Day: 11/14/2015

Homeopathy ‘could be blacklisted’

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Homeopathy

Ministers are considering whether homeopathy should be put on a blacklist of treatments GPs in England are banned from prescribing, the BBC has learned.

The controversial practice is based on the principle that “like cures like”, but critics say patients are being given useless sugar pills.

The Faculty of Homeopathy said patients supported the therapy.

A consultation is expected to take place in 2016.

The total NHS bill for homeopathy, including homeopathic hospitals and GP prescriptions, is thought to be about £4m.

How homeopathic pills are made

Homeopathy is based on the concept that diluting a version of a substance that causes illness has healing properties.

So pollen or grass could be used to create a homeopathic hay-fever remedy.

One part of the substance is mixed with 99 parts of water or alcohol, and this is repeated six times in a “6c” formulation or 30 times in a “30c” formulation.

The end result is combined with a lactose (sugar) tablet.

Homeopaths say the more diluted it is, the greater the effect. Critics say patients are getting nothing but sugar.

Common homeopathic treatments are for asthma, ear infections, hay-fever, depression, stress, anxiety, allergy and arthritis.

Source: British Homeopathic Association

But the NHS itself says: “There is no good-quality evidence that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for any health condition.”

The Good Thinking Society has been campaigning for homeopathy to be added to the NHS blacklist – known formally as Schedule 1 – of drugs that cannot be prescribed by GPs.

Drugs can be blacklisted if there are cheaper alternatives or if the medicine is not effective.

After the Good Thinking Society threatened to take their case to the courts, Department of Health legal advisers replied in emails that ministers had “decided to conduct a consultation”.

Officials have now confirmed this will take place in 2016.

Debate

Simon Singh, the founder of the Good Thinking Society, said: “Given the finite resources of the NHS, any spending on homeopathy is utterly unjustifiable.

“The money spent on these disproven remedies can be far better spent on treatments that offer real benefits to patients.”

But Dr Helen Beaumont, a GP and the president of the Faculty of Homeopathy, said other drugs such as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) for depression would be a better target for saving money, as homeopathic pills had a “profound effect” on patients.

She told the BBC News website: “Patient choice is important; homeopathy works, it’s widely used by doctors in Europe, and patients who are treated by homeopathy are really convinced of its benefits, as am I.”

The result of the consultation would affect GP prescribing, but not homeopathic hospitals which account for the bulk of the NHS money spent on homeopathy.

Estimates suggest GP prescriptions account for about £110,000 per year.

And any decision would not affect people buying the treatments over the counter or privately.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was criticised for supporting a parliamentary motion on homeopathy, but in an interview last year argued “when resources are tight we have to follow the evidence”.

Minister for Life Sciences, George Freeman, told the BBC: “With rising health demands, we have a duty to make sure we spend NHS funds on the most effective treatments.

“We are currently considering whether or not homeopathic products should continue to be available through NHS prescriptions.

“We expect to consult on proposals in due course.”

Famed number π found hidden in the hydrogen atom.

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Three hundred and sixty years ago, British mathematician John Wallis ground out an unusual formula for π, the famed number that never ends. Now, oddly, a pair of physicists has found that the same formula emerges from a routine calculation in the physics of the hydrogen atom—the simplest atom there is. But before you go looking for a cosmic connection or buy any crystals, relax: There is probably no deep meaning to the slice of π from the quantum calculation.

The surprising calculation involves the energies of the cloudlike orbitals, like this one, in which the electron in a hydrogen atom hovers.

Defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, π is one of the weirder numbers going. Its decimal representation, 3.14159265358979 …, never ends and never repeats. And π can be captured in many disparate formulas. For example, in 1655, Wallis figured out that π can be written as the product of an infinite number of ratios multiplied together: π/2=(2/1*2/3)*(4/3*4/5)*(6/5*6/7)*(8/7*8/9)* …

Deriving that formula didn’t come easy for Wallis, says Tamar Friedmann, a mathematician and physicist at the University of Rochester (U of R) in New York. Roughly speaking, he started out by considering the ratio of the areas of a circle and a square that circumscribes it—which turns out to be π/4—she explains. Wallis found a way to write this ratio in terms of infinite sums, such as 1+23+33+43+ … After pages of arithmetic, he was able to replace the sums with the product and achieve his famous formula. Mathematicians have since found simpler ways to derive it involving techniques from probability theory, combinatorics, and trigonometry.

