Filipino elite fight ageing with stem cell therapy

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Cynthia Carrion-Norton gestures as she speaks during an interview at her home in Manila. Carrion-Norton flits high-heeled around Metro Manila with energy levels belying her years, thankful for a controversial treatment she highly recommends to fellow sixty-somethings. AFP

MANILA, PhilippinesCynthia Carrion-Norton flits high-heeled around Metro Manila with energy levels belying her years, thankful for a controversial treatment she highly recommends to fellow sixty-somethings.

Carrion-Norton, 66, a member of the Philippine Olympic Committee and a former undersecretary for medical tourism, credits her vitality to adult stem cell therapy.

The day I got the therapy I went to a dinner party and everyone told me: Cynthia, youre blooming!, Carrion-Norton told Agence France-Presse.

The procedure involves harvesting the patients stem cells from their own fat and injecting them into their blood, which she likened to being injected with intravenous fluid in the arm.

In a country where many elite are obsessed with anti-ageing, wealthy Filipinos are shelling out between $12,500 and $18,000 per session of stem cell therapy in the belief it will improve their overall health and make them look younger.

Rich businessmen and public officials mostly male are the most eager customers, according to Florencio Lucero, a doctor in Manila who said he started performing adult stem cell therapy in 2006.

They do it because they want to work longer, Lucero told AFP.

And then they tell their wives or girlfriends.

Lucero said Filipinos had been receiving anti-ageing stem cell treatment since the 1970s, often flying abroad to do so.

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Filipino elite fight ageing with stem cell therapy

BUYING TIME | Philippine elite fight aging with stem cell therapy

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By: Alexandra Geperle, Agence France-Presse November 6, 2013 11:55 AM

InterAksyon.com The online news portal of TV5

MANILA, Philippines -- Cynthia Carrion-Norton flits high-heeled around the Philippine capital with energy levels belying her years, thankful for a controversial treatment she highly recommends to fellow sixty-somethings.

Carrion-Norton, 66, a member of the Philippine Olympic Committee and a former undersecretary for medical tourism, credits her vitality to adult stem cell therapy.

"The day I got the therapy I went to a dinner party and everyone told me: 'Cynthia, you're blooming!" Carrion-Norton told AFP.

The procedure involves harvesting the patient's stem cells from their own fat and injecting them into their blood, which she likened to being injected with intravenous fluid in the arm.

In a country where many among the elite are obsessed with anti-aging, wealthy Filipinos are shelling out between $12,500 and $18,000 per session of stem cell therapy in the belief it will improve their overall health and make them look younger.

Rich businessmen and public officials -- mostly male -- are the most eager customers, according to Florencio Lucero, a doctor in Manila who said he started performing adult stem cell therapy in 2006.

"They do it because they want to work longer," Lucero told AFP.

"And then they tell their wives or girlfriends."

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BUYING TIME | Philippine elite fight aging with stem cell therapy

Philippine elite fight ageing with stem cell therapy

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Stem cell pills claiming to make customers "feel and look at least seven years younger" can be bought through Filipino websites for just 9,000 pesos (US$200).

Carrion-Norton, 66, a member of the Philippine Olympic Committee and a former undersecretary for medical tourism, credits her vitality to adult stem cell therapy.

The day I got the therapy I went to a dinner party and everyone told me: Cynthia, youre blooming!, Carrion-Norton told AFP.

The procedure involves harvesting the patients stem cells from their own fat and injecting them into their blood, which she likened to being injected with intravenous fluid in the arm.

In a country where many elite are obsessed with anti-ageing, wealthy Filipinos are shelling out between US$12,500 and US$18,000 per session of stem cell therapy in the belief it will improve their overall health and make them look younger.

Rich businessmen and public officials mostly male are the most eager customers, according to Florencio Lucero, a doctor in Manila who said he started performing adult stem cell therapy in 2006.

They do it because they want to work longer, Lucero told AFP.

And then they tell their wives or girlfriends.

Lucero said Filipinos had been receiving anti-ageing stem cell treatment since the 1970s, often flying abroad to do so.

Thai medical entrepreneur Bobby Kittichaiwong says he has a lucrative business catering to the Filipino elite, who pay US$20,000 to visit his Villa Medica clinic in Germany for a more controversial form of stem cell therapy.

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Philippine elite fight ageing with stem cell therapy

Annual Forum Discusses Spirituality in Mental Health

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Psychologists, Christians, and community members interested in how religious beliefs affect mental health gathered this past Friday for the Universitys annual Veritas Forum. This years forum, titled Making Sense of Mental Health, explored the combination of the physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of mentalillness.

