A diverse collection of expressive meditations to help people let go of mental overload, emotional turmoil, and physical stress.
Monthly Archives: April 2010
Public Employee of the Year Awards!
Public Employee of the Year
See Also: Federal pay ahead of private industry by USA Today
Khyber Club owner in Philly defends rights of Nazis to dress as they please, And he’s a Jew
Even NeoNazis rights to Free Speech should be Defended
From Eric Dondero:
There isn't a blog in the entire blogosphere that is more passionately anti-Socialist, including anti-National Socialist than Libertarian Republican (besides perhaps Right Guy, and Pam Geller's Atlas Shrugs), .
But being a libertarian sometimes means defending some truly disgusting and revolting behavior. We libertarians believe that individuals should be free to do as they please, so long as they are not infringing upon the rights of others. This includes wearing totally offensive attire.
Three NeoNazis were attacked after a Punk Show at the legendary Khyber Club in Philadelphia over the weekend. But the club owner expressed a rather libertarian view, defending their right to dress as they wish. Khyber's Stephen Simmons is Jewish.
From Philly.com via Conservative Focus blog:
Khyber owner Stephen Simons, who was not at the show, said he had been told that the crowd inside "largely ignored and mocked" the three men.
But after they exited the club, on 2nd Street near Chestnut, they were attacked by a group of up to 50 people, he said.
[A blogger described] "Nazi-inspired symbols" and as wearing "camouflaged combat pants; woolen, WWII-era coats adorned with SS emblems and authentic Third Reich hats with Nazi insignias emblazoned atop them."
"I guess being on 2nd Street in SS uniforms on a Friday night is a way to incite a semi-riot," Simons said.
"As a Jew, I am totally offended by them wearing the uniforms," he said. "But, as an American citizen, I totally uphold their right to dress however they want to dress."
For the record, I too am Jewish. Simons is correct. The three individuals represent a reprehensible ideology. But they should be free to wear Nazi clothes without the fear of being physically attacked.
The Libertarian Right View on Arizona’s Immigration Law
"We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act. But decades of inaction and misguided policy have created an unacceptable situation." -- Arizona Governor Jan Brewer
by Jim Lagnese, Right Guy
With all the hoopla and hand wringing going on about the immigration bill just passed in Arizona, a Rasmussen poll shows that 70% of Arizonans support the bill.
This is no surprise. While the hollywood and left wing set decry the law, they do not have to live in Arizona where the consequences of illegal immigration are mote dire than getting your landscaping done cheaply.
There are real dire consequences there, like murder, rape and robbery, and also the toll on social services like healthcare and education. We are talking about illegal aliens. A wave of Obama's magic wand with amnesty will not change the negative impact on our society. All it will do is legitimize an underclass and create a constituency for democrats. No matter what they say, that is the real reason behind amnesty.
Arizona is the first to put it's foot down, with Sheriff Joe Arpaio leading the charge. I expect other states to follow suit.
For the record, I firmly believe legal immigration is a good thing. All of us got here from immigration, including so called native americans. The culture we have had was one of excellence, freedom and responsibility coupled with opportunity. This means we welcome those that take initiative, work hard, obey the laws, and live here responsibly. The reward is that people from other countries not only live a better life here and contribute, but they also move up socio-economically. This doesn't happen so well in other countries.
Furthermore, allowing illegal immigration or granting amnesty does not send the best here. There is no standard, just that if you can walk across a desert, you can come here. What about a Korean Physicist or Indian Computer Scientist that does everything by the book and has to wait years? It's hardly just or fair to give someone a leg up just because they live next door and it suits the democrats political purposes.
The bottom line is that while we need to adjust our immigration laws to allow more people to come and live here permanently, and to get the best, we also have a responsibility to those already here to ensure public safety, and justice to those who do things by the book. American Exceptionalism demands that we do so, not lay out our flag as a door mat to those who couldn't give a shit.
Libertarian Party candidate for Arizona Governor Bruce Olsen, praises opponent Republican Jan Brewer for Immigration crack-down
From Eric Dondero:
Two days ago, upon the signing of legislation cracking down on illegal immigration by Republican Governor Jan Brewer, the leading Libertarian candidate for Governor in the State, Bruce Olsen issued the following statement (via IPR):
Well, Governor Brewer , your making it tough to run against ya. Im proud to call you Governor. This will be the first step , other states must follow suit. Now its up to the county Sheriffs to do their job. The federal government will attempt to stomp on this legislation. All legal Arizonans must stand with our Governor , the legislature, and our law enforcement agencies. Its a great day for Arizona. The message is loud and clear. If your here illegally, leave. Kuddo’s Governor Brewer!
He received immediate criticism for his statement from Party insiders, including his opponent for the LP nomination, radical Libertarian and perrennial candidate Barry Hess:
Bruce displays the thought process I see all the time in disgruntled Republicans. He makes it clear that he has no interest in forwarding the libertarian philosophy...
Olsen shot back yesterday with a post on his blog, the aptly named Arizona Sentinel:
For those of you that are of the Libertarian Party, let me direct you to a book written by your VP Nominee in 2008, Wayne Allen Root. I think we can assume that since Wayne made it to the number two slot, it stands to reason that the majority of the Libertarian party agrees with his position on illegal immigration. After reading Waynes book” The Conscience of a Libertarian” I knew I had found a political home.
