Day: 05/14/2015

Government Says Big Pharma Kills More People Than All Illegal Drugs Combined | CSGlobe

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Government Says Big Pharma Kills More People Than All Illegal Drugs Combined

A new study has shown that pharmaceutical drugs cause more overdoses and more deaths than all of the illegal drugs on the market combined. According to the government’s own statistics, listed on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, deaths relating to pharmaceutical drugs rose to roughly 23,000 last year, which accounts for over half of the total overdose deaths in the country for that time period.

Additionally, a recent study conducted by researchers with the University of Virginia, University of Arkansas, the Partnership for Drug Free Kids, and the American Institutes for Research reconfirmed the known dangers of pharmaceutical drug abuse.

The study concluded that, “Teens need help before they reach these tipping points for prescription drug abuse. Adults spotting teens with very high levels of anxiety and at least moderate use of other restricted substances should realize that these are students with a high likelihood of prescription abuse. Male teens with a high need to be popular and teens in generalappear to be at exceptional risk. Campaigns must target parents as well,since they clearly underestimate both the physical risks of prescription drugs and the likelihood that their children will abuse these drugs.”

Sadly, the authors of the study described any average teenager, however, it does give us some insight into the root causes of teenage drug abuse.

As the study noted, teens are being pushed towards drug use by the high-stress environment that is created by modern culture and government schools. Many times, these students are even prescribed a wide variety of these medications to help them cope with the stresses of teenage life, which means that doctors are essentially putting their stamp of approval on daily teenage use of amphetamines like Adderall or tranquilizers like Xanax.

A study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) highlighted this phenomena, pointing out that “Prescription drugs are seen as blessed by a trusted institution, the FDA, while increasingly aggressive advertising by drug companies simultaneously floods parents and children with messages that these substances are safe, popular, and beneficial.”

Graphene-wrapped diamond ball bearings cut friction to virtually nothing .

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graphene_nanoscrollsLubricating graphene nanoscrolls form around nanodiamonds in dry conditions, but water is problematic for the effect .

A method that reduces friction between two surfaces to almost zero on macroscopic scales has been demonstrated by US researchers. The phenomenon, which was discovered accidentally, works by combining nanodiamonds with sheets of graphene, which curl around the nanodiamonds to form ‘nanoscrolls’ that lubricate the two surfaces. As friction wastes so much energy in all sorts of mechanical devices this discovery has huge potential to save both energy and money.

On the macroscale, friction is the result of microscopic imperfections in surfaces, but atomic-scale friction concerns the attractive forces between individual atoms. This opens up the phenomenon of structural lubricity, where the difference in atomic spacing between two surfaces makes it impossible for multiple atoms in one surface to get close to atoms in the other, leading to extraordinarily low friction. However,scaling this up has proven difficult, as macroscopic surfaces are not perfect single crystals with constant lattice separations, but instead are dotted with deformations and grain boundaries that can stick.

Anirudha Sumant and colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois suspected that the surface of diamond-like carbon (DLC), whichconsists of randomly mixed sp3 and sp2 bonds, might provide a perfect lattice mismatch against which graphene could slide with minimal resistance. To test this they passed a millimetre-scale DLC slider across a silica surface covered with graphene. However, the friction they measured between the two surfaces was inconsistent – sometimes very low, other times higher. When they examined wear on the slider, they discovered that nanoscale scrolls of graphene had detached from the graphene surface. Suspecting these were behind the low friction, they added nanodiamonds to the surface to act like tiny ball bearings. When they tested the two surfaces again they found that friction dropped to virtually zero and stayed low as the slider moved. They showed that the graphene flakes bond to and wrap around the nanodiamonds, cutting friction through a mixture of lattice mismatch effects and acting like miniature ball bearings. ‘Once you have this roll then [the DLC]  just slides across the surface,’ says Sumant.

Martin Dienwiebel of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany is impressed. ‘It’s stunning that they observe these kinds of low frictional forces with a system of graphene and diamond, so it’s very interesting and important,’ he says. ‘I would have been a little concerned about this idea that the graphene patches are being rolled around the diamonds, but when you look at the transmission electron micrographs, that’s convincing.’

At present the technique only works in dry, inert conditions, as the oxygen in water droplets can bond to graphene and stop nanoscrolls forming. The researchers are now working on ways to overcome this problem, but Sumant says that, even now, the technique could be useful for many applications, such as space technology or electronic systems where the environment can be controlled. ‘If the benefits are so huge,’ he says, ‘you can imagine putting a container around something and filling it with nitrogen or argon.’

