24 maio 2015
Space Shuttle Rising
What's that rising from the clouds? The space shuttle. Sometimes, if you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time, you could have seen something very unusual -- a space shuttle launching to orbit. Images of the rising shuttle and its plume became widely circulated over the web shortly after Endeavour's final launch in 2011 May. The above image was taken from a shuttle training aircraft by NASA and is not copyrighted. Taken well above the clouds, the image can be matched with similar images of the same shuttle plume taken below the clouds. Hot glowing gasses expelled by the engines are visible near the rising shuttle, as well as a long smoke plume. A shadow of the plume appears on the cloud deck, indicating the direction of the Sun. The US Space Shuttle program concluded in 2011, and Endeavour can now be visited at the California Science Center.
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united-nations: Saturday is the International Day to End...
Saturday is the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula.
Obstetric fistula is one of the most serious and tragic injuries that can occur during childbirth. It is a hole between the birth canal and the bladder or rectum caused by prolonged, obstructed labour without treatment.
The condition typically leaves women incontinent, and as a result they are often shunned by their communities – yet, it is fully preventable.
More at: http://ift.tt/1PB5o95
That was yesterday. Obstetric fistula is a very serious issue affecting women on Africa and other parts of the world
east tharsis region of mars, photographed by mars express, 17th...
east tharsis region of mars, photographed by mars express, 17th july 2014.
below centre is ascraeus mons, the northernmost of the tharsis montes - below and left is pavonis, and below and left of that is arsia mons. at far right, level with pavonis mons, are the western valles marineris (i think they’re filled with cloud or fog).
8 images from the visual monitoring camera (basically a webcam stuck on the spacecraft, repurposed to give a low resolution overview of the planet).
image credit: esa. animation: ageofdestruction.
ageA importância de saber onde encontrar um médium vidente confiável
Os médiuns videntes são pessoas que possuem um dom muito raro, pois poucos conseguem enxergar o plano espiritual através da Terceira Visão. Esse é apenas um dos motivos que levam muitos a consultar aqueles que possuem esse dom.
Eles conseguem, através das manifestações visuais, ver como o espírito se encontra no plano superior. Portanto, saber onde encontrar um médium vidente confiável é importantíssimo para que as mensagens do plano espiritual sejam transmitidas de maneira correta.
Onde posso encontrar um médium vidente confiável?
Você já deve ter lido em nosso artigo: Saiba o que é e o que faz um médium vidente, que pessoas que possuem esse dom têm grandes responsabilidades, devendo sempre, através de uma troca justa, ajudar todos que os procuram para resolver seus anseios e angústias a respeito do que o futuro reserva.
Mas muitos não pensam dessa forma e se aproveitam da situação para se passarem por pessoas que possuem esse dom. Mas onde posso encontrar um médium vidente confiável?
O Astrocentro é o site certo para você encontrar um médium vidente confiável
O Astrocentro é o lugar certo, onde você encontra um médium vidente confiável. Nossos profissionais são criteriosamente selecionados por especialistas na área para você não correr o risco de ser enganado por nenhum “charlatão”.
Veja também:
- Como acabar com as dúvidas? Um vidente pode te orientar
- Falar com um vidente do Astrocentro pode amenizar suas preocupações
- Vidente: um dom de se comunicar com o plano espiritual
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For those who have not heard this yet: 9 of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since...
For those who have not heard this yet: 9 of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000. (That’s average worldwide temperatures.)
Turning blood into neural cells Specifically, stem cell...
Turning blood into neural cells
Specifically, stem cell scientists at McMaster can now directly convert adult human blood cells to both central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) neurons as well as neurons in the peripheral nervous system (rest of the body) that are responsible for pain, temperature and itch perception. This means that how a person’s nervous system cells react and respond to stimuli, can be determined from his blood.
The breakthrough, published online today and featured on the cover of the journal Cell Reports, was led by Mick Bhatia, director of the McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Human Stem Cell Biology and is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. Also playing a key role was Karun Singh, a co-author in the study and holder of the David Braley Chair in Human Stem Cell Research.