Now, Friedmann and Carl Hagen, a theoretical physicist at U of R in New York, have found a surprisingly easy way to derive the formula using a three-page calculation involving the hydrogen atom. The hydrogen atom consists of a single negatively charged electron bound to a single positively charged proton. According to quantum mechanics, the electron does not circle the proton the way the moon circles Earth but instead occupies cloudlike orbitals that give the probability of finding the electron here or there. Each orbital has a distinct energy.

In their calculation, reported this week in the Journal of Mathematical Physics, the researchers use a technique called the variational principle to come up with an upper limit for the energy of each orbital. They compare that estimate with the exact energy for the orbital, which can be deduced from a more precise calculation. Hagen had been assigning this problem in quantum mechanics class and had found that the approximate value approached the exact one more closely for higher energy states. That was odd, Friedmann says, as approximations tend to work better for lower energy states.

Friedmann proved that for orbitals in which the electron whizzes around the nucleus with a lot of “angular momentum,” the ratio of the approximate and exact energies can be rewritten as the ratio of things called gamma functions. As angular momentum increases, the ratio of gamma functions narrows in on 1, explaining the efficacy of the approximation. Moreover, one of those gamma functions gives a value of π, whereas the other ones can be rewritten as the product of ratios in the Wallis formula. So with a bit of rearranging, the Wallis formula tumbles out. “I was completely surprised,” Friedmann says. “I wasn’t looking for it at all.”

The emergence of the formula probably doesn’t signal anything profound about quantum theory, cautions Bruno Nachtergaele, a mathematical physicist at the University of California, Davis, and editor of the journal in which the paper was published. “You are entitled to be delighted by this,” he says, “but one shouldn’t look too deep for meaning.” In fact, the emergence of the formula may have more to do with the properties of gamma functions than the physics of the hydrogen atom, Nachtergaele says. Special functions such as gamma functions can often be written out in many ways as sums, products, integrals, etc., Nachtergaele says, so it’s possible that Friedmann and Hagen’s analysis could lead to other notable formulas, too.

10 foods to boost your brain power

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Eating Well For The Brain

A balanced diet is always great for our body! Eating well is good for our mental as well as physical health. The brain requires nutrients just like your heart, lungs or muscles do. But which foods are particularly important to keep our grey matter happy?

 

http://www.speakingtree.in/slideshow/10-foods-to-boost-your-brainpower

Americans being poisoned into psychosis, violence and insanity by prescription drugs and heavy metals.

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Are people in the United States actually becoming more aggressive and violent, or is it merely a misperception caused by slanted news coverage?

Psychosis

Certainly we are exposed to far more neurotoxins than prior generations, and in much higher doses, in the form of the plethora of industrial chemicals that surround us and permeate every part of our environment. And while many different toxins are known to produce neurobehavioral effects, two categories in particular are worthy of further consideration: psychiatric drugs and heavy metals. Heavy metals such as lead and mercury are, of course, already well-known to cause brain damage and behavioral disturbances. Psychiatric drugs, likewise, are actually designed to alter the function of the brain — that is, if they disrupt your brain’s chemical equilibrium, it means they are working as designed.

Doping the people without cause

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, antidepressants are among the top three most prescribed classes of therapeutic drugs in non-hospital settings. Yet even people who know of these drugs’ common metabolic and sexual side effects are often not aware that they can regularly produce psychiatric disturbances as well including anxiety, irritability and agitation. Nearly all antidepressants can also actually increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

Yet shockingly, a recent study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that more than 67 percent of those taking antidepressants had “never met the criteria for major depressive disorder” — that is, the condition that the drugs are supposedly meant to treat.

In addition, a full 38 percent of those taking the SSRI class of antidepressants have never been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder or social phobia.

“Many individuals who are prescribed and use antidepressant medications may not have met criteria for mental disorders,” the researchers wrote. “Our data indicate that antidepressants are commonly used in the absence of clear evidence-based indications.”

