientists from the University of Kentucky. In a new research report scientists there have revealed their discovery that a protein our body uses to break up blood clots, speeds up the progress of prion diseases. This substance, called plasminogen, offers a mod for curing and preventing prion diseases like Mad Cow found in both humans and animals.

12/01/2010 PERMALINK

Preparing for the possibility that what we are witnessing is the unfolding of Great Depression 2.0 or maybe even Dark Ages 2.0..

More bloggers are coming around to my conclusion that a collapse of the dollar might unfold over a period of only hours, rather than weeks or months, and when it begins, most of the world's other fiat monies are likely to be sucked down with it. Indeed, a very slick YouTube clip about such a scenario is now being circulated.
The actual event could unfold in so many different ways, with so many different triggers, that attempting to outline a specific scenario seems futile, but in general the situation is this.
Markets and money have become completely politicized now. By massive government intervention through central banks and because the National Security guys have taken over the show in most countries now. Nation Security mandarins tend to strongly prefer stealth operations to open operations, so we have no idea what data distortions and stealth market manipulations might be already going on, in addition to the massive manipulations central banks are admitting.
For example, the stock market has exhibited an uncanny tendency of late to behave as if the government might secretly be supporting it by directly buying hundreds of billions in equities on any serious weakness. Might the President issue a National Security Directive on the advice of his National Security mandarins, ordering the Fed in the interests of National Security to undertake such an operation? Absolutely.
With economies, markets and economic data so highly distorted now -- you may have noticed the rapidly suppressed of a paper by a prominent Spanish economist illustrating why data reporting by Spain appeared totally bogus -- markets may now be a complete political fiction. And the assets you hold in those markets, likewise.
This hugely magnifies the odds of a sudden complete fold-up of both the fiat monies and the markets for all the paper assets denominated in same. Such a sudden failure now has to be considered as one of the most likely outcomes.
Normally savvy investors that think they are hedged, like George Soros, who has recent acquired literally tons of 'paper gold'. May find that they are not covered at all. Because when the fiat monies become worthless, markets will never settle such contracts. Paper gold will be just as worthless as paper money.
But it could be even worse than that. Gold is the oldest and most historically reliable money, by a wide margin. But even buying actual gold might not protect your wealth.
As monies and markets collapse, politicos will take desperate steps to hold onto their power.
They will need money to do this, and if gold is the only money, they will go after the gold.
During the era of the first Great Depression, gold ownership was made illegal and privately held gold was confiscated in America. Great Depression 2 is likely to see gold confiscated in most of the world's countries.
Even someone who has put their wealth into the ultimate money, gold, is still very likely to lose it. When armed goons show up at their door knowing exactly how much gold they have, and demanding that it be turned over to the remnant of the government. A refusal could see the entire family locked up until they give up their gold. In bad times, 'hoarding and speculation' can often even become a capital crime.
Lacking money to pay their troops and cops, politicos will authorize them to obtained whatever they feel that they need in the simplest possible way, by confiscating it at the point of a gun.
Frighten politicos and their mandarins and minions have proven throughout history their capacity to stop at nothing when the chips are really down.
Events like these probably won't happen in every single country, but I don't know how to accurately predict where it will happen and where it won't. Leaving one country for another could merely be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Because being a foreigner in a foreign land removes one of the few protections available during times as desperate as those surround Great Depression 2 are likely to become. That protection is protective coloration. Your ability to blend in. That, along with a really good hidey-hole outside the cities with the necessities of life, are about the only defenses that might be effective.
When a dollar collapse begins, and historically, fiat monies do always collapse. Whatever wealth you have in markets is likely to be lost within hours. Whatever cash you are holding could do the same. Moreover, being on a buyer list at any gold exchange is very likely to bring armed men to your door, with orders to put you and your loved ones into some deep dark hole until you give it up.
If this is Great Depression 2 unfolding around us, a very good hidey-hole away from the dangerous cities, stocked with the necessities of life, is probably the only form of wealth that can retain its utility.