Health & Wellness
ScienceDaily
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:00 EST
Many biological processes are controlled by small molecules known as microRNAs, which work by suppressing the expression of specific sets of genes. Xiang-Hang Luo and colleagues, at Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, People's Republic of China, have now identified a previously unknown microRNA (miR-2861) as crucial to bone maintenance in mice and humans.
Of clinical importance, expression of functional miR-2861 was absent in two related adolescents with primary osteoporosis.
Several lines of evidence determined the key role of miR-2861 in maintaining bone. First, miR-2861 promoted the in vitro development of a mouse stromal cell line into the cells responsible for bone formation. Second, in mice, in vivo silencing of miR-2861 inhibited bone formation and decreased bone mass. Last, analysis of ten patients with primary osteoporosis revealed two related adolescents in whom disease was caused by a mutation in the miR-2861 precursor (pre-miR-2861) that blocked expression of miR-2861.
These data led the authors to conclude that miR-2861 has an important role in controlling the generation of the cells responsible for bone formation and that defects in the processing of its precursor can cause osteoporosis.
ScienceDaily
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:00 EST
People preferentially marry those with similar ancestry, but their decisions are not necessarily based on hair, eye or skin colour. Research, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology, shows that Mexicans mate according to proportions of Native American to European ancestry, while Puerto Ricans are more likely to settle down with someone carrying a similar mix of African and European genes.
Neil Risch, from the University of California, San Francisco, worked with a team of researchers to study the effects of ancestry on partner choice in Mexicans and Puerto Ricans living in their own countries or in the USA. The subjects came from The Genetics of Asthma in Latino Americans (GALA) study, conducted by Risch's UCSF colleague, Esteban Gonzalez Burchard. Risch said, "Latin America provides a unique opportunity to study population structure and non-random mating, due to the historical confluence of European, Native American and African racial groups over the past five centuries. We found that assortative mating, that is partner choice based on a shared ancestry, is very common in these populations."
Quite how our DNA influences our desires remains mysterious. Risch and his colleagues did not find that geography or socio-economic status could explain the ancestral influence on romance, and factors like hair, eye and skin colour individually only had a minor role. According to Burchard, "Certainly physical characteristics, such as skin pigment, hair texture, eye color, and other physical features are correlated with ancestry and are likely to be factors in mate selection. However, the spouse correlation for these traits and the correlation of these traits with ancestry were actually below what would be required to fully explain the phenomenon."
Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:00 EST
© Wiki Commons
The CDC now reports that nearly 4,000 Americans have been killed by H1N1 swine flu. This number is supposed to sound big and scary, motivating millions of people to go out and pay good money to be injected with untested, unproven H1N1 vaccines. But let's put the number in perspective: Did you know that more than
four times as many people are killed each year by common NSAID painkillers like aspirin?
The July 1998 issue of
The American Journal of Medicine explains it as follows:
"Conservative calculations estimate that approximately 107,000 patients are hospitalized annually for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-related gastrointestinal (GI) complications and at least 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur each year among arthritis patients alone." (Singh Gurkirpal, MD, "Recent Considerations in Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug Gastropathy", The American Journal of Medicine, July 27, 1998, p. 31S)
So for every person the CDC claims was killed by H1N1 swine flu this year, common painkillers like aspirin have killed four! Yet you don't see the CDC, FDA, WHO or mainstream media running around screaming about the extreme dangers of aspirin, do you? All those deaths apparently don't matter. Only swine flu deaths lead to hysteria.
Science Daily
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:55 EST
Real-life particles released by car brake pads can harm lung cells in vitro. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology found that heavy braking, as in an emergency stop, caused the most damage, but normal breaking and even close proximity to a disengaged brake resulted in potentially dangerous cellular stress.
Barbara Rothen-Rutishauser and Peter Gehr from the University of Bern, Switzerland, and Michael Riediker from the Institute for Work and Health, Lausanne, Switzerland, worked with a team of researchers to study the effects of brake particles on cultured lung cells placed in a chamber close to the axle of a car. They said, "Brake wear contributes up to 20% of total traffic emissions, but the health effects of brake particles remain largely unstudied. We've found that the metals in brake wear particles can damage junctions between cells by a mechanism involving oxidative stress".
Christina Jewett & Sam Roe
ProPublica & Chicago Tribune
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:53 EST
© Tribune photo by Abel Uribe / July 30, 2009
Chanile Hayes says Dr. Michael Reinstein told her taking the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel would help her lose weight. Instead, she says, she went from 140 pounds to nearly 300 pounds within two years.
Executives inside pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca faced a high-stakes dilemma.
On one hand, Chicago psychiatrist Dr. Michael Reinstein was bringing the company a small fortune in sales and was conducting research that made one of its most promising drugs look spectacular.
On the other, some worried that his research findings might be too good to be true.
As Reinstein grew irritated with what he perceived as the company's slights, a top executive outlined the scenario in an e-mail to colleagues.