While antidepressants may be the most commonly prescribed of psychiatric drugs, they are not the only ones with mood- and behavior-altering side effects. The anti-smoking drug Chantix, for example, can cause “changes in behavior, hostility, agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts or actions,” according to the company that makes it. Indeed, as with antidepressants, any drug designed to modify the brain’s chemistry may change a person’s behavior, including for the worse.

According to the mental health watchdog group Citizens’ Commission on Human Rights, “Despite 22 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation, and dozens of high profile shootings/killings tied to psychiatric drug use, there has yet to be a federal investigation on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence.”

The group maintains a database of known psychiatric drug side effects at here.

Brain-damaging metals are everywhere

Another category of brain-damaging toxins that nearly all people are exposed to is heavy metals. Because these metals are so widely used in industrial manufacturing, they have permeated the environment and are now found in everything from air pollution and soil to household products such as electronics and even sewage sludge (which is spread on food crops as fertilizer).

Among the metals known to damage the brain and produce cognitive and behavioral effects are lead, mercury, aluminum and manganese.

As Natural News editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, has pointed out, even people seeking to protect themselves from radioactivity exposure may inadvertently dose themselves with heavy metals. Zeolites, marketed for their ability to bind to radioactive isotopes and flush them from the body, all contain high levels of lead and aluminum. When zeolites are ground up, these toxins become even more bioavailable.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/051912_psychosis_Big_Pharma_heavy_metals.html#ixzz3rZZ0sITH

7 Reasons You Need Mental Strength to Be Successful

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Becoming mentally strong will separate you from the pack and help you achieve higher levels of success.

Everyone possesses mental strength to some degree. But the stronger you are, the more likely you are to achieve bigger and better goals.

Here are seven reasons why you need mental strength to be successful:

1. Mental strength conquers self-doubt.

Whether your ambition is to run a marathon, or your goal is to double your revenue, you’ll likely experience self-doubt at one time or another. Questioning your goal—and your ability to achieve it—is a normal part of the attainment process. But when you’re mentally strong, you’ll be able to reframe your negative self-talk so you can continue working toward your goal with increased confidence.

2. Mental strength keeps you motivated.

It’s easy to stick to your goals when you feel motivated, but motivation waxes and wanes. Mental strength will help you keep moving toward your goal, even on the days you don’t feel like it. You’ll be able to dig deep and discover the inner strength you need when you’re tired, discouraged or unambitious.

3. Mental strength helps you tune out unhelpful advice.

Whether you want to please others or prove them wrong, other people’s opinions can easily drown out your own voice. Mental strength will help you tune out the unhelpful criticism and bad advice from those around you. Being strong will help you stay true to your values and keep you focused on making the best decisions, regardless of the feedback you receive from those around you.

4. Mental strength ensures you’ll learn from your mistakes.

Hiding your mistakes or making excuses for your blunders increases the chances that you’ll repeat those mistakes again. Mental strength helps you humbly accept responsibility for your actions so you can truly learn from your mistakes. With each lesson you learn, you’ll grow one step closer toward reaching your goal.

5. Mental strength provides courage to face your fears.

Stepping outside your comfort zone is difficult, but mental strength gives you the courage to face your fears head-on. When you’re feeling strong, you’ll have confidence that you can tolerate discomfort and you’ll be willing to move forward, despite your distress.

6. Mental strength assists you in bouncing back from failure.

While failure causes some people to give up, mentally strong people bounce back from failure even better than before. Mentally strong people have a high enough self-worth that they’re able to tolerate repeat failure without fear of ridicule. Building mental strength will help you use failure as a stepping stone to future success.

7. Mental strength helps you regulate your emotions.

The road to success is often filled with emotional highs and lows. If you lack adequate skills to regulate your emotions, you’ll struggle to resist temptation, delay gratification and take calculated risks. Mental strength is the key to controlling your emotions, so your feelings don’t cloud your judgement or lead you astray.

There will always be obstacles and challenges that threaten to derail your road to success. Building mental strength will help you develop resilience to life’s inevitable obstacles so you can overcome setbacks with confidence.

