Day: 12/18/2016

The Dangers of Microwaves and Plastic Combo

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I don’t recommend storing your food in plastic or cooking it in a microwave, but if you’re going to use either, at least don’t use them together. Microwaving food in a plastic container virtually guarantees that your food will be contaminated with plastics chemicals that have leached into your food during the heating process.

Microwave Hazards

Story at-a-glance

  • Plastic contains any number of endocrine-disrupting and other chemicals; heating it in the microwave accelerates their transfer into your food
  • Ninety-five percent of plastic products subjected to real-world usage conditions, like microwaving, tested positive for estrogenic, hormone-disrupting activity
  • Heat has been found to increase the rate of chemical transfer from plastic into food by up to 55-fold

There’s no arguing that plastic is convenient, inexpensive, and virtually unbreakable, making it tempting to use for food storage, especially while you’re out and about. However, though it seems perfectly safe, plastic is made with a veritable stew of chemicals.

What’s Lurking in Your Plastic Containers?

Depending on what product you’re using, your plastic might contain phthalates, for starters. Phthalates are a group of “gender-bending” chemicals causing males of many species to become more female.

These chemicals have disrupted the endocrine systems of wildlife, causing testicular cancer, genital deformations, low sperm counts, and infertility in a number of species, including polar bears, deer, whales, and otters, just to name a few.

In humans, phthalates have been linked to preterm birth and neurobehavioral problems in infants after in-utero exposure.1 They’ve also been found to increase blood pressure levels,2 and high urinary levels are associated with insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes.3

Plastic containers may also contain bisphenol-A (BPA) or any one of its similar “replacement” chemicals, including BPS (there’s also Bisphenol B, C, E, F, G, M. P, PH, TMC, and Z).

While the replacement chemicals haven’t been widely studied, BPA is a known endocrine disruptor that’s been linked to a number of health concerns, particularly in pregnant women, fetuses, and young children, but also in adults, including:

Structural damage to your brain Changes in gender-specific behavior and abnormal sexual behavior
Hyperactivity, increased aggressiveness, and impaired learning Early puberty, stimulation of mammary gland development, disrupted reproductive cycles, ovarian dysfunction, and infertility
Increased fat formation and risk of obesity Stimulation of prostate cancer cells
Altered immune function Increased prostate size and decreased sperm production

What else might be lurking in your plastic? Commercial-grade cling wrap (which may be used to wrap cheese or other deli items) may be made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is known to cause cancer. The manufacture of PVC also leads to the formation of dioxin, another carcinogen.

Styrofoam food trays, egg cartons, carryout containers, and opaque plastic cutlery may contain yet another chemical known as styrene, which has been classified as a possible human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

Heating Accelerates the Transfer of Chemicals to Your Food

In a study of common plastic products, 70 percent tested positive for estrogenic activity, which means they’re capable of disrupting your hormone levels.4 However, that was before researchers subjected them to conditions in which they’re actually used.

Under real-world conditions like running the plastics through a dishwasher or heating them in a microwave, 95 percent tested positive for estrogenic, hormone-disrupting activity.

While regular use, such as washing in a dishwasher and scratches, has been found to increase the rate of chemical leaching, heat appears to be the worst offender of all, increasing the rate of chemical transfer by up to 55-fold. As written in the journal Toxicology Letters:5

“Using a sensitive and quantitative competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, BPA was found to migrate from polycarbonate water bottles at rates ranging from 0.20 ng/h to 0.79 ng/h.

At room temperature the migration of BPA was independent of whether or not the bottle had been previously used. Exposure to boiling water (100 degrees C) increased the rate of BPA migration by up to 55-fold.”

In the US, the National Institute of Environmental Health Science recommends consumers avoid microwaving food in plastic containers because heat increases the likelihood of chemical leaching.6

Plastic ‘Microwaveable’ Containers Increase Your Risk of High Blood Pressure

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends any plastic containers you use in the microwave should be labeled for microwave oven use.7 But such containers may not be much safer than standard plastics.

“Microwaveable” containers may be formulated with supposedly “safer” chemicals. Diisononyl phthalate (DINP) and diisodecyl phthalate (DIDP), for instance, have been used to replace di-2-ethylhexylphthalate (DEHP), an endocrine-disrupting phthalate known to cause reproductive toxicity.

DEHP is highly lipophilic (fat soluble), and when used in PVC plastic is only loosely chemically bonded to the plastic. It readily leaches into blood (when used in IV tubing, for example) or other lipid-containing solutions in contact with the plastic.

DINP and DIDP have been touted as safer alternatives, but they, too, have been linked to health concerns, including high blood pressure.8 Microwaving food in #7 polycarbonate plastic, in particular, should be avoided, even if it is labeled microwave-safe.

According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC):9

“What the term ‘microwave-safe’ basically means is that any chemicals leaching from the container into food do so at levels far below those shown to have any health effects.

There is cause to be wary of this claim, however. In particular, #7 polycarbonate plastic should not be used in a microwave, even if it is labeled ‘microwave-safe,’ because it leaches hormone-disrupting bisphenol A (BPA), especially when heated.”

I would expand this to say that there is really no such thing as “microwave-safe” plastic. There are many chemicals that could potentially leach into your food, and it’s unclear which are tested for and what levels are deemed “safe” for consumption.

