Tag: 2014 (page 2 of 11)

Cintamani

Cintamani is a sacred stone which came from Sirius star system. Millions of years ago, during a Galactic superwave, a planet orbiting Sirius A exploded. Its fragments traveled in all directions, some of them reaching Earth after long journey through in...

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Pipeline Spill Dumps 105,000 Gallons of Oil on California’s Coastline

Oil from a broken pipeline coats miles of the Pacific Ocean and shoreline near Goleta, Calif., May 20, 2015, after a 24-inch underground pipeline broke May 19th and leaked into a culvert leading to the ocean. Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline said an thousands of gallons of oil were released before the pipeline was shut down. Photos by Jonathan Alcorn/Greenpeace. Steve Horn, DeSmog BlogUp to 105,000 gallons of oil obtained via offshore drilling have spilled from a p [...]

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Why Do We Still Vaccinate? – 25 Questions From A Former Vaccine Advocate

Brian Rogers, Prevent DiseaseI used to be pro vaccine. I know the feeling of thinking others were just plain crazy and wrong for not vaccinating their children and themselves. ‘Irresponsible!’ I said when pointing my finger. I’d use the same old arguments about polio and small pox and how vaccines saved us from all those horrible diseases and just swallowing and regurgitating the propaganda I was brought up with. It was only recently, in 2009 that I started question [...]

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Australia Prime Minister Advisor Says Global Warming is a United Nations Hoax to Create New World Order


Maurice Newman, the Australian PM's business adviser

rt.com

The Australian prime minister’s chief business adviser says that climate change is a ruse led by the United Nations to create a new world order under the agency’s control. The statement coincided with a visit from the UN’s top climate negotiator.

Maurice Newman, chairman of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s business advisory council, said the UN is using false models which show sustained temperature increases because it wants to end democracy and impose authoritarian rule.

“It’s a well-kept secret, but 95 percent of the climate models we are told prove the link between human CO2 emissions and catastrophic global warming have been found, after nearly two decades of temperature stasis, to be in error,” he wrote in an opinion piece published in The Australian newspaper on Friday, without providing evidence.


Australia Prime Minister Tony Abbott

“The real agenda is concentrated political authority. Global warming is the hook,” he said, adding that the UN is against capitalism and freedom and wants to create a “new world order.” 

The adviser’s inflammatory comments coincided with a visit from UN climate chief Christiana Figueres. 

According to Newman, Figueres is “on record saying democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. Communist China, she says, is the best model.”

Figueres was in Australia to discuss practical climate change action, urging the country to move away from heavily polluting coal production. She also urged Australia to play a leading role at the climate summit in Paris in December. 

But that call is unlikely to be heeded. During November’s G20 meeting in Brisbane, Abbott warned that the Paris summit would fail if world leaders decided prioritize the cutting of carbon emissions over economic growth. 

Abbott, who called the science behind climate change “crap” in 2009, also repealed a tax on carbon pricing and abolished the independent Climate Commission advisory body in Australia.
The prime minister has been reluctant to take part in climate change politics, trying but failing to keep it off the agenda at last year’s G20 summit. 

Both Abbott’s office and the United Nations have so far declined to comment on Newman’s statements. 

A well-known climate change skeptic, Newman has made similar provocative comments in the past, calling the notion a “myth” and a “delusion.”

In February, he criticized renewable energy policies. Citing British charity Age UK, he stated that elderly citizens in Britain often die of “winter deaths” because they can’t afford power. He blamed renewable energy policies which drive up the price of energy. 

However, when asked about his claim by The Guardian, the charity sent back a statement which referenced high energy costs, but failed to mention anything about renewable energy. 

Just a few months earlier, in November 2014, Newman cited a Scottish government-commissioned study which allegedly said that for every job in the renewable sector, 3.7 jobs were lost elsewhere. 
However, the report itself made no mention that it was commissioned by the government. In fact, the government called the study “misleading,” adding that the industry would actually have the opposite effect on jobs. 

According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global mean temperature could rise by up to 4.8° Celsius (40.6° Fahrenheit) this century alone. The prediction is seen as a recipe for droughts, floods and rising seas.

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Report: No endangered animals in 200 zoos across the US!




Excerpt from thenextdigit.com

On May 15, the 10th anniversary of Endangered Species Day has been kicked off across the United States, which sees a series of wildlife awareness events with the participation of over 200 zoos. These zoos across the country restricted access to a few of their endangered animals and birds to make visitors feel the non existence of such species.
Ohio’s Akron Zoo also participated in the awareness event, where it shrouded Sumatran tigers from visitors, with only limited access to visitors to capture a glimpse of the endangered tiger species. In Dallas Zoo, authorities kept the African penguins were kept away from visitors’ sight, while allowing those visitors who commit to eat sustainable seafood, switching off lights when not in use and such kind of conservation efforts.

