Monthly Archives: June 2010

Obama Says Climate Legislation Needs a Limit on Carbon, or Maybe Not

Posted on by

Protestors carry a large black piece of plastic symbolizing an oil spill as they take part in the 'Hands Across The Sand Miami' event sponsored by several groups protesting offshore oil drilling, which they say presents danger to oceans, marine wildlife fishing industries and coastal economies in Miami Beach, Florida June 26, 2010.

President Obama met with Senators today to talk about climate change and energy.  According to The Hill,

Leading Senate advocates of climate change legislation emerged from a White House meeting proclaiming President Barack Obama offered firm support for including greenhouse gas curbs in the broad energy package slated for Senate debate this summer.

“The president was very clear about putting a price on carbon and limiting greenhouse gas emissions,”  Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said outside the White House after the 90-minute meeting between Obama and a bipartisan group of about 20 senators.

The Senators felt sure the Obama was very clear about a price on carbon.  But Obama himself wasn’t as sure.

Obama told the senators that “he still believes the best way for us to transition to a clean energy economy is with a bill that makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses by putting a price on pollution.”

But the White House statement then adds: “Not all of the Senators agreed with this approach, and the President welcomed other approaches and ideas that would take real steps to reduce our dependence on oil, create jobs, strengthen our national security and reduce the pollution in our atmosphere.”

Read more here. Why would he welcome “other approaches”?   This is Obama’s biggest fault on this issue — he welcomes ideas that are not supported by science.  Does anyone else remember when Candidate Obama and was saying we need to transition off oil and fossil fuels and put a price on carbon and base our energy policy on science, not politics?  Maybe I dreamed the whole thing.  I continue to be disappointed in Obama’s lack of strong, urgent leadership on climate change and getting us off coal and oil.  It’s not that it can’t be done, so something else is holding him back, and it’s  green, and flat, and occasionally crisp.  See hint on the right.

Senator Voinavich did his part and represented the official Republican line on climate change legislation today:  They will obstruct it, dismiss it, and do whatever it takes to block it.  Dear Republicans, isn’t it about time you did something good for your country, instead of trying to block everything that would be helpful to current and future generations? We are getting really weary of this obstruction.  According to The Hill:

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) said Tuesday that the White House meeting President Barack Obama hosted with a bipartisan group of senators demonstrated that broad climate change legislation is probably dead.  “I believe today’s meeting at the White House sent a clear [...]

In Expensive Tulum, Campers Can Pitch a Tent for Free on Santa Fe Beach

Posted on by

Tulum, Mexico, once a little-known village of fishermen and rubber plantations on the Yucatan’s Caribbean coast, has become one of Mexico’s prime tourist hot spots over the past few years. Straddling the border between Riviera Maya and the Costa Maya, Tulum initially attracted visitors to see their ruins, the only ancient Mayan city built directly on the ocean. Wave after wave of tourists descended upon the archeological site, walked through the temples and ended up high upon the oceanfront cliffs, looking down at one of the most gorgeous beaches in the world. Before long, visitors were arriving as much for the beach as the ruins and development soon followed.

Pitch a tent for free at Santa Fe Beach in Tulum

Today the beach is crowded with a three-mile long tourist strip known as the Hotel Zone, where some of the most exclusive, pricey digs in the Yucatan offer everything from gourmet food to meditation and Yoga retreats. Fortunately, it’s still possible to experience Tulum the way it used to be. At the northernmost end of the Hotel Zone lies Santa Fe Beach, a wide, windswept stretch of alabaster sweeping toward a crystalline turquoise sea. Few people make it up to this end; other than the beach it offers only a few scattered bamboo cabanas without electricity and a couple of beach shack restaurants. And because of the remoteness, no one cares if you pitch a tent.

Campers at Santa Fe Beach enjoy a secluded strip of sand and a distant view of the Tulum Lighthouse

To find Santa Fe Beach, take the road to Tulum Ruins. At the entrance, instead of climbing the steps into the site, turn right onto the dirt road running parallel to the ocean and follow it for about half a mile. Walk around the chain and posts strung across the road; the Tulum Lighthouse will be behind the chain link fence on your left. Turn left onto the second sand path after the chain link fence ends; this is an unmarked public access that leads to Santa Fe Beach.

