Science & Technology

Scientists see how bone marrow treatment for cancer can also benefit individuals with symptoms of schizophrenia

Moises Velasquez-Manoff
The New York Times
Fri, 28 Sep 2018 00:00 UTC

A bone-marrow transplant treated a patient's leukemia - and his delusions, too. Some doctors think they know why.

The man was 23 when the delusions came on. He became convinced that his thoughts were leaking out of his head and that other people could hear them. When he watched television, he thought the actors were signaling him, trying to communicate. He became irritable and anxious and couldn't sleep.

Dr. Tsuyoshi Miyaoka, a psychiatrist treating him at the Shimane University School of Medicine in Japan, eventually diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. He then prescribed a series of antipsychotic drugs. None helped. The man's symptoms were, in medical parlance, "treatment resistant."

A year later, the man's condition worsened. He developed fatigue, fever and shortness of breath, and it turned out he had a cancer of the blood called acute myeloid leukemia. He'd need a bone-marrow transplant to survive. After the procedure came the miracle. The man's delusions and paranoia almost completely disappeared. His schizophrenia seemingly vanished.

Comment: See also:

Blood holds key to liver regeneration says new study

Michigan State University
Fri, 08 Mar 2019 03:24 UTC

The liver is the only organ in the body that can regenerate. But some patients who undergo a liver resection, a surgery that removes a diseased portion of the organ, end up needing a transplant because the renewal process doesn't work.

A new Michigan State University study, published in the journal Blood, shows that the blood-clotting protein fibrinogen may hold the key as to why this happens.

"We discovered that fibrinogen accumulates within the remaining liver quickly after surgery and tells platelets to act as first responders, triggering the earliest phase of regeneration," said James Luyendyk, a professor of pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine. "But if fibrinogen or platelets are inhibited, then regeneration is delayed."

Platelets are blood cells that help form clots and stop bleeding. When they receive information from fibrinogen, they go into action and accumulate in the remaining part of the liver to help restore it, increasing the chances of a fully functional liver and successful recovery.

Using samples from patients undergoing liver resection and a comparable model in mice, Luyendyk and his team noticed that when fibrinogen was low, the number of platelets in the liver decreased.

"This shows that fibrinogen deposits are extremely important and directly impact regeneration in both mice and humans," Luyendyk said.

Researchers 'surprised' to find viruses evolve by... devolving!

Uncommon Descent
Mon, 11 Mar 2019 22:43 UTC

The main thesis of Behe's new book, Darwin Devolves, surrounds what Behe calls "poison-pill" mutations, which gives an organism a quick fix, but which can run the risk of being incapable of utilizing future needed adaptations. In other words, breaking and blunting genes to adapt to new environments become changes that get locked in due to natural selection's tendency to root out anything but what is the 'fittest' in any environment - and this can include even beneficial mutations being rooted out due to beneficial mutations being so rare and showing up way too late to modify the adapted organism.

So, today at Phys.Org there is a PR (press release) about a study involving viruses. It turns out that even at the level of viruses, the First Rule of Adaptative Evolution applies: a broken gene ends up being beneficial to the virus, allowing it to replicate itself when it has been rendered almost unable to do so by the host's immune system.

Science slander: Scientists link Behe's 'Darwin Devolves' to measles, catastrophic climate change

David Klinghoffer
Evolution News
Sat, 09 Mar 2019 20:23 UTC

© Matthew G. Bisanz [CC BY-SA 3.0] / Wikimedia Commons.
American Association for the Advancement of Science, HQ, Washington, D.C.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a national group devoted, as Wikipedia says, to "promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the betterment of all humanity." Wow, that's important stuff! Among other endeavors, they publish Science Magazine, the top science journal in the U.S.

All this sounds very serious, very distinguished, very sober. But check this out. Science published the remarkable "train wreck" of a review of Michael Behe's book, Darwin Devolves. As we've demonstrated, that was pretty much an embarrassment. Besides publishing Science, the AAAS also has an "online, global news service." It's called EurekAlert! and it issues press releases for research by universities and other bodies. The media then takes those and runs with them.

A Press Release About a Book Review

Well, EurekaAlert! issued a press release about the Science review of Darwin Devolves. A press release about a book review? Strange to say, but yes. And it's a gem. It was provided by the City University of New York, which employs reviewer Nathan H Lents. (He teaches at CUNY's John Jay College.) There is no named author. It would be interesting to find out who wrote it.

Comment: The AAAS obviously doesn't want you to read Darwin Devolves. So if you value your children, your sanity, and the fate of the poor polar bears (purely products of Darwinian evolution, remember), do your self a favor and absolutely positively do NOT read Behe's book. Do not go to Amazon, do not purchase it for a deceptively reasonable $19, and do not ever question Darwin's dogma.

And make sure not to read either of the following articles either:

Volcano in Iceland Is one of the largest sources of volcanic CO2, 'rarely included in calculations'

Terri Cook
EoS
Mon, 11 Mar 2019 10:30 UTC

© Evgenia Ilyinskaya
An airborne view of the massive glacier (600 square kilometers and up to 700 meters thick) that covers Katla, one of Iceland's most active and hazardous volcanoes. New research of Katla's emissions suggests that ice-covered volcanoes may emit greater quantities of carbon dioxide than previously estimated.

High-precision airborne measurements, in combination with atmospheric modeling, suggest that the Katla subglacial caldera may be one of the planet's biggest sources of volcanic carbon dioxide.

