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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Polar Vortex to Plunge Cold Into Midwestern, Eastern US in Early April

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Arctic air will plunge into much of the central and eastern United States, as the polar vortex shifts its position during early April.

Following a pattern favoring more warm days than cold days into next week, a change will likely bring record cold to parts of the Midwest and East . . .

“From Sunday, April 3, through Monday, April 4, temperatures will be below-average from the northern Plains to the mid-Atlantic coast,” Lundberg said. “We expect nighttime temperatures to drop near the freezing mark as far south as the Tennessee Valley.”

Temperatures will average 15-30 degrees Fahrenheit below normal with the core of the cold air directed at the North Central states. Normal highs during the first week of April are in the lower to middle 50s in Minneapolis, Chicago and Detroit and in the 60s from Kansas City, Missouri, to Nashville and Cincinnati.

“The intense cold could impact play for opening day MLB games in Pittsburgh and Kansas City, Missouri, on Sunday, as well as games elsewhere in the Midwest and Northeast on Monday,” according to AccuWeather Lead Long-Range Meteorologist Paul Pastelok. (Read more from “Polar Vortex to Plunge Cold Into Midwestern, Eastern US in Early April” HERE)

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Hillary Wants to Reveal Area 51 Secrets

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Hillary Clinton says barring any national security risk, she would like to open up the government files on Area 51 to the public if she is elected president.

“I would like us to go into those files and hopefully make as much of that public as possible,” she told Jimmy Kimmel Thursday night on his late night ABC talk show. “If there’s nothing there, let’s tell people there’s nothing there.”

When Kimmel followed up by asking what she would do if she discovered there was actually something alarming in the files, Clinton replied: “Well, if there is something there, unless it’s a threat to national security, I think we ought to share it with the public.” (Read more from “Hillary Wants to Reveal Area 51 Secrets” HERE)

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Scientists Create Ultra-Simplified Bacteria but Discover Life Is Still Mind-Boggling Complex

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By Malcolm Ritter. Scientists have deleted nearly half the genes of a microbe, creating a . . . bacterium [that] has a smaller genetic code than does any natural free-living counterpart, with 531,000 DNA building blocks containing 473 genes. (Humans have more than 3 billion building blocks and more than 20,000 genes).

But even this stripped-down organism is full of mystery. Scientists say they have little to no idea what a third of its genes actually do.

“We’re showing how complex life is, even in the simplest of organisms,” researcher J. Craig Venter told reporters. “These findings are very humbling.” (Read more from “Scientists Create Ultra-Simplified Bacteria but Discover Life Is Still Mind-Boggling Complex” HERE)

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Scientists Create Tiniest Life Form yet, Not Sure What It Is

By Eric Roston. For years, DNA and computer operating systems served as cliches for each other: DNA is the “operating software” of living cells in the same way that system software is the “DNA” of a computer.

The problem with the comparison, as shown by research two decades in the making, is how much biologists still don’t know about DNA, or genomes. That’s an especially problematic development, given the industry sprouting up around genetic manipulation.

Genomics pioneer Craig Venter and more than 20 colleagues engineered a living microbe with a genome simpler than any seen in nature. In other words, they created a life form whose relative simplicity and modular design make it a platform that one day may be as easily manipulated as, say, software. Setting aside fears of Blade Runner replicants running amok, the breakthrough revealed on Thursday in the journal Science may hold promise for a new era in medicine, industry, and energy. (Read more from “Scientists Create Tiniest Life Form yet, Not Sure What It Is” HERE)

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Prop Pistol May Cost New Jersey Actor 10 Years Behind Bars

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New Jersey’s bizarre gun laws have struck again. An actor who used a pellet gun while filming a movie now faces 10 years behind bars on felony possession of a firearm charges.

Carlo Goias, whose screen name is Carlo Bellario, was recently filming “Vendetta Games” when he was arrested in a residential neighborhood for having an Airsoft gun. The Toms River resident was holding a plastic toy outside a vehicle during a chase scene, which prompted some 9-1-1 calls. He was then forced to spend four days in jail while trying to raise $10,000 bail.

“I was shooting a movie – I wasn’t committing a crime intentionally,” Goias told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “Robert De Niro doesn’t ask Marty Scorsese if he has gun permits. We’re actors. That’s for the production company to worry about.”

Goias rejected a plea deal offer Tuesday that would have resulted in less than one year in prison. Prosecutors said prior convictions for theft and burglary could result in a 10-year sentence.

“I pretended to shoot out the window; they were going to dub in the sound later,” Goias said. “We get back, and within a couple of minutes we’re surrounded by cop cars.” (Read more from “Prop Pistol May Cost New Jersey Actor 10 Years Behind Bars” HERE)

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Disney, Marvel Threaten Georgia Filming Boycott Over ‘Antigay’ Bill

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Nathan Deal, the Republican governor of the state of Georgia, has a big decision to make.

He has until May 3 to either sign or veto a bill that supporters describe as defending “religious liberty” and opponents call “antigay.” House Bill 757 is attracting plenty of attention from beyond the state’s boundaries. Walt Disney Studios, maker of many superhero and animated films, chimed in Wednesday.

“Disney and Marvel are inclusive companies, and although we have had great experiences filming in Georgia, we will plan to take our business elsewhere should any legislation allowing discriminatory practices be signed into state law,” Disney said in a statement.

Marvel Studios, maker of the Avengers and X-Men films, is a subsidiary of Disney.

