XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 08/28/13

Wednesday, 28 August 2013

Age-Related Forgetfulness Tied to Diminished Brain Protein... -

Age-related forgetfulness may be due to a deficiency in a brain protein that helps form memories, a study found. Targeting the gene that produces that protein could lead to new therapies, the researchers said.
Scientists identified the protein, called RbAp48, in human brain cells and showed that inhibiting it in mice made the animals forgetful while raising the protein improved their memories. That suggests that age-related memory loss may be reversible, researchers said.
“All of us are living longer, and we want to stay engaged in a cognitively complex world,” said Scott Small, a study author and neurologist at Columbia University in New York. The mouse studies show that that too little of the protein is causing memory loss, he said.
The findings also confirm that age-related memory loss is different from the deficits seen in Alzheimer’s disease. The research is published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
The researchers took the postmortem brains of eight people ages 33 to 88 who were disease-free, and examined the function of 17 genes in a part of the hippocampus, an area that is involved in memory. That section, called the dentate gyrus, has been shown before to change with age. The strongest changes were found in a gene that expressed RbAp48, which declines in function as brains age.
When the researchers suppressed that gene in healthy young mice, the mice performed worse on object recognition and water maze tests. When the researchers allowed the gene to go back to normal function, the mice’s memory improved.
Older Mice
In another group of older mice, researchers used a virus to put extra copies of the RbAp48 gene in the animals’ brains. That led them to produce more of the associated protein in their dentate gyruses. Their performance on cognitive tests improved to the levels seen in young mice.
The results suggest that changes in RbAp48 in humans may be a cause of memory loss, Small said. The mouse models here are significant than in other brain disease, since most mammals undergo similar decreases in that gene level naturally as they age, he said.

Read more -

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-28/age-related-forgetfulness-tied-to-diminished-brain-protein.html

Amazing How 1 Common Denominator in the Middle East Wars is Only nations left with Own Central Banks are Syria & Iran -

It is common knowledge that the entire western world is as near as dammit to total bankruptcy, with only two other political entities still operating with their own central banks (and in the black) the US State of North Dakota and South Africa.

It’s also common knowledge that “only a war” can get us out of the current global debt trap…

An internal, publicly-owned central bank issues the nation’s currency, sets the repo and interest rates and monitors the money supply needed to drive the economy, which is the ease of access of product from manufacturers to consumers using ‘money’ as a medium of exchange.

Both the nation’s businesses and government borrow from the central bank, and any interest incurred is returned to the national fiscus and spent on service delivery and the business of government, which is the well being of its citizens.

A central bank can also issue asset-backed scrip to raise emergency funds or sell long-term investment funds as Treasury Bonds.

One of the largest financial ‘trading assets’ is the mortgage bond.

A mortgage is a long-term financial commitment and the 20 or 30 year debt incurred can be sold at a discount to investors willing to wait that time for their money to yield returns as mortgages are paid off.

Meantime, the mortgage lender has new cash in hand (although much less that the total 20 or 30 year mortgage yield) for further lending into or investing in the economy.

If on the other hand, a nation’s money supply is ‘fiat’ or paper currency borrowed at interest from a foreign bank and further, that paper is not backed by gold or other ‘hard’ assets, a part of the nation’s GDP is spent ‘servicing’ the debt incurred over the interest and not on service delivery or infrastructure maintenance.

What has happened in the world is a repetition of several other debt-based economic collapses over the centuries, all the result of many fraudulent financial practices like securitizing ‘troubled assets’ by pooling them with Triple-A Mortgage securities, but particularly by interest rates called usury.

Once anyone, including a nation, has fallen into the ‘debt trap’ a ‘modern’ false economy kicks in – borrowing more money to pay off the interest – called Keynesian economics, which only ‘works’ up to the point where the consumer base stops growing.

You can’t get more money from for the same products from the same number of people unless you raise your prices, in which case the consumer will turn to his employer for higher wages and the ‘push-pull’ inflationary cycle starts.

There are many other factors involved if an economy strays from the basic rule of income “more must come in than goes out”, but the most common is fraud that government turns a blind eye to like the sub-prime fraud that the Bush Administration actively supported to the point of ‘politically assassinating’ the governor of New York, Elliott Spitzer, for attempting to rally the nation’s other governors to legislate against the practice.

Once that ‘borrowing to pay interest’ mistake is made, the “Debt-to-GDP Ratio” must increase until all GDP revenue is being used to service debt and basic infrastructure collapses…

Or we have a war.