Currently, scientists and physicians have a limited understanding of the complex issue of pain and how to treat it. The peripheral nervous system is made up of different types of nerves – some are mechanical (feel pressure) and others detect temperature (heat). In extreme conditions, pain or numbness is perceived by the brain using signals sent by these peripheral nerves.
“The problem is that unlike blood, a skin sample or even a tissue biopsy, you can’t take a piece of a patient’s neural system. It runs like complex wiring throughout the body and portions cannot be sampled for study,” said Bhatia.
“Now we can take easy to obtain blood samples, and make the main cell types of neurological systems – the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system – in a dish that is specialized for each patient,” said Bhatia. “Nobody has ever done this with adult blood. Ever.
“We can actually take a patient’s blood sample, as routinely performed in a doctor’s office, and with it we can produce one million sensory neurons, that make up the peripheral nerves in short order with this new approach. We can also make central nervous system cells, as the blood to neural conversion technology we developed creates neural stem cells during the process of conversion.”
His team’s revolutionary, patented direct conversion technology has “broad and immediate applications,” said Bhatia, adding that it allows researchers to start asking questions about understanding disease and improving treatments such as: Why is it that certain people feel pain versus numbness? Is this something genetic? Can the neuropathy that diabetic patients experience be mimicked in a dish?
It also paves the way for the discovery of new pain drugs that don’t just numb the perception of pain. Bhatia said non-specific opioids used for decades are still being used today.
“If I was a patient and I was feeling pain or experiencing neuropathy, the prized pain drug for me would target the peripheral nervous system neurons, but do nothing to the central nervous system, thus avoiding non-addictive drug side effects,” said Bhatia.
“You don’t want to feel sleepy or unaware, you just want your pain to go away. But, up until now, no one’s had the ability and required technology to actually test different drugs to find something that targets the peripheral nervous system and not the central nervous system in a patient specific, or personalized manner.”
Bhatia’s team successfully tested their process using fresh blood, but also cryopreserved (frozen) blood. Since blood samples are taken and frozen with many clinical trials, this allows them “almost a bit of a time machine” to go back and explore questions around pain or neuropathy to run tests on neurons created from blood samples of patients taken in past clinical trials where responses and outcomes have already been recorded”.
In the future, the process may have prognostic potential, explained Bhatia, in that one might be able to look at a patient with Type 2 Diabetes and predict whether they will experience neuropathy by running tests in the lab using their own neural cells derived from their blood sample.
“This bench to bedside research is very exciting and will have a major impact on the management of neurological diseases, particularly neuropathic pain,” said Akbar Panju, medical director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Pain Research and Care, a clinician and professor of medicine.
“This research will help us understand the response of cells to different drugs and different stimulation responses, and allow us to provide individualized or personalized medical therapy for patients suffering with neuropathic pain.”
Image: Sectioned brain tissue (blue and red) 3 weeks after injection of neural precursors derived from blood (green) demonstrating their in vivo differentiation potential.Credit: Image courtesy of McMaster University.
Starting gun fired on gene editing GENE editing is here. The...
Starting gun fired on gene editing
GENE editing is here. The first work attempting to edit human embryos grabbed headlines last week. And another study showed how gene editing might prevent children inheriting disease.
It could be decades before it is safe to snip out and replace stretches of DNA to genetically engineer babies – even if it is deemed ethically acceptable. But the approach is already being tested for treating disease in adults and could soon be used to treat a wide range of disorders.
It has been a long time coming. Rudimentary editing methods were first developed some 30 years ago, but only now have techniques been honed to the point that they can be used for treating people. It raises the curtain on a new era of genomic tinkering and genetic medicine.
HIV therapy
In the coming months, four US clinics will recruit people with HIV to a trial of a therapy based on gene editing. HIV wreaks havoc by destroying immune cells called T-cells. It does this by exploiting a receptor, CCR5, on the surface of these cells. Destroy the gene for CCR5 and you can block infection.