Viagra Could Stop Malaria

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Since it first came on the market in 1998, Viagra has been found to address more conditions than just erectile dysfunction—it treats hypertension, altitude sickness, and prostate cancer. Now a team of European researchers has found that everyone’s favorite little blue pill can prevent malaria because of the way an enzyme affects red blood cells, according to a study published in PLOS Pathogens.

Malaria is caused by a parasite that lives in blood and is transmitted between people through mosquito bites. The sexual form of the parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, goes through some stages of its development in mosquitoes, but spends one very important stage in human red blood cells found in bone marrow. Once in the blood, these cells give the impression of being healthy because they are squishy, which allowed them to slip by the spleen, which normally looks for abnormal or dead blood cells, which are firmer, and filters them out.

The researchers figured that a good way to engage the spleen’s cleansing power would be to harden the red blood cells. Viagra, which works for its intended purpose by relaxing certain muscles to increase blood flow, allows the infected cells to remain stiff by inhibiting an enzyme that would keep them squishy. In this study, the researchers tested Viagra on the blood in an artificial spleen and found that the spleen easily weeded out the hardened red blood cells. The researchers see their work as the first step towards new types of antimalarials.

‘No tissue charring’: New Russian laser could revolutionize medicine, smartphones

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Scientists at a Russian university have developed a unique metal-vapor laser, which can cut through bones, tissue or glass without burning or damaging them. They say the technology could be used in a wide range of fields – from medicine to smartphones.

Researchers at Tomsk State University are excited by the new laser because it is multi-functional and has the potential to be used in a number of different spheres. For example the ability to cut bone and tissue with no side effects could prove revolutionary for the medical industry.

The new device developed by the scientists is a strontium vapor laser and has the ability to operate at 10 to 12 different wavelengths, which researchers say is “exceptional” for vapor lasers, as it gives them so much versatility.

“There is no such laser anywhere else in the world, and there is a lot of interest in it,” said 73-year-old Professor Anatoly Soldatov, who is dean of the Innovative Technology Department, told the Siberian Times. He added that its optimum wavelength was 6.45 microns.

Technology giant Samsung has already shown interest in the revolutionary lasers. The company’s electronics’ department had sent the scientists some glass samples to test with the strontium vapor laser and the results proved to be an eye-opener.

Photo courtesy / Tomsk State University press service

Industrial devices normally used to cut glass for smartphones and tablets normally use carbon dioxide lasers at a wavelength of 10.6 microns. This laser does not actually cut through the glass, rather it heats it up. However, this process means that between 20 percent and 30 percent of the glass cut has to be thrown away because of defects such as chipping.

“We have a multi-wave system that combines both surface and in-depth thermal detachment which results into a perfect surface. A study with an electronic microscope showed that the number of imperfections [when cutting glass with a strontium laser] is one-hundredth the size compared to cutting with carbon dioxide laser,” Soldatov told the newspaper.

Photo courtesy / Tomsk State University press service

The scientists are now looking to perfect their technology in order to cut live tissue. They are also working to shorten the pulse duration to just a few nanoseconds, which will increase the energy density and thus its power.

The development of lasers in Tomsk dates back over half a century, with the first one launched in 1963. Over the last few decades the university has produced a number of different lasers, including helium-neon, argon, carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

Soldatov added that after the millennium, Vanderbilt University in the US became interested in researching a free-electron laser. They were trying to find a perfect wavelength for drilling through bone and the cutting soft tissues, due to its potential importance for research into transplants.

“The first thing they determined was the best wavelength is 6.45 microns. At this wavelength it was possible to make good incisions and you can choose the mode in which the tissue charring practically does not occur,” he said. However, they were still looking for the best laser to carry out this task.

They eventually got in contact with Tomsk State after coming across an old publication from 1983. Following some more tests, Soldatov realized that the strontium vapor laser was the most suitable, due to its ability not to induce any burning or damage while operational.

First Warm-Blooded Fish Found

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The car-tire-size opah is striking enough thanks to its rotund, silver body. But now, researchers have discovered something surprising about this deep-sea dweller: It’s got warm blood.