Ohio’s Akron Zoo’s director of marketing and guest services David Barnhardt revealed that the zoo will be using this event to launch their own program SAFE (Saving Animals from Extinction) where the zoo will create awareness of saving endangered animals. SAFE is sponsored by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. He also said,
“Through SAFE we will pull all of these resources we have available to us and develop action plans, raise awareness and engage the public to help these endangered species.”
Endangered Species Day is an opportunity for every humans to learn about the importance of animals, especially endangered species, and day to day actions they can take to protect these species, according to the Endangered Species Coalition. The Endangered Coalition not only sponsors events in the states, but also provides toolkits for zoos which interested in its own endangered species awareness programs such as SAFE.
Dallas Zoo has initiated a program in February 2015, named as the Wild Earth Academy, which educates people about endangered species. Ben Jones, Wild Earth Academy’s Senior Director and Dean, said in a statement:
“There’s a balance in nature and it’s very evident that that balance is becoming imbalanced, it’s shifting. We have to do our part to use the resources that we have, but not use them up.”
The Coalition also produces the yearly report “Vanishing: Ten American Species Our Children May Never See” – listing the top 10 most endangered species during the time of reporting. 2014’s ‘Vanishing’ report listed endangered animals like the Monarch butterfly, Mountain yellow-legged frog (extinct from southern Sierra Nevada), North Pacific right whale, great white shark (California/Mexico), little brown bat (extinct due to white-nose syndrome, an illness caused by a deadly fungus from Europe), whitebark pine, rusty patched bumblebee, greater sage-grouse, polar bear and snake river sockeye salmon.

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CRISPR-Cas9 modifies your DNA, under legal fire ~ Video




Excerpt from slashgear.com

A revolutionary method of editing the human genome has this week become the subject of a patent war. Back in April of 2014, patents were awarded by the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) to the Broad Institutes’ Dr. Feng Zhang, MIT, and Harvard to develop the technology behind "CRISPR-Cas9". 
This April, the UC Board of Regents’ legal team spoke with the USPTO about reconsidering their action, suggesting they award the patent to the inventor of the original method, UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna. One way or another, this radical DNA modifier must be made. 

We need X-Men, after all.


The following video will explain what this genome-editing piece of technological breakthrough is all about. CRISPR-Cas9 is what it's called, and getting in to your body to make changes on a DNA level is what it's going for.

CRISPR-Cas9 works as a tiny scissors.

Utilizing the natural bacterial-level protective system used by your body to fight infections, CRISPR-Cas9 replicates the sequences of target DNA strands and latches on.

It's the connector that CRISPR-Cas9 makes real, and really programmable.

Your body provides the Cas9.* The Cas9 is the nuclease enzyme that cuts DNA strands.

*Correction - BACTERIA have Cas9, not our human selves. As helpful commenter "John" put so eloquently, "So far it has only been found in bacterial cells, and that's one of the things that makes it so amazing--a relatively simple molecular system that replicates many of the functions of our elaborate adaptive immune response, all in a single prokaryotic cell!"

Screen Shot 2015-05-15 at 10.11.42 AM
ABOVE: Image comes via Nature; Addgene, By Jonathan Corum, via NYT.

When a DNA sequence is cut, it may attempt to re-form. In doing so, it can create mutations.

But that's a discussion for another day.

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Genetically altered twin monkeys have been made using the CRISPR-Cas9 method. As you'll see in DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.01.027 in Cell Symposia "Generation of Gene-Modified Cynomolgus Monkey via Cas9/RNA-Mediated Gene Targeting in One-Cell Embryos", these monkeys are living large on gene-altered action.

12DOUDNAjp-articleLarge

Today what's important is that two groups are fighting for the patents involved in CRISPR-Cas9.

A paper published online June 28 2012 by Science authored by Martin Jinek, Krzysztof Chylinski, Ines Fonfara, Michael Hauer, Jennifer A. Doudna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier describes the method: "A Programmable Dual-RNA–Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity."

You can find this paper under code DOI: 10.1126/science.1225829.

Dr. Zhang suggests he demonstrated the CRISPR genome editing method before the 2012 paper was published by Dr. Doudna and Dr. Charpentier and crew. Dr. Doudna and Dr. Charpentier and crew suggest say Dr. Zhang's notebook (used as proof for patents) does not prove genome editing before the 2012 paper was published.

Can't we all just get along? Think of the monkeys!

Click to zoom

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Abandoned Uranium Mines Plague Navajo Nation

Sonia Luokkala, Earth Island JournalWaking TimesThe mesas of Monument Valley rise deep red on the horizon. We are in Diné Bikéyah, land of the Navajo.“This is John Wayne country,” trained Navajo guide Gregory Holiday repeats his lines for an enchanted group of tourists. The view opens boundless to the sacred land of the Diné people, but for visitors it is presented as the iconic west of cowboys and Americana.The sun sets and the last traveler boards t [...]

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Listen To These Eerie ‘X-Files’ Sounds Recorded in Earth’s Stratosphere

Excerpt from huffingtonpost.comWhat does the edge of space sound like? Pretty darn strange. Just have a listen to these acoustic signals recorded in the stratosphere some 22 miles above Earth's surface (above). At frequencies below 20 hertz, thes...