This is literally the deadliest economic flaw of all – to deliberately waste huge mineral and human ‘assets’ only to destroy them as quickly as possible in order to build or hire more of them, employing more people and thus generating a ‘recovery’ – because the money to fight a war has to be borrowed and a nation drops further into debt.

By the end of a major war and for a few decades after, the populations on both sides have been stripped of their savings and property and are offered credit with which to ‘rebuild’… starting the ‘Boom-Bust-cycle’ all over again along with the new debt incurred by the war – America is still paying war debts from the beginning of the last century.

The only respite in the current situation is that the world is now aware of the system’s total inadequacies and will hopefully write a true history of these events, pass it to the next generation and thus prevent another wave of robbery, depression, destruction and ‘recovery’ only to repeat it again.

Read more -

http://www.blacklistednews.com/It%E2%80%99s_Amazing_How_One_Common_Denominator_in_the_Middle_East_Wars_is_Ignored_%E2%80%93_the_Only_nations_left_there_with_their_Own_Central_Banks_are_Syria_and_Iran./28465/0/0/0/Y/M.html

Miniature 'human brain' grown in lab -

Miniature "human brains" have been grown in a lab in a feat scientists hope will transform the understanding of neurological disorders.

The pea-sized structures reached the same level of development as in a nine-week-old foetus, but are incapable of thought.

The study, published in the journal Nature, has already been used to gain insight into rare diseases.

Neuroscientists have described the findings as astounding and fascinating.

The human brain is one of the most complicated structures in the universe.

Scientists at Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences have now reproduced some of the earliest stages of the organ's development in the laboratory.

Brain bath
They used either embryonic stem cells or adult skin cells to produce the part of an embryo that develops into the brain and spinal cord - the neuroectoderm.

This was placed in tiny droplets of gel to give a scaffold for the tissue to grow and was placed into a spinning bioreactor, a nutrient bath that supplies nutrients and oxygen.

Brain
A cerebral organoid - the brown pigments are a developing retina
The cells were able to grow and organise themselves into separate regions of the brain, such as the cerebral cortex, the retina, and, rarely, an early hippocampus, which would be heavily involved in memory in a fully developed adult brain.

The researchers are confident that this closely, but far from perfectly, matches brain development in a foetus until the nine week stage.

The tissues reached their maximum size, about 4mm (0.1in), after two months.

The "mini-brains" have survived for nearly a year, but did not grow any larger. There is no blood supply, just brain tissue, so nutrients and oxygen cannot penetrate into the middle of the brain-like structure.

One of the researchers, Dr Juergen Knoblich, said: "What our organoids are good for is to model development of the brain and to study anything that causes a defect in development.

"Ultimately we would like to move towards more common disorders like schizophrenia or autism. They typically manifest themselves only in adults, but it has been shown that the underlying defects occur during the development of the brain."

The technique could also be used to replace mice and rats in drug research as new treatments could be tested on actual brain tissue.

Researchers have been able to produce brain cells in the laboratory before, but this is the closest any group has come to building a human brain.

The breakthrough has excited the field.

Prof Paul Matthews, from Imperial College London, told the BBC: "I think it's just mindboggling. The idea that we can take a cell from a skin and turn it into, even though it's only the size of a pea, is starting to look like a brain and starting to show some of the behaviours of a tiny brain, I think is just extraordinary.

Read more -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23863544

Intelligence Suggests Assad Not Behind Chemical Weapons Attack -

Intercepted phone calls that will be presented by the Obama administration as proof that Bashar Al-Assad was behind last week’s chemical weapons attack in Syria actually suggest that the attack was not ordered by the Syrian government.
Phone calls by the Syrian Ministry of Defense intercepted by Mossad and passed to the US reveal that Syrian government officials, “exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people,” in the hours after last week’s attack.
Why would the Syrian Ministry of Defense be making panicked phone calls “demanding answers” about the attack if they had ordered it?
The fact that the highest levels of the Syrian government apparently had no knowledge of the attack strongly suggests that they did not order it, with the worst case scenario being that the attack was “the work of a Syrian officer overstepping his bounds,” writes Foreign Policy’s Noah Shachtman.
“We don’t know exactly why it happened,” a US intelligence official told Foreign Policy. “We just know it was pretty fucking stupid.”
So despite not knowing exactly what happened, why it happened, or who ordered it, while sabotaging the UN’s investigation of the incident, the US is about to launch cruise missile attacks and potentially enflame the entire region based on evidence that actually suggests the Syrian government had no idea who was behind the chemical weapons attack.
Meanwhile, previous evidence that suggests the US-backed rebels prepared and used chemical weapons on numerous occasions has been completely forgotten in the rush to war.
The last time the United Nations investigated evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria, inspectors concluded that it was likely the rebels and not Assad’s forces who were behind the attacks.
In addition, leaked phone conversations that emerged earlier this year between two members of the Free Syrian Army contain details of a plan to carry out a chemical weapons attack capable of impacting an area the size of one kilometer.
There are also multiple other examples of video footage which shows US-backed rebels preparing and using chemical weapons.
The notion that Washington has any credibility when it comes to laying blame about weapons of mass destruction is ludicrous.
The last time the world believed the United States’ claims about Iraq’s non-existent WMD, hundreds of thousands of innocent people died as a result.
The Obama administration is about to launch the United States headlong into a conflict that could spark a new war in the Middle East, yet the very justification for the assault is being blithely accepted by the mainstream media, who have learned nothing from how their obsequious and unquestioning behavior prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq helped grease the skids for a decade of bloodshed and disaster.

