Myopia Epidemic: Kids Urged to Drop Devices and Go Outside — Or Risk Blindness
November 26th, 2015Must see picture of Chinese school desks!
A new global study co-authored by Dr David Wilson of Brien Holden Vision Institute, forecasts that 10 per cent of the world’s population will be at risk of blindness by 2050 if steps aren’t taken to stop myopia turning into high myopia (requiring glasses with a prescription of minus 5 or stronger).
In China, where around 81 per cent of teenagers have myopia, students are being barred from getting too close to their work. Another school has glass walls and as well as glass ceilings to expose children’s eyes to the light.
While about 30 per cent of the risk of myopia is genetic, experts say daily exposure to sunlight can stop the disease from progressing. One Chinese school is locking the doors for two hours a day, and refusing to let children back inside.
Research Credit: DF
“Gene Drive” Mosquitoes
November 26th, 2015Via: Guardian:
Hundreds of genetically modified mosquitoes that are incapable of spreading the malaria parasite to humans have been created in a laboratory as part of a radical approach to combating the disease.
The move marks a major step towards the development of a powerful and controversial technology called a “gene drive” that aims to tackle the disease by forcing anti-malarial genes into swarms of wild mosquitoes.
The procedure can rapidly transform the genetic makeup of natural insect populations, making it a dramatic new tool in the fight against an infection that still claims over 400,000 lives a year. The same technology is being considered for other human diseases and infections that devastate crops.
“This is a significant first step,” said Prof Anthony James at the University of California, Irvine. “The mosquitoes we created are not the final brand, but we know this technology allows us to efficiently create large populations.”
But gene drive technology is so powerful that leading researchers have urged scientists in the field to be cautious. A warning published in August in the prestigious journal Science, by teams in the UK, US, Australia and Japan, said that while gene drives have the potential to save lives and bring other benefits, the accidental release of modified organisms “could have unpredictable ecological consequences.”
End of Daily Injections for People with Type 1 Diabetes
November 26th, 2015Via: Telegraph:
The end of daily injections for diabetes sufferers could be in sight after scientists showed it is possible to restore insulin production for up to a year by boosting the immune system.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Britain suffer from Type 1 diabetes and need to inject themselves daily to keep blood sugar levels under control.
The disease attacks insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas. Healthy people have billions of ‘peacekeeping’ cells called ‘T-regs’ which protect insulin-making cells from the immune system but people suffering Type 1 diabetes do not have enough.
Now researchers at the University of California and Yale have shown that the ‘T-regs’ can be removed from the body, increased by 1,500x in the laboratory and infused back into the bloodstream to restore normal function.
An initial trial of 14 people has shown that the therapy is safe, and can last up to a year.
“This could be a game-changer,” said Dr Jeffrey Bluestone, Professor in Metabolism and Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
British Government Compensates Women Who Spent Years in Fake Relationships with Undercover Cops
November 25th, 2015Via: Guardian:
Back then, the public knew little about a covert operation that had been running since 1968. Only a limited number of senior police officers knew about it. Kennedy was one of more than 100 undercover officers who, over the previous four decades, had transformed themselves into fake campaigners for years at a time, assimilating themselves into political groups and hoovering up information about protests that they had helped to organise.
More than 10 women have discovered that they had relationships with undercover policemen, some lasting years, without being told their true identity.
On Friday it was announced that police had agreed to give a full apology and pay compensation to Lisa and six other women for the trauma they suffered after being deceived into forming intimate relationships with police spies.
Lisa, for her part, welcomed the apology. But it comes more than a decade after Kennedy’s mission began. “No amount of money or ‘sorry’ will make up for the lack of answers about the extent to which I was spied upon in every aspect of my most personal and intimate moments,” she says.
2012: Undercover Police Had Children with Activists
Blue Origin: Successful Reusable Rocket Test
November 24th, 2015Via: NPR:
It started with a boom and ended with a touchdown: Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has sent a craft past the edge of space and then landed its rocket safely – and vertically — in Texas.
The flight of the New Shepard spacecraft was the second full test of Blue Origin’s system that’s designed to take six humans into space before returning to Earth. The company plans to reuse both the capsule and rocket assemblies – and it calls the rocket’s safe return today a “historic” achievement. In a similar test in April, the rocket failed to land safely. The craft’s capsule lands via parachute.
In Monday’s test, the vehicle reached an altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers) before landing back on Earth in a controlled descent. The craft went just over the Karman Line, which designates anything over 100 kilometers above sea level as space.
China Opening “The World’s Biggest Animal Cloning Factory”
November 24th, 2015Via: Telegraph:
The world’s biggest animal “cloning factory” is due to open in China, producing one million calves a year, sniffer dogs and even genetic copies of the family pet.
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The factory, which will include a 15,000 square metre laboratory, an animal centre, a gene bank and an exhibition hall, is currently being built in the port city of Tianjin, near Beijing, and is due to open in the first half of next year.
