Endocrine Disruptors and Sperm Function
May 13th, 2014Via: EMBO:
A plethora of endocrine-disrupting chemicals interfere with human sperm function in a way that may have a negative impact on fertilization. These are the findings of a German – Danish team of researchers from the Center of Advanced European Studies and Research in Bonn, Germany, and the University Department of Growth and Reproduction, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark. The work, which is published in EMBO reports, suggests that endocrine disruptors may contribute to widespread fertility problems in the Western world in a way that hitherto has not been recognized.
Endocrine disruptors are present in food, textiles, drugs, household, and personal-care products such as plastic bottles, toys, and cosmetics. Proving the deleterious effects of endocrine disruptors on human beings has been difficult due to a lack of suitable experimental systems.
The European Commission is currently reviewing its policy on endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Last year, their plans caused a debate between endocrinologists and a group of toxicologists over how to regulate these chemicals. “Our study provides scientific evidence to assist forming international rules and practices,” said the leader of the study, Timo Strünker, from the Center of Advanced European Studies and Research in Bonn, Germany.
“For the first time, we have shown a direct link between exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals from industrial products and adverse effects on human sperm function,” said Niels E. Skakkebaek, professor and leader of the Danish team.
Hundreds to thousands of chemicals can be rapidly tested for their potential to interfere with human sperm function using the bioassay developed by the researchers. In this initial study, about one hundred chemicals were tested. Around one third, including ultraviolet (UV) filters like 4-methylbenzylidene camphor (4-MBC) used in some sunscreens, the anti-bacterial agent Triclosan used in toothpaste, and di-n-butylphthalate (DnBP), showed adverse actions.
Study Strengthens Link Between Neonicotinoids and Collapse of Honey Bee Colonies
May 12th, 2014Via: Harvard:
Two widely used neonicotinoids—a class of insecticide—appear to significantly harm honey bee colonies over the winter, particularly during colder winters, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The study replicated a 2012 finding from the same research group that found a link between low doses of imidacloprid and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in which bees abandon their hives over the winter and eventually die. The new study also found that low doses of a second neonicotinoid, clothianidin, had the same negative effect.
Further, although other studies have suggested that CCD-related mortality in honey bee colonies may come from bees’ reduced resistance to mites or parasites as a result of exposure to pesticides, the new study found that bees in the hives exhibiting CCD had almost identical levels of pathogen infestation as a group of control hives, most of which survived the winter. This finding suggests that the neonicotinoids are causing some other kind of biological mechanism in bees that in turn leads to CCD.
Innovative Prosthetic Arm From Segway Inventor Cleared by U.S.
May 10th, 2014Via: Bloomberg:
A prosthetic arm made by a company founded by Segway inventor Dean Kamen was approved for sale by U.S. regulators, who called it the first such device able to respond to multiple simultaneous commands from a wearer’s brain.
Electrodes attached to the arm detect muscle contractions close to the prosthesis, and a computer translates them into movement, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said yesterday in a statement. As many as 10 movements can be detected by the limb, which is the same weight and shape as a natural human arm.
Videos: FDA approves a life-like prosthetic arm from the man who invented the Segway
Do No Evil Google – Censor & Snitch for the State
May 10th, 2014Via: The Burning Platform:
The techno-narcissistic American public has been manipulated into falsely believing their iGadgets, Facebook, Twitter, and thousands of Apps have made them smarter, freer and safer. As Goethe proclaimed, the majority of willfully ignorant Americans are hopelessly enslaved, while falsely believing they are free. Our controllers, through relentless propaganda and misinformation pounded into our brains by the government controlled education system and unrelenting messaging by their mass media co-conspirators, have molded the minds and opinions of the vast majority into believing government and mega-corporations are beneficial and indispensable to their well-being.
The overwhelming majority have been conditioned like rats to believe anything their keepers feed them. In order to keep society running smoothly, with little dissent, thought, opposition or questioning, the Deep State utilizes all the tools at its disposal to manipulate, influence, coerce, bully and bribe the populace into passive submission. They’ve trained us to love our servitude. The Inner Party sees this as essential to their continued control, power and enrichment, while keeping the Proles impoverished, ignorant, fearful and distracted with bread and circuses.
The key weapon in their arsenal of obedience is technology and the mega-corporations that control the flow of information disseminated to the hypnotized mindless masses. The United States has devolved into a society where a few powerful unelected unaccountable men, controlling the levers of government, education, finance, and media are able to formulate the opinions, tastes, beliefs, and fears of the masses through the effective and subtle use of technology. They have tenaciously and unflinchingly fashioned a technology addiction among the masses in order to keep them distracted, entertained and uninterested in thinking, gaining knowledge, or comprehending their roles and responsibilities as citizens in a purportedly democratic republic.
