‘Jaw-Dropping’ Scientific Breakthrough Hailed as Landmark in Fight Against Hereditary Diseases

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Photo Credit: RambergMediaImagesA breakthrough in genetics – described as “jaw-dropping” by one Nobel scientist – has created intense excitement among DNA experts around the world who believe the discovery will transform their ability to edit the genomes of all living organisms, including humans.

The development has been hailed as a milestone in medical science because it promises to revolutionise the study and treatment of a range of diseases, from cancer and incurable viruses to inherited genetic disorders such as sickle-cell anaemia and Down syndrome.

For the first time, scientists are able to engineer any part of the human genome with extreme precision using a revolutionary new technique called Crispr, which has been likened to editing the individual letters on any chosen page of an encyclopedia without creating spelling mistakes. The landmark development means it is now possible to make the most accurate and detailed alterations to any specific position on the DNA of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes without introducing unintended mutations or flaws, scientists said.

The technique is so accurate that scientists believe it will soon be used in gene-therapy trials on humans to treat incurable viruses such as HIV or currently untreatable genetic disorders such as Huntington’s disease. It might also be used controversially to correct gene defects in human IVF embryos, scientists said.

Until now, gene therapy has had largely to rely on highly inaccurate methods of editing the genome, often involving modified viruses that insert DNA at random into the genome – considered too risky for many patients.

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Study: One in Five Milky Way Stars Hosts Potentially Life-Friendly Earths

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Photo Credit: Reuters/NASA Ames/JPL-CaltechOne out of every five sun-like stars in the Milky Way galaxy has a planet about the size of Earth that is properly positioned for water, a key ingredient for life, a study released on Monday showed.

The analysis, based on three years of data collected by NASA’s now-idled Kepler space telescope, indicates the galaxy is home to 10 billion potentially habitable worlds.

The number grows exponentially if the count also includes planets circling cooler red dwarf stars, the most common type of star in the galaxy.

“Planets seem to be the rule rather than exception,” study leader Erik Petigura, an astronomy graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, said during a conference call with reporters on Monday.

Petigura wrote his own software program to analyze the space telescope’s results and found 10 planets one- to two-times the diameter of Earth circling parent stars at the right distances for liquid surface water.

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Remington Arms Co. Unveils Clothing Line for the ‘Gun-Toting Crowd’

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Photo Credit: Reuters/CaterpillarCall it concealed-carry chic: With all 50 U.S. states now permitting people to pack pistols in public, it was only a matter of time before some company came to market with an apparel line targeting the gun-toting crowd.

Remington Arms Co, which has been making firearms for nearly 200 years, has just unveiled a collection of clothing and accessories, including the “Smoothbore Field Coat” ($1,295) and the “Double Derringer Leather Vest” ($300).

In drawing a bead on the apparel market, Remington becomes the latest U.S. manufacturer to try reinventing itself as a “lifestyle brand” as a way to bolster its bottom line.

Next up is Winnebago Industries Inc, the U.S. maker of motorhomes and trailers. In October, the Forest City, Iowa-based motorhome maker announced an agreement with Brandgenuity, a New York-based licensing agency, to put the Winnebago name on a range of outdoor fashions and camping gear.

“We stand for quality products and a fun lifestyle,” Randy Potts, the company’s chairman, chief executive and president, told Reuters. “We think there’s an opportunity to leverage that beyond RVs.”

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A Chip In The Head: Brain Implants Will Be Connecting People To The Internet By The Year 2020

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Photo Credit: Wikimedia CommonsWould you like to surf the Internet, make a phone call or send a text message using only your brain? Would you like to “download” the content of a 500 page book into your memory in less than a second? Would you like to have extremely advanced nanobots constantly crawling around in your body monitoring it for disease? Would you like to be able to instantly access the collective knowledge base of humanity wherever you are?

All of that may sound like science fiction, but these are technologies that some of the most powerful high tech firms in the world actually believe are achievable by the year 2020. However, with all of the potential “benefits” that such technology could bring, there is also the potential for great tyranny. Just think about it. What do you think that the governments of the world could do if almost everyone had a mind reading brain implant that was connected to the Internet? Could those implants be used to control and manipulate us? Those are frightening things to consider.

For now, most of the scientists that are working on brain implant technology do not seem to be too worried about those kinds of concerns. Instead, they are pressing ahead into realms that were once considered to be impossible.

Right now, there are approximately 100,000 people around the world that have implants in their brains. Most of those are for medical reasons.

But this is just the beginning. According to the Boston Globe, the U.S. government plans “to spend more than $70 million over five years to jump to the next level of brain implants”.

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Moose Hunter Shoots Norway Man On Toilet

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Photo Credit: news.sky.comA moose hunter in Norway has accidentally shot a pensioner who was sitting on the toilet in a nearby holiday home.

The rifleman had been aiming for the animal, but saw his wayward bullet pierce the wooden wall behind it and strike the unsuspecting victim.

Officials said the man in his 70s was rushed to hospital by helicopter from the site in the island Vesteroy, around 74 miles south of capital Oslo.