For instance, the Nutrition Action Newsletter reported the leakage of numerous toxic chemicals from the packaging of common microwavable foods, including pizzas and popcorn. Chemicals included polyethylene terephthalate (PET), benzene, toluene, and xylene.

Microwaving fatty foods in plastic containers also leads to the release of dioxins and other toxins into your food.10,11 You’re far better off heating your food in glass or ceramic containers – and not in a microwave at all.

Why You Might Want to Rethink Microwave Cooking

At the very least, banish all plastic products (containers, plastic wrap, food wraps, etc.) from ever seeing the inside of your microwave. Even better, banish your microwave altogether.

Microwaves heat food by causing water molecules in it to resonate at very high frequencies and eventually turn to steam, which heats your food. While this can rapidly heat your food, it also causes a change in your food’s chemical structure. The first thing you probably noticed when you began microwaving food was how uneven the heating is.

“Hot spots” in microwaved food can be hot enough to cause burns — or build up to a “steam explosion.” This has resulted in admonitions to new mothers about NOT using the microwave to heat up baby bottles, since babies have been burned by super-heated formula that went undetected (not to mention the issue with plastic toxins leaching into the milk).

Microwaving distorts and deforms the molecules of whatever food or other substance you subject to it. An example of this is blood products. Blood is normally warmed before being transfused into a person. Now we know that microwaving blood products damages the blood components.

In fact, one woman died after receiving a transfusion of microwaved blood in 1991, which resulted in a well-publicized lawsuit. Further, when you heat food in a microwave, it can zap the nutrition right out of your food. Some excellent scientific data has been gathered regarding the detrimental effects of microwaves on nutrients:

• A study published in the November 2003 issue of The Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture found broccoli “zapped” in the microwave with a little water lost up to 97 percent of its beneficial antioxidants.

By comparison, steamed broccoli lost 11 percent or fewer of its antioxidants. There were also reductions in phenolic compounds and glucosinolates, but mineral levels remained intact.12

•In a study of garlic, as little as 60 seconds of microwave heating was enough to inactivate its alliinase, garlic’s principle active ingredient against cancera.13

• A Japanese study that just 6 minutes of microwave heating turned 30-40 percent of the B12 in milk into an inert (dead) form.14

• An Australian study showed that microwaves cause a higher degree of “protein unfolding” than conventional heating.15

• Microwaving can destroy the essential disease-fighting agents in breast milk that offer protection for your baby. In one study, microwaved breast milk lost lysozyme activity, antibodies, and fostered the growth of more potentially pathogenic bacteria.16

19 Tips to Reduce Your Chemical Exposure at Home

In the US, chemicals are considered safe until proven otherwise. You don’t want to risk your health by exposing yourself to these toxins unnecessarily, especially in your food but also in your personal care products and goods around your home. Implementing the following measures will help you avoid the worst endocrine-disrupting culprits as well as other chemicals from a wide variety of sources. To sum it up, try to stick with whole foods and natural products around your home.

The fewer ingredients a product contains, the better, and try to make sure anything you put on or in your body – or use around your home – contains only substances you’re familiar with. If you can’t pronounce it, you probably don’t want it anywhere near your family.

  1. As much as possible, buy and eat organic produce and free-range, organic meats to reduce your exposure to added hormones, pesticides, and fertilizers. Also avoid milk and other dairy products that contain the genetically engineered recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST).
  2. Rather than eating conventional or farm-raised fish, which are often heavily contaminated with PCBs and mercury, supplement with a high-quality omega 3, or eat smaller fish or fish that is wild-caught and lab tested for purity. Wild caught Alaskan salmon is about the only fish I eat for these reasons.
  3. Buy products that come in glass bottles or jars rather than plastic or canned, since chemicals can leach out of plastics and into the contents.
  4. Store your food and beverages in glass rather than plastic, and avoid using plastic wrap.
  5. Use glass baby bottles and avoid plastic sippy cups for your little ones.
  6. Eat mostly raw, fresh foods. Processed, prepackaged foods (of all kinds) are a common source of chemicals such as BPA and phthalates.
  7. Replace your non-stick pots and pans with ceramic or glass cookware.
  8. Filter your tap water — both for drinking and bathing. If you can only afford to do one, filtering your bathing water may be more important, as your skin absorbs contaminants. To remove the endocrine-disrupting herbicide Atrazine, make sure the filter is certified to remove it. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), perchlorate can be filtered out using a reverse osmosis filter.
  9. Look for products that are made by companies that are earth-friendly, animal-friendly, green, non-toxic, and/or 100% organic. This applies to everything from food and personal care products to building materials, carpeting, paint, baby items, upholstery, and more.
  10. Use a vacuum cleaner with a HEPA filter to remove house dust, which is often contaminated with traces of chemicals.
  11. When buying new products such as furniture, mattresses, or carpet padding, ask what type of fire retardant it contains. Be mindful of and/or avoid items containing PBDEs, antimony, formaldehyde, boric acid, and other brominated chemicals. As you replace these toxic items around your home, select those that contain naturally less flammable materials, such as leather, wool, and cotton.
  12. Avoid stain- and water-resistant clothing, furniture, and carpets to avoid perfluorinated chemicals (PFC’s).
  13. Minimize your use of plastic baby and child toys, opting for those made of natural wood or fabric instead.
  14. Only use natural cleaning products in your home or make your own. Avoid products that contain 2-butoxyethanol (EGBE) and methoxydiglycol (DEGME) — two toxic glycol ethers that can damage fertility and cause fetal harm.17
  15. Switch over to organic brands of toiletries such as shampoo, toothpaste, antiperspirants, and cosmetics. You can replace many different products with coconut oil and baking soda, for example. EWG has a great database18 to help you find personal care products that are free of phthalates and other potentially dangerous chemicals. I also offer one of the highest quality organic skin care lines, shampoo and conditioner, and body butter that are completely natural and safe.
  16. Replace feminine hygiene products like tampons and sanitary pads with safer alternatives.
  17. Avoid artificial air fresheners, dryer sheets, fabric softeners, or other synthetic fragrances.
  18. Look for products that are fragrance-free. One artificial fragrance can contain hundreds – even thousands – of potentially toxic chemicals.
  19. Replace your vinyl shower curtain with one made of fabric.