Last year, researchers targeted and destroyed this gene in the T-cells of 12 people with HIV using custom-made proteins called zinc finger nucleases. This raised their resistance to the virus. The new trial goes further, knocking out the gene in the stem cells that give rise to T-cells, making it a possible one-shot, lasting treatment. “The goal is a functional cure,” says John Zaia, of the City of Hope hospital in Duarte, California.
The trial blazes a path for using the approach to treat other diseases. For example, another trial set to start soon will focus on sickle cell disease, in which the oxygen-carrying haemoglobin molecules in red blood cells are abnormal. The technique would switch on a protein that can be used instead of the haemoglobin.
There could be downsides to this approach though. “Genome editing offers both tremendous promise and significant potential risk,” says David Liu of Harvard University. Almost all editing techniques have the potential to modify unintended DNA sequences, he says. “Some of these off-target genome modification events will likely lead to negative biological consequences.”
But, if it can be made safe, editing adult stem cells is likely to face fewer ethical hurdles than other applications of gene editing.
Inherited change
Some teams are already exploring the possibility of using gene editing to make heritable changes. Last week, researchers showed that gene editing can weed out mutations in the mitochondria that a female mouse passes on to her offspring.
Mitochondria generate energy in our cells and have their own set of DNA, which differs from that in the cell nucleus. Mutations in mitochondria can cause diseases for which there are no treatments.
Earlier this year, the UK gave the green light to mitochondrial replacement therapy. This involves creating “three-parent babies” with healthy mitochondria donated from a third person preventing such diseases being passed on.
The new approach offers an alternative. It uses a gene-editing technique based on custom-made proteins called TALENs. These proteins can be designed to latch on to the DNA in faulty mitochondria and target them for destruction. Healthy mitochondria remain unharmed.
Most women at risk of passing on faulty mitochondria carry some healthy and some mutated mitochondria, so TALENs could lower the number of mutated mitochondria in their eggs. Harmful effects only kick in once the number of mutated mitochondria crosses a threshold, so this may be enough to prevent disease in their child, and perhaps in future generations too.
Using gene editing in this way isn’t without risk, says Robert Lightowlers at Newcastle University, UK. It is unclear whether reducing the number of mitochondria could have a long-term effect, he says. And although the TALENs protein in the study seemed to target only the intended mitochondria, it could be harmful if even a very low amount of it got into the nucleus and altered DNA there.
Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, who is part of the team doing the TALENs work, says they plan to begin testing the safety of the technique. “The idea will be to obtain oocytes and discarded embryos from IVF treatments in order to test this technology using human samples.”
Taking the research to the next level will be controversial. Last month, a group of scientists called for a moratorium on gene editing research in cells that can form embryos. The plea was made by those working on gene editing with adult cells who are concerned that embryo editing could have unpredictable effects on future generations and stimulate a public outcry.
Uncharted waters
Despite the call for a hiatus, a team in China announced last week that it had edited DNA in the nucleus of human embryos.
The work involves a technique called CRISPR/Cas9, developed in the last few years. It has the potential to accelerate progress enormously because CRISPR is much faster than conventional gene editing methods.
Despite the hype, there is a long way to go before CRISPR could be used to write genetic disease out of the DNA of future generations. The Chinese study flagged up a number of potential problems. Of the 86 eggs injected, just four were successfully modified. And the resulting embryos were a mosaic of modified and unmodified cells.
This may have been down to the unviable embryos used, which were created when two sperm fertilised the same egg. The team said it used them because ethical concerns preclude the study of gene editing in normal embryos. But that hasn’t stopped the work being criticised.
The fuss is because it is the first phase of a more controversial effort to make genomic changes in human embryos intended to be implanted, says George Annas of Boston University. “It is only in the context of this wider project that manipulation of non-viable human embryos moves from curiosity to potentially dangerous – both to the resulting children and their children, and to society at large,” says Annas. These concerns over designer babies are less of an issue for mitochondrial gene editing because it is only possible to delete mutant mitochondria, not alter them.
