Drug Can Reverse Alzheimer’s in One Week

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alzheimersA drug that reversed Alzheimer’s in mice in only one week will be tested in people this year. The IL-33 protein reversed Alzheimer’s-like disease in mice, stopping cognitive decline in its tracks, according to joint research by the University of Glasgow and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).

“IL-33 is a protein produced by various cell types in the body and is particularly abundant in the central nervous system — brain and spinal cord,” said Professor Eddy Liew of the University of Glasgow. “We carried out experiments in a strain of mice (APP/PS1) which develop progressive AD-like disease with aging.

We found that injection of IL-33 into aged APP/PS1 mice rapidly improved their memory and cognitive function to that of the age-matched normal mice within a week.”

Characteristics of Alzheimer’s include the amyloid plaque deposits and the formation of neurofibrillary tangles in the brain. As the disease progresses, plaques and tangles build, leading to the loss of connections between nerve cells. Eventually, the cells die, which causes the loss of brain tissue . . .

Although the researchers aren’t positive the protein will work in humans, they are optimistic. “Previous genetic studies have shown an association between IL-33 mutations and Alzheimer’s disease in European and Chinese populations,” said Liew. “Furthermore, the brain of patients with Alzheimer’s disease contains less IL-33 than the brain from non-Alzheimer’s patients. (Read more from “Drug Can Reverse Alzheimer’s in One Week” HERE)

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Girl Finds Pharaoh’s Amulet at Jerusalem Dig

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jerusalem-1042972_960_720A rare amulet bearing the name of the Egyptian ruler Thutmose III, Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty who reigned from 1479 – 1425 BCE, was discovered at the Temple Mount Sifting Project located in Jerusalem”s Tzurim Valley National Park.

The amulet, which is more than 3,200 years old, was found within earth discarded from the Temple Mount by the Waqf Islamic authority – which has been conducting illegal digs in an efforts to uproot all traces of Jewish heritage at the holiest site in Judaism – and was only recently deciphered by archaeologists.

“Thutmose III was one of the most important pharaohs in Egypt’s New Kingdom and is credited with establishing the Egyptian imperial province in Canaan, conducting 17 military campaigns to Canaan and Syria and defeating a coalition of Canaanite kings at the city of Megiddo in 1457 BCE,” stated Dr. Gabriel Barkay, the co-founder and director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project.

“Thutmose III referred to himself as “the one who has subdued a thousand cities,” and it is known that for more than 300 years, during the Late Bronze Age, Canaan and the city state of Jerusalem were under Egyptian dominion, likely explaining the presence of this amulet in Jerusalem.”

The amulet was discovered by Neshama Spielman, a 12-year-old girl from Jerusalem who came with her family to participate in the Temple Mount Sifting Project. (Read more from “Girl Finds Pharaoh’s Amulet at Jerusalem Dig” HERE)

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The Revolutionary Project to ‘Solve’ Cancer

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABillionaire Sean Parker, famous for his founding roles at Napster and Facebook, is backing an unconventional $250 million effort to attack cancer that involves persuading hundreds of the country’s top scientists — who often are in competition with each other — to join forces and unify their research targets.

The consortium, which will be formally announced Wednesday, focuses on immunotherapy, a relatively new area of research that seeks to mobilize the body’s own defense systems to fight mutant cancer cells. Many believe it represents the future of cancer therapy.

More than 300 scientists working at 40 labs in six institutions — Stanford, the University of California, San Francisco, and University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Pennsylvania, MD Anderson Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center — have already signed on . . .

He describes the effort as a way to remove obstacles related to bureaucracy and personality that will allow scientists to borrow from each other’s labs unencumbered. The researchers will continue to be based at their home institutions but will receive additional funding and access to other resources, including specialized data scientists and genetic engineering equipment set to become part of the nonprofit Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco. (Read more from “The Revolutionary Project to ‘Solve’ Cancer” HERE)

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If You Want to Fly a Political Flag, Don’t Do It in New Jersey

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prison-553836_960_720Vexillologists beware! If you fly a flag in New Jersey, you might find yourself in a jail cell.