We picked the topic in conjunction with Veritas, our mother-body organization, and we pick topics that we think are relevant to current affairs, said forum co-director Chando Mapoma 16. This year we picked disabilities and mental health because [those topics have] been in the news a lot. [Evangelical Christian pastor] Rick Warrens son killed himself, and he was mentally unstable, and thats been in the news. I also think its something thats not talked about a lot. We wanted to shed more light on it from a Christiancontext.

Mapoma organized the event along with forum director Jinsol Hyun 15, financial directors Youngbo Sim 15 and Joshua Lee 16, publicity director Jamie Jung 16, and outreach directors Tae Hee Kim 15 and Shirley Deng 14. The students worked with sponsors such as the Catholic Students Organization, Wesleyan Christian Fellowship, and the Office of Religious and SpiritualLife.

The discussion featured Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Vice Chair at Duke University Dan Blazer and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale School of Medicine Nii Addy, as well as University Director of Counseling and Psychological Services Jennifer DAndrea, who served asmoderator.

Blazer asserted that spirituality is highly tied to a psychologists approach to treating patients with mental healthissues.

Depression is at once biological, psychological, social, and spiritual, and if we try to disentangle that, we miss some very important points, Blazer said. Depression in my view is always a spiritual challenge because it has a way of undermining so much of who we are. [Medical approaches] all can be helpful, but we have to look at trying to heal the soul, as well as the psyche and thebody.

He also addressed how psychologists can incorporate this into theirwork.

Therapists need to listen to not just what seems to be on the surface, they need to be listening underneath, Blazer said. If we listen underneath, I think well hear about the spiritual, and that will enable us then to be able to work with the person more on a spirituallevel.

Questions and conversation covered a range of topics, from how to balance a spiritual and medical approach to how social media affects our ability to communicate with others. Addy explained how social media can both assist and deter the human connection necessary for thisprocess.

Ive seen people who have been able to isolate themselves more easily because of social media, Addy said. But at the same time, Ive also seen people who have been willing to share more in a social media setting and have been more willing to have other people walk them through certain situations.... Its a mixed bag, and were still trying to figure out the balance point, but there are efforts to try to use social media in positiveways.

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Annual Forum Discusses Spirituality in Mental Health

UConn professor studies spirituality with text surveys

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Published:Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Updated:Tuesday, November 5, 2013 00:11

Sociology professor Bradley Wright focused his time on studying crime only to expand his horizons and analyze the nationwide relationship between spirituality and sociological patterns.

Soulpulse, his latest research project of which he is the manager, just launched last week. An online experience sampling method study, it collects measures of willpower, spirituality, self-control and daily stresses to compile data on the relationship between all of these variables.

After signing up on soulpulse.org, users receive text messages twice a day for 14 days that direct them to a 15 to 20-question survey. These questions gather data on daily spiritual attitudes and physical influences at points during the day, such as quality of sleep, amount of exercise and alcohol consumption. The average length of time required to complete the survey is around three minutes and is designed with the ideas of simplicity and ease of use.

At the end of the two-week testing period, the reward for participants is a comprehensive review of their data that allows them to see and learn more about their spiritual mindsets. In return, the research team is given the opportunity to analyze the information that they have collected. Wright said they have already found that people report the greatest feelings of spirituality on Sundays and the least amount on Wednesdays.

A collection of three-minute surveys however, took months of collaboration across the country to complete. 18 months of planning and 10 trips to Silicon Valley were necessary, as well as a team of people who each contributed a unique skillset to the group. The Soulpulse team consists of four computer programmers, three public engagers and six academic advisors including UConn professors Crystal Park and Jeremy Pais.

Wright said that learning to run a software development project was quite difficult, confessing that he was forced to get his first smartphone for this specific purpose. However, he said with a smile the real joy of the work was getting to know and work with these people.

Although Soulpulse is officially open to collect data for the next few more years, Wright says that there is quite a bit more work to do on the project. The cost of implementation has already amounted up to $150,000, and the group is currently seeking another sponsor as they move onto the next step of analyzing the data they receive.

For the record, computer programmers are not cheap. At all, said Wright. Promoting the website to the public is another issue that the group is currently working on. Social media will be primarily used to spread awareness; for instance, John Ortberg, a prominent pastor involved with the project, has over 40,000 followers of Twitter and plans to utilize this to Soulpulses advantage.

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UConn professor studies spirituality with text surveys

There’s a traffic jam at the International Space Station

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It's a busy week in orbit at the International Space Station. With nine astronauts set to crowd the station this week, part of its crew moved a Russian transport vehicle to a different dock to make room for the new arrivals.

Three members of the six-person Expedition 37 climbed into the Soyuz TMA-09 spacecraft Friday to bring the vehicle from the Rassvet cargo and docking module to the Zvezda service module, which has another Russian docking port on the other side of the station. The maneuver began at 4:33 a.m. EDT and lasted 21 minutes.

