Venezuela: President Nicolas Maduro Survives Assassination Attempt by Terrorists Using Explosives-Laden Drone
August 4th, 2018Via: Daily Mail:
Seven national guards have been injured in Venezuela after what is believed to have been an assassination attempt on socialist President Nicolas Maduro using an explosive-laden drone during a Caracas military parade.
Footage broadcast by state television shows Maduro abruptly cutting short his speech before looking to the sky. Thousands of soldiers who were standing in massed ranks then scatter as people scream amid the sounds of explosions.
Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, was standing next to him at the time, and can be seen ducking away from the source of the loud explosions. Images showed a soldier with a bleeding head being carried away and smoking holes in nearby buildings.
Maduro accused neighboring Colombia and unidentified ‘financiers’ in the United States of being responsible for the attack, while some of his officials blamed Venezuela’s opposition.
Association of Statin Exposure With Histologically Confirmed Idiopathic Inflammatory Myositis in an Australian Population
August 3rd, 2018Facebook link to cardiologist Dr. Jack Wolfson discussing this.
In other news: Doctor Payments Increased Drug Prescribing by 73%:
Drugmakers that pay for doctors’ meals get an outsize return on their investment, or a 73% increase in prescribing of their drug.
That was the conclusion of a new paper, which looked at cardiologists who were taken out to a meal by sales representatives of Pfizer PFE, +2.24% or AstraZeneca AZ, -0.16% The companies make two expensive branded cholesterol-lowering statins, Lipitor and Crestor.
Via: JAMA:
Question: What is the association between current exposure to statin medications and histologically confirmed idiopathic inflammatory myositis?
Findings: In this population-based case-control study of 221 patients with idiopathic inflammatory myositis and 662 age- and sex-matched controls, there was a statistically significant 79% increased likelihood of statin exposure in patients with idiopathic inflammatory myositis compared with controls.
Meaning: Given the increased use of statin medications worldwide and the severe adverse effects of idiopathic inflammatory myositis, increased awareness and recognition of this potentially rare adverse effect with statin exposure is needed.
Periodic Fasting Starves Cisplatin Resistant Cancers to Death
August 3rd, 2018Via: EMBOpress:
Treatment of cancers with the cytotoxic agent cisplatin frequently evokes resistance, accompanied by rewiring of metabolic pathways, limiting its clinical use. Recent research by Obrist et al (2018) shows that cisplatin?resistant growth of lung adenocarcinoma is particularly vulnerable to periodic fasting cycles and starvation?induced cell death, due to its dependency on glutamine, required for nucleoside biosynthesis, suggesting an opportunity for nutritional anti?cancer interventions.
NASA Names Astronauts for First Manned U.S. Space Launches Since 2011
August 3rd, 2018Via: Reuters:
NASA on Friday named nine astronauts for the first manned space launches from U.S. soil since the space shuttle program ended in 2011.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s announcement signals a milestone in the U.S. space program, with its shift to the private sector for ferrying cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station.
Since the space shuttle program was shut down, the U.S. space agency NASA has had to rely on Russia to fly astronauts to space station, a $100 billion orbital research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (402 km) above Earth.
The astronauts named on Friday will be carried aloft aboard spacecraft developed by entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing Co, crewing first the test flights, and then missions involving both Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
The first flight is expected sometime next year.
Trash Piles Up in U.S. as China Closes Door to Recycling
August 3rd, 2018Via: PhysOrg:
For months, a major recycling facility for the greater Baltimore-Washington area has been facing a big problem: it has to pay to get rid of huge amounts of paper and plastic it would normally sell to China.
Beijing is no longer buying, claiming the recycled materials are “contaminated.”
Tesla Gigafactory 1 Battery Production at ‘~20 GWh’ – More Than All Other Carmakers Combined
August 2nd, 2018Via: Electrek:
Tesla Gigafactory 1, the Tesla/Panasonic battery factory in Nevada, is starting to reach some impressive levels of production.
The automaker has now confirmed Gigafactory 1 battery production is now at ‘~20 GWh’, which it claims is “more than all other carmakers combined.”
We have previously estimated that battery production had already reached 20 GWh solely based on the battery supply needed for the new level of Model 3 production that Tesla has reached last month.
Now Tesla has confirmed it in its shareholder letter released yesterday:
“At the end of July, Gigafactory 1 battery production reached an annualized run rate of roughly 20 GWh, making it the highest-volume battery plant in the world by a significant margin. Consequently, Tesla currently produces more batteries in terms of kWh than all other carmakers combined.”
Related: Long Waits for Tesla Energy Products: ‘Battery Cell Starved’
Apple Breaches $1 Trillion Stock Market Valuation
August 2nd, 2018Via: Reuters:
Apple Inc became the first $1 trillion publicly listed U.S. company on Thursday, crowning a decade-long rise fueled by its ubiquitous iPhone that transformed it from a niche player in personal computers into a global powerhouse spanning entertainment and communications.
A Hidden Amazon Fortune: Bezos Parents May Be Worth Billions
August 1st, 2018Via: Bloomberg:
It may be the most successful venture investment of all time.
In 1995, Jackie and Mike Bezos plowed $245,573 into their son’s fledgling e-commerce website, according to a prospectus two years later. It was a big gamble, Mike Bezos, the stepfather of Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, recalled onstage during a 2015 event at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
“I want you to know how risky this is,” the son told his parents, “because I want to come home at dinner for Thanksgiving and I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
He’s probably welcome to extra helpings of turkey — and all the gravy. One IPO and three stock splits later, his parents’ stake could be worth almost $30 billion today. That would make them wealthier than Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, the 30th-richest person on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
People Who Don’t Drink Any Alcohol More Likely to Develop Dementia [???]
August 1st, 2018Via: Independent:
People who are teetotal in middle age are at greater risk of developing dementia than those who drink moderate amounts, with benefits particularly apparent in wine drinkers, a new study has found.
Researchers found abstinence was associated with a 45 per cent increase in the chances of getting dementia by early old age, compared to those who drank within recommended limits – up to a bottle and a half of wine a week.
People who drank above the 14 unit guideline were also at increased risk, the team from University College London and French institute for health, Inserm, found. Their risk of developing dementia increased incrementally the more alcohol they were consuming.
“We show that both long term alcohol abstinence and excessive alcohol consumption may increase the risk of dementia,” the authors of the study, published in the British Medical Journal, wrote. “Given the number of people living with dementia is expected to triple by 2050 and the absence of a cure, prevention is key.”
Among abstainers, the study also found increased risks of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. These are both conditions which could contribute to dementia, a collective term for the loss of memory, thinking and other cognitive functions, and the leading cause of death in the UK.
Moderate alcohol consumption has previously been shown to help protect against these conditions, by reducing cholesterol and blood pressure levels, and it may be this which is responsible for the dementia protecting benefit.
Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China
August 1st, 2018Via: The Intercept:
Google is planning to launch a censored version of its search engine in China that will blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest, The Intercept can reveal.
The project – code-named Dragonfly – has been underway since spring of last year, and accelerated following a December 2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, according to internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans.
Teams of programmers and engineers at Google have created a custom Android app, different versions of which have been named “Maotai” and “Longfei.” The app has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government; the finalized version could be launched in the next six to nine months, pending approval from Chinese officials.