BoyaLife will operate the facility with its South Korean partner, Sooam Biotech, that runs a centre that can clone dogs for customers willing to pay $100,000 (£66,000), and has already produced more than 550 puppies.
Turkey Shoots Down Russian Warplane
November 24th, 2015Update: Shot Down Over Syria
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Via: Guardian:
A furious Vladimir Putin labelled Turkey “accomplices of terrorists” and warned of “serious consequences” after a Turkish F-16 jet shot down a Russian warplane on Tuesday morning, the first time a Nato country and Moscow have exchanged direct fire over the crisis in Syria.
Putin, speaking ahead of a meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan in Sochi, said the plane had been shot down over Syrian airspace, and fell 4km inside Syria. Putin said it was “obvious” that the plane posed no threat to Turkey.
“Our military is doing heroic work against terrorism … But the loss today is a stab in the back, carried out by the accomplices of terrorists. I can’t describe it in any other way,” said the Russian leader. Putin suggested the Turks were shielding Islamic State terrorists from Russian attacks: “Do they want to make Nato serve Isis?”
Ankara and the Kremlin gave conflicting accounts of the incident, which appears to have occurred in an area near the Turkish-Syrian border straddling Iskenderun and Latakia.
The Turkish military said it scrambled two F-16 fighter jets after a plane entered Turkish airspace in the province of Hatay at 9.20am on Tuesday, warning it to leave 10 times in five minutes before shooting it down.
A government official said: “In line with the military rules of engagement, the Turkish authorities repeatedly warned an unidentified aircraft that they were 15km or less away from the border. The aircraft didn’t heed the warnings and proceeded to fly over Turkey. The Turkish air forces responded by downing the aircraft.
Truck Apparently Carrying Nuclear Weapon Rear Ended by Vehicle in Security Convoy
November 24th, 2015Via: YouTube:
More: DailyMail
Research Credit: ottilie
Dominican Republic Issues Warrants Over Fugitive French Pilots
November 24th, 2015Via: BBC:
A judge in the Dominican Republic has issued arrest warrants for three Frenchmen accused of helping two French pilots flee drug convictions.
One of the three, Aymeric Chauprade, is an independent right-wing member of the European parliament.
The pilots were arrested in 2013 preparing to take off in a plane carrying 26 suitcases of cocaine.
They were sentenced to 20 years but during the appeal process fled to the French Antilles and then on to France.
Private jet
Announcing the warrants for Mr Chauprade and fellow French nationals Christophe Naudin and Pierre Malinowski, Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito alleged the trio had helped organise the escape from the Dominican Republic of pilots Pascal Fauret and Bruno Odos.
The pilots were convicted in Santo Domingo in August in the so-called “Air Cocaine” drug-trafficking case.
They had been arrested in March 2013 at the resort of Punta Cana on a privately hired jet carrying 680kg (1,500lb) of cocaine.
After their conviction they were freed under the judicial review process and barred from leaving the country.
But they reportedly escaped by boat to the French Antilles and from there by plane to France.
French media earlier said the pilots had worked previously for the French navy and had been helped by former intelligence agents.
The French government said it had nothing to do with their escape.
The pilots say they are innocent and have vowed to clear their name.
They were arrested earlier this month in Lyon but legal experts say an extradition is unlikely.
DNA ‘Vaccine’ Sterilizes Mice, Could Lead to One-Shot Birth Control
November 24th, 2015Mice and cats… *wink*
Via: Science:
Animal birth control could soon be just a shot away: A new injection makes male and female mice infertile by tricking their muscles into producing hormone-blocking antibodies. If the approach works in dogs and cats, researchers say, it could be used to neuter and spay pets and to control reproduction in feral animal populations. A similar approach could one day spur the development of long-term birth control options for humans.
“This looks incredibly promising,” says William Swanson, director of animal research at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden in Ohio. “We’re all very excited about this approach; that it’s going to be the one that really works.”
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Biologist Bruce Hay of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and colleagues took a different approach to blocking GnRH. Rather than rely on animals’ immune systems to create antibodies, he and his colleagues engineered a piece of DNA that—when packaged inside inactive virus shells and injected into mice—turned their muscle cells into anti-GnRH antibody factories. Because muscle cells are some of the longest lasting in the body, they continue to churn out the antibodies for 10 or more years. Both male and female mice with high enough levels of the antibodies were rendered completely infertile when Hay’s team allowed them to mate 2 months later, the team reports online today in Current Biology.
“That 2-month delay is because of how long it takes the muscle to start producing enough antibody,” Hay explains. “Going forward, one goal is certainly to try other systems that wouldn’t have that time lag.”
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For now, the question is how effective the drug will be in animals other than mice. “The challenge is always moving between species,” says Swanson, who is already planning to test out Hay’s approach in cats. If it works, he says, it could change the way communities deal with feral cat populations. “We have to figure out how to control these populations without being harmful to individual cats,” he says. “And this kind of lifelong contraception might be a safe, effective way to do that.”
Research Credit: tal