That makes the opah (Lampris guttatus) the first warm-blooded fish every discovered. Most fish are ectotherms, meaning they require heat from the environment to stay toasty. The opah, as an endotherm, keeps its own temperature elevated even as it dives to chilly depths of 1,300 feet (396 meters) in temperate and tropical oceans around the world.

“Increased temperature speeds up physiological processes within the body,” study leader Nicholas Wegner, a biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California, told Live Science. “As a result, the muscles can contract faster, the temporal resolution of the eye is increased, and neurological transmissions are sped up. This results in faster swimming speeds, better vision and faster response times.”

The result, Wegner said, is a fast-swimming fish with an advantage for hunting slow, cold-blooded prey. [See Photos of the Gigantic Warm-Blooded Opah (Moonfish)]

Undersea moon

The opah, also known as the moonfish, has relatively small red fins decorating its large, round body, which can grow up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) long. These fins, which flap rapidly as the fish swims, turn out to be important in generating body heat for the opah.

“The opah appears to produce the majority of its heat by constantly flapping its pectoral fins which are used in continuous swimming,” Wegner said.

Researchers first suspected that something might be strange about the opah after analyzing a sample of the fish’s gill tissue. According to the new study, published today (May 14) in the journal Science, the blood vessels in the tissue are set up so that the vessels carrying cool, oxygenated blood from the gills to the body are in contact with the vessels carrying warm, deoxygenated blood from the body to the gills. As a result, the outgoing blood warms up the incoming blood, a process called counter-current heat exchange.

“There has never been anything like this seen in a fish’s gills before,” Wegner said in a statement. “This is a cool innovation by these animals that gives them a competitive edge. The concept of counter-current heat exchange was invented in fish long before [humans] thought of it.”

To confirm that these special gills helped the opah stay toasty, the researchers tagged a number of moonfish with temperature monitors and tracked the fish as they dove. The fish spend most of their time at least 150 feet (45 m) below the ocean surface. No matter how deep they dive, however, their body temperature stays about 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) warmer than the surrounding water. Fat deposits around the gills and muscles help insulate the fish, the researchers found.

Built for speed

Warm blood gives deep-sea fish a boost, according to Wegner. The opah’s muscles and nervous system likely function faster than an equivalent fish with cold blood. Other deep-diving fish, such as tuna and some sharks can shunt blood to certain body parts to keep them warm during deep dives. But these fish have to swim up out of the depths frequently to prevent their organs from shutting down.

In contrast, the opah can stay deep for long periods of time.

“Nature has a way of surprising us with clever strategies where you least expect them,” Wegner said in a statement. “It’s hard to stay warm when you’re surrounded by cold water, but the opah has figured it out.”

Next, Wegner told Live Science, he and his colleagues want to study Lampris immaculatus, the opah’s southern cousin. This fish, the southern opah, lives in colder waters than the northern opah, so it would be harder to keep warm, Wegner said — but even more beneficial.

Hit the Gym after Studying to Boost Recall .

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Regular exercise boosts brain health, and a fit brain is generally able to learn, think and remember better. But a few recent studies offer an additional exercise-related tip: time your workouts for just after a study session, and you might better retain the information you just learned. In a variety of experiments, people who biked, did leg presses or even simply squeezed a handgrip shortly after or before learning did better on tests of recall in the hours, days or weeks that followed.

Experts think the crucial component is physical arousal. Exercise excites the body in much the same way an emotional experience does—and emotional memories are well known to be the most long lasting. The researchers caution, however, that at most exercise can have a supportive effect—the important thing is to study well first.

More Quick Tips for Creativity and Focus

• Lie down to spark insight.

One study showed that people who lay on their back solved anagrams significantly faster than those who stood.

Fukushima plant springs another radioactive leak; radiation 600 times higher than ‘safe’ levels

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On May 1, a worker at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant discovered a storage tank leaking radioactive water, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced the following day.

radioactive

In March 2011, a major earthquake and tsunami triggered three separate meltdowns at the Fukushima plant. Large quantities of water have been rendered radioactive from being used to cool the crippled reactors. In addition, groundwater has been leaking into the basements of the reactors, mixing with contaminated water there and also becoming radioactive. TEPCO has been frantically pumping this water out and concentrating it into onsite storage tanks in an effort to minimize how much radioactive water spreads beyond the plant as groundwater.

The leak was found on the same day that TEPCO resumed tests for its beleaguered plans to construct a nearly mile-long “ice wall” of frozen soil to prevent more groundwater from infiltrating into the plant.