Sunscreen is killing the coral, sea life & is causing skin cancer, NOT the Sun! (Video)

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Image: Sunscreen is killing the coral, sea life & is causing skin cancer, NOT the Sun! (Video)

Elizabeth Plourde is talking about sunscreen that is killing the coral, sea life & is causing skin cancer.

The largest glacier in East Antarctica is being melted by warm water.

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antarctica.jpg
The ice shelf is thought to be losing between 63 and 80 billion tons of its mass to the ocean per year Reuters

Scientists at institutions in the United States and Australia have published a set of unprecedented ocean observations near the largest glacier of the largest ice sheet in the world: Totten glacier, East Antarctica. And the result was a troubling confirmation of what scientists already feared — Totten is melting from below.

The measurements, sampling ocean temperatures in seas over a kilometer (0.62 miles) deep in some places right at the edge of Totten glacier’s floating ice shelf, affirmed that warm ocean water is flowing in towards the glacier at the rate of 220,000 cubic meters per second.

These waters, the paper asserts, are causing the ice shelf to lose between 63 and 80 billion tons of its mass to the ocean per year, and to lose about 10 meters (32 feet) of thickness annually, a reduction that has been previously noted based on satellite measurements.

This matters because more of East Antarctica flows out towards the sea through the Totten glacier region than for any other glacier in the entirety of the East Antarctic ice sheet. Its entire “catchment,” or the region of ice that slowly flows outward through Totten glacier and its ice shelf, is larger than California. If all of this ice were to end up in the ocean somehow, seas would raise by about 11.5 feet.

“This ice shelf is thinning, and it’s thinning because the ocean is delivering warm water to the ice shelf, just like in West Antarctica,” said Don Blankenship, a glaciologist at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the study’s co-authors. Blankenship was not on the research vessel, but he and his colleagues helped the Australia-based researchers with understanding the contours of the seafloor so they could plan their field investigations into where warm and deep waters could penetrate.

The lead author of the research, published Friday in Science Advances, was Stephen Rintoul, a researcher with the University of Tasmania in Hobart and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or CSIRO. Totten glacier is, more or less, due south of Australia and relatively close to one of Australia’s bases of operations on the ice continent, Casey Station.

Rintoul and his colleagues, on board the government vessel Aurora Australis, were able to navigate extremely close to the Totten ice shelf edge in January of 2015, when an opening in the sea ice allowed the ship to get in closer than one ever has before. This is how they were able to gather the required ocean observations — and to detect the warm water.

The researchers took ocean measurements at 10 separate points along the floating Totten ice shelf. And at two of the stations, they found that the ocean underneath was extremely deep. There was a six-mile-wide canyon at a depth of 600 meters (nearly 2000 feet) that then branched into two narrower canyons, each reaching greater depths. One of them was over 800 meters deep (more than 2,500 feet) the other was 1,097 meters deep (3,600 feet). Each was about one to two miles wide.

It was in these deep undersea canyons, and a few shallower areas as well, that warm ocean water, called modified circumpolar deep water, was flowing inward powerfully towards Totten glacier. And the previously measured loss of ice from the ice shelf matched closely with the amount of heat that the ocean was delivering, the paper found.

Granted, calling the waters reaching Totten at great depths “warm” is a bit of a misnomer —they are slightly below the freezing point. However, at the extreme pressures and depths involved, the freezing point of ice itself lowers, making these waters more than warm enough to melt ice.

Measuring the warm water reaching Totten was, until now, a missing puzzle piece in determining what’s happening with the glacier. Prior research, for instance, had shown the presence of cavities that warm water could enter, and scientists believed this was occurring because they had observed Totten thinning and lowering in the water. But as NASA glaciologist Eric Rignot put it to the Post at the time, “it is one thing to find potential pathways for warm water to intrude the cavity, it is another to show that this is actually happening.”

Now, scientists are showing that it’s actually happening.

The researchers are interested in Totten not only because of the massive global consequences were it to be destabilized, but also because it could help solve a riddle from the Earth’s past. Researchers have calculated that during previous warm eras, such as during the Pliocene, about 3 million years ago, global temperatures not too much higher than those that exist today led to radical amounts of sea level rise. It’s too much of an ocean surge for the loss of West Antarctica, alone, to explain — so they’ve been going looking to East Antarctica to close the sea-level budget from those eras.