The Georgia bill would let faith-based organizations refuse the use of property “for an event which is objectionable to such faith based organization.” It would allow those organizations to refuse to provide services that “violate such faith based organization’s sincerely held religious belief.” This would also extend to hiring practices. (Read more from “Disney, Marvel Threaten Georgia Filming Boycott Over ‘Antigay’ Bill” HERE)

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The Appearance of Disappearance: The CIA’s Secret Black Sites

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Twelve years ago, in a village on the edge of a pine forest not far from Lithuania’s elegant capital Vilnius, workmen constructed an unusual warehouse. It was the size of an Olympic swimming pool with no windows, many air vents and no stated purpose. The site had formerly been a riding stables and a paddock. It had also served as a local watering hole — a welcome one since the village lacked a bar or restaurant. The new building was shiny and modern, incongruous amid the tumbledown farm buildings and Soviet-era housing blocks. The convivial atmosphere of the riding club was replaced, in the words of one local inhabitant, by “this certain emptiness”.

Naturally, the neighbours were curious. They speculated about the new building’s function. Was it a military listening post? A drug factory? A clandestine organ transplant lab? None of them guessed that it might be a key facility in the US Central Intelligence Agency’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation programme, one of a secret network of “black sites”, set up in half a dozen countries to house undisclosed prisoners out of reach of lawyers, the Red Cross or other branches of the US government. Why should they? Lithuania was a long way from the front lines of the war on terror, and the village of Antaviliai, although only 20 minutes by car from the capital, was known for summer lake swims rather than for covert operations.

The secret detention programme, as it was gradually uncovered, stretched across the globe. The network of sites we have documented encompasses Antaviliai and Kabul, North Carolina and Skopje, Columbia County, Milan, Tripoli and Bucharest. In our journeys through this material, we have sought to portray the appearance of disappearance.

Sceptics like to invoke the power of photography, its ability to show what is real. Three years ago, at a hearing for a European Parliament civil liberties committee inquiry into complicity in illegal detentions, one MEP asked if he could see a photograph of a prisoner on a plane. Failing that, he would remain convinced of the fictional world in which it didn’t happen. In the same way, Valdas Adamkus, a former president of Lithuania, when asked during a visit to London in 2011 about CIA prisoners being held in his country, stated firmly that: “Nobody proved it, nobody showed it.” (Read more from “The Appearance of Disappearance: The CIA’s Secret Black Sites” HERE)

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Woman Behind Viral ‘Angry Splash Mountain Lady’ Meme Says the Photo Was Posed

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A woman dubbed ‘Angry Splash Mountain Lady’ by the internet has come forward to explain why she looks so upset while riding the Disney World ride.

Jordan Alexander, from Syracuse, New York, took the internet by storm after a photo of her on Splash Mountain emerged of her sitting alone, with her arms crossed, looking angry.

The photo quickly went viral and turned into a meme, where internet users photo shopped her face on to famous works of art and added celebrities like John Travolta into the Splash Mountain picture.

And as it turns out, the photo was completely posed.

Jordan’s husband, Steven, said when the photo was taken, the couple already been at the park all day with their baby and Jordan’s parents. (Read more from “Woman Behind Viral ‘Angry Splash Mountain Lady’ Meme Says the Photo Was Posed” HERE)

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Saddle up, Folks, It’s Time to Become a Prepper

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Here is one of the most recent reasons why you should prepare. Use this article as an example of why your family and friends should also become preppers:

There is only one major reason governments all across the world have either already begun, or are planning to remove, higher-denomination paper currency from circulation. It has nothing to do with stopping drug deals or hampering terrorism. Surprisingly – at this point anyway – it also isn’t about actually gaining further control over the citizenry.

It’s about economics. For all intents and purposes, every government on earth is at best broke, or more likely saddled with massive debt. So aside from printing more money, what’s a hungry oligarchy to do?

Simple: force everyone into a cashless society … and then take the money they need directly from your bank account rather than picking your pocket . . .

Having supplies, food, guns and ammo is fantastic … assuming you know how to use them. However, if you never do figure out how to clean that gun, start that fire, fix that wound, purify that water or grow that crop, don’t worry. It’s still pretty sweet … for the folks who will be using all that stuff after you head off to the pearly gates to yell at St. Peter. (Read more from “Saddle up, Folks, It’s Time to Become a Prepper” HERE)

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FDA Admits That Nearly 70% of U.S. Chickens Contain Cancer Causing Arsenic

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(Editor’s note: Snopes contests this MSN article’s conclusion, stating that at one time chicken contained arsenic but that the sale of the arsenic-laced food additive was discontinued by Pfizer in 2011) I don’t know about the rest of you, but lately my poultry purchases at my local market have become more and more of a ‘hit-and-miss’ situation, with more ‘misses’ if I’m being honest. As I bite into my homemade chicken nuggets or Coq au Vin (when I’m feeling fancy) I can’t help but feel that the chicken just tastes weird, stringy, just…funny. So a few days ago when I turned on the tube and saw the news headlines stating that the FDA has finally confirmed that chicken meat sold in the USA contains arsenic, my head, and stomach, nearly hit the roof. This cancer-causing toxic chemical, that in high doses could kill you, is actually being added to chicken feed on purpose, giving store-bought chicken the illusion of healthy coloring and plump appearance. Shockingly, this is the case with more than 70 percent of all U.S. chickens! That is just awful! . . .

So, the next time you’re out buying chicken (if you’re not totally put off by it at this point) make sure you look out for the following:

-If the chicken meat is bright pink in color, like in an unnatural way, avoid it at all costs.

-Make sure that the fat content on the chicken is white to deep yellow, not gray or pasty.

(Read more from “FDA Admits That Nearly 70% of U.S. Chickens Contain Cancer-Causing Arsenic” HERE)

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