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NASA student balloon captures mysterious sounds 23 miles above the Earth

NASA-launched student balloonExcerpt from chron.comFor the first time in 50 years, microphones attached to a NASA-launched student balloon have captured strange hisses, crackling sounds and faint whistling.Researchers aren't sure what the sounds are ...

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Nanoparticles In Food and Water Found to Alter Gut Microbiome

Heather Callaghan, ContributorWaking TimesNanotechnology – that is, metal oxide particles* such as titanium dioxide – are increasingly used in the commercial food supply, consumer goods, body care and in water treatment.The gut microbiome is today’s most appealing topic of science because it was previously unacknowledged by the medical community just how important gut health is to the human brain, hormones, immunity, mental health and more. Maintaining a h [...]

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Nuclear Experimentation Year 70 – Playing With Madness

Ethan Indigo Smith, ContributorThe recent “news” on the nuclear situation in Iran brings to light the madhouse of cards on which the postmodern world is built. Or rather, it would bring the madness to light if the major media outlets of the world were not bought up and sold out to the military industrial complex, and therefore completely misinformed on the actions and dangers of the nuclear experimentation industry.The story is not just about [...]

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13 Things Anyone Who Loves A Highly Sensitive Person Should Know

Excerpt from huffingtonpost.com When I was in kindergarten, a boy in my class tossed my favorite book over our elementary school fence. I remember crying profusely, not because I was sad to see it go, but because I was so furious that he was s...

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Lab for genetic modification of human embryos just $2,000 away – report


Reuters / Christian Charisius



Reuters

With the right expertise in molecular biology, one could start a basic laboratory to modify human embryos using a genome-editing computer technique all for a couple thousand dollars, according to a new report.

Genetic modification has received heightened scrutiny recently following last week’s announcement that Chinese researchers had, for the first time, successfully edited human embryos’ genomes. 
The team at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China, used CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats), a technique that relies on “cellular machinery” used by bacteria in defense against viruses. 

This machinery is copied and altered to create specific gene-editing complexes, which include the wonder enzyme Cas9. The enzyme works its way into the DNA and can be used to alter the molecule from the inside. The combination is attached to an RNA guide that takes the gene-editing complex to its target, telling Cas9 where to operate. 

Use of the CRISPR technique is not necessarily relegated to the likes of cash-flush university research operations, according to a report by Business Insider. 


Geneticist George Church, who runs a top CRISPR research program at the Harvard Medical School, said the technique could be employed with expert knowledge and about half of the money needed to pay for an average annual federal healthcare plan in 2014 -- not to mention access to human embryos. 

"You could conceivably set up a CRISPR lab for $2,000,” he said, according to Business Insider. 

Other top researchers have echoed this sentiment. 

"Any scientist with molecular biology skills and knowledge of how to work with [embryos] is going to be able to do this,” Jennifer Doudna, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, recently told MIT Tech Review, which reported that Doudna co-discovered how to edit genetic code using CRISPR in 2012. 

Last week, the Sun Yat-Sen University research team said it attempted to cure a gene defect that causes beta-thalassemia (a genetic blood disorder that could lead to severe anemia, poor growth, skeletal abnormalities and even death) by editing the germ line. For that purpose they used a gene-editing technique based on injecting non-viable embryos with a complex, which consists of a protective DNA element obtained from bacteria and a specific protein. 

"I suspect this week will go down as a pivotal moment in the history of medicine," wrote science journalist Carl Zimmer for National Geographic.


Response to the new research has been mixed. Some experts say the gene editing could help defeat genetic diseases even before birth. Others expressed concern. 

“At present, the potential safety and efficacy issues arising from the use of this technology must be thoroughly investigated and understood before any attempts at human engineering are sanctioned, if ever, for clinical testing,” a group of scientists, including some who had worked to develop CRISPR, warned in Science magazine. 

Meanwhile, the director of the US National Institutes for Health (NIH) said the agency would not fund such editing of human embryo genes. 

“Research using genomic editing technologies can and are being funded by NIH,” Francis Collins said Wednesday. “However, NIH will not fund any use of gene-editing technologies in human embryos. The concept of altering the human germline in embryos for clinical purposes ... has been viewed almost universally as a line that should not be crossed.”

Although the discovery of CRISPR sequences dates back to 1987 – when it was first used to cure bacteria of viruses – its successes in higher animals and humans were only achieved in 2012-13, when scientists achieved a revolution by combining the resulting treatment system with Cas9 for the first time. 


On April 17, the MIT’s Broad Institute announced that has been awarded the first-ever patent for working with the Crisp-Cas9 system. 

The institute’s director, Eric Lander, sees the combination as “an extraordinary, powerful tool. The ability to edit a genome makes it possible to discover the biological mechanisms underlying human biology.”

The system’s advantage over other methods is in that it can also target several genes at the same time, working its way through tens of thousands of so-called 'guide' RNA sequences that lead them to the weapon to its DNA targets. 

Meanwhile, last month in the UK, a healthy baby was born from an embryo screened for genetic diseases, using karyomapping, a breakthrough testing method that allows doctors to identify about 60 debilitating hereditary disorders.

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