– See more at: http://www.success.com/article/7-reasons-you-need-mental-strength-to-be-successful#sthash.3JevWnRy.dpuf

The Mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle

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A Most Mysterious Place

As a kid, I revelled in the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle, pouring over literature that told of ghost ships, of planes disappearing forever, of instruments going haywire. In fact, it was Disney’s cartoon series which had episodes dedicated to this mystery.

http://www.speakingtree.in/slideshow/the-mysteries-of-the-bermuda-triangle

Poor Countries Do More When It Comes to Saving Forests

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Tropical forest giants Brazil and Indonesia made less ambitious climate commitments than the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo and other smaller, poorer countries, an analysis released yesterday by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) found.

forest clearing

That discovery is consistent with a trend observed by the environmental group for the climate submissions — known as intended nationally determined contributions, or INDCs — of a dozen forest-centric countries ahead of key U.N. climate change negotiations in Paris beginning this month.

“The DRC is a very poor country, and it has a lot of difficulties in terms of making plans and implementing them, but they did a good job in their INDC,” said Doug Boucher, director of UCS’s Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative.

The final of three white papers, the report examines how forests and the land-use sector are represented by nations in their INDCs. Submitted by more than 150 nations ahead of the Paris talks, the targets will make up the heart of a new global agreement to rein in greenhouse gas emissions.

The report analyzed each pledge in terms of transparency, ambition and accounting standards, as well as proposed actions in the land-use sector, which includes emissions from agriculture, deforestation and forest degradation, and other land-use activities.

Land-use emissions account for nearly 25 percent of total global emissions, which makes it critical to have accurate information on the sector, Boucher said. As sequesterers of carbon, forests are an important component for helping the world stave off climate change.

As found in previous white papers, it was the smallest country — in this case, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — that made a strong and specific commitment for tacking land-use-sector emissions.

Brazil, India have far to go
Despite being one of the least developed countries in the world, the African nation, home to the second-largest tract of tropical forest, pledged a 17 percent reduction in emissions by 2030 and specified how much of this will come from each sector and to what extent each goal is contingent on international assistance.

In contrast, the report found Indonesia was vague in how it would address emissions from its land-use sector.

With its vast, carbon-rich peatlands, more than 60 percent of the country’s emissions come from the land. This year, an especially bad fire season prompted Indonesia’s president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, to issue a moratorium on clearing peatlands even in existing agricultural concession areas (ClimateWire, Oct. 26).

The country’s climate plan calls for a 29 percent emissions reduction by 2030, or 41 percent if it receives international financing; however, no plan for stopping deforestation was mentioned in the INDC.

Of India’s 38-page climate submission, six pages focus on what the country intends to do to reduce its emissions. The country lists a goal of reducing global warming emissions 33 to 35 percent by 2030, but it does not specify how much can be done without international aid.

“Reduction of deforestation and degradation of natural forests is hardly mentioned, even though they still remain a problem despite the country’s having made the transition to net reforestation overall,” the report notes of India’s pledge.

Brazil presented strong emissions reductions numbers, but it was unambitious in its land-use-sector goals, the report charges.

Brazil fell flat in terms of what it could do in its forests, Boucher said. He called it ironic, considering that is the sector in which the country has made notable progress. Since 2004, Brazil has cut its rate of deforestation nearly 80 percent. The county has also committed to restoring 12 million hectares (nearly 30 million acres) of forest by 2030.

“The INDC calls for zero illegal deforestation, but they don’t say how much is happening now, and the mandate is only for Amazon biome, which is a big one from a climate point of view but leaves out some fairly significant parts of the country that also has some parts of forest,” he said.

The first analysis examined the climate commitments submitted by the United States, Mexico and the European Union and found the U.S. INDC does acknowledge the land sector (ClimateWire, June 2).

The second looked at China, Canada, Morocco and Ethiopia and criticized the transparency, ambition and proposed actions of China and Canada (ClimateWire, Sept. 11).

Overall, the third analysis of INDCs solidified a pattern: In many cases, smaller, poorer countries have submitted stronger global commitments, at least in terms of specificity of actions.