And it turns out that like West Antarctica, East Antarctica features several regions — including Totten — where massive amounts of ice rise above the ocean level, but are grounded deep below it. In the case of Totten glacier, its so-called “grounding line,” which is where the glacier begins to lift off the seafloor and to float, forming an ice shelf with an ocean cavity beneath it, is nearly a mile and a half deep.

Granted, none of this means that Totten is contributing much to sea-level rise — yet. The large loss of ice from the ice shelf doesn’t raise seas because that ice is already afloat. But the weakening of the ice shelf is troubling because the shelf holds back Totten’s more dangerous ice, and when it goes it will allow that ice to flow more easily into the ocean.

For Blankenship, the new study, combined with past aircraft and satellite research on Totten, puts the remaining piece in place and suggests an increasingly clear picture of ocean-driven melt that could lead to growing instability.

“The whole process is here and going on,” he says. “This is the biggest potential contributor in East Antarctica. It needs to be understood.”

Things Doctors Never Tell You About Cholesterol. Here’s the Truth: Cholesterol is vital, not evil

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Why Cholesterol Is Not the Cause of Heart Disease

Dr. Rath’s discovery of the vitamin C-scurvy-heart disease connection and our latest research shed new light on the role of cholesterol in heart disease.
LpaLDL

LpaLDLHigh blood cholesterol can lead to cardiovascular deposits only when combined with the loss of the integrity and functional weakness of the blood vessel walls. Weakened arterial wall structure triggers the need for its biological repair. The most common cause of vascular wall dysfunction and an increase in vascular endothelial gaps allowing for infiltration of large biological molecules (Lp(a) and LDL) is a long-term deficiency of vitamin C and other micronutrients (vitamin B6, Copper, Lysine, etc.). These micronutrient deficiencies can lead to insufficient production or impaired structure of collagen, the protein which forms the basic structure of blood vessels. Such structural weakness is first manifested in the blood vessel wall areas exposed to highest mechanical stress, such as the coronary arteries. In this situation, vascular deposition of blood lipoproteins, in particular Lipoprotein(a), works like a biological “plaster” reinforcing factor.
According to this new understanding, high blood cholesterol is a “consequence” of, not the “cause” of, heart disease.
This concept also answers why heart attacks are the leading cause of death in humans, but are an exception in the animal world. All animals, with only a few exceptions, produce large quantities of vitamin C in their bodies (2-20 grams/day) to support optimum collagen production necessary for maintaining healthy and elastic blood vessels. A high level of endogenous vitamin C production protects animal arteries from damage and development of atherosclerotic deposits. This is why animals do not die of heart attacks, even if some, such as bears, have very high blood cholesterol levels (600 mg/dl). In contrast, humans lost the ability of vitamin C production, and its daily dietary intake is often insufficient to assure optimum vascular health. For humans, the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for vitamin C is 60-80 mg/day.

A summary of Dr. Rath’s groundbreaking discovery is outlined in a PDF Cholesteral discovery, and it is also presented in his popular book Why Animals Don’t Get Heart Attacks, But People Do!

Cardiovascular Research at the Dr. Rath Research Institute

Our research in the area of cardiovascular disease focuses on the health-beneficial effects of vitamins and essential nutrients in various aspects of cardiovascular disease, its initiation, and stepwise progression.
Our researchers developed a new mouse model (GULO-/-;Lp(a)+) which has two characteristics of human metabolism: the expression of Lipoprotein(a) and the lack of endogenous vitamin C (ascorbate) production. We showed that dietary deficiency of vitamin C resulted in increased serum levels of Lp(a). Moreover, chronic suboptimal intake of vitamin C and its complete depletion (scurvy) leads to Lp(a) accumulation in the vascular wall and parallels atherosclerotic lesion development. Our results confirm that dietary vitamin C deficiency is a risk factor for atherosclerosis independent of dietary lipids. Our scientific work supports the concept that Lp(a) functions as a mobile repair molecule compensating for the structural impairment of the vascular wall, a morphological hallmark of hypoascorbemia and scurvy.

Among other projects, we have been investigating the role of nutrients in controlling abnormal migration and the growth of smooth muscle cells in the arterial wall, a hallmark of atheroma development and growth. We are also studying how nutrient synergy can be applied to curb inflammation leading to arterial wall cell damage and blood leukocyte recruitment. We have shown that nutrient synergy is more effective than individual antioxidants in decreasing oxidative stress associated with endothelial and smooth muscle cell damage, and lipid and lipoprotein oxidation and their intra-arterial wall accumulation.

A significant part of our efforts have been concentrated on applying nutrient synergy in controlling pathological aspects of the remodeling of the extracellular matrix in the arterial wall. Such pathology leads to lost integrity and weakening of arterial wall structure, impaired arterial contractility, lipoprotein retention and oxidation, pathological behavior of arterial wall resident cells, increased plaque instability and the risk of its rupture.

Our other research areas include the aspects of sex hormone imbalance in the development of cardiovascular disease, as well as the cardiovascular aspects of impaired glucose metabolism (diabetes mellitus). Our research findings have contributed to a better understanding of nutrient synergy in controlling uterine smooth muscle tissue contractility (important in preventing miscarriage) and in autoimmune mechanism-mediated impairment of bronchial smooth muscle tissue contractility (asthma).