Second leak in weeks

The leaking tank was discovered when the worker noticed a wet patch just three inches wide next to it. The ground at that spot tested at 70 microsieverts per hour of beta-ray-emitting radioactivity; this is more than 600 times the 0.11 microsieverts per hour of maximum recommended exposure.

Workers piled sandbags around the tank to keep the leak from spreading, TEPCO said.

The leak was the second one reported in the last few weeks. In late April, a still-unexplained power outage caused water transfer pumps at the plant to shut down. The pumps were being used to move radioactive water from one drainage channel into another after it was revealed that water had been spilling from the first channel directly into the Pacific Ocean. When the power to the plants shut down, radioactive water resumed flowing into the sea. Approximately 100 tons of contaminated water — also exceeding the legal limit — are estimated to have escaped before power was re-established.

Cleanup could still be centuries away

More than four years after the Fukushima disaster, 70,000 people are still unable to return to their homes due to high levels of radioactive contamination. The local agricultural economy has been devastated.

Meanwhile, TEPCO’s efforts to clean up the plant are plagued with failures and missteps. Radiation levels inside the failed reactors are still so high that scientists believe that any human entering would die almost instantly.

As a result, TEPCO has struggled to find ways to locate the reactors’ radioactive fuel rods, let alone remove them. These problems caused the company to announce last year that removal of the fuel would not begin until 2025, five years earlier than previously announced. The company expects the full cleanup to take 40 years, though the head of the plant has admitted that the technology for the cleanup does not actually exist and may not come into existence for centuries.

An example of this technological limitation was seen in late April, when a high-tech robot designed to withstand high levels of radiation died just three hour into its mission.

The “transformer” robot, a snake-like device designed to be able to change its shape to adapt to its surroundings, was supposed to be able to withstand the heat and radiation levels inside the reactor for ten hours.

Following the device’s failure, TEPCO announced that it was severing the cables used to control the robot and postponing its plans for robotic inspection of the reactors.

“Radiation levels in these structures is higher, and working inside them is problematic,” said TEPCO adviser Dale Klein, a former chairman of the U.S. nuclear regulatory commission. “This is a challenge that has never been faced before.”

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/049702_Fukushima_radiation_leak_nuclear_disaster.html#ixzz3aGq7H11p

Is Your Appendix Actually Useless?

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It’s commonly believed that the appendix no longer has a use. Is there any truth to this?

Its full name is Vermiform Appendix: “Vermiform” being Latin for “worm-shaped”, which describes the shape of this it. The human appendix is a 5-to-10 cm (2-to-4 inch) worm-like long protrusion jutting off the large intestine right by where the large and small intestine meet. Considered a “vestigial organ” — something that has lost its function through evolution — there is no general consensus among scientists about what the appendix’s actual purpose is.

However, recent a recent study from Duke University may have finally figured out the great mystery of the appendix’s function: a storehouse for “good bacteria” needed for digestion in the intestine. A side effect of diseases that cause chronic diarrhea — like cholera and dysentery — is that they can wipe out all the bacteria we need for digestion. It’s in situations like this, the study speculates, that our appendix would replenish this missing “good bacteria”.

This would also explain why we are capable of living without them. Appendicitis, or inflammation of the appendix, almost always results in the removal of the appendix and is one of the most common causes of acute abdominal pain. The classic signs of appendicitis are: pain in the stomach area first, followed by vomiting, and finally a fever. As appendicitis continues, the pain tends to focus in the lower-right quadrant of the abdomen.

So if we don’t need them, why is appendicitis so common? Scientists attribute this to what the refer to as the “hygiene hypothesis”. Basically, it purports that because our ultra-hygienic society rarely exposes us to dangerous pathogens, when we actually are, our bodies tend to overreact. There are fewer complications if you have your appendix removed before it ruptures, so of you have some intense pain in your abdomen you should see a doctor immediately. Have you had your appendix removed? If so, be sure to share your experiences in the comments section below.

Pulse laser used to create 3D display in mid-air.

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3D Air
You’ve probably seen projectors that can create images that seem to float in mid-air by painting light onto fog or water, but Japanese firm Aerial Burton has created something much more impressive. The recently demoed Aerial Burton display can create moving 3D images in mid-air using laser plasma technology.

