Daily Archives: March 8, 2017

Study parses influence of genes and environment in metabolic disease – Medical Xpress

Posted: March 8, 2017 at 12:48 pm

March 8, 2017 White fat stores energy, while brown fat dissipates energy by producing heat, mediated by uncoupling protein 1, or UCP1. Credit: Ray Soccio, MD, PhD, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

By comparing two strains of miceone that becomes obese and diabetic on a high-fat diet and another resistant to a high-fat regimenresearchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania identified genome-wide changes caused by a high-fat diet.

The a team, led by Raymond Soccio, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Medicine, and Mitchell Lazar, MD, PhD, director the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism, published their findings online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI), in addition to an Author's Take video.

"We focused on the epigenome, the part of the genome that doesn't code for proteins but governs gene expression," Lazar said.

Their research suggests that people who may be genetically susceptible to obesity and type 2 diabetes due to low levels of a protein that helps cells burn fat, may benefit from treatments that ultimately increase the fat-burning molecule.

The team looked at the interplay of genes and environment in two types of white fat tissue, subcutaneous fat (under the skin) versus visceral fat around abdominal organs. The latter correlates strongly with metabolic disease. This visceral fat shows major gene expression changes in diet-induced obesity. The JCI study confirmed this relationshipand importantlyextended these findings to show that the epigenome in visceral fat also changes on a high fat diet.

Diet-induced epigenomic changes in fat cells occur at histones - proteins that package and order DNA in the nucleus, which influences gene expression - across the genome. There were also changes in the binding to DNA of an essential fat cell protein, a transcription factor called PPARgamma.

The team next treated obese mice with the drug rosiglitazone, which targets PPARgamma in fat to treat diabetes in people. "While the drug-treated obese mice were more insulin sensitive, we were surprised to see that the drug had little effect on gene expression in visceral fat," Soccio said. "This led us to look at subcutaneous fat and we discovered that this depot is much more responsive to the drug."

"These results are clinically relevant and indicate that the 'bad' metabolic effects of obesity occur in visceral fat, while the 'good' effects of rosiglitazone and other drugs like it occur in subcutaneous fat," Lazar said.

In particular, the drug-induced changes they found in subcutaneous fat reflected the phenomenon of browning, in which white fat takes on characteristics of brown fat, typically in response to cold exposure or certain hormones and drugs.

White fat stores energy, while brown fat dissipates energy by producing heat, mediated by uncoupling protein 1, or UCP1. The most interesting discovery of the study, say the authors, involves UCP1.

They showed that rosiglitazone, as expected, increases Ucp1 expression in both obesity-prone and obesity-resistant strains of mice. However, in subcutaneous fat of the obesity-resistant mice, Ucp1 expression was high even in the absence of the drug. "But the real surprise came when we looked at the offspring of obesity-resistant and obesity-prone parents, which have one of each parent's version of the Ucp1 gene," Soccio said.

Strikingly, they found that the obesity-prone mouse strain's version of the Ucp1 gene has lower expression and less PPARgamma binding than the obesity-resistant version. This imbalance shows that the obesity-prone mouse strain's Ucp1 is genetically defective, since it is less active than the other strain's version, even when both are present in the same cell nucleus.

In their final experiments, the team asked what happens when browning and Ucp1 expression are activated using rosiglitazone or exposure to cold, both environmental factors. They found that in both cases, total Ucp1 expression goes up as expected, but the obesity-prone strain's defective version of Ucp1 now reaches equal levels to the obesity-resistant strain's version.

"Importantly, we were only changing the mouse's environment with a drug or temperature, not the actual DNA sequence of the Ucp1 gene," Lazar said. "We propose that this result indicates epigenomic rescue of Ucp1 expression in subcutaneous fat cells."

The team is following up the mouse studies using human fat biopsies to figure out the exact DNA sequence differences responsible for variable Ucp1 expression, both in mice and in humans.

The relevance of this study extends even beyond UCP1 and obesity. "Many gene variants are thought to exert their effects by ultimately altering gene expression levels, and this study shows that a genetic predisposition to altered gene expression can be identified and then overcome with treatment," Lazar said. "This is the dream of precision medicine, and hopefully our study is a step in this direction."

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By comparing two strains of miceone that becomes obese and diabetic on a high-fat diet and another resistant to a high-fat regimenresearchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania identified ...

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Study parses influence of genes and environment in metabolic disease - Medical Xpress

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Violence on Facebook Live presents censorship dilemma – CBS News

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A person armed with a gun is seen on a live video posted to social media onApril 31, 2016 in Chicago.

Facebook/WBBM

Facebook Live gives people an easy way to broadcast live video, but it has also reportedly given Facebook a real live headache: how to decide when to censor video depicting violent acts.

In the year since its launch, the