Let me suggest that you buy this book and pay particular attention to Chapter 21 page 223-233. Let me also suggest that you join a minuteman group, go to the border, participate in several events. After 5-6 events, I will bet a big mac and fries that your views will be different than they are today. By the way, I like mine with cheese. I can also tell you that having traveled all over the state since September collecting signatures from registered Libertarians. The views expressed above by nay sayers are not common in rural Arizona. I've received emails from registered Libertarians from all over the state, supporting border security. And the Independants are all over making our borders secure and removing illegal aliens from our states.
Olsen and Barry Hess will face off in a primary and Olsen is expected to prevail in the primary given his support statewide by constitutionalists, right libertarians and those concerned with immigration. They will face off in the primary, but not at the Libertarian Party convention.
Note - Olsen is a Veteran of the United States Military (bio). He served in both the US Navy as a crew chief and then later did a tour in the US Air Force. Hess's website bio lists no Military Service, rather he was an English major in college.
Thanks Everyone
The State Convention for the Libertarian Party of Indiana held over this past weekend was our most successful one to date! The light of Liberty is alive and well in the Hoosier state. Now, we need your help again. Check out the candidates page on our site and support the Libertarian candidate in your area! [...]
Should State Agencies compete for funds?
Recently Gov. Daniels (R) renewed his call for state agencies to reduce their operating budgets by up to 15% in the face of Indiana’s growing budget shortfalls. States like California are already in dire financial straights. Libertarian-leaning Reason Magazine suggests that perhaps state programs need to start “budgeting for outcomes”.
Sarcopenia, Metabolic Syndrome, and Overnutrition
This paper outlines the overlap between the ways in which both processes of aging and eating too much lead to the loss of muscle mass and strength: "Sarcopenia, which is defined by the loss of skeletal muscle mass, predisposes skeletal muscle to metabolic dysfunction which can precipitate metabolic disease. Similarly, overnutrition, which is a major health problem in modern society, also causes metabolic dysfunction in skeletal muscle and predisposition to metabolic disease. It is now the prevailing view that both aging and overnutrition negatively impact skeletal muscle metabolic homeostasis through deleterious effects on the mitochondria. Accordingly, interplay between the molecular pathways implicated in aging and overnutrition that induce mitochondrial dysfunction are apparent. Recent work from our laboratory has uncovered the stress-responsive mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) phosphatase-1 (MKP-1) as a new player in the regulation of metabolic homeostasis in skeletal muscle and mitochondrial dysfunction caused by overnutrition. These observations raise the intriguing possibility that MKP-1 may function as a common target in the convergence between sarcopenia and overnutrition in a pathophysiological pathway that leads to a loss of skeletal muscle mitochondrial function." Going the other way, you might recall that calorie restriction helps to maintain muscle mass with age.
View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v2/n3/full/100135.html
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
A Look at Progress in Cancer Vaccines
Nature looks at the chaotic state of bringing cancer vaccines to trial: "Many first-generation cancer vaccines such as PANVAC, a pancreatic cancer vaccine, were deemed safe but failed to demonstrate that they significantly slowed the progression of cancer. Because cancer-associated antigens - such as those used in Provenge - are also found at low levels in healthy tissue, their ability to trigger a powerful immune response may be blunted. A second generation of vaccines, designed to provoke a stronger immune response, is under development, with some scientists now focusing on antigens that are found only on tumour cells. ... Over the past decade, researchers have reached a deeper understanding of how tumours actively suppress immune responses in their immediate environment, which can dampen responses to cancer vaccines. To overcome this, some therapies currently in development combine the vaccine with chemotherapies that are designed to counteract this immune suppression. ... For some in the field, the struggle to create effective cancer vaccines conjures up memories of the long battle to develop antibody-based therapies, which are now a mainstay of the biotechnology industry. There, too, a series of clinical-trial failures initially soured the field's reputation ... We realized you just have to test a lot of drugs to find one that works, and it's the same for a cancer vaccine."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100421/full/4641110a.html
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
Beetroot Juice May Boost Stamina
(HealthDay News) -- Beetroot juice can boost physical stamina and increase exercise endurance by up to 16 percent, a new British study shows.
The researchers found that nitrate in beetroot juice reduces oxygen uptake to a degree that can't be achieved by any other means. The findings could benefit endurance athletes, elderly people and those with cardiovascular, respiratory or metabolic diseases, the study authors suggest.
The study included eight men, aged 19 to 38, who drank 500 milliliters a day of organic beetroot juice for six consecutive days. They then completed a series of tests on an exercise bike. The same tests were repeated after the men drank the same amount of a placebo (blackcurrant cordial) for six days.
After drinking the beetroot juice, the men were able to cycle for an average of 11.25 minutes -- 92 seconds longer than after consuming the placebo drink. The men also had a lower resting blood pressure after they drank the beetroot juice, the researchers found.
The study was published Aug. 6 in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Read more...
Biomarker Studies Could Realize Goal of More Effective and Personalized Cancer Medicine
When President Richard Nixon launched the war on cancer in his January 1971 State of the Union, he called for "the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon." Yet nearly 40 years and $100 billion in federally funded cancer research later, it seems the lunar landing was a much less daunting task.
Sessions on CSC Therapeutics at AACR10
There were two poster sessions on Cancer Stem Cell Therapeutics at the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). The sessions, Cancer Stem Cell Therapeutics 1 and Cancer Stem Cell Therapeutics 2, took place on the morning and afternoon of April 20, 2010 [FriendFeed entry].