Yuet Kan of the University of California, San Francisco, describes the study as a publicity gimmick. The disease it targeted, beta-thalassaemia, can already be detected by pre-implantation embryonic screening during IVF. “I don’t see any need for embryo gene editing,” says Kan, who is using CRISPR to treat HIV.
Despite the controversy, at least one group in the US and several more in China are also reportedly working with human embryos. But when it comes to treating disease in the near future, it is the adult methods that hold the most immediate promise. One thing is for sure, the gene-editing genie is well and truly out of the bottle.
Numerologia: O significado do número Oito
8 - Símbolo do logos ou do poder criativo universal.
| Caduceu de Mercúrio |
A melhor representação gráfica de seus atributos é a figura do caduceu de Mercúrio. As duas serpentes entrelaçadas configuram um 8, simbolizando o equilíbrio dinâmico entre as duas forças opostas (masculina e feminina).
Devido a sua forma, o oito representa também o eterno movimento em espiral dos céus.
Growing Fat To Get Slim While normal white fat stubbornly stores...
Growing Fat To Get Slim
While normal white fat stubbornly stores excess calories on hips, bellies and thighs, over the last few years a picture has emerged of a different kind of fat – one which, paradoxically, might help us to lose weight. This is brown fat, which challenges all our assumptions about the fat in our bodies: it burns calories rather than storing them.
It was only six years ago we discovered that brown fat exists and is active in adults. Since then, it has become the focus of attention as a potential tool to help combat obesity and its related diseases. And the idea that there might be a way to burn through calories without the need to exercise is a tempting prospect for many of us.
“We all know you only need a modest change in energy balance to put on weight – eating one or two extra biscuits a day is enough,” says Michael Symonds at the University of Nottingham, UK. “So if you could activate brown fat, or increase its activity, you could potentially reduce your body weight.”
Symonds is one of a number of researchers working to develop behavioural, surgical and pharmaceutical therapies that might harness the power of brown fat, and some of these could be as simple as taking a cold dip in the pool or eating spicy food.
What makes brown fat so interesting is its ability to burn food directly to produce heat, whereas energy extracted from food is usually stored first, then released during activity such as exercise. It can produce 300 times more heat per gram than any other tissue in the body. This is because brown fat cells have a disproportionately high number of mitochondria – the small energy producing structures in cells – which also gives the stuff its eponymous colour. These mitochondria are slightly different from those in other cells, too, because they contain a protein called thermogenin, or UCP1, which enables brown fat to turn energy to heat directly.
This furnace-like ability is vital for regulating temperature in some mammals and in babies, who are unable to shiver to keep warm. But until recently it was thought to become defunct after infancy in humans. Then in 2009, several studies showed that brown fat was present and functional in adults in the neck, shoulders and around the spinal cord.
This discovery changed the question from whether adults have brown fat, to whether we can make use of it to help with weight control. “It was a eureka moment,” says Symonds.
The amount of brown fat each of us has varies, though. Slimmer people tend to have more of it, which might help explain why some people seem to burn through everything they eat, while others pile on the pounds.
So the first step is to find out how much, if any, of this “good” fat you have. Because brown fat is activated when the body is exposed to the cold, Symonds and his team have helped pioneer the use of a thermal imaging camera to detect it.
When animals are cold, they initially regulate their temperature by shivering. But after repeated exposure, shivering decreases while energy expenditure stays the same. Studies in rodents have shown that this is down to brown fat activity. If the same is true in humans, then regular cold exposure could help you adapt to the cold and burn calories in the process.
Evidence for this comes from an intriguing study conducted by the US army in the 1960s, which subjected 10 almost nude men to temperatures of 11 °C , for 8 hours a day for a month. Electrodes on their skin showed that, like rats, shivering decreased after about two weeks, suggesting that their bodies had somehow adapted to the cold. The team concluded that another metabolic process was at work, although it remained a mystery.
Fifty years later, Anouk van der Lans at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and colleagues wondered whether brown fat was responsible. So in 2012 they recreated the study using PET scans and fat and muscle biopsies to measure brown fat activity, as well as monitoring shivering. After 10 days, brown fat activity had increased and the subjects were better at producing heat without shivering, so they shivered less. They also found the cold easier to tolerate.