Joseph Hornick flew a “Trump – Make America Great Again!” flag on his property only to have the police show up at his door and instruct him to remove his flag. It turns out a local city ordinance makes it illegal to post political signs more than thirty days before an election, so if Hornick continues to let his Trump flag fly, he could end up with a $2,000 fine, a 90 day stint in jail or both.

Now, I’m no Trump fan, but I am a fan of free speech, and telling someone they cannot fly a flag or post a sign in favor of a certain political candidate makes a mockery of our fundamental American right to speak our mind.

Though a real problem, laws like this always make me roll my eyes for the regulations are so arbitrary. We are supposed to believe that flying a flag that supports Trump is a menace to society that must be stopped with the full force of law, and yet the same guy who is banned from flying a flag in his local neighborhood can go online and tell the entire world, “Trump will make America great again!” without consequence. We are told political signs are bad and must be stopped, but there’s no problem with people wearing T-shirts supporting Trump, so are we to believe that a stationary political message is somehow more threatening than a mobile political message? This local township is telling us that it’s a travesty of justice to post a political sign thirty-one days before an election but thirty days before an election, it’s all a wonderful part of the electoral process? What nonsense!

I think most people would agree that this law serves no purpose, and yet this is just a single example of nonsensical restrictions on the election process. There are many equally arbitrary laws which bizarrely win popular support. Why is it perfectly okay to give a political candidate $2,700 and yet completely illegal to give the candidate $2,700.01? I personally find it difficult to imagine how a single penny could pose that much of a threat to the nation. We are supposed to believe it’s totally wrong to give a dime over $2,700 to a political candidate, yet it’s perfectly okay to give an additional $5,000 to a political party or a PAC (Political Action Committee) that in turn will give a candidate that money. You can even give an unlimited amount of money to a Super PAC which will not give the money directly to the candidate but will spend every dime on ads and other political tools designed to get a single candidate elected. How does any of this make sense?

Why have so many Americans been convinced that attempts to influence the political system are a bad thing? Isn’t the entire point of a representative government encapsulated in the idea that citizens can influence the political landscape?

Here’s my crazy idea. People should be able to do what they choose with what is theirs. Is it your property? Then fly whatever flag you want to fly. Is it your money? Then give to whomever you darn well please.

How could a rational person come to any other conclusion? (For more from the author of “If You Want to Fly a Political Flag, Don’t Do It in New Jersey” please click HERE)

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Almost 200 People in This Indiana Town Were Diagnosed With HIV

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From the start of the HIV outbreak here, health officials emphasized that nothing set Scott County apart from many other rural communities where opioid drug use had become an epidemic . . .

Many people here had viewed HIV as a big-city disease, something that might afflict people in San Francisco or New York. But Austin is a small city of about 4,000 people 40 miles north of Louisville, Ky.

Then in February 2015, the first 30 cases of HIV were reported. By mid-March, the number had climbed to 55 . . .

Now, a year later, the outbreak is at 190 cases. But the sickness runs deeper.

Poverty envelops this city. Empty storefronts dot the main street. Many homes are boarded up or have makeshift tarps instead of windows. Fewer than 10% of Austin’s residents have earned a college degree. (Read more from “Almost 200 People in This Indiana Town Were Diagnosed With HIV” HERE)

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Satellite Image of Red River Nile Evokes Biblical Story

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A newly released satellite image of Egypt’s Nile river shows the river colored deep red, bringing to mind the biblical first plague in which the waters of the great river turned to blood.

But, this time at least, it is not the wrath of god that is responsible for the river’s crimson hue: The European Space Agency’s Sentinel-3A satellite, which took the picture, uses a radiometer to measure infrared energy . . .

The heat radiated by vegetation around the river is therefore responsible for the red color.