Photo Credit: Barbara Weibel
Article by Barbara Weibel of Cultural Travel with Hole In The Donut

The Brain Preservation Foundation: Better preservation through plastination

Posted on by

I've often thought that cryonics, the practice of storing tissue (namely the brain) in a vat of liquid nitrogen, may eventually come to be seen as a rather primitive and naive technique for preservation. While it may be the only current option for those hoping to capture and restore their brain states for future reanimation, cryonics as a concept may not stand the test of time. More sophisticated methods have already been proposed, including warm biostasis and plastination.

While warm biostasis remains a largely theoretical endeavor, brain plastination was recently given a considerable boost through the founding of the Brain Preservation Foundation. Launched by Accelerating Studies Foundation founder John Smart and Harvard neuroscientist Ken Hayworth, the BPF is seeking to facilitate the development of any technology that will effectively preserve the brain for eventual reanimation. While the foundation members' pet interest is in plastination, they are not married to any particular technique. As far as they're concerned, the successful development of any kind of brain preservation technology means that everyone wins.

To this end, the Foundation has launched the Brain Preservation Technology Prize – a prize for demonstrating ultrastructure preservation across an entire large mammalian brain and verified by a comprehensive electron microscopic survey procedure. Think of it as an X-Prize for brain preservation technology. The Foundation wants to encourage researchers to develop techniques “capable of inexpensively and completely preserving an entire human brain for long-term storage with such fidelity that the structure of every neuronal process and every synaptic connection remains intact and traceable using today’s electron microscopic imaging techniques.”

The current purse is for $100,000, but they expect this prize amount to increase as donors chip-in. And in anticipation of success, the BPF has created a mind uploader's bill of rights.

As noted, the BPF has a special interest in brain plastination, mostly on account of Smart and Hayworth's extensive work in this field. If you've ever seen seen a Body Worlds exhibit, then you know about plastination. It is thought that brain-state may be preserved through the chemical conversion of brain matter into a non-degradable substrate, which is why the proposed technique is also referred to as chemical brain preservation. For example, it might be possible to flood a brain shortly after death with glutaraldehyde to fix proteins, followed by osmium tetroxide to stabilize lipids and other compounds. Essentially, this process could turn a deceased brain into a chunk of plastic that will last indefinitely.

Smart envisions the day when this technology is refined and streamlined to the point where preservation may cost as little as $2,000. Not a bad price for a radically extended life.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Smart and Hayworth about their project at the Humanity+ Summit that was held in early June. As a conference attendee, I was given a tour of Harvard's Center for Brain Science Neuroimaging where Hayworth works. In his lab, Hayworth uses electron microscopy to delineate every synaptic connection from plastinated mouse brains, a process that preserves both structure and molecular level information. Essentially, while they're working to preserve and analyse mouse brains, Hayworth and his team are developing the theory and technologies required to preserve human brains.

The tour of Hayworth's lab was jaw dropping on many levels. Not only did I get a chance to see slides of brains at the nanometer scale, I got a chance to see real researchers doing real work in a real lab. It's transhumanism under construction; this wasn't airy-fairy armchair futuristic fantasy - this research is actually happening.

Hayworth speculates that scientists will produce a synapse level map of an entire human brain over the next decade. As for mind uploading from a plastic embedded brain, Hayworth believes that's about 50 years off.

Make a donation to the Brain Preservation Foundation today. Your life may depend on it.

Episodic hypertension is a strong predictor of stroke risk

Posted on by

The mechanisms by which hypertension causes vascular events are unclear. Guidelines for diagnosis and treatment focus only on underlying mean blood pressure.

In each TIA cohort in this study, visit-to-visit variability in systolic blood pressure (SBP) was a strong predictor of subsequent stroke (eg, top-decile hazard ratio [HR] for SBP 6·22), independent of mean SBP.

Maximum SBP reached was also a strong predictor of stroke (HR 15).

Visit-to-visit variability in SBP on treatment was also a strong predictor of stroke and coronary events (top-decile HR for stroke: 3·25) independent of mean SBP.

Visit-to-visit variability in SBP and maximum SBP are strong predictors of stroke, independent of mean SBP. Increased residual variability in SBP in patients with treated hypertension is associated with a high risk of vascular events.

References:

Image source: BP device used for measuring arterial pressure. Wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License.

Posted at Clinical Cases and Images. Stay updated and subscribe, follow us on Twitter and connect on Facebook.