Diabetes May Start in the Intestines
February 27th, 2012Via: Science Daily:
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have made a surprising discovery about the origin of diabetes. Their research suggests that problems controlling blood sugar — the hallmark of diabetes — may begin in the intestines.
The new study, in mice, may upend long-held theories about the causes of the disease. Because insulin is produced in the pancreas and sugar is stored in the liver, many scientists have looked to those organs for the underlying causes of diabetes.
The findings are reported Feb. 16 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.
In the new research, scientists studied mice that are unable to make fatty acid synthase (FAS) in the intestine. FAS, an enzyme crucial for the production of lipids, is regulated by insulin, and people with diabetes have defects in FAS. Mice without the enzyme in the intestines develop chronic inflammation in the gut, a powerful predictor of diabetes.
“Diabetes may indeed start in your gut,” says principal investigator Clay F. Semenkovich, MD. “When people become resistant to insulin, as happens when they gain weight, FAS doesn’t work properly, which causes inflammation that, in turn, can lead to diabetes.”
Research Credit: anchoviesmegma
U.S./Mexico Border Fence
February 27th, 2012Enjoy the TSA’s full body X-ray or groping at the airport…
Via: YouTube:
Research Credit: P&P
Swarms Of Autonomous Micro-Air-Vehicles Modeled On Insects
February 27th, 2012Via: NPR:
Do bees, swarms of bees, make you nervous? Maybe not. Maybe they remind you of honey, flowers and warm summer days. You stay out of their way and they stay out of yours. What if, however, the bees weren’t bees at all but hundreds (or thousands) of autonomous microbots, facsimiles of the real thing, buzzing around in the real world?
That’s not Hollywood fantasy any more. It appears to be within reach. Researchers in the Microrobotics Lab at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences say that they expect their Robobees project will demonstrate flying, autonomous micro-air-vehicles modeled on insects within the next 2 1/2 years.
Wikileaks Stratfor Emails
February 27th, 2012Via: Wikileaks:
Today, Monday 27 February, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered “global intelligence” company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods, for example :
“[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control… This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase” – CEO George Friedman to Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla on 6 December 2011, on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant providing information on the medical condition of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez.
The material contains privileged information about the US government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. There are more than 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange. The emails also expose the revolving door that operates in private intelligence companies in the United States. Government and diplomatic sources from around the world give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money. The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.
The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients. For example, Stratfor monitored and analysed the online activities of Bhopal activists, including the “Yes Men”, for the US chemical giant Dow Chemical. The activists seek redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. The disaster led to thousands of deaths, injuries in more than half a million people, and lasting environmental damage.
Stratfor has realised that its routine use of secret cash bribes to get information from insiders is risky. In August 2011, Stratfor CEO George Friedman confidentially told his employees : “We are retaining a law firm to create a policy for Stratfor on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. I don’t plan to do the perp walk and I don’t want anyone here doing it either.”
Greece: Farmers Cut Out Parasitic Middlemen, Sell 24 Tons of Potatoes Directly to Consumers
February 27th, 2012Yes. This is the way to do it.
Via: Guardian:
Hammered by the financial crisis that has led to ever diminishing income, a group of residents in northern Greece have joined forces with potato farmers to slash consumer prices and ensure producers can get their crop to markets by cutting out the middle man.
Hundreds of families turned up Saturday in this northern Greek town to buy potatoes at massively reduced prices, sold directly by producers at cost price. They lined up in cars and with bicycles, on foot and with scooters to collect their bags of spuds from a truck that flung its doors wide open and was doing a roaring trade in the parking lot of a local courthouse.
Farmers say it costs about 20 cents ($0.27) to produce a kilogram (2 pounds) of potatoes, but that wholesalers will only buy them for 10-12 cents to get the crop to supermarkets, where they sell for about 60-70 cents a kilogram. Faced with making a loss, many producers say they have been unable to even get their products to the market.
Greece’s severe financial crisis, now entering its third year, has seen pensions and salaries slashed and led to skyrocketing unemployment of over 20 percent. More and more people have been turning up at soup kitchens run by the church or local aid groups, and homelessness has been increasing.
Faced with an ever deepening recession, some local groups have begun coming up with novel ways to beat the financial crunch.