Encouragingly, in this study, a temperature of about 16 °C was cold enough to switch on the tissue. “Nobody thinks that getting so cold that you’re uncomfortable is necessary,” says Aaron Cypess of the US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, an author of one of the 2009 papers.
How many calories can you expect to shed? Estimates vary hugely. One trial of Japanese men found that spending 2 hours a day in a
17 °C room for six weeks boosted brown fat activity by 50 per cent, and got rid of 5 per cent of their body fat. At the start of the experiment the men burned 108 calories during 2 hours in the cold, but this rose to 289 calories after doing it every day for six weeks.
That doesn’t necessarily mean all those calories are burned by the brown fat itself – in studies that only involve short bursts of cold exposure, it could be down to other mechanisms like shivering. For example, one study of volunteers with an average of 50 grams of brown fat found they burned around 300 extra calories a day when exposed to moderate cold for 30 minutes – but brown fat only accounted for 20 calories of this.
Despite the mixed results, those figures are encouraging enough for some people to make cold exposure part of their daily routine. “The mechanism of how it happens is important to understand, but for practical reasons, the result is what people care about,” says Wayne Hayes, a NASA scientist who has created the Cold Shoulder, a waistcoat filled with ice packs designed to activate brown fat.
Cypess and others believe that brown fat could make a contribution to weight loss strategies with regular cold exposure. But what if you don’t like the cold? There could be a tastier alternative.
BEIGE IS THE NEW WHITE
Capsaicin, a compound in chillies, seems to stimulate brown fat in a similar way. Mice fed capsaicin as part of a high-fat diet, for example, have increased metabolic activity and don’t put on weight. This fits with a small study in which 10 men who took capsaicin pills daily had greater brown fat activity in the cold and burned more calories after six weeks.
“Capsaicin is promising as it is natural, and relatively safe and inexpensive,” says Cypess. “But we are awaiting the definitive experiment showing that a dose of capsaicin directly leads to activation of brown fat.”
nychealth: Happy Memorial Day weekend, NYC!With the unofficial...
Happy Memorial Day weekend, NYC!
With the unofficial start of summer, the beaches are now open in NYC!
If you’re planning a visit to one of NYC’s beaches this weekend, text BEACH to 877877 to receive alerts about water quality and closures at the beaches.
Not only does smoking cigarettes increase your risk of...
Not only does smoking cigarettes increase your risk of rheumatoid arthritis, it makes the disease harder to treat. For free help quitting smoking, call 1-800-QUIT-NOW.
As the weather warms up its prime On my way! To find good...
As the weather warms up its prime On my way! To find good history books at yard sales for cheap!
In the 1200s, the word “girl” meant any young person, female or male.
In the 1200s, the word “girl” meant any young person, female or male.
allheartcare: Smoking during pregnancy can cause...
Smoking during pregnancy can cause complications, like low birth weight, and sudden infant death syndrome once the baby is born. You can quit.
May 24th 1883: Brooklyn Bridge opensOn this day in 1883, the...
Depiction of the Brooklyn Bridge upon its opening
The Brooklyn Bridge today
May 24th 1883: Brooklyn Bridge opens
On this day in 1883, the iconic Brooklyn Bridge in New York City opened. The bridge connects Manhattan and Brooklyn and when opened was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Thousands attended the opening ceremony, including President Chester A. Arthur and New York Mayor Franklin Edson, who crossed the bridge to celebratory cannon fire. A few days after opening, a rumour spread that the bridge was unstable and would collapse. However, the rumours were ended on May 17th 1884 when famous circus master P.T Barnum showed its stability by having his famous attraction - Jumbo the elephant - lead a parade of elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge.
Just launched a “Confirmation Bias” T-shirt campaign...
Just launched a “Confirmation Bias” T-shirt campaign with teespring (http://ift.tt/1drqx4A). Please like and share to help support All-About-Psychology.Com
Updated Science: Treating Jellyfish Stings
This science from 2012 is still valid. Good luck at the beach!
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