Two posters presented in the 2nd session have been highlighted in a news release. See: Alchemia’s HyACT Technology Enhances the Killing of Cancer Stem Cell Populations in Breast and Colorectal Cancer, Business Wire, April 20, 2010 [FriendFeed entry]. One of these is Poster #4293: Evaluation of activated CD44 as a biological target in the eradication of breast cancer stem cells, by Vera J Evtimov and Tracey J Brown [Presentation Abstract]. The other is Poster #4278: HA-Irinotecan targeting of activated CD44 is an effective therapy for the eradication of putative colon cancer stem cells [Presentation Abstract].
3-gram reduction in daily salt intake would decrease coronary heart disease, stroke, and death
The U.S. diet is high in salt, with the majority coming from processed foods. Reducing dietary salt is a potentially important target for the improvement of public health.
Reducing dietary salt by 3 g per day (1200 mg of sodium per day) is projected to reduce the annual number of new cases of CHD by 60,000 to 120,000, stroke by 32,000 to 66,000, and myocardial infarction by 54,000 to 99,000 and to reduce the annual number of deaths from any cause by 44,000 to 92,000. Such an intervention would be more cost-effective than using medications to lower blood pressure in all persons with hypertension.
The cardiovascular benefits of reduced salt intake are on par with the benefits of population-wide reductions in tobacco use, obesity, and cholesterol levels.
References:
Projected Effect of Dietary Salt Reductions on Future Cardiovascular Disease. NEJM, 2010.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/362/7/590
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/362/7/590
Image source: Single-serving salt packets. Wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License.
Posted at Clinical Cases and Images. Stay updated and subscribe, follow us on Twitter and connect on Facebook.
Fish out of pills – Pharmaceuticals in drinking water
Fish out of pills - Pharmaceuticals in drinking water, NationalGeographic, April 01, 2010. Design Editor Oliver Uberti shows what went into the making of an information graphic about pharmaceuticals that make their way into our watersheds and end up in fish. Click here to see the full-size illustration.
A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans. The concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, far below the levels of a medical dose but the long-term consequences to human health are unknown.
The pharmaceutical industry points out the amount of medication in the water supply is the equivalent of a single pill in an Olympic-size swimming pool. Still, if you a have glass of water in Philadelphia, you are drinking tiny amounts of at least 56 medications.
References:
Antibiotics, anticonvulsants, antidepressants and sex hormones in drinking water of 41 million Americans http://goo.gl/HiXa
AP Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water. Associated Press.
Drugs in water causing troubling problems to fish, wildlife. CNN.
In U.S., bottled water lacks drug safeguards. CNN.
In U.S., bottled water lacks drug safeguards. CNN.
Pollution: Fish Pharm. NGM Blog Central.
Posted at Clinical Cases and Images. Stay updated and subscribe, follow us on Twitter and connect on Facebook.
John C. Miller
These amazing pieces were created by visual & audio artist John C. Miller.
A bit from his artist statement:
“The human anatomy is the main focus of my work. My work explores the organs, tendons, tissues and muscles in their varied internal environments… The focus for several years now has been the heart’s interior. The series, Interiors, attempts to explore the blood flow and constriction of flow. More specifically it is inspired by my open heart surgery at age five…”
I seriously recommend checking out all of his work!
"Anatomical Art: Dissection to Illustration," Exhibition Curated by Marie Dauenheimer, Arlington, Virginia
"We have the gift of language, the gift of making memories in words and pictures," Aziz says. "The bodies are gone, but by making these memories, we, to an extent, resurrect them. This is the antidote to death."--David Montgomery, "In gross anatomy, Howard U.'s Ashraf Aziz sees nothing but grace," Washington Post, Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Marie Dauenheimer, friend, friend of Morbid Anatomy, and Observatory lecturer past and future (more on that future lecture--which is entitled "Three Unique Medical Museums in Northern Italy" and will take place on Saturday May 1--soon!) has curated an exhibition of artworks inspired by the cadaver as part of a year-long collaboration between Howard's College of Medicine and the Art Institute of Washington. The Washington Post just ran a really lovely and in-depth story about the exhibition and the collaboration; it was such an interesting article that I have posted it here in its entirety:
In gross anatomy, Howard U.'s Ashraf Aziz sees nothing but grace
By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2010At 71, Ashraf Aziz has spent half his life cutting open cadavers and initiating medical students at Howard University into the pungent mysteries of human anatomy. He likes the heads. Extracting the muscles of chewing is one of his specialties. There is little about the body that can faze him anymore.
And yet, here in a little art gallery across the street from the Rosslyn Metro station, this most eloquent and loquacious man of science has been rendered almost speechless.
"I, I'm really a little bit -- " he stammers.
He sounds like a first-year medical student about to be overcome in the embalming room.
"I'm sorry," he says.
Tears well in his eyes.
Surrounded by red-wine-sipping artists and art students on a recent evening, the anatomist is contemplating their renderings of the human body. The nudes not only have no clothes, they also have no skin. The subjects are cadavers -- cadavers from the lab where Aziz teaches gross anatomy.
"I'm so deeply moved," he says. He never thought he would find such kindred spirits.
This exhibit, "Anatomical Art: Dissection to Illustration," is just one outcome of an unusual year-old collaboration between Howard's College of Medicine and the Art Institute of Washington. The cross-disciplinary ping-pong continues strong in both directions:
There is talk of enlisting animators from the art school to enhance lessons on locomotion at the medical school. An Art Institute sculptor presented Aziz with some fancy modeling clay, which he used to take an impression from the inside of a chimpanzee skull as part of his comparative chew-muscle research.