6 business books to read if you want to be successful

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Whether you’re looking for a new job or just wanting to move up in your current career, there are loads of books filled with advice to help you out.

Even though there are plenty of newer reads, sometimes you just can’t beat the classics.

Here’s a roundup of six old-school career books.

Yes, your parents may have read them, too; but the advice is so legendary — and useful — they’re still worth downloading today:

Amazon

1. ‘The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success‘ by Nicholas Lore

Are you looking for a new job? Maybe you’re just hoping to reignite your passion for your current position? Whichever it may be, “The Pathfinder,” originally published in 1998, is the book for you. Lore aims to help you find a career path that feels good and fulfills you.

With over 100 self-assessments, this isn’t a book you’ll be able to read and forget about. It puts you to work! In fact, it’s pretty similar to having your own personal career coach!

Already read this classic? Read another! Try “I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was” by Barbara Sher with Barbara Smith.

Amazon

2. ‘Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales From the World of Wall Street‘ by John Brooks

Did you know: Warren Buffett lent his copy of “Business Adventures” to Bill Gates. Gates went on to say that it was “the best business book [he has] ever read.” That means it must be good, right? Originally published in 1969, it includes many drama-filled stories about Wall Street that will keep you entertained all the way through.

But it’s more than just salacious: You’ll get the inside scoop on the world of finance with a look at the 1962 stock market crash, the fall of a major brokerage firm, and more.

Want more personal work-related stories? Read “Mistakes I Made at Work: 25 Influential Women Reflect on What They Got Out of Getting It Wrong” by Jessica Bacal.

Amazon

3. ‘Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement‘ by Tony Robbins

In this book, Robbins takes readers, step-by-step, through how to perform at your best, become a leader, gain self-confidence, find the five keys to wealth and happiness, and more.

Although this book was originally published in 1987, people still use it to achieve their goals and find success.

Want more tips on how to be your best? Read “Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind” by Jocelyn Glei.

Amazon

4. ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People‘ by Dale Carnegie

Perhaps the ultimate career classic, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is touted on its cover as the “only book you need to lead you to success.”

It’s packed with advice to teach you how to handle your relationships with others and the six ways to get people to like you without making them feel manipulated. You’ll even learn how to win people over to your way of thinking!

Have you already read this book? Try: “How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships” by Leil Lowndes.

Amazon

5. ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People‘ by Stephen Covey

First published in 1990, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” has gone on to sell over 25 million copies worldwide. And for good reason! Covey shares techniques to help you adopt the very traits that make others so successful.

To learn these elusive habits, you must first accomplish what he refers to as a “paradigm shift.” Covey says this shift will change how you act regarding productivity, time management, positive thinking, and more.

Already read this classic? Try “Leave Your Mark: Land Your Dream Job. Kill It in Your Career. Rock Social Media” by Aliza Licht.

Amazon

6. ‘Think and Grow Rich‘ by Napoleon Hill

Although this book isn’t necessarily career-specific, “Think and Grow Rich” is about finding success and wealth in your life. This 1930s classic — yep, your grandparents may have read it, too — shares the secret some of the wealthiest people of that time used to earn their money.

If you’ve ever wondered how men like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford earned their fortunes, this book has the answer! In addition, Hill also outlines his 13-step program to finding success.

Already read the original version? Check out “Think and Grow Rich for Women” by Sharon Lechter.

Yes, it’s important to stay on top of the latest career trends and thinking. But in the spirit of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” I highly recommend checking out one of these classic reads. They’re still in print today because the advice is just that good.

Scientists Discover How to Implant False Memories 

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MIT researchers Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu recently made history when they successfully implanted a false memory into the mind of a mouse. The proof was a simple reaction from the rodent, but the implications are vast. They placed the furry little creature inside a metal box, and it froze, displaying a distinct fear response. The mouse was reacting as if it had received an electrical shock there, when it hadn’t at all.

What makes it more riveting is that their success was considered a long-shot. The hypothesis was that not only could they identify those neurons associated with encoding memory, but could essentially rewrite one. Experts say that this an impressive feat which helps uncover more of the mystery of how memory operates. Though neuroscientists have considered such a possibility for years, they never thought this kind of experiment could actually work.

This breakthrough was possible due to research out of Oxford which discovered exactly how short-term memories are transferred into long term memory. But the MIT researchers took it into an entirely new direction. Memories are actually stored in not one area, but certain groups of neurons known as engrams. Ramirez and Liu came together in 2010 and designed a new method for exploring live brains, to identify specific engrams. The neuroscientists used a newly minted technique called optogenetics, which employs lasers to stimulate genetically engineered cells designed to react to them.

Areas where the memory resides are highlighted in purple.

The scientists and their team injected a biochemical cocktail into the brains of special, genetically engineered mice. The cocktail contained a gene with a light sensitive protein called channelrhodopsin-2. This was injected into the dentate gyrus—the area in the hippocampus where memory is encoded. Then they implanted filaments into the mice’s skulls. These acted as a conduit for a laser. The researchers found they could reactivate a memory by flooding certain neurons with laser light.

