Baking Soda for Inflammation
July 19th, 2018Via: Lew Rockwell:
Researchers at the Medical College of Georgia have discovered a nerve center in a cell layer in the spleen that controls the immune response and therefore inflammation throughout the body. Given that virtually all chronic age-related disease involves inflammation (called inflammaging), this discovery is of monumental significance and has widespread application for virtually every organ and tissue in the body as the spleen is not only an abdominal organ that is involved in the recycling of old blood cells but is also a key part of the human immune system.
The striking part of this discovery is that autoimmune reactions responsible for chronic inflammation throughout the body were quelled by consumption of two grams (~half a teaspoon) of baking soda in water for two weeks in healthy humans. Researchers say baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) calms the immune response in the spleen and has a system-wide effect.
The United States of Arms
July 19th, 2018Via: Will Geary:
The United States of Arms from Will Geary on Vimeo.
U.S. weapons exports from 1950 to 2017. Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's Arms Transfers Database. Units are expressed in trend indicator values (TIV). Each dot on the map = one TIV. Visualization by Will Geary.
Can You Name a Country?
July 19th, 2018Via: YouTube – Jimmy Kimmel Live:
San Francisco: Non-Citizens Legally Register to Vote in San Francisco School Elections
July 19th, 2018Via: Sacramento Bee:
San Francisco began registering non-citizens, including undocumented immigrants, to register to vote Monday in the November election for the city school board, reported The San Francisco Chronicle.
The move follows passage of a 2016 ballot measure by San Francisco voters opening school elections to non-citizens who are over the age of 18, city residents and have children under age 19, reported the publication.
“This is no-brainer legislation,” Hillary Ronen, a San Francisco supervisor, told the Chronicle. “Why would we not want our parents invested in the education of their children?”
“We want to give immigrants the right to vote,” Norman Yee, also a county supervisor, told KGO.
Pentagon Working on Neural Interface
July 18th, 2018Via: NextGov:
The idea of humans controlling machines with their minds has spun off sci-fi blockbusters like “Pacific Rim” and entire subgenres of foreign film, but while today skyscraper-sized fighting robots exist only on the big screen, the Pentagon is building technology that could one day make them a reality.
Today, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is selecting teams to develop a “neural interface” that would both allow troops to connect to military systems using their brainwaves and let those systems transmit back information directly to users’ brains.
Japan’s Increasing Stockpile of Plutonium
July 17th, 2018Via: Channel News Asia:
Japan has amassed enough plutonium to make 6,000 atomic bombs as part of a programme to fuel its nuclear plants, but concern is growing that the stockpile is vulnerable to terrorists and natural disasters.
Japan has long been the world’s only non-nuclear-armed country with a programme to reprocess spent nuclear fuel from its power plants into plutonium.
On Tuesday (Jul 17), a decades-old deal with the United States which allows Japan to reprocess plutonium was renewed, but the pact can be terminated by either side with just six months’ notice.
Plutonium reprocessing is meant to create a new and emissions-free fuel source for resource-poor Japan, but the size of its stockpile has started to attract criticism, even from allies.
Plutonium can be used to create nuclear weapons. Although Japan has vowed the material would never be used for military purposes, it has now amassed vastly more plutonium than it can use, since many of its nuclear plants are still offline after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
Experts warn the growing stockpile could be dangerous in case of a natural disaster, like the earthquake and tsunami that set off the Fukushima meltdown, and is also an attractive target for terrorists.
They also fear the reserve could encourage other regional powers, including China, to press for a similar reprocessing capability, boosting the amount of weaponisable plutonium in Asia.