Meanwhile, at the art school, to such curriculum standards as "life drawing" -- portraits of live, nude models -- has been added the informal option of, well, dead drawing, in the cadaver lab. Some artists have taken to exploring -- and memorizing the Latin names of -- complex muscle groups that invisibly influence the supple motions of the living torso.
Perhaps most striking has been seeing the life and career of one of Washington's singularly passionate scientists come full circle.
The son of amateur artists in the Indian diaspora, growing up in Tanzania, Aziz, too, once wanted to become an artist. But his poet-carpenter father and his henna-painter mother feared there wasn't a secure future in art. So Aziz became a zoologist and a human anatomist, an associate professor at Howard.
The choice was apt, for the study of anatomy has embraced art -- and vice versa -- at least since Leonardo da Vinci performed dissections and drew the results. From "Gray's Anatomy," the seminal 19th-century illustrated text, to latter-day sensational exhibitions of plasticized cadavers such as "Bodies" and "Body Worlds," the dissected corpse continues to fascinate, repulse, instruct and inspire.
Aziz believes that when science and art diverge, both lose. He draws his own illustrations. To conclude his regular medical lecture on the hand and forearm, he has had traditional Indian tabla drummers demonstrate the dexterity of the muscles and tendons that his students will tweeze in the cadaver lab. In 1999 he co-wrote a 19-page academic journal article in which he cited Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Marshall McLuhan, along with medical authorities. The ostensible subject was to defend the relevance of the "real" cadaver in medical education despite the rise of digital "cyber cadavers" -- but really the piece was a stirring meditation on authenticity. Away from the lab he reads poetry and writes essays on popular Indian cinema.
Aziz's dream has been to see what a new generation of artists would bring to a new generation of cadavers. Even if the results were nothing revolutionary, he thought, the process itself would be illuminating for all involved: Where life has ended, insight might begin.
Anatomy for art students
As Aziz was casting his thoughts from the realm of science to art, an artist named Marie Dauenheimer was thinking in the other direction.In 1979, five years after Aziz began teaching at Howard, Dauenheimer was sitting in a class, Gross Anatomy for Artists, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. What a concept, she thought: The students would spend a couple of hours in a studio life drawing, then cross the hall to the anatomy lab. They would shuttle back and forth from living to dead, surface to structure, skin-deep to skinless.
"That was a turning point for me," she says.
She got a master's in medical illustration at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she took gross anatomy and dissected a cadaver. "I loved every minute of it," she says. "To explore the human body and then being able to draw it."
She built a career as a freelance illustrator -- drawing surgical procedures, molecular structures, physiological processes. Four years ago she joined the faculty of the Art Institute, teaching classes in life drawing and human and animal anatomy.
Last year she conceived a summer sabbatical to realize one of her own dreams. She wanted to conjure those epiphanic student days in the anatomy lab. She proposed to develop a more powerful way to teach principles of anatomy to art students.
One of the best friends and collaborators of her husband, anthropologist Samuel Strong Dunlap, was none other than Aziz. Dauenheimer paid a visit to Howard. She expected just to have coffee with Aziz, and brainstorm how they might work together. Aziz surprised her.
"Your cadaver is waiting for you," he said.
He encouraged Dauenheimer to do the dissection herself, with help from Dunlap. All summer she cut and drew, inviting art students and colleagues to make their own sketches and sculptures. That work is in the exhibit.
The anatomist imposed one condition on the artist.
"He had dibs on the head," Dauenheimer says.
The source
Dissection puts Aziz in a philosophical mood. In the lab one recent afternoon, he grasps the left hand of a cadaver and holds it up for inspection. The flexible assemblage of bones, muscles and tendons rests in his rubber-gloved palm."Look at this here," he says, manipulating the sinewy thumb.
"What Aristotle called the organ of organs, the opposing thumb."His rubber fingers glide down the flayed forearm, and he lightly presses and pulls stringy cords that cause the thumb and fingers to move, puppetlike.
"The body is organized in layers of muscles," he says. "Look at the silvery tone of the tendons! Beauty is not skin-deep, it is deep-deep. . . . The cadaver opens itself up to reflection. This is where data and information lead to knowledge and insight."
Aziz is standing in the center of a vast space filled with 46 stainless steel platforms, each supporting a cadaver in a blue or white body bag and connected to black ventilation tubes.
The atmosphere is not morbid, but reverent. The bodies have been donated by the families of the dead. For six months, students work with the cadavers. Then the remains are cremated and returned to the families, or interred in a plot in Beltsville. No personal details about the cadavers are revealed to the students. The cadaver that Dauenheimer dissected and that most of the artists drew belonged to a 94-year-old woman.
Before dissection, the bodies are embalmed in a room next to the lab. The blood is drained out and preservative chemicals are pumped in. During dissection, the skin is peeled back and fat and other tissue is cleared away to reveal the purple-brown muscles and iridescent tendons.
In Aziz's view, the anatomy lab is not the end of anything, it is the beginning of something.
"The cadaver is a medical student's first patient," he says.
It is like a message from the physician who signed the death certificate to a new generation of doctors. "The novice begins training where the trained physician leaves off," he wrote in his manifesto celebrating the cadaver.
A cadaver is unwieldy. It will not fit in your laptop for later reference. Hence the need to depict and describe it -- the artist's role.
Yet Aziz stakes his worldview on this point: Just as the medical student must begin his initiation with the original flesh and guts, not with a pristine digitized reflection, so the artist -- engaged in creating yet another reflection -- must begin at the source.