The Aerial Burton display isn’t currently capable of creating detailed images like you’d see on a screen projector, but it’s still a big leap when you consider there’s nothing up there off which to bounce light. That’s really the basis of most projection technologies — the light reflects off something to your eyes. The aerial display shown here uses lasers to ionize molecules in the air, so the source of thelight is actually floating in mid-air where you see it.

The images are produced by a 1kHz infrared pulse laser, which is directed into a 3D scanner. This apparatus reflects the pulses up into the air while focusing them on pre-defined points. By ionizing molecules in very localized areas, the device is essentially producing pockets of plasma that give off energy as photons. The flashes of light are short-lived, so the system has to constantly pulse new beams to keep the image alive.

The next step is to increase the resolution of the images. Right now it can be a little hard to tell what each image is as it’s rotating around. This is more of a concern with busy backgrounds behind it. There are a few demos of this same technology in water, and the overall quality of the image is much higher. Air is obviously much less dense, so there may be fundamental limits to this kind of pulsed plasma laser tech.

The designers believe the Aerial Burton display could be used in emergency situations to help people find evacuation routes and emergency supplies. It’s also portable and can be mounted in a car. You might not be able to render Princess Leia in full holographic detail, but a giant floating arrow that points to safety during an emergency seems doable.

Watch the video. URL: https://youtu.be/GNoOiXkXmYQ

GE engineers make engine using additive manufacturing process

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GE engineers have been getting firsthand insights about additive manufacturing as applied to jet engines. News of their success in 3D-printing a mini-jet engine has gathered some attention. The team made a simple 3D-printed engine that roared at 33,000 rotations per minute, said a report. The team who built it are at GE Aviation’s Additive Development Center outside Cincinnati. The focus there is on techniques in additive manufacturing for making 3D structures by melting metal powder layer upon layer.

GE Aviation’s site (GE Aviation provides jet and turboprop engines, components and integrated systems) reviewed the additive approach, and where it departs from past methods. “Unlike traditional manufacturing methods that mill parts from a slab of metal, additive manufacturing ‘grows’ parts directly from a CAD file using layers of fine metal powder and an electron beam or laser. The result is complex, fully dense parts without the waste, manufactured in a fraction of the time it would take using other methods,” said a recent post on the site.

The team pooled their skills as technicians, machinists and engineers. “We wanted to see if we could build a little that runs almost entirely out of additive manufacturing parts,” said one of the engineers. “This was a fun side project.”

David Bartosik, engineer with GE Additive Development Center, said they used a process called DMLM, Direct Metal Laser Melting. One of the big advantages is that you can redesign your parts, with new geometries, he said.


General Electric has been exploring additive manufacturing for some time now. In an interview in 2013 with AdditiveManufacturing.com, Greg Morris and Todd Rockstroh spoke about GE’s work in exploring such technologies.

Rockstroh spoke about the DMLM process, saying it was “the use of a focused laser to fuse, layer-by-layer, a three dimensional object. It is the same as the various industry used terms for additive manufacturing: Selective Laser Melting, Selective Laser Sintering, Direct Metal Laser Sintering. We chose ‘melting’ as the machines do not technically sinter but overlap a series of fusion welded layers. The mechanical properties can be generally near-forged and significantly better than cast properties.”

Morris said, “Additive provides the ability to create geometry that cannot be made any other way. For the aerospace industry, additive is particularly attractive because it can create components in materials that are commonly used in aerospace such as nickel-based alloys, Titanium, etc. and we can make those parts with structures that provide design benefits, such as lattice structures that allow for substantial weight reductions, yet do not compromise the mechanical integrity of the part.”

This was no complex commercial aircraft engine. They started out with a design for a radio-controlled aircraft engine, developed for remote control model planes, and customized the plans for their printing machines. The final product measures around a foot long by about eight inches tall, said Michael Keller, writing in GE Reports.

In the bigger picture, Morris, GE Aviation’s General Manager for Additive Technologies, earlier this month said additive manufacturing “will fundamentally change the way we think about how we design our parts, how we manufacture components and ultimately how our products look and function.” He said that “all of us who work with additive technology at GE feel extremely fortunate to be part of an organization that has embraced this technology as fully as GE Aviation has.”

Later this year, GE will begin using to create complex components of its newest fuel nozzles. This will be done at a new 300,000 square-foot facility in Auburn, AL. “Fuel nozzles are an intricate and highly sophisticated engine component that are key to delivering industry-leading fuel efficiency and lower emissions for next-generation jet engines,” said the company. The nozzles will be on the LEAP jet engine.