Russia's Fyodor Yurchikhin commanded the vehicle, which also had NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano inside. Three people must go inside the Soyuz during these kinds of transfers because if something goes wrong, NASA wants to preserve the option of making an early return to Earth with a full crew on board. [Space Station Photos: Expedition 37 Mission in Orbit (Gallery)]

The move cleared the way for three new crewmembers to arrive Nov. 7. Soyuz TMA-11M Russian commander Mikhail Tyurin, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata, of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will dock at the Rassvet port six hours after launching from Kazakhstan.

Nine people in the space station will make for crowded quarters. According to NASA, this month will mark the first time since October 2009 that so many people were on the station without the presence of a space shuttle. That vehicle used to routinely dump crews of an extra six to seven astronauts on board the station for a few days. Typical space station crew numbers range between three to six people at a time.

Besides carrying the astronauts, the Soyuz will also have the Olympic torch onboard as part of a cosmic torch relay. On Nov. 9, just two days after the torch arrives on station, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy will take it outside the station as part of a spacewalk.

The torch will come back to Earth Nov. 10 when Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano fly home to cap a five-month mission in space.

Coincidentally, Yurchikhin was at the helm the last time a Soyuz moved ports on the station. The June 2010 flight went off flawlessly, but was delayed after a last-minute circuit breaker power failure in one of the space station's solar arrays. NASA usually moves these arrays out of the way to make sure that emissions from the Soyuz's thrusters don't damage the solar panels.

Yurchikhin and NASA astronauts Douglas Wheelock and Shannon Walker waited an extra orbit (about 90 minutes) inside their Sokol spacesuits. Russian mission controllers invited the crew to take off their gloves if they wanted to get more comfortable, but Yurchikhin said everyone could wait it out.

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There’s a traffic jam at the International Space Station

A traffic jam in space? Space station set to host nine astronauts.

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Three of the six current space station crew members moved a Soyuz spacecraft to a new docking port Friday to make room for another spaceship, which is set to arrive on Thursday with three additional astronauts

It's a busy week in orbit at the International Space Station. With nine astronauts set to crowd the station this week, part of its crew moved a Russian transport vehicle to a different dock to make room for the new arrivals.

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Three members of the six-person Expedition 37 climbed into the Soyuz TMA-09 spacecraft Friday (Nov. 1) to bring the vehicle from the Rassvet cargo and docking module to the Zvezda service module, which has another Russian docking port on the other side of the station. The maneuver began at 4:33 a.m. EDT (0833 GMT) and lasted 21 minutes.

Russia's Fyodor Yurchikhin commanded the vehicle, which also had NASA astronautKaren Nybergand European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano inside. Three people must go inside the Soyuz during these kinds of transfers because if something goes wrong, NASA wants to preserve the option of making an early return to Earth with a full crew on board. [Space Station Photos: Expedition 37 Mission in Orbit (Gallery)]

The move cleared the way for three new crewmembers to arrive Nov. 7. Soyuz TMA-11M Russian commander Mikhail Tyurin, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata, of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will dock at the Rassvet port six hours after launching from Kazakhstan.

Nine people in the space station will make for crowded quarters. According to NASA, this month will mark the first time since October 2009 that so many people were on the station without the presence of a space shuttle. That vehicle used to routinely dump crews of an extra six to seven astronauts on board the station for a few days. Typical space station crew numbers range between three to six people at a time.

Besides carrying the astronauts, the Soyuz will also have theOlympic torchonboard as part of a cosmic torch relay. On Nov. 9, just two days after the torch arrives on station, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy will take it outside the station as part of a spacewalk.

The torch will come back to Earth Nov. 10 when Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano fly home to cap a five-month mission in space.

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A traffic jam in space? Space station set to host nine astronauts.

NASA sees warm sea surface helped strengthen Tropical Storm 30W

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21 hours ago by Rob Gutro NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Depression 30W on Nov. 5 at 0611 UTC/1:11 a.m. EDT as it was making its way west through the South China Sea. The purple areas indicate coldest cloud tops with potential for heavy rainfall. Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the South China Sea and revealed that warm sea surface temperatures and low wind shear enabled Tropical Depression 30W to strengthen into a tropical storm.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm 30W on Nov. 5 at 0611 UTC/1:11 a.m. EDT as it was making its way west through the South China Sea. The infrared AIRS data provides valuable cloud top temperature data that indicates how high the thunderstorms are the make up the tropical cyclone. Some of those thunderstorms mostly north of the storm's center were high into the troposphere where air temperatures were colder than -63F/-52C. Cloud top temperatures in that range indicate that the thunderstorms have the potential to drop heavy rainfall.