Moment of insight
Pen and sketchbook in hand, Geoffrey Moore was paying close attention to the skinned and stripped lower leg and foot of the cadaver. He noticed that one of the toenails was still tinted with polish. Fuchsia. A sudden powerful consciousness of this departed life flooded his imagination."I had to stop drawing for a minute," recalls Moore, 21, a third-year animation student.
Then he went back to work. He was trying to solve an artistic problem. In his animation exercises at the institute, he had been having trouble with the "toe-roll" or "foot-roll" motion, when an animated character is taking strides. Now in the lab he was drawing -- and mentally absorbing -- those muscles and tendons that make that roll possible.
"We're all kind of differently shaped, but motion is universal," Moore says. He was accustomed to rendering the surfaces of things, where appearances vary so much. The cadaver lab reveals the universal in the particular. "Instead of seeing the differences, you see the similarities in our bodies," he says. "The more you learn about what's under the skin, the more you can apply that when you see someone walking down the street."
Moore's sketches of the leg and foot hang in the exhibit organized by Dauenheimer, along with the work of eight other students and professional artists.
At the exhibit opening, having recovered his composure, Aziz walks from picture to picture, pausing delightedly at each. Courtly and cheerful, he wears a sports coat and a striped tie with little skulls on it. He is joined by his wife, Barbara Dunn, an oncologist with the National Cancer Institute. They live in Mount Pleasant.
"This is fantastic," Aziz says to Charl Ann Brew, who has made an eight-inch sculpture of a gesturing cadaver whose bones and muscles are revealed to different degrees on different limbs. Aziz lingers over the head.
"You have the forehead muscle . . . the smile muscle . . . then the kissing muscle right there . . . and in order to give a French kiss, the muscle there to get deep suction. Exquisite detail!"
Brew, an art instructor, says the project has inspired her to look deeper. "I'm memorizing a different sent of muscles every quarter."
As he walks through the exhibit, Aziz cites a few lines by the Urdu poet Ghalib, about how the awareness of death adds intensity to life: "If the candle did not immolate itself in all its brilliant colors, the night would not be illuminated."
These are his most important anatomy lessons.
"We have the gift of language, the gift of making memories in words and pictures," Aziz says. "The bodies are gone, but by making these memories, we, to an extent, resurrect them. This is the antidote to death."
The exhibition--which looks not-to-be-missed--will be on view until May 8th at the Art Institute of Washington Gallery (“Gallery 1820”), 1820 N. Fort Myer Drive, Street Level, Arlington, Virginia. You can read the entire article in context on the Washington Post website by clicking here. You can see the photo gallery--from which the above image was drawn--by clicking here. You can find out more about the show by clicking here.
Image: Nikki Kahn-The Washington Post; Caption reads: "The son of amateur artists in the Indian Diaspora and growing up in Tanzania, Aziz, too, once wanted to become an artist. But his poet-carpenter father and his henna-painter mother feared there wasn't a secure future in art. So he became a zoologist and a human anatomist, and is now an associate professor at Howard. Here, Aziz spritzes a solution on a cadaver to keep it moist at the gross anatomy lab in Northwest Washington." You can see the full photo essay by clicking here.
Beetroot Juice May Boost Stamina
(HealthDay News) -- Beetroot juice can boost physical stamina and increase exercise endurance by up to 16 percent, a new British study shows.
The researchers found that nitrate in beetroot juice reduces oxygen uptake to a degree that can't be achieved by any other means. The findings could benefit endurance athletes, elderly people and those with cardiovascular, respiratory or metabolic diseases, the study authors suggest.
The study included eight men, aged 19 to 38, who drank 500 milliliters a day of organic beetroot juice for six consecutive days. They then completed a series of tests on an exercise bike. The same tests were repeated after the men drank the same amount of a placebo (blackcurrant cordial) for six days.
After drinking the beetroot juice, the men were able to cycle for an average of 11.25 minutes -- 92 seconds longer than after consuming the placebo drink. The men also had a lower resting blood pressure after they drank the beetroot juice, the researchers found.
The study was published Aug. 6 in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Read more...
Longevity Meme Newsletter, April 26 2010
LONGEVITY MEME NEWSLETTER
April 26 2010
The Longevity Meme Newsletter is a weekly email containing news, opinions, and happenings for people interested in aging science and engineered longevity: making use of diet, lifestyle choices, technology, and proven medical advances to live healthy, longer lives. This newsletter is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. In short, this means that you are encouraged to republish and rewrite it in any way you see fit, the only requirements being that you provide attribution and a link to the Longevity Meme.
To subscribe or unsubscribe from the Longevity Meme Newsletter, please visit http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/
______________________________
CONTENTS
- The Revealed Slow Aging Hypothesis
- The State of Innate Immune Therapies for Cancer
- Quantifying the Harm Done by Cytomegalovirus
- Recent Longevity Study Results
- Discussion
- Latest Healthy Life Extension Headlines
THE REVEALED SLOW AGING HYPOTHESIS
An interesting idea, albeit hard to prove one way or another at this stage of our progress in biotechnology:
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/04/the-revealed-slow-aging-hypothesis.php
“To what degree might we attribute the accelerating rise in human life span in recent centuries to an increased survival rate for people who bear gene variants that (a) harm the prospects for survival to adulthood in low-technology settings, but (b) lead to a longer life expectancy for those who do survive?”