In order to prove that they could identify certain engrams, they reactivated a memory associated with fear. After the experiment, the mice’s brain tissues were examined under a microscope. Those associated with a specific memory glowed green due to the injected chemical. Liu compared it to a “starry night” where you could view “individual stars.” The engram that glowed was associated with an electroshock to the foot, and so triggered the startle or fear response.

Now that they knew which engram was associated with fear, they set up an experiment to test it. After injecting the cocktail into the same region of the brain, they placed the mouse inside a metal box. This box was safe. The mouse was able to explore for 12 whole minutes with no problems. The next day, it was put in a different box but received an electric shock instead. These two boxes differed in color, shape, and scent, researchers assure. The following day, the same mouse was placed inside the safe box again, and would have remembered it as safe. But researchers activated the foot shock memory using a laser, initiating the fear response.

Networks of neurons lighting up.

Is a similar procedure conceivable for humans? According to Ramirez, “Because the proof of principle is there…the only leap left between there and humans is just technological innovation.” Today, over 20 labs around the world are building upon this research. In fact, a French team recently implanted false memories in the brains of sleeping mice. Howard Eichenbaum, the director of the Center for Neuroscience at Boston University, is going in another direction. He is working on recreating longer and larger memories, those experiences which unfold over time.

There are many positive implications such as the ability to take the bite out of or even erase those painful memories attached to PTSD, depression, and other psychiatric disorders. There may be applications for Alzheimer’s, reverse engineering memories lost to the disease. It even holds promise for those suffering from substance abuse disorder, allowing them to forget their addiction.

Even so, there are negative connotations too. As our memory is the glue which holds our identities together, wouldn’t erasing a memory, even a bad one, indelibly erase a portion of the person themselves? Though painful, our negative memories define us. Of course, those hobbled by depression or haunted by PTSD could come to see it as a saving grace. Today, scientists aim not to erase technically, at least at first, but to rewrite a memory in a manner that promotes, rather than impedes, mental health. But the potential is there. There are further implications.

A neuron associated with the fear response is illuminated.

What about implanting false memories in witnesses to change the outcome of trials? Many in the past have been convicted when they were innocent, exonerated later due to the advent of DNA testing. False memory implantation might lead to a new and ruthless form of witness tampering. Films like Inception or Eternal Sunshine could become a reality. But if you erase the memory of a bad ex from your past, do the lessons you’ve learned about love go with it?

There are implications in terms of state control and even the sovereignty of one’s own mind. Such a procedure under a totalitarian regime could manufacture false patriotism, even wipe clean the memories of revolutionaries in order to make them loyal to the state. The ability to actually do this is thought to be four to five decades away. Yet the federal research group DARPA says it is a mere four years from a brain implant capable of altering PTSD-related memories. Theoretically, such technology could be used to silence dissent.

Meanwhile, a psychology professor at New York University, Dr. Gary Marcus, has proposed inserting a microchip into the human brain to allow for a human-internet interface, making the mind a search engine as well as improving one’s memory. Perhaps you could backup files to prevent tampering. But wouldn’t it also allow a hacker to say hack your brain? An important ethical dialogue must begin now. A superstructure and strict protocol must be erected. And yet, chances are those operating outside of its boundaries may still violate it. Though this technique shows promise, strong regulation and oversight must be enacted to prevent human rights violations and miscarriages of justice.

Are cobra snakes that venomous?

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In India, 50,000 people die every year from snakebites. The Indian cobra is one of India’s “big four” serpent killers. Its venom is a lethal mix of neurotoxin and cardiotoxin.

REad more: http://www.businessinsider.com/cobra-snake-bite-venom-2016-12?IR=T

How Not to Be Ignorant about the World: Hans Rosling, the Most Influential Man You’ve Never Heard Of.

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Numbers bombard us constantly and few can really grasp their significance and weight when we start talking about matters in millions and billions. Swedish Professor Hans Rosling became famous for taking giant, unwieldy data sets and making them emotionally and intellectually relevant. He is as close as we’d had to a statistics superstar (perhaps until this election cycle’s breakout stat guru Nate Silver).

A frequent TED speaker, Rolling has been listed numerous times as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by magazines such as Time. What he communicates has been so crucial in matters of public health that he’s been consulted by world leaders and famous execs like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Melinda Gates offered this praise for his consultations with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:

“To have Hans Rosling as a teacher is one of the biggest honours in the world.”

Rosling’s background is in medicine. He’s a physician and epidemiologist, working from 1970s to 90s in Africa, where he studied epidemics like the paralyzing konzo as well as the effects of poverty on the creation of diseases.

“Extreme poverty produces diseases. Evil forces hide there,” says Rosling. “It is where Ebola starts. It’s where Boko Haram hides girls. It’s where konzo occurs.”

He has also investigated a “cassava” outbreak in Cuba, meeting Fidel Castro in 1992.

“Then, two men walk in with guns, and in comes Fidel Castro,” he remembers. “My first surprise was that he was so kind, like Father Christmas. He didn’t have the attitude you might expect from a dictator.”

But it was Rosling’s gift for communicating data that has perhaps been his most wide-reaching contribution. He specializes in unique, very accessible presentations of hard-to-grasp macro-level sets of data on key topics like health and poverty. This work led to the creation of his non-profit Gapminder Foundation which developed “moving-bubble” stat-presentation software Trendalyzer, eventually acquired by Google in 2007.