Read more -

http://www.prisonplanet.com/intelligence-suggests-assad-not-behind-chemical-weapons-attack.html

Landlord of the year charging extra to use Elevator - first 60 uses are free and then $35 a month, stairs are free -

Fellow Redditors were quick to issue legal advice when user davemel37 posted a note purportedly left on the door of their apartment building's elevator. If what they claim is to be believed (and having rented ourselves, it doesn't seem implausible), their landlord is fixing to charge tenants a cheeky $35 a month to use the elevator. The note, fancily printed up with the use of a computer, apparently reads: "Dear residents, Effective Oct 1, 2013 you will need to use your scan card to use the elevator." Generously, "The first 60 uses are free and thereafter $35 a month. If you elect NOT to use this service, the stairs are still free." If this is indeed true, we predict an automated user-pays system will soon be introduced for opening and closing windows, and availing oneself of the garbage chute.

Read more -

http://now.msn.com/redditor-claims-landlord-plans-to-charge-extra-for-elevator

"Monkey with a hand grenade" - 22 Reasons Why Starting World War 3 In The Middle East Is A Really Bad Idea -

While most of the country is obsessing over Miley Cyrus, the Obama administration is preparing a military attack against Syria which has the potential of starting World War 3. In fact, it is being reported that cruise missile strikes could begin "as early as Thursday". The Obama administration is pledging that the strikes will be "limited", but what happens when the Syrians fight back? What happens if they sink a U.S. naval vessel or they have agents start hitting targets inside the United States? Then we would have a full-blown war on our hands. And what happens if the Syrians decide to retaliate by hitting Israel? If Syrian missiles start raining down on Tel Aviv, Israel will be extremely tempted to absolutely flatten Damascus, and they are more than capable of doing precisely that. And of course Hezbollah and Iran are not likely to just sit idly by as their close ally Syria is battered into oblivion. We are looking at a scenario where the entire Middle East could be set aflame, and that might only be just the beginning. Russia and China are sternly warning the U.S. government not to get involved in Syria, and by starting a war with Syria we will do an extraordinary amount of damage to our relationships with those two global superpowers. Could this be the beginning of a chain of events that could eventually lead to a massive global conflict with Russia and China on one side and the United States on the other? Of course it will not happen immediately, but I fear that what is happening now is setting the stage for some really bad things. The following are 22 reasons why starting World War 3 in the Middle East is a really bad idea...

#1 The American people are overwhelmingly against going to war with Syria...

Americans strongly oppose U.S. intervention in Syria's civil war and believe Washington should stay out of the conflict even if reports that Syria's government used deadly chemicals to attack civilians are confirmed, a Reuters/Ipsos poll says.

About 60 percent of Americans surveyed said the United States should not intervene in Syria's civil war, while just 9 percent thought President Barack Obama should act.

#2 At this point, a war in Syria is even more unpopular with the American people than Congress is.

#3 The Obama administration has not gotten approval to go to war with Syria from Congress as the U.S. Constitution requires.

#4 The United States does not have the approval of the United Nations to attack Syria and it is not going to be getting it.

#5 Syria has said that it will use "all means available" to defend itself if the United States attacks. Would that include terror attacks in the United States itself?

#6 Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem made the following statement on Tuesday...

"We have two options: either to surrender, or to defend ourselves with the means at our disposal. The second choice is the best: we will defend ourselves"

#7 Russia has just sent their most advanced anti-ship missiles to Syria. What do you think would happen if images of sinking U.S. naval vessels were to come flashing across our television screens?