THE STATE OF INNATE IMMUNE THERAPIES FOR CANCER
The transplant of leukocyte or granulocyte immune cells has shown great promise in destroying even advanced cancer, but little work is being done to bring this from the laboratory to the clinic:
“You might recall that people were enthused a few years back over the work of researcher Zheng Cui, who showed that (a) one breed of lab mice shug off cancer because their immune cells are different in ways that enable them to kill cancer dead, (b) transplanting those immune cells into more vulnerable mice also kills cancer dead, and (c) this same state of affairs exists in humans. Somewhere, someone has an immune system that can kill your cancer. If you could find them and undergo a transplant of leukocyte or granulocyte immune cells, the evidence to date suggests that this would be a very effective therapy. As put by the folk at Livly, a non-profit startup focused on bringing this form of therapy into the clinic: Results like this suggest to us that innate immunotherapy is the only approach that has shown the promise to permanently cure advanced cancer. Ironically, it is also one of the most neglected areas in contemporary research.”
QUANTIFYING THE HARM DONE BY CYTOMEGALOVIRUS
Nearly all of us have cytomegalovirus (CMV) lurking in our bodies by the time we are old, and it is one of the reasons why our immune systems decline dramatically with advancing age:
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/04/quantifying-the-harm-done-by-cytomegalovirus.php
“Most people are exposed to this mild persistent herpesvirus over the course of their life; it causes few obvious symptoms, but over time more and more of your immune system resources become uselessly specialized to fight it. An immune cell dedicated to remembering the signature of CMV is unavailable for other uses – and eventually you run out of cells to protect you from new threats, destroy cancers, and clear out senescent cells.
“A CMV fixation should be thought of as yet another form of malfunction or misconfiguration of the immune system, to be put in the same broad category as autoimmune diseases. Some of the research efforts directed towards repairing autoimmune disease may in the future also be turned towards repairing a CMV-specialized immune system. For example, researchers have successfully rebooted the immune system in human patients in recent years: completely destroying and then recreating it in order to remove all immune cells with errant programming. Another possibility is the use of targeted cell killing technologies that can pick out and destroy CMV-specialized immune cells based on their surface markers.”
RECENT LONGEVITY STUDY RESULTS
Some examples from recent studies of genetic components of human longevity:
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/04/a-few-recent-longevity-study-results.php
“More genetic and other studies of long-lived people are taking place these days, which means a faster flow of results than has been the case in past years. Part of that can no doubt be attributed to an increased interest in manipulating the aging process in the scientific community, as well as the continually falling cost of the tools needed to run such studies. … There are an unknown but almost certainly large number of small contributory factors making up the genetic component of human longevity, and they are being uncovered at an accelerating pace. What does this all mean for you and I? Probably very little. We will not gain greatly extended longevity through tinkering with our haplotypes – by the time genetic tweaks are happening in the clinic, we will be old. Changes to metabolism that make a year or two’s difference in life span across an entire lifetime will be next to worthless to someone already in late life, and already seriously damaged by aging. We should welcome the advances in practice and understanding of human biology and aging, because all such information will at some point be useful, but we must also recognize that genetic alterations to slow aging are not the path to extending our own lives. We must instead focus on the repair of age-related changes, such as that proposed by the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence.”
http://www.longevitymeme.org/topics/strategies_for_engineered_negligible_senescence.cfm
DISCUSSION
The highlights and headlines from the past week follow below. If you have comments for us, please do send e-mail to newsletter@longevitymeme.org
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Reason
reason@longevitymeme.org
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LATEST HEALTHY LIFE EXTENSION HEADLINES
EXERCISE AND ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE (April 23 2010)
http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4695
More evidence for the benefits of exercise: “Researchers from the University of Washington conducted a six-month clinical trial with 33 participants, 17 of whom were women. All showed early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and were between the ages of 55 and 85. The experiment participants underwent a six-month intensive aerobic training program, spending 45 minutes to an hour four times each week on a stationary bicycle or treadmill. At the end of the six months, the participants saw improvement in mental agility, while the control group showed no improvement. Researchers are planning further studies to conduct larger and longer duration trials, following volunteers for years instead of months, for more conclusive data as to whether exercise can prevent full-blown cases of Alzheimer’s. … Other similar studies have been conducted, where researchers have measured the health benefits of resistance training for women between the ages of 65 and 75 who are most at risk for developing Alzheimer’s. In one study, after one year of training, women who had completed the training showed better scores on mental acuity and conflict resolution tests than those who didn’t.”
POLITICS AND HISTORICAL ASPIRATIONS TO ENGINEERED LONGEVITY (April 23 2010)
http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4694
Possibly an example of overthinking the issue at the JET, but the section on Finot illustrates that our era does not enjoy a monopoly on rational thinking about extending the healthy human life span: “The beginning of the modern period in the pursuit of radical human enhancement and longevity can be traced to fin-de-siecle/early twentieth-century scientific and technological optimism and therapeutic activism. The works of several authors of the period – Fedorov, Stephens, Bogdanov, Nietzsche and Finot – reveal conflicting ideological and social pathways toward the goals of human enhancement and life extension. Each author represents a particular existing social order, and his vision of human advancement may be seen as a continuation and extension of that order. Therefore, the pursuit of life extension may be considered a fundamentally conservative (or conservationist) enterprise. … First, these adaptations may question the claims of a particular ideology for supremacy in the promotion of life-extension and life-enhancement. The claims that atheism, capitalism or hedonism are more conducive to the pursuit of longevity, can be countered by historical examples where religion, socialism or asceticism were the foundations. No ideological system seems to have a monopoly, however strongly it asserts that it constitutes the rock-solid ground for this pursuit. It may be that, rather than providing such a foundation, political ideologies enlist the hope for life extension to increase their appeal.”