The satellite, launched in February, is designed to monitor environmental changes. It is the third of more than a dozen “eyes in the sky” that make up the Copernicus program, which the ESA describes as the most sophisticated Earth observation system ever launched. (Read more from “Satellite Image of Red River Nile Evokes Biblical Legend” HERE)

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Peace out, Fools! Obama Plays the Clown by Flashing the Peace Sign for Nuclear Security Summit ‘Team Photo’

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Surrounded by world leaders, President Barack Obama gave the peace sign as they gathered for a ‘team photo’ during a two-day nuclear summit.

All eyes were on Obama as 54 other presidents and prime ministers joined him in Washington, DC, for crunch talks on Iran and terrorist threats involving nuclear weapons.

There was one set of eyes, however, that was particularly focused on the President – those of Prime Minister David Cameron.

Relations between Cameron and Obama have been strained since the President criticized the Prime Minister for getting ‘distracted’ during the crisis in Libya and turning it into a ‘s**t show’.

There was more than metaphorical distance between the pair at today’s summit, with Cameron only able to glare at Obama from across the podium as he was elbowed out to the edge of the stage. (Read more from “Peace out, Fools! Obama Plays the Clown by Flashing the Peace Sign for Nuclear Security Summit ‘Team Photo'” HERE)

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Deer Hunters Face Unwanted Competition as Feral Hog Explosion Thins Herds

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Deer hunters are facing competition from a source that is mean, relentless and out of control.

The explosion of feral hogs across the U.S. is threatening the deer population — spreading disease, dominating the food chain and even, on occasion, killing and eating fawns. In Louisiana, where there are an estimated 700,000 wild hogs, hunters and wildlife officials say they are taking a toll on the whitetail deer herd.

“They are in the marshes and beaches of Louisiana all the way up into the hills and piney woods and swamps,” Jim LaCour, state wildlife veterinarian for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, told FoxNews.com. “They’re in every habitat in the state” . . .

LaCour described the feral pigs, which can weigh up to 500 pounds, as “opportunistic” eaters — omnivores that feast on anything crossing their path, including deer fawn, other piglets and dead animals . . .

Some speculate the population boom is due to relatively recent cross-breeding in the wild. Others, like LaCour, say the popularity of hog hunting in the 1980’s and early ’90’s led humans to move the feral pigs from confined, geographically isolated areas into places they had never been before. (Read more from “Deer Hunters Face Unwanted Competition as Feral Hog Explosion Thins Herds” HERE)

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Scientists and Insurers Develop ‘Death Clock’ to Predict When Customers Will Die

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Insurance premiums could rise after scientists teamed up with the insurance industry to create an algorithm which will predict when customers will die.

The University of East Anglia is launching a four year study using huge databases of medical data to determine life expectancy and long-term illness.

The four-year project is being funded by a £800,000 grant from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) and is using experts from insurance giant Aviva.

“People around the world are living longer,” said lead researcher Prof Elena Kulinskaya from UEA’s School of Computing Sciences.

“We want to develop software tools that use Big Data routinely collected by healthcare providers to forecast longevity. (Read more from “Scientists and Insurers Develop ‘Death Clock’ to Predict When Customers Will Die” HERE)

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Mental Illness Mostly Caused by Life Events Not Genetics, Argue Psychologists

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Mental illness is largely caused by social crises such as unemployment or childhood abuse and too much money is spent researching genetic and biological factors, psychologists have warned.

Over the past decade funding bodies like the Medical Research Council (MRC) have spent hundreds of millions on determining the biology of mental illness.

But while there has been some success in uncovering genes which make people more susceptible to various disorders, specialists say that the true causes of depression and anxiety are from life events and environment, and research should be directed towards understanding the everyday triggers.

Peter Kinderman, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Of course every single action, every emotion I’ve ever had involves the brain, so to have a piece of scientific research telling us that the brain is involved in responding emotionally to events doesn’t really advance our understanding very much . . .

“It detracts from the idea that trauma in childhood is a very very powerful predictor of serious problems like experiencing psychotic events in adult life, so of course the brain is involved and of course genes are involved, but not very much, and an excessive focus on those issues takes us away from these very important social factors” (Read more from “Mental Illness Mostly Caused by Life Events Not Genetics, Argue Psychologists” HERE)

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