#8 When the United States attacks Syria, there is a very good chance that Syria will attack Israel. Just check out what one Syrian official said recently...

A member of the Syrian Ba'ath national council Halef al-Muftah, until recently the Syrian propaganda minister's aide, said on Monday that Damascus views Israel as "behind the aggression and therefore it will come under fire" should Syria be attacked by the United States.

In an interview for the American radio station Sawa in Arabic, President Bashar Assad's fellow party member said: "We have strategic weapons and we can retaliate. Essentially, the strategic weapons are aimed at Israel."

Al-Muftah stressed that the US's threats will not influence the Syrain regime and added that "If the US or Israel err through aggression and exploit the chemical issue, the region will go up in endless flames, affecting not only the area's security, but the world's."

#9 If Syria attacks Israel, the consequences could be absolutely catastrophic. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promising that any attack will be responded to "forcefully"...

"We are not a party to this civil war in Syria but if we identify any attempt to attack us we will respond and we will respond forcefully"

#10 Hezbollah will likely do whatever it can to fight for the survival of the Assad regime. That could include striking targets inside both the United States and Israel.

#11 Iran's closest ally is Syria. Will Iran sit idly by as their closest ally is removed from the chessboard?

#12 Starting a war with Syria will cause significant damage to our relationship with Russia. On Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that the West is acting like a "monkey with a hand grenade".

#13 Starting a war with Syria will cause significant damage to our relationship with China. And what will happen if the Chinese decide to start dumping the massive amount of U.S. debt that it is holding? Interest rates would absolutely skyrocket and we would rapidly be facing a nightmare scenario.

#14 Dr. Jerome Corsi and Walid Shoebat have compiled some startling evidence that it was actually the Syrian rebels that the U.S. is supporting that were responsible for the chemical weapons attack that is being used as justification to go to war with Syria...

With the assistance of former PLO member and native Arabic-speaker Walid Shoebat, WND has assembled evidence from various Middle Eastern sources that cast doubt on Obama administration claims the Assad government is responsible for last week’s attack.

You can examine the evidence for yourself right here.

#15 As Pat Buchanan recently noted, it would have made absolutely no sense for the Assad regime to use chemical weapons on defenseless women and children. The only people who would benefit from such an attack would be the rebels...

The basic question that needs to be asked about this horrific attack on civilians, which appears to be gas related, is: Cui bono?

To whose benefit would the use of nerve gas on Syrian women and children redound? Certainly not Assad’s, as we can see from the furor and threats against him that the use of gas has produced.

The sole beneficiary of this apparent use of poison gas against civilians in rebel-held territory appears to be the rebels, who have long sought to have us come in and fight their war.

#16 If the Saudis really want to topple the Assad regime, they should do it themselves. They should not expect the United States to do their dirty work for them.

#17 A former commander of U.S. Central Command has said that a U.S. attack on Syria would result in "a full-throated, very, very serious war".

#18 A war in the Middle East will be bad for the financial markets. The Dow was down about 170 points today and concern about war with Syria was the primary reason.

#19 A war in the Middle East will cause the price of oil to go up. On Tuesday, the price of U.S. oil rose to about $109 a barrel.

#20 There is no way in the world that the U.S. government should be backing the Syrian rebels. As I discussed a few days ago, the rebels have pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda, they have beheaded numerous Christians and they have massacred entire Christian villages. If the U.S. government helps these lunatics take power in Syria it will be a complete and utter disaster.

#21 A lot of innocent civilians inside Syria will end up getting killed. Already, a lot of Syrians are expressing concern about what "foreign intervention" will mean for them and their families...

"I've always been a supporter of foreign intervention, but now that it seems like a reality, I've been worrying that my family could be hurt or killed," said one woman, Zaina, who opposes Assad. "I'm afraid of a military strike now."

"The big fear is that they'll make the same mistakes they made in Libya and Iraq," said Ziyad, a man in his 50s. "They'll hit civilian targets, and then they'll cry that it was by mistake, but we'll get killed in the thousands."

#22 If the U.S. government insists on going to war with Syria without the approval of the American people, the U.S. Congress or the United Nations, we are going to lose a lot of friends and a lot of credibility around the globe. It truly is a sad day when Russia looks like "the good guys" and we look like "the bad guys".

What good could possibly come out of getting involved in Syria? As I wrote about the other day, the "rebels" that Obama is backing are rabidly anti-Christian, rabidly anti-Israel and rabidly anti-western. If they take control of Syria, that nation will be far more unstable and far more of a hotbed for terrorism than it is now.