Check out Hans Rosling’s great video for BBC where he shows how the health and economic status of 200 countries changed dramatically in the last 200 years:

Centering his work on the elimination of global poverty, Rosling thinks it is entirely possible to achieve that objective, as proportionally the numbers living in extreme poverty have been declining by more than half in the past 25 years. For his somewhat positive and can-do attitude on this and other issues, he has been criticized for minimizing the scope of certain tragedies. But he sees his mission in communicating how problems can be solved, so showing progress and possibilities is a key tactic towards that.

Here’s an interesting TED talk by Roslling on how religions affect birth rates:

 

Staff should start work at 10am to avoid ‘torture’ of sleep deprivation

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Forcing staff to start work before 10am is tantamount to torture and is making employees ill, exhausted and stressed, an Oxford University academic has claimed.

Before the age of 55, the circadian rhythms of adults are completely out of sync with normal 9-to-5 working hours, which poses a “serious threat” to performance, mood and mental health.

Dr Paul Kelley, of Oxford University, said there was a need for a huge societal change to move work and school starting times to fit with the natural body clock of humans.

Experiments studying circadian rhythms have shown that the average 10-year-old will not start focussing properly for academic work before 8.30am. Similarly, a 16-year-old should start at 10am for best results and university students should start at 11am.

Dr Kelley believes that simply moving school times could raise grades by 10 per cent. He was formerly a head teacher at Monkseaton Middle School, in North Tyneside, where he changed the school start day from 8.30am to 10am and found that the number of top grades rose by 19 per cent.

Similarly, companies who force employees to start work earlier are also likely to be hurting their output, while storing up health problems for staff.

A man in bed reaching for his alarm clock
Dr Paul Kelley said work and school starting times should fit with the natural body clock 

“This is a huge society issue,” Dr Kelley told the British Science a Festival in Bradford. “Staff should start at 10am. You don’t get back to (the 9am) starting point till 55. Staff are usually sleep-deprived. We’ve got a sleep-deprived society.

“It is hugely damaging on the body’s systems because you are affecting physical, emotional and performance systems in the body.

“Your liver and your heart have different patterns and you’re asking them to shift two or three hours. This is an international issue. Everybody is suffering and they don’t have to.

“We cannot change out 24-hour rhythms. You cannot learn to get up at a certain time. Your body will be attuned to sunlight and you’re not conscious of it because it reports to hypothalamus, not sight.

“This applies in the bigger picture to prisons and hospitals. They wake up people and give people food they don’t want. You’re more biddable because you’re totally out of it. Sleep deprivation is a torture.”

Sleep deprivation has been shown to have major impacts on health. Just one week with less that six hours’ sleep each night leads to 711 changes in how genes function.

Lack of sleep impacts performance, attention, long-term memory and encourages drug and alcohol use.

It also leads to exhaustion, anxiety, frustration, anger, impulsive behaviour, weight gain, risk-taking, high blood pressure, lower immunity, stress and a raft of mental health conditions.

Neuroscientists say teens are biologically predisposed to go to sleep at around midnight and not feel fully awake and engaged until around 10am.

Dr Kelley said that almost all students were losing around 10 hours of sleep a week because they were forced to get up too early.

“Just by changing the start time you can improve quality of life for whole generations of children,” he added.

“There are major societal problems that are being caused by that. But the opportunities are fantastic. We have an opportunity here to do something that would benefit millions of people on Earth.”

Teenager's sitting their GCSE's
Teenagers are being allowed to start school at 10am to see if it improves their GCSE scores

Tens of thousands of children are starting school at 10am in a ground-breaking experiment by Oxford to prove that later classes can improve exam results.

GCSE students from more than 100 schools across England will take part in the four-year project based on scientific evidence which suggests teenagers are out of sync with traditional school. The team is hoping to publish findings in 2018.

A Department of Education spokesman said: “We have given all schools the freedom to control the length of the school day because they are best placed to know what’s best for their communities.

“Allowing more time for supervised study and extra-curricular activities has been shown to benefit disadvantaged pupils in particular by giving them access to purposeful, character-building activities, which is why we are helping schools offer a longer day.”

Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher regularly survived on four hours’ sleep a night

Sleep habits of those at the top

  • As Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher famously slept for just four hours a night during the week, though she took regular daytime naps.
  • When asked how many hours sleep people need, Napoleon Bonaparteis said to have replied: “Six for a man, seven for a woman, eight for a fool.”
  • US President Barack Obama is understood to only sleep for six hours a night.
  • Business magnate Donald Trump boasts just three to four hours sleep nightly.
  • Sir Winston Churchill managed on just four hours sleep a night during World War Two – but insisted on a two hour nap in the afternoon.
  • Scientist Albert Einstein reportedly slept for 10 hours a night, plus daytime naps.
  • Bill Gates, former chief executive of Microsoft, says he needs seven hours of sleep to “stay sharp”.

Synthetic supermicrobe will be resistant to all known viruses.

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artist's impression of e coli covered in lots of pink hairs

It’s not finished yet. But if it is, it will be the greatest feat of genetic engineering by far.

A team in the US is part-way towards recoding the E. coli bacterium to work with a different genetic code from all other organisms on Earth. That means making more than 62,000 changes to its genome.