DECIPHERING REGENERATION (April 22 2010)
http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4693
From the Telegraph, news of continuing incremental progress in understanding the mechanisms of regeneration in lower animals: “research into how Planarian worms can regrow body parts – including a whole head and brain – could one day make it possible to regenerate old or damaged human organs and tissues … We want to be able to understand how adult stem cells can work collectively in any animal to form and replace damaged or missing organs and tissues. … Any fundamental advances in understanding from other animals can become relevant to humans surprisingly quickly. If we know what is happening when tissues are regenerated under normal circumstances, we can begin to formulate how to replace damaged and diseased organs, tissues and cells in an organised and safe way following an injury caused by trauma or disease. This would be desirable for treating Alzheimer’s disease, for example. With this knowledge we can also assess the consequences of what happens when stem cells go wrong during the normal processes of renewal – for example in the blood cell system where rogue stem cells can result in Leukaemia.”
BECAUSE SOMEONE HAS TO STATE THE OBVIOUS (April 22 2010)
http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4692
Life is getting better: “Human society has changed much over the last centuries and this process of ‘modernization’ has profoundly affected the lives of individuals; currently we live quite different lives from those forefathers lived only five generations ago. There is difference of opinion as to whether we live better now than before and consequently there is also disagreement as to whether we should continue modernizing or rather try to slow the process down. Quality-of-life in a society can be measured by how long and happy its inhabitants live. Using these indicators I assess whether societal modernization has made life better or worse. Firstly I examine findings of present day survey research. I start with a cross-sectional analysis of 143 nations in the years 2000-2008 and find that people live longer and happier in today’s most modern societies. Secondly I examine trends in modern nations over the last decade and find that happiness and longevity have increased in most cases. Thirdly I consider the long-term and review findings from historical anthropology, which show that we lived better in the early hunter-gatherer society than in the later agrarian society. Together these data suggest that societal evolution has worked out differently for the quality of human life, first negatively, in the change from a hunter-gatherer existence to agriculture, and next positively, in the more recent transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society. We live now longer and happier than ever before.”
TISSUE ENGINEERED SKIN PROGRESSES (April 21 2010)
http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4691
Spanish scientists “have generated artificial human skin by [tissue] engineering based on agarose-fibrin biomaterial. The artificial skin was grafted onto mice, and optimal development, maturation and functionality results were obtained. This pioneering finding will allow the clinical use of human skin and its use in many laboratory tests on biological tissues – which, additionally, would avoid the use of laboratory animals. Further, this finding could be useful in developing new treatment approaches for dermatological pathologies. … The skin created in the laboratory showed adequate biocompatibility rates with the recipient and no rejection, dehiscence or infection was registered. … The experiment [is] the first to create artificial human skin with a dermis made of fibrin-agarose biomaterial. To this date, artificial skin substitutes were elaborated with other biomaterials as collagen, fibrin, polyglycolic acid, chitosan, etc. These biomaterials [added] resistance, firmness and elasticity to the skin. … Definitively, we have created a more stable skin with similar functionality to normal human skin.”
AN UPDATE ON SCENT AND LONGEVITY (April 21 2010)
http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4690
A number of studies in recent years have suggested that calorie intake is not the only thing that can alter metabolism to change longevity in lower animals: “Specific odors that represent food or indicate danger are capable of altering an animal’s lifespan and physiological profile by activating a small number of highly specialized sensory neurons … Recent research in model organisms and in humans has shown that sensory experiences can impact a wide range of health-related characteristics including athletic performance, type II diabetes, and aging. Nematode worms and fruit flies that were robbed of their ability to smell or taste, for example, lived substantially longer. However, the specific odors and sensory receptors that control this effect on aging were unknown. Using molecular genetics in combination with behavioral and environmental manipulations, [researchers have identified] carbon dioxide (CO2) as the first well-defined odorant capable of altering physiology and affecting aging. Flies incapable of smelling CO2 live longer than flies with normal olfactory capabilities. They are also resistant to stress and have increased body fat. To many insects, including fruit flies, CO2 represents an ecologically important odor cue that indicates the presence of food (e.g. rotting fruit or animal blood) or neighbors in distress (it has been implicated as a stress pheromone). Indeed, this group of researchers previously showed that merely sensing one’s normal food source is capable of reversing the health and longevity benefits that are associated with a low calorie diet. They now establish that CO2 is responsible for this effect.”
HUMANITY+ SUMMIT AT HARVARD (April 20 2010)
http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4689
The Humanity+ Summit will be held in June at Harvard: “The H+ Summit is part of a larger cultural conversation about what it means to be human and, ultimately, more than human. This issue lies at the heart of the transhumanism movement … The H+ Summit is a two day event that explores how humanity will be radically changed by technology in the near future. Visionary speakers will explore the potential of technology to modify your body, mind, life, and world. What will it mean to be a human in this next phase of technological development? How can we prepare now for coming changes? We foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition and overcoming such constraints as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, lack of resources, and our confinement to the planet earth. The possibilities are broad and exciting. The H+ Summit will provide a venue to discuss these future scenarios and to hear exciting presentations by the leaders of the ongoing H+ (r)evolution.” Amongst the confirmed speakers is biomedical gerontologist and engineered longevity advocate Aubrey de Grey, whose presentations are always well worth attending.