Research Credit: Pookie
Florida: Police Execute Two Unarmed People, Shoot Two of Their Own In Unhinged Rampage
May 9th, 2014This is Florida Gold.
Via: CBS:
On December 10, more than two dozen police officers from across Miami Dade County converged on a blue Volvo that had crashed in the backyard of a townhouse on 65th Street just off 27th Avenue.
As the car was wedged helplessly between a light pole and a tree, nearly a minute passed before officers opened up – firing approximately 50 bullets at the car and the two unarmed men inside the vehicle.
The two men inside the car survived that initial volley of gunfire, according to witnesses, who said they could see the men moving inside the Volvo. Everything went quiet for nearly two minutes before the officers opened up a second time – unleashing an unrelenting torrent of bullets that lasted almost 25 seconds. By the time it was over, the two men inside the car were dead.
CBS4 News has learned a total of 23 officers fired a total of at least 377 rounds.
Bullets were sprayed everywhere. They hit the Volvo, other cars in the lot, fence posts and neighboring businesses. They blasted holes in a townhouse where a 12-year-old dove to the ground for cover and a four month old slept in his crib.
“It was like the Wild Wild West, man, crazy,” said Anthony Vandiver, who barely made it through the back door of his home before the gunfire erupted. “Shooting just wild; shooting all over the place. Bullets could have come through the window. Anything could have happened man. They weren’t thinking, they weren’t thinking at all.”
Earlier that night, the driver of the Volvo, Adrian Montesano, robbed a Walgreens at gunpoint, and then later shot Miami Dade Police Officer Saul Rodriguez in a nearby trailer park.
Montesano escaped in the officer’s patrol car eventually dumping it at his grandmother’s house in Hialeah – before fleeing in her blue Volvo
By 5 am every cop in South Florida was looking for that blue Volvo – intent on catching the man who had shot one of their own.
But what police didn’t realize before they started shooting at the Volvo is there was a second man in the car – Corsini Valdes – who had committed no crime.
And in fact, as CBS4 News was the first to report, both men inside the Volvo were unarmed at the time police caught up with them. All of the gunfire came from police.
Montesano and Valdes were killed by the dozens of rounds that tore through their bodies.
But Montesano and Valdes weren’t the only ones struck – two Miami Dade police officers were hit as well – caught in the crossfire. One officer was shot in the arm and the second was hit in the arm and grazed in the head. If the bullet had struck just a half an inch to the side the officer would have been killed.
The sound of the gunfire was deafening – literally deafening. Two Miami police officers sustained ruptured ear drums from the cacophony of shots.
CBS4 News has spent the last five months piecing together the events of that evening and the hunt for the blue Volvo. CBS4 News reviewed radio transmissions, analyzed video taken during the shooting, interviewed officials from the different agencies involved, and reviewed records related to the officers who fired their weapons.
The nature of the shooting suggests the officers lost sight of their own training and that the officers, caught up in the heat of the moment, failed to listen to their radios or coordinate their actions endangering not only their own lives but the lives of the public.
It is worth saying, none of this would have happened if Adrian Montesano had not made the decision to rob the Walgreens and shoot a police officer. None of those officers would have been in that backyard if it weren’t for the actions of Montesano. But that does not absolve the officers of responsibility for their own conduct, as well.
Inside the Strange New World of DIY Brain Stimulation
May 9th, 2014Via: Wired:
With easy access to the research, the equipment, and each other, self-experimenters aren’t consulting their doctors or waiting for scientific consensus. They’re zapping first and asking questions as they go.
Solar Wind Downdraft Towers
May 7th, 2014Via: Physorg:
The tower that SWET has in mind is located in a hot dry area. The tower structure is a hollow cylinder reaching skyward into the dry atmosphere heated by the solar rays of the sun. The water introduced by the injection system near the top of the Tower evaporates and is absorbed by the hot, dry air. The air becomes cooler, denser and heavier than the outside warmer air and falls through the cylinder at speeds up to and in excess of 50 mph. The air is diverted into wind tunnels surrounding the base of the tower where turbines inside the tunnels power generators to produce electricity. (Each tunnel has a dedicated generator-room, with multiple-sized generators, powered by the patented drive system. The tower produces clean electricity, 24 hours day and night, 365 days a year.)
Women Who Avoid Sunshine Have Double the Mortality Rate from All Causes vs. Women Who Sunbathe
May 7th, 2014Warning: Nothing that appears on Cryptogon should be considered medical advice.
Vitamin D3 supplementation has made an incredibly positive impact on my life. I used to get absolutely shocking hay fever-like symptoms. I write “hay fever-like” because the symptoms would be exactly like hay fever, but during times when pollen counts have been low. A doctor told me that mold was probably the problem. In the wet environment of the Far North of NZ, mold is inescapable.