Potential DNA Damage from CRISPR Has Been ‘Seriously Underestimated’
July 17th, 2018Via: STAT News:
From the earliest days of the CRISPR-Cas9 era, scientists have known that the first step in how it edits genomes — snipping DNA — creates an unholy mess: Cellular repairmen frantically try to fix the cuts by throwing random chunks of DNA into the breach and deleting other random bits. Research published on Monday suggests that’s only the tip of a Titanic-sized iceberg: CRISPR-Cas9 can cause significantly greater genetic havoc than experts thought, the study concludes, perhaps enough to threaten the health of patients who would one day receive CRISPR-based therapy.
The results come hard on the heels of two studies that identified a related issue: Some CRISPR’d cells might be missing a key anti-cancer mechanism and therefore be able to initiate tumors.
The DNA damage found in the new study included deletions of thousands of DNA bases, including at spots far from the edit. Some of the deletions can silence genes that should be active and activate genes that should be silent, including cancer-causing genes.
Researchers Mount Successful GPS Spoofing Attack Against Road Navigation Systems
July 17th, 2018Via: Bleeping Computer:
Academics say they’ve mounted a successful GPS spoofing attack against road navigation systems that can trick humans into driving to incorrect locations.
The research is of note because previous GPS spoofing attacks have been unable to trick humans, who, in past experiments, often received malicious driving instructions that didn’t make sense or were not in sync with the road infrastructure —for example taking a left on a straight highway.
New research successfully fools humans
But a research team formed from academics from Virginia Tech and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, along with experts from Microsoft Research, have come with an improved method of carrying out GPS spoofing attacks that take into account the road layout.
To perform the attack researchers developed an algorithm that works in near real-time, along with a portable GPS-spoofing device that costs about $223, which can be easily attached to a car or put on a vehicle tailing the target’s car at distances of up to 50 meters.
14,400-Year-Old Flatbread Remains That Predate Agriculture
July 17th, 2018Via: Atlas Obscura:
BREAD-MAKING AROUND THE WORLD HAS evolved from a similar, ancient approach of combining flour, water, and sometimes yeast. But for prehistoric societies with limited tools, making bread wasn’t so simple. Given how laborious it was to make bread thousands of years ago, it’s long been associated with settled Neolithic societies—and only after the advent of agriculture.
That’s no longer the case. Today, a team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen, the University College London, and the University of Cambridge released a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailing their discovery of 14,400-year-old crumbs from a flatbread. The archaeological site, known as Shubayqa 1, is located in the Black Desert of northeastern Jordan and was home to Natufian hunter-gatherers. The flatbread remains are not only the oldest instance of bread found to date, but also preeminent examples of how bread-making existed even before agriculture developed some 4,000 years later.
“Nobody had found any direct evidence for production of bread, so the fact that bread predates agriculture is kind of stunning,” says Tobias Richter, a University of Copenhagen archaeologist who co-authored the paper. “Because making bread is quite labor-intensive, and you don’t necessarily get a huge return for it. So it doesn’t seem like an economical thing to do.” That’s because breadmaking doesn’t just involve baking: Back then, it would have also involved kneading, grinding cereals into fine grains, and dehusking plants.
Digital Ads Are Starting to Feel Psychic
July 17th, 2018Via: The Outline:
Earlier this year, my friend Max gave me a knife from Japan as a gift. That evening, as I was lying in bed looking at Instagram, I scrolled passed an ad of what looked like exactly the same knife. I did a double take, got out of bed, retrieved the knife from the kitchen and compared it to the one my screen—it was a perfect match, a Masomoto KS. I hadn’t Googled the knife, taken a picture of it, or event sent a text about it. The only interaction I had about the knife was face to face with Max when he gave it to me. This felt like more than a coincidence — it felt like I was being listened to.
Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne, two Brooklyn-based artists whose work explores the intersections of technology and society, have been hearing a lot of stories like mine. In June, they launched a website called New Organs, which collects first-hand accounts of these seemingly paranoiac moments. The website is comprised of a submission form that asks you to choose from a selection of experiences, like “my phone is eavesdropping on me” to “I see ads for things I dream about.” You’re then invited to write a few sentences outlining your experience and why you think it happened to you.