Michael Wolosin, managing director of research and policy for Washington, D.C.-based group Climate Advisers, said in his analysis of many of the national climate plans ahead of Paris that he has observed a similar pattern. He said one reason for the disconnect is that smaller nations recognize they will need financial assistance from the international community, and to get that, they need to be specific.

“There’s almost a higher threshold and transparency for countries that are needing finance,” he said. “There is less need for Brazil to be exactly specific on everything they’re going to do, because they’re going to self-finance their action.”

Still ‘falling short’ of 2 C
Many nations, including Brazil and United States, put forth pledges based on the existing laws and regulations, Wolosin said. The United States is considering action it can take without Congress, such as emissions reductions from U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan and vehicle emissions regulations.

Similarly, although Wolosin called Brazil’s zero illegal deforestation pledge “serious backsliding and quite weak,” he said it would be challenging for the country to set a zero legal deforestation goal, for example, when Brazilian laws allows for some legal deforestation.

Both Boucher and Wolosin stressed that presently, with the climate commitments now in from more than 150 countries, the emissions reductions on the table still are not enough to keep warming below the 2-degree-Celsius threshold agreed upon by the international community.

If every country meets the full extent of its pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions, there will still be as much as 12 billion tons more climate change pollution in the atmosphere by 2030 than there should, the U.N. Environment Programme’s “Emissions Gap Report” found earlier this month (ClimateWire, Nov. 6).

“We’re falling short in that there’s so much variation in terms of what they give in their INDCs, and countries are still feeling free to leave out important numbers and important actions and even whole sectors if they want,” Boucher added. “For transparency, for the world to understand what the other countries are planning, we have to hope for some real improvement.”

New study explores how anxiety can aggravate asthma

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anxiety and asthma

Asthma medication inhaler.

Anxiety sensitivity, in simple terms, is a fear of fear. But when people with anxiety sensitivity also have asthma, their suffering can be far more debilitating and dangerous, because they have difficulty managing their asthma. A new study explores this issue and recommends treatment to help decrease asthma symptoms. The study by Alison McLeish, a University of Cincinnati (UC) associate professor of psychology, Christina Luberto, a recent doctoral graduate from UC and clinical fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Emily O’Bryan, a graduate student in the UC Department of Psychology, will be presented at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) 49th Annual Convention that takes place Nov. 12-15, 2015 in Chicago.

The researchers recruited 101 college undergraduates who reported having asthma. The experiment aimed to mimic asthma symptoms by having study participants breathe in-and-out through a narrow straw, about the width of a coffee-stirrer straw.

As expected, people who reported higher anxiety sensitivity not only reported greater anxiety during the straw-breathing task, but also experienced greater asthma symptoms and decreased lung function. “Anxiety sensitivity not only helps explain why we see higher rates of anxiety disorders, but also why anxiety is associated with poorer asthma outcomes,” says McLeish.

As a result, the study recommended interventions for anxiety sensitivity—such as exposure therapy—aimed at reducing the anxiety.

Safety controls were in place during the straw-breathing exercise and all participants were required to have their inhalers with them in case they experienced an asthma attack. Students were told they could stop at any time during the straw-breathing exercise.

The UC presentation at the ABCT Convention is part of a Nov. 14 symposium titled, “Motivation Escape and Avoidant Coping: The Impact of Distress Intolerance on Health Behaviors.” The research will be published in an upcoming special issue of the journal Behavior Modification and is currently featured ahead of the print issue in the journal online.

The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies is a multidisciplinary organization committed to the advancement of scientific approaches to the understanding and improvement of human functioning through the investigation and application of behavioral, cognitive and other evidence-based principles to the assessment, prevention, treatment of human problems and the enhancement of health and well-being.

How Far Is Too Far to Prevent Climate Change?

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We’re at a tipping point in human history when it comes to climate change. Meanwhile, scientists are preparing to take extreme measures to stop the coming catastrophe.

The eruption of the Mount Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines gave scientists an idea. As the volcanic ash spewed across the sky, it helped reflect the sun’s rays, cooling the Earth.

Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, explained in an interview with PRI: “The planet was more or less a degree Fahrenheit cooler than it otherwise would’ve been despite the increasing rise in greenhouse gases.”

The ash helped block the sun’s rays from reaching the Earth — less sun, meant less heat. This led scientists to wonder how they could artificially create this effect to alter the path of climate change.

“We need to decide as a civilization whether this is going to be mostly a natural world … and interfere as little as possible on natural systems. Or are we going to … manage it the way we’ve managed so many other things.”

“There are planes that can go up to the stratosphere now,” Caldeira said. “The spraying technologies are well-developed … The bigger question is what are the unintended consequences of doing such a dramatic act.”

Climage_change_cloud

This premise has already been explored in the dystopian sci-fi film,Snowpiercer. The story goes that humanity is at the end of their rope after an attempt to avert the effects of global warming goes wrong. Scientists developed a chemical that planes sprayed across the stratosphere. The result caused an unintended reaction, which created an extreme temperature shift causing the planet to freeze over. The only survivors reside on this train, which stays in constant motion, protecting it from freezing. Pretty bleak.

“I think we’re at a bit of a crossroads,” Caldeira said to PRI. “We need to decide as a civilization whether this is going to be mostly a natural world … and interfere as little as possible on natural systems. Or are we going to … manage it the way we’ve managed so many other things.”

Bill Nye is kept up by the notion of climate change. It’s happening, and yet little has been done on a global scale to drastically change our fate.

The Barack Obama administration has introduced 40 new climate change initiatives to help fight carbon emissions. But America isn’t the only major player in this global issue. The world needs developing countries, such as India and China, to adopt cleaner energy solutions. But that’s not going to happen so long as coal remains cheap, which is why some have suggested America buys up coal to keep it in the ground.

It’s possible humanity might get to the point where we feel we must take such drastic measures to secure our survival.

Experimental Alzheimer’s drug shows anti-ageing effects, surprising researchers

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Human trials to begin next year.

 

We know that Alzheimer’s disease is linked to ageing, in that the elderly are most susceptible to experiencing the disorder, but just how deep are the ties?

A new study by researchers in the US explains more about the relationship between ageing and Alzheimer’s, with continued testing of an experimental drug candidate called J147 revealing unforeseen benefits in the latest research. In testing on rodents, the drug surprised researchers by showing unexpected anti-ageing effects on mice.

When the animals were treated with J147 they showed better memory and cognition, healthier blood vessels in the brain, and other improved physiological features.

“Initially, the impetus was to test this drug in a novel animal model that was more similar to 99 percent of Alzheimer’s cases,” said Antonio Currais, a researcher in the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California. “We did not predict we’d see this sort of anti-ageing effect, but J147 made old mice look like they were young, based upon a number of physiological parameters.”

J147 takes a different approach to many other drugs developed to combat Alzheimer’s disease. “While most drugs developed in the past 20 years target the amyloid plaque deposits in the brain (which are a hallmark of the disease), none have proven effective in the clinic,” said David Schubert, senior author of the study. Instead, the treatment focuses on what the researchers say is the most obvious major risk factor for the disease: old age.

J147 was initially synthesised by using cell-based screens against old-age-associated brain toxicities. In the latest study, the researchers tested the efficacy of the treatment by tracking the progression of three groups of rapidly ageing mice. One group were young mice, one were old mice, and the final group were old mice on a diet which included J147.

In a set of experiments designed to test the animals’ memory, cognition and motor movements, the old mice fed J147 showed better performance and also displayed fewer pathological signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brains. Further, many aspects of the J147-fed mice’s gene expression and metabolism – including increased energy metabolism, reduced brain inflammation and reduced levels of oxidised fatty acids in the brain – were similar to that of the younger mice.

Less leakage of blood from the microvessels in the brain was another bonus stemming from the drug. “Damaged blood vessels are a common feature of ageing in general, and in Alzheimer’s, it is frequently much worse,” said Currais.

The research, which is published in Aging, is set to continue in 2016, with the first human trials hoped to replicate these exciting effects so far seen in rodents. “If proven safe and effective for Alzheimer’s, the apparent anti-ageing effect of J147 would be a welcome benefit,” said Schubert.