STOPPING METASTASIS (April 20 2010)
http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4688
Cancer would be far less threatening a condition if metastasis could be reliably blocked: “Like microscopic inchworms, cancer cells slink away from tumors to travel and settle elsewhere in the body. Now, [researchers report] that new anti-cancer agents break down the looping gait these cells use to migrate, stopping them in their tracks. Mice implanted with cancer cells and treated with the small molecule macroketone lived a full life without any cancer spread, compared with control animals, which all died of metastasis. When macroketone was given a week after cancer cells were introduced, it still blocked greater than 80 percent of cancer metastasis in mice. … macroketone targets an actin cytoskeletal protein known as fascin that is critical to cell movement. In order for a cancer cell to leave a primary tumor, fascin bundles actin filaments together like a thick finger. The front edge of this finger creeps forward and pulls along the rear of the cell. Cells crawl away in the same way that an inchworm moves. Macroketone latches on to individual fascin, preventing the actin fibers from adhering to each other and forming the pushing leading edge.”
ANOTHER VIEW OF WHAT TO DO ABOUT AGING (April 19 2010)
http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4687
An interesting paper: “The idea that bodies wear out with age is so ancient, so pervasive, and so deeply rooted that it affects our thought in unconscious ways. Undeniably, many aspects of aging, e.g., oxidative damage, somatic mutations, and protein cross-linkage are characterized by increased entropy in biomolecules. However, it has been a scientific consensus for more than a century that there is no physical necessity for such damage. Living systems are defined by their capacity to gather order from their environment, concentrate it, and shed entropy with their waste. Organisms in their growth phase become stronger and more robust; no physical law prohibits this progress from continuing indefinitely. Indeed, some animals and many plants are known to grow indefinitely larger and more fertile through their lives. The same conclusion is underscored by experimental findings that various insults and challenges that directly damage the body or increase the rate of wear and tear have the paradoxical effect of extending life span. Hyperactive mice live longer than controls, and worms with their antioxidant systems impaired live longer than wild type. A fundamental understanding of aging must proceed not from physics but from an evolutionary perspective: The body is being permitted to decay because systems of repair and regeneration that are perfectly adequate to build and rebuild a body of ever-increasing resilience are being held back. Regardless of the reason for this retreat, it should be more fruitful to focus on signaling to effect the ongoing activity of systems of repair and regeneration than to attempt repair of the manifold damage left in the wake of their failure.”
STEPS TOWARDS CONTROLLING REGENERATION (April 19 2010)
http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4686
Spurring regeneration by use of signalling molecules is a promising field of medical development. Here is an example from the Technology Review: “scientists have identified a pair of peptides that can stimulate new cell growth and improve heart function in rodents induced to have heart attacks. [Researchers are] now testing one of the peptides, periostin, in pigs induced to have heart attacks. Because these animals have hearts similar in size to humans, they provide a good model for testing new therapies prior to human clinical trials. Preliminary results show that injecting the peptide into the pericardium, the lining around the heart, seems to help. … [This] approach is, to some degree, in competition with stem-cell therapy, which is already being tested in humans. Scientists are working on different ways of harvesting and delivering stem cells to patients with heart disease, and clinical trials have so far yielded mixed results. Transplanted cells appear to have difficulty surviving and integrating into their new environment. In fact, some scientists suggests that benefit of cell transplants comes from the cells ability to stimulate innate growth. Triggering this process with peptides [may] be a simpler method of treatment of certain conditions such as cardiomyopathy [an enlarged heart] where the problem is lack of viable, contractile heart muscle cells.”
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If you have comments for us, please do send email to newsletter@longevitymeme.org.
Decoding the Skies
National Geographic has a very interesting program coming up on Thursday (29 April). The episode is called Decoding the Skies and it explores our ancestors relationship with the night sky. Earlier generations (and not all that many back) depended on knowing what was going on with the night sky. I always find it interesting to learn about those ties because sadly we as a population have lost the knowledge and traditions of our ancestors. How many people do you think could tell you what phase the moon is in right now? Not too many I bet and that is pretty basic stuff.
It’s a very interesting episode, I was pretty amazed at some of things I didn’t know.
On another programming note: The Discovery Channel is airing a four part series called “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking”. This should be a real treat and you know I will have my recorder all set up, hopefully it will hold together!. You can see more about it here.
Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace! | Cosmic Variance
Okay, that’s a bit alarmist. But Stephen Hawking has generated a bit of buzz by pointing out that contact with an advanced alien civilization might not turn out well for us backward humans. In fact, we should just try to keep quiet and avoid being noticed.
“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said.
Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact.
He explained: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”
To which I can only say: yeah. Sounds about right. If aliens were sufficiently enlightened to be utterly peace-loving and generous, it would be great to have back-and-forth contact with them. But it’s also possible that they would simply wipe us out — not necessarily in a Mars Attacks! kind of invasion, but almost without noticing (as we have done to countless species here on Earth already). So how do you judge the risk? (Dan Drezner gives the interplanetary-security perspective.)
It’s like the LHC doomsday scenarios, but for real — the sensible prior on “murderous aliens” is much higher than on “microscopic black hole eats the Earth.” Happily, a face-to-face chat seems unlikely anyway. Nothing wrong with listening in, on the unlikely chance that the aliens are broadcasting their communications randomly throughout the galaxy. Besides, a little advance warning wouldn’t hurt.
Update: I had forgotten that we had already discussed this a couple of years ago. Old bloggers tend to repeat themselves.