And the downside of getting involved in Syria is absolutely enormous. Syria, Iran and Hezbollah all have agents inside this country, and if they decide to start blowing stuff up that will wake up the American people to the horror of war really quick. And by attacking Syria, the United States could cause a major regional war to erupt in the Middle East which could eventually lead to World War 3.

I don't know about you, but I think that starting World War 3 in the Middle East is a really bad idea.

Let us hope that cooler heads prevail before things spin totally out of control.

Read more -

http://www.blacklistednews.com/22_Reasons_Why_Starting_World_War_3_In_The_Middle_East_Is_A_Really_Bad_Idea/28457/0/38/38/Y/M.html

Human Guinea Pig: 8 Year Old Girl May Hold Key to Immortality -

Gabby Williams is 8 years old and has not aged because of a “mysterious condition” that keeps her trapped in an infant’s body.

Mary Margaret Williams, Gabby’s mother, explained that her daughter has not changed much since she was born.

Williams said: “She has gotten a little longer and we have jumped into putting her in size 3-6 month clothes instead of 0-3 months for the footies.”

Mainstream television played a documentary based on Gabby in 2011; which also featured a 40 year old man who still resembles a 10 year of child.

A woman in Florida has retained her childhood appearance, and a 31 year old Brazilian woman looks like a toddler.

Gabby’s story will be replayed on television when The Learning Channel (TLC) airs a follow-up documentary this week.

Richard Walker, medical doctor, said that Gabby’s condition is a matter of a “genetic off-switch” which prevents the girl from aging.

Gabby is fascinating to scientists because they believe she may hold the key to immortality.

Physiological changes in the human body is facilitated by developmental inertia which is the aging process itself.

Walker said: “Without that process we never develop. When we develop, all the pieces of our body come together and change and are coordinated. Otherwise, there would be chaos.”

It is assumed that the human body does not have a “stop witch” with regard to aging. Walker has observed in other study subjects that when developmental inertia is damaged, the aging process halts.

Walker explained: “If we could identify the gene and then at young adulthood we could silence the expression of developmental inertia, find an off-switch, when you do that, there is perfect homeostasis and you are biologically immortal.”

Indeed, Walker believed that the research necessary to discover “biological immortality” should be pursued because people could stop the aging process where it is and never age another day while remaining “physically and functionally able.”

In order to study Gabby, Walker coerced her parents into believing that his work with their daughter could help Alzheimer’s sufferers. The Williams family turned their daughter over to Walker as a guinea pig.

Walker said: “If what Gabrielle holds inside of her would find a cure—for sure we would be a part of the research project. We have faith that Dr. Walker and the scientific community do find something focused more on the disease of aging, rather than making you 35 for the rest of your life.”

Read more -

http://www.blacklistednews.com/Human_Guinea_Pig%3A_8_Year_Old_Girl_May_Hold_Key_to_Immortality/28207/0/0/0/Y/M.html?morestories=obinsite

'Twerk,' 'selfie' added to Oxford dictionary -

Twerking, the rump-busting up-and-down dance move long beloved on America's hip-hop scene, has officially gone mainstream. It's got the English dictionary entry to prove it.
Britain's Oxford Dictionaries said the rapid-fire gyrations employed by U.S. pop starlet Miley Cyrus to bounce her way to the top of the charts had become increasingly visible in the past 12 months and would be added to its publications under the entry: "Twerk, verb."
Although Cyrus's eye-popping moves at Monday's MTV Video Music Awards may have been many viewers' first introduction to the practice, Oxford Dictionaries' Katherine Connor Martin said "twerking" was some two decades old.
"There are many theories about the origin of this word, and since it arose in oral use, we may never know the answer for sure," Martin said. "We think the most likely theory is that it is an alteration of work, because that word has a history of being used in similar ways, with dancers being encouraged to 'work it.' The 't' could be a result of blending with another word such as twist or twitch."
"Twerk" will be added to the dictionary as part of its quarterly update, which includes words such as "selfie," the word typically used to describe pouty smartphone self-portraits, "digital detox" for time spent way from Facebook and Twitter, and "Bitcoin," for the nationless electronic currency whose gyrations have also caught the world's eye.
Oxford Dictionaries is responsible for a range of reference works, including Oxford Dictionaries Online, which focuses on modern usage, and the historically-focused Oxford English Dictionary, which probably won't be adding "twerk" to its venerable pages any time soon.
The definition: "Twerk, v.: dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance."

Read more: -

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/28/twerk-selfie-added-to-oxford-dictionary/?test=latestnews