"If he is in fact worth half a billion dollars to (AstraZeneca)," the company's U.S. sales chief wrote in 2001, "we need to put him in a different category." To avoid scaring Reinstein away, he said, the firm should answer "his every query and satisfy any of his quirky behaviors."
Putting aside its concerns, AstraZeneca would continue its relationship with Reinstein, paying him $490,000 over a decade to travel the nation promoting its best-selling antipsychotic drug, Seroquel. In return, Reinstein provided the company a vast customer base: thousands of mentally ill residents in Chicago-area nursing homes.
Katherine Gustafson
FoodChange.org
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:00 EST
© Dan4th via flickr
The fact that there's a revolving door between government and industry will come as news to no one. What is surprising (though hardly, says the cynical devil on my shoulder) is that President Obama continues to spin it around.
What ever happened to "No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years" (as stated in Obama's
ethics rules)?
Whatever happened to "We'll tell ConAgra that it's not the Department of Agribusiness. It's the Department of Agriculture. We're going to put the people's interests ahead of the special interests" (
speech to the Iowa Farmers Union, November 2007)?
FTO South African News Blog
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:08 EST
© Unknown
Washington, D.C. - After Barack Obama said that he will not employ lobbyists in the government the FDA (which is part of the government in the US) employs a Monsanto Lawyer that is responsible for much of the genetically [modified] milk being consumed in the US.
Michael Taylor former employee of Monsanto now takes the top job of advising Margaret Hamburg. She is the commissioner of food and drugs in the US.
It does not just stop there, we know that the US wants to outlaw vitamins and nutrition from food, if I have it correctly they are already labeled as toxins and this guy called Michael Taylor will also work as the DA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the Center for Veterinary Medicine, the Office of Regulatory Affairs, Congress and the White House.
Ashley Fantz
CNN
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:00 EST
Decatur, Georgia -- Gigi reaches up into her sun salutation. She steps back into her high lunge and kicks her legs straight into plank pose, a push-up she holds without wobbling for 10 seconds before looking up impatiently at her yoga teacher.
It's close to 6 p.m. She's had a long day.
She collapses on her mat, rolls on her back and closes her eyes. And then sends one finger digging up her nose.
What? C'mon, she's only 5.
This is yoga for kids. Once an oddity reserved for only the crunchiest communities, downward dog for the grade-school set is now being taught in studios from Minnetonka, Minnesota, to Moscow, Russia. And educators, including Chicago's Namaste School, which serves mostly poor kids who speak a language other than English, are turning to yoga to connect with a generation that many say has been dismissed as deficit this or hyperactive that.
At Decatur Yoga and Pilates studio, just outside Atlanta, Georgia, Dylan Laakmann, sits quietly next to his mother. The lanky 12-year-old whose fashionably long hair hangs in his face, describes himself as a "downer" before he started taking yoga two years ago.
Paul Fassa
NaturalNews
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:00 EST
There has been a flurry of contradictory swine flu events reported here and from Ukraine this early fall. These coincided with a CBS news program releasing information that very few reported swine cases actually tested positive for H1N1. CBS's state by state survey discovered that less than 5 percent of flu cases reported in most American states were confirmed as H1N1.
In most states less than half the reported cases were not even a flu of any type! The CDC and WHO conveniently canceled the need for laboratory swine flu confirmations in mid-summer 2009. That makes it easier to pump up the statistics, doesn't it?
Back Ground Details
Since the WHO this year changed the criteria for declaring a pandemic from worldwide high mortality rates to infections only, it's easier to claim a pandemic with the Swine Flu. Connect these dots: Swine Flu is actually less severe than a normal seasonal flu. But it is highly contagious!
So why bother with this rule juggling to make it easy to categorize a spreading flu as a pandemic? Once the stage 6 pandemic level is called, and it has been, the WHO via the United Nations becomes a medical dictator by international law to almost 200 member nations.
And over the past few years, laws have been arranged to exclude Big Pharma and governments from being financially liable for vaccine related injuries and deaths during a pandemic. A license to kill?
ScienceDaily
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:00 EST
Until recently, scientists believed that, following a stroke, a patient had about six months to regain any lost function. After that, patients would be forced to compensate for the lost function by focusing on their remaining abilities. Although this belief has been refuted, a University of Missouri occupational therapy professor believes that the current health system is still not giving patients enough time to recover and underestimating what the human brain can do given the right conditions.
In a recent article for OT Practice Magazine, Guy McCormack, clinical professor and chair of the occupational therapy and occupational science department at the MU School of Health Professions, argues that health practitioners believe their clients need more time and motivation to reclaim lost functions, such as the use of an arm, hand or leg. With today's therapies, it is possible for patients to regain more function than ever thought possible, McCormack said.
"Patients are able to regain function due to the principle of neuroplasticity, or the brain's ability to change, especially when patients continue therapy long after their injuries," McCormack said. "Therapists once believed the brain doesn't develop new neurons; but, now they know neurons change their shape and create new branches to connect with other neurons, rewiring the brain following an injury or trauma."
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