His injury was not though to be life-threatening. The moose also escaped unharmed.

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Angry Sun Spits Two Million-mph Tongues of Fire

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Photo Credit: Fox News The sun erupted with two of the strongest solar flares it can unleash Friday, just days after blasting an intense solar storm at Earth.

The sun fired off a flare that registered at X1.7 on the space weather scale at 4:01 a.m. EDT (0801 GMT) Friday, then followed with an X.2-class event at 11:07 a.m. EDT (1507 GMT). NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured video of the X1.7 solar flare, which came after several smaller sun storms over the last few days.

Both powerful flares erupted from a new sunspot cluster called Region 1882 and sparked temporary radio blackouts, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) said in an update. But neither eruption is likely to spark major geomagnetic storms in Earth’s magnetic field, they added. [Solar Max: Sun Storm Photos of 2013]

Astronomers classify solar flares into three categories — C, M and X — with C being the weakest and X the strongest. When aimed directly at Earth, X-class sun eruptions can interfere with satellite-based communications and navigation systems and also endanger astronauts in orbit.

That does not appear to be the case with today’s X-class flares, according to an SWPC update, though officials are awaiting additional imagery of the events to see if they were associated with a massive explosion of super-hot plasma — known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME — that can hurl solar material into space at more than 1 million mph.

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China Killed Your Dog. Are You Next?

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Photo Credit: Daniel J. Groshong/Bloomberg NewsHas your dog exhibited unpleasant health effects — such as, oh, death — after eating jerky treats imported from China? If so, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration would really “like to hear from you or your veterinarian.”

That, in essence, is the white flag of surrender the FDA raised on its homepage this week, effectively conceding its inability to figure out what, precisely, in imported jerky treats has sickened 3,600 dogs and 10 cats since 2007. According to the agency, approximately 580 of those cats and dogs have died from causes that include kidney failure and gastrointestinal bleeding.

Yet, despite the fact that the agency has tested more than 1,200 jerky treats since 2011, visited Chinese pet food plants and engaged in collaborations across governments and academia, there’s no reason to believe that the agency’s regulators are any closer to understanding the outbreak than they were six years ago. So, left to their own devices, they’re asking for help from the public.

This should worry more than pet owners. According to U.S. government data collected by Food & Water Watch, a nongovernmental group concerned with food safety issues, U.S. imports of Chinese food products for human consumption have increased from 2.3 billion tons in 2003 to 4.1 billion tons in 2012. In effect, Americans would be well within their rights to wonder: If the agency can’t secure the jerky treats, what guarantee is there it can secure the 367.2 million gallons of Chinese apple juice Americans imported in 2012?

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‘Offensive’ Halloween Costumes Banned by US University

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Photo Credit: Alamy University students in America have been told not to wear “offensive” halloween costumes including cowboys, indians and anything involving a sombrero.

Students at the University of Colorado Boulder have also been told to avoid “white trash” costumes and anything that portrays a particular culture as “over-sexualised” – which the university says includes dressing up as a geisha or a “squaw” (indigenous woman).

They are also asked not to host parties with offensive themes including those with “ghetto” or “hillbilly” themes or those associated with “crime or sex work.”

In the letter sent by a university official students are asked to consider the impact that their costumes could have.

Christina Gonzales, the dean of students, wrote: “Making the choice to dress up as someone from another culture, either with the intention of being humorous or without the intention of being disrespectful, can lead to inaccurate and hurtful portrayals of other people’s cultures.

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Poor Sleep Linked to Alzheimer’s in Study of Brain Scans

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Photo Credit: BSIP/UIG/Getty ImagesSleeping poorly or not getting enough rest may result in a type of brain abnormality associated with Alzheimer’s disease, a study showed.

Brain images of adults with an average age of 76 found that those who said they slept less or poorly had increased build-up of beta-amyloid plaques, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s, according to research published today in JAMA Neurology. None of those in the study had been diagnosed with the disease.

Though more studies are needed to determine whether poor sleep increases plaque or the plaque causes sleep troubles, the findings suggest another way people might be able to identify early changes that foreshadow Alzheimer’s. Research released at the Alzheimer’s meeting in July suggested that memory lapses may be one of the earliest discernible signs of the disease.

“This is part of a larger message that healthy sleep is an important contributor to health in general and especially to successfully aging,” said study author Adam Spira, an assistant professor in the Department of Mental Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, in an Oct. 18 telephone interview. “It may be an important component in preventing Alzheimer’s disease, but that remains to be seen.”

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Meet the Google Executive Who Plans to Cheat Death

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Google engineering director and futurist Ray Kurzweil believes we are close to realizing everlasting life and is dead-set on getting us there.

The inventor and noted author believes the key to such a scientific breakthrough is a system of ‘bridges’ that enable the body to move from strength to strength over time.

The youthful 65-year-old currently takes 150 supplements a day, which he argues if the first bridge.

The idea is to build enough bridges to ensure the body holds out long enough for life-lengthening technology to come into its own.

He has likened the biology of the body to computer software and believes we are all ‘out of date’.

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