“We take on projects other groups say are impossibly expensive – or just plain impossible,” says the team leader George Church at Harvard Medical School in Boston, for whom this project is one step towards even more ambitious creations.

What you need to know: Understanding CRISPR – The gene-editing revolution on our doorstep
The recoded E. coli could have all kinds of industrial uses. It should be better in several ways: resistant to all existing viruses, unable to swap genes with other organisms and capable of producing proteins unlike any found in nature.

Building blocks
Normal proteins have the 20 natural amino acids as their building blocks. The recoded E. coli will make proteins with up to four additional artificial amino acids. “That’s going to challenge the creativity of the scientific community,” says team member Marc Lajoie at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Making an organism virus-resistant gives it a huge advantage. But the recoded E. coli will be unable to grow unless fed one of those artificial amino acids, so it shouldn’t spread in the wild. “Biocontainment is our number one priority,” says Church.

Church ultimately wants to make farm animals and human stem cells that are resistant to all viruses. Such cells could be used for producing vaccines and for transplants. It is very difficult to make people resistant to viruses, cancer and ageing, Church says, but we could create tissues and organs for transplant with these properties.
Genetically engineered microbes are ever more widely used in industry. At first, only simple changes could be made. In the 1970s, for instance, a human gene was added to E. coli so it could be used to “brew” insulin for people with diabetes.

Nowadays, brewers are adding or tweaking dozens of genes, to create microorganisms that can churn out everything from saffron and vanilla flavouring to antimalarials and opium.

Trouble brewing?
But the worry is that drastically modified microbes will escape from factories or swap genes with wild microbes. Imagine, for instance, if a microbe churning out a drug like opium started colonising the guts of people.

Viruses can also wreck batches of growing microbes if they infect the vats. “Companies don’t like to talk about it,” Church says.

In theory at least, changing microbes’ genetic code could solve these problems. In a gene coding for a protein, each sequence of three DNA letters – called a triplet codon – either specifies which amino acid should be added to the chain next, or tells the protein-making machinery to stop when a protein is complete.

There are four different DNA letters (A, T, G and C) so there are 64 different triplet codons (AAA, AAT and so on). But because there are only 20 amino acids, there’s a lot of redundancy. For instance, the codons TAG, TAA and TGA all mean stop.

If every TAG in a genome was altered to TAA or TGA, it wouldn’t alter any of the protein recipes. But it would free up the TAG codon, so it could be used for specifying an artificial amino acid.

Church was part of a group that has already done this. In 2013, they finished editing the genome of one strain of E. coli to replace every one of the 314 instances of TAG.

Last year, the biologists went on to show that the freed-up TAG could be made to specify any one of several artificial amino acids. What’s more, they altered genes so that essential proteins would work only if they included the artificial amino acid at certain points. This meant these strains of E. coli could only grow if their culture medium contained those artificial amino acids. In other words, these bacteria cannot escape from labs or factories.

Piece by piece
Now Church’s team has revealed their progress towards on a far more ambitious project: changing seven codons in E. coli. Because this requires making more than 62,000 DNA changes, it cannot be done by gene editing. Instead, the team designed the genome on a computer and then synthesised the DNA in short pieces around 2000 DNA letters long.

These short segments have been stitched together to make 87 longer segments 50,000 DNA letters long. The final step will be to put them together to create a complete, 4-million-letter long E. coli genome. But before they do that, Church and his team are checking that all the genes still work, by inserting these segments into a living bacterium and deleting the equivalent sequence.

Gene editing – bring it on: Meet genetic engineering pioneer George Church
As expected, changing codons sometimes has lethal effects. For instance, one change to an essential gene altered the binding of a protein that controls gene activity. But so far only 13 deadly flaws have been found in the 2200 genes that have been checked so far – just over half the total – and these have all been fixed.

When will it be finished? The betting pool among the team ranges from 4 months to 4 years, says Church. But unexpected problems could yet put a spanner in the works.

If it does succeed, Church’s team won’t be the first to create a bacterium with a genome synthesised by scratch. That honour goes to a team at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, California.

Minimal genome
But Venter’s team created a microbe with a stripped down, minimal genome. Altering the genetic code as Church’s team are doing is far more challenging.

Although seven codons have been altered, the peculiarities of the genetic code mean only four could be used to specify artificial amino acids. “The genetic code is weird,” says Lajoie.

The recoded E. coli will be made freely available to other researchers. Companies will be able to license it on a non-exclusive basis, Church says.

Are synthetic humans on the way? Artificial genome could create a ‘blank slate’ human template
And many may want this since changing seven codons should be enough to make it completely resistant to all viruses. Viruses cannot make their own proteins, but instead hijack the machinery of the cells they infect. A recoded E. coli will still start producing viral proteins if it is infected, but there will be so many errors in those proteins that no new viruses will be produced.

Making animals resist viruses in the same way will be a far greater challenge. The human genome is 6 billion letters long compared to the 4 million of E. coli, for instance.

But a group of biologists including Church are trying to raise $100 million to synthesise the entire human genome from scratch.

The initial plans do not include altering the genetic code, but if this Human Genome Project-Write goes ahead, it would pave the way for doing so.

Watch the video. URL:https://youtu.be/1lD3IZ9rmsc