AIRS infrared data also revealed that the sea surface temperatures are warm in the area of the South China Sea where TD30W is moving. Warm sea surface temperatures over 26.6C/80F are needed to maintain a tropical cyclone's intensity and those in the path of TD30W are warmer than that, enabling the storm to intensify through increased evaporation.

On Nov. 5 at 1500 UTC/10 a.m. EDT, Tropical Storm 30W or TS30W had maximum sustained winds near 35 knots/40 mph/64.8 kph. TS30W was located approximately 507 nautical miles/ 583.4 miles/939 km east of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, near 11.0 north and 114.5 east. TS30W was moving west at 16 knots/18.4 mph/29.6 kph.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast predicts that TS30W will make landfall as a tropical storm in southern Vietnam near the city of Nha Trang on Nov. 6 around 1200 UTC Universal Time./7 p.m. Vietnam local time.

Explore further: NASA sees Tropical Depression 30W affecting central Philippines

Tropical Depression 30W formed and moved through Visayas, Philippines. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of the depression that showed it had some potential for heavy rain while moving through ...

NASA infrared imagery revealed that bands of thunderstorms have been wrapping into the center of newborn Tropical Depression 29W, indicating it's organizing and strengthening in the Philippine Sea.

Tropical Depression 11W formed in the western North Pacific Ocean and appears to be tracking toward Luzon, in the Northern Philippines. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of the tropical depression ...

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NASA sees warm sea surface helped strengthen Tropical Storm 30W

NASA's Mars robots set to get company with India's successful launch

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November 5, 2013 01:07 PM ET

Computerworld - About 10 months from now, NASA's Mars robotic rovers and orbiters are slated to be getting some company.

The Indian Space Research Organization this morning launched a spacecraft from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre near Chennai to begin a mission to Mars.

After a 10-month journey, the spacecraft is scheduled to enter orbit around Mars and begin to study the Red Planet's atmosphere and surface. The primary goal: To gather technical information that can help Indian scientists plan for interplanetary travels.

The Indian space agency said the Mangalyaan spacecraft, will spend the next 20 to 25 days orbiting the Earth, testing itself and moving into a higher orbit where it will slingshot toward Mars.

If Mangalyaan, Hindi for "Mars Craft," reaches its destination, India will join the United States, the Soviet Union and the European Space Agency in successfully getting crafts to the planet.

Today, NASA has two robotic rovers, Curiosity and Opportunity exploring the surface of Mars, and orbiters Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter taking images, studying the Martian atmosphere and relaying data compiled by the rovers back to Earth.

Michael Braukas, a NASA spokesman, said the U.S. agency hopes the Indian effort will complement its work.

He told Computerworld on Monday that while India's Mars mission is not a cooperative one with NASA, the U.S. agency will will provide provide data from its satellites and antennas to show Indian Space Research Organization officials, for instance, Mangalyaan's position in space.

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NASA's Mars robots set to get company with India's successful launch

NASA ISS Live Stream: Watch The Soyuz Launch From Times Square Or From Home

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The ISS launch will carry three flight engineers; Koichi Wakata, from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio; and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin. The crew will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, located in Kazakhstan, aboard a Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft. The flight to the ISS will take six hours followed by a two hour docking procedure.

The three flight engineers will replace Expedition 37 crew members Luca Parmitano, from the European Space Agency, Karen Nyberg, from NASA, and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin. The three Expedition 37 members will leave the ISS on Sunday, Nov. 10, reports NASA. Fellow cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, who arrived at the ISS in September, will replace Yurchikhin as commander.

NASA will provide a live stream, as they have done previously, of the ISS launch but have added a unique public viewing event for the occasion. NASA will show the launch from the Times Square Toshiba vision screen, located at One Times Square, beginning at 10:15 p.m. EST until 11:45 p.m. EST.

William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said in a statement, The space station serves as a unique laboratory for researchers around the world, home to astronauts from multiple countries, and was built with international cooperation, so it's fitting to show the launch of the next crew in the most cosmopolitan city in the United States.

Wednesdays launch is just the beginning of an incredibly busy schedule for the ISS crew, notes NASA. Mike Hopkins, a NASA flight engineer, has been working on the Synchronized Position, Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites, SPHERES-RINGS, experiment which seeks to demonstrate wireless power transfer between satellites at a distance for enhanced operations. After the Soyuz launch, a spacewalk is scheduled for Saturday that will see Kotov and cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy carry the 2014 Winter Olympic torch outside of the ISS. The week concludes with the departure of the three Expedition 37 crew members on Sunday.

The ISS launch live stream can be viewed below, beginning at 10:15 p.m. EST.

Live streaming video by Ustream

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NASA ISS Live Stream: Watch The Soyuz Launch From Times Square Or From Home