Ilias Tsolakidis, 54, part of a volunteer group in northern Greece, said he contacted a potato farmer in northern Greece last week and posted an advertisement on the internet offering consumers the chance to order directly from the producer at cost price. He was overwhelmed by the response: by Wednesday, all 24 tons of potatoes on offer had been sold, with 534 families putting in orders.
Related: New Zealand: Country Calendar: Growing Strong — Whangarei Growers Market
Company Makes Copyright Claims Against YouTube Videos Containing Sounds of Birds Chirping
February 27th, 2012Welcome to the future of the Internet.
Via: TheNextWeb:
You can barely hear the birds chirping in this YouTube video of a man picking some fresh ingredients for a wild salad, and yet that very sound has been identified as copyrighted material, belonging to music company, Rumblefish.
YouTube user eeplox posted this to Google’s YouTube help forum a couple of days ago:
I posted a video which is basically just me walking and talking, outdoors, away from any possible source of music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPBlfeuZuWg
And apparently youtube identified my video as containing copyrighted music from a company called rumblefish. I filed a dispute, and now I’m waiting for said company to respond to it. Is this a freak occurrence? I feel pretty violated by this, a mysterious entity claiming to own my content and apparently profiting from it with ads.
There are birds singing in the background in the video, could they own the rights to birdsong?
It sounds almost too bizarre to be true, but comments on the post would indicate that this isn’t the first time this has happened, with YouTube’s automated system laying claim to nature’s sounds. In fact, according to eeplox, the system mistakenly identified the bird sounds, not only as copyrighted, but also as a musical composition.
The very problem is that YouTube uses an entirely automated system to scan for copyright claims, and while YouTube users can dispute the claims, any company that says the content belongs to them, can dispute right back. Independent YouTube users, like eeplox, are left in the middle.
White House Refuses to Release Email From Monsanto-Linked Lobbyist
February 27th, 2012Via: TruthOut:
The White House is withholding documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by an environmental group that suspects the Obama administration of working with Monsanto-linked lobbyists to defend the planting of genetically engineered (GE) crops in wildlife refuges across the country.
Osborne: UK Has Run Out of Money
February 27th, 2012Via: Telegraph:
The Government ‘has run out of money’ and cannot afford debt-fuelled tax cuts or extra spending, George Osborne has admitted.
In a stark warning ahead of next month’s Budget, the Chancellor said there was little the Coalition could do to stimulate the economy.
Mr Osborne made it clear that due to the parlous state of the public finances the best hope for economic growth was to encourage businesses to flourish and hire more workers.
“The British Government has run out of money because all the money was spent in the good years,” the Chancellor said. “The money and the investment and the jobs need to come from the private sector.”
Mr Osborne’s bleak assessment echoes that of Liam Byrne, the former chief secretary to the Treasury, who bluntly joked that Labour had left Britain broke when he exited the Government in 2010.
He left David Laws, his successor, a one-line note saying: “Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left”.
Related [???]: Statements by James Blackheath, House of Lords, 16 February 2012
U.S. TO ANNOUNCE UNILATERAL AERIAL BLOCKADE ON SYRIA [???]
February 27th, 2012Via: ynet:
The Pentagon is readying for the possibility of intervention in Syria, aiming to halt Syrian President Bashsar Assad’s violent crackdown on protesters, the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported Saturday, citing a US military offical.
According to the official, the intervention scenario calls for the establishment of a buffer zone on the Turkish border, in order to receive Syrian refugees. The Red Cross would then provide the civilians humanitarian aid, before NATO crews would arrive from Turkey and join the efforts.
The measure would pave the way for the US to declare an aerial blockade on Syria.
The intercession is to be modeled after NATO’s efforts in Kosovo, which brought an end to the Serbian control of the region. NATO’s plan of action included prolonged aerial shelling.
FBI Turns Off Thousands of GPS Devices After Supreme Court Ruling
February 26th, 2012Via: Wall Street Journal:
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling overturning the warrantless use of GPS tracking devices has caused a “sea change” inside the U.S. Justice Department, according to FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann.
Mr. Weissmann, speaking at a University of San Francisco conference called “Big Brother in the 21st Century” on Friday, said that the court ruling prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use.
These devices were often stuck underneath cars to track the movements of the car owners. In U.S. v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled that using a device to track a car owner without a search warrant violated the law.
After the ruling, the FBI had a problem collecting the devices that it had turned off, Mr. Weissmann said. In some cases, he said, the FBI sought court orders to obtain permission to turn the devices on briefly – only in order to locate and retrieve them.