The emission rate of carbon dioxide (CO₂) is one of the less obvious-but nevertheless significant-measures of volcanic activity. Volcanic CO₂ emissions are also important for understanding the preindustrial climate balance. To date, estimates of global volcanic CO₂emissions have been extrapolated primarily from measurements collected at a small number of active sources. Ice-covered volcanic centers are prevalent, but they are often difficult to access, and their vents are difficult to discern, so they are rarely included in these calculations.

Comment: While it's clear that much greater forces are driving our planet's climate, it's notable what global warmists fail to include in their obviously erroneous models.

See:

And check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?

Researchers solve mystery of Antarctica's emerald icebergs

Sputnik
Sun, 10 Mar 2019 16:51 UTC

Scientists have apparently come up with a new explanation for a phenomenon that has left researchers across the world scratching their heads for over a century.

A team of glaciologists from the University of Washington claim to have solved the enigma of emerald green icebergs floating around Antarctica, and suggested that the reason behind it is iron oxide.

In a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, they made an assumption that significant amounts of iron oxide in rock dust from Antarctica's mainland are trapped in the ice.

NASA transforms a Hubble photo into a stunningly eerie musical composition

Jacinta Bowler
Science Alert
Sat, 09 Mar 2019 13:00 UTC

The Universe is a wondrous place, full of vast numbers of planets to explore, unsolved mysteries, and even 'superbubbles' blown by black holes.

But there's one thing that space really isn't: loud. Without Earth's air molecules to help you hear, out there in space you'd be listening to a whole lot of silence.

Luckily, that hasn't stopped NASA from figuring out a way to produce sound in the soundlessness of space - by 'sonifying' the above image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Yep, move over music, podcasts, or audio-books- the new thing to listen to is Hubble images.

The image NASA used for this project was taken by the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide-Field Camera 3 back in August last year.

The guys working with Hubble call the image a 'galactic treasure chest' because of the number of galaxies splattered across it.

"Each visible speck of a galaxy is home to countless stars," NASA explains about the image.

Darwin Devolves by Michael Behe: Another Huge Advance Against Darwinism and for Intelligent Design

Tom Gilson
The Stream
Fri, 08 Mar 2019 19:29 UTC

Michael Behe, professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, has been keeping committed Darwinists awake nights for years. His 1996 book Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution asked a long-ignored question: If Darwin's theory explains everything so well, why hasn't anyone shown how it works at the minutest level, biochemistry? If it doesn't work there, it doesn't work anywhere. Today Behe releases a new book, based on new science, showing once again that it doesn't work there. Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution is going to cause a lot more sleepless nights.

The new science he covers in this book shows that Darwin's theory can explain some changes, but quickly breaks down. DNA sequencing has only been available in the past decade or two. Its findings show that when organisms change, they do it almost always by breaking genes, not by making new ones. So in general, the evidence shows that when species evolve, they're really devolving. And that devolution prevents future evolution.

Evolution (Unguided) Breaks Things

Behe defines his terms carefully. Evolution, in particular, means many different things. On one level, it simply says things change over time. No controversy there. On another level, it's a theory of common descent, saying that all organisms came by something like a branching tree from one common ancestor. But classic evolutionary theory also claims that this common descent, and all the adaptations of life, happened by an unguided process: natural selection sifting random variations. This, Behe says, flatly conflicts with the evidence.

Russia's state of the art Zircon hypersonic missile challenges US naval dominance

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Sat, 09 Mar 2019 09:20 UTC

While the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile has not attracted the same level of media attention as the strategic Avangard re-entry vehicle or even the air-launched Kinzhal aeroballistic missile, it nevertheless represents an important advance in military technology and represents the state-of-the-art of Russian technologies. It promises to maintain and even expand Russia's conventional deterrence through its high guarantee of effective retaliatory capability even against the most advanced anti-air and anti-missile defenses.

The secrecy surrounding the 3M22 Zircon, to the point of there existing no official images of the weapon, is remarkable and reminds one of the careful effort to conceal the true nature of the P-700 Granit heavy anti-ship missile, specifically its air-breathing ramjet propulsion.

Comment: Russia continues developing technology, at a fraction of the cost, that exceeds the capabilities of the US. What happens to the US if it doesn't remain the military top dog of the world?

'It's hard to argue with Elon': Roscosmos chief agrees with Musk's assessment of Russia's rocket industry

RT
Fri, 08 Mar 2019 10:15 UTC

elon musk, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin

Head of Roscosmos couldn't resist giving thinly-veiled credit to their space endeavors by sticking with Elon Musk. The latter recently hailed Russia's rocket industry and its "best engines" currently traversing the Earth's orbit.

"It's hard to argue with Elon on it," tweeted Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin, sharing an appreciative tweet Musk published on Thursday.

"Russia has excellent rocket engineering and best engine currently flying," the entrepreneur said at the time, adding, hat a "reusable version" of the Angara rocket in particular "would be great."

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Science & Technology

Scientists see how bone marrow treatment for cancer can also benefit individuals with symptoms of schizophrenia

Blood holds key to liver regeneration says new study

Researchers 'surprised' to find viruses evolve by... devolving!

Science slander: Scientists link Behe's 'Darwin Devolves' to measles, catastrophic climate change

Volcano in Iceland Is one of the largest sources of volcanic CO2, 'rarely included in calculations'

Researchers solve mystery of Antarctica's emerald icebergs

NASA transforms a Hubble photo into a stunningly eerie musical composition

Darwin Devolves by Michael Behe: Another Huge Advance Against Darwinism and for Intelligent Design

Russia's state of the art Zircon hypersonic missile challenges US naval dominance

'It's hard to argue with Elon': Roscosmos chief agrees with Musk's assessment of Russia's rocket industry

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