Rather than spend the rest of my life snorting prescription steroids, which is what was prescribed for this, I started taking 10,000 units of Vitamin D3 per day. I have absolutely no “hay fever” problems as long as I take 10,000 IU of D3 per day.
The correlation between taking the Vitamin D3 and relief from my condition is remarkable. If I stop taking the Vitamin D3, the “hay fever” comes back within about five days. I tried cutting down to 5,000 units per day and the symptoms came back, but not as intense as usual.
Since having children, Becky started getting some sort of hay fever-like thing and large amounts of Vitamin D3 do nothing for her. She’s from this area and this never happened to her before she had children. So, like a lot of situations in alternative health, a population sample size of one is valid, if that one person is you. As such, your results may vary, batteries not included, etc.
I told this story about how Vitamin D3 works for me not because I think that it will help a lot of people with hay fever, but because hay fever is so horrible that if there’s a chance that it works for even one person out there, the effort will have been worth it.
Via: Telegraph:
Women who never sunbathe during the summer are twice as likely to die than those who sunbathe everyday, a major study has shown.
Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden claim guidelines which advise people to stay out of the sun unless wearing sunscreen may be harming the population, particularly in countries like Britain.
Exposure to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight is often cited as a cause of skin melanoma. The NHS currently recommends avoiding overexposure to the sun to prevent all types of skin cancer.
But the new research, which followed nearly 30,000 women over 20 years, suggests that women who stay out of the sun are at increased risk of skin melanomas and are twice as likely to die from any cause, including cancer.
“The results of this study clearly showed that mortality was about double in women who avoided sun exposure compared to the highest exposure group,” said lead author Dr Pelle Lindqvist.
“Sun exposure advice which is very restrictive in countries with low solar intensity might in fact be harmful for women’s health.
“The mortality rate was increased two-fold among avoiders of sun exposure as compared to those with the highest sun exposure habits.”
It is thought that a lack of vitamin D may to be blame. Vitamin D is created in the body through exposure to sunshine and a deficiency is known to increase the risk of diabetes, tuberculosis, multiple sclerosis and rickets.
Cases of rickets have risen fourfold in the last 15 years as sunscreen has increased in popularity.
Previous studies have shown that vitamin D can increase survival rates for women with breast cancer while deficiencies can signal prostate cancer in men. Low levels of vitamin D have also been linked to more aggressive forms of skin cancer.
Scientists Create 1st Living Organism From Artificial DNA
May 7th, 2014Via: U.S. News and World Report:
Move over, Frankenstein! Your 21st-century counterpart has just been announced.
In true sci-fi fashion, a team of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla, Calif., has created a brand-new bacteria based on a genetic structure found nowhere on Earth.
According to lead researcher Floyd Romesberg, the feat involved artificially engineering a unique combination of DNA material — a combination not found in any living creature — and then successfully inserting it into a living cell that usually contains only natural combinations of DNA.
“Life on Earth in all its diversity is encoded by only two pairs of DNA bases, A-T and C-G,” Romesberg explained in an institute news release. “And what we’ve made is an organism that stably contains those two plus a third, unnatural pair of bases.”
“This shows that other solutions to storing [genetic] information are possible,” he added, “and, of course, takes us closer to an expanded-DNA biology that will have many exciting applications — from new medicines to new kinds of nanotechnology.”
“This Secret Fuel of the Economy, Rarely Missing and Little Noticed, Is Running Out”
May 7th, 2014
Via: AP:
For those who fear an overcrowded planet, this is good news. For the economy, not so good.
We tend to think economic growth comes from working harder and smarter. But economists attribute up to a third of it to more people joining the workforce each year than leaving it. The result is more producing, earning and spending.
Now this secret fuel of the economy, rarely missing and little noticed, is running out.
“For the first time since World War II, we’re no longer getting a tailwind,” says Russ Koesterich, chief investment strategist at Blackrock, the world’s largest money manager. “You’re going to create fewer jobs. … All else equal, wage growth will be slower.”
Births are falling in China, Japan, the United States, Germany, Italy and nearly all other European countries. Studies have shown that births drop when unemployment rises, such as during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Birth rates have fallen the most in some regions that were hardest hit by the financial crisis.
In the United States, three-quarters of people surveyed by Gallup last year said the main reason couples weren’t having more children was a lack of money or fear of the economy.
The trend emerges as a key gauge of future economic health — the growth in the pool of potential workers, ages 20-64 — is signaling trouble ahead. This labor pool had expanded for decades, thanks to the vast generation of baby boomers. Now the boomers are retiring, and there are barely enough new workers to replace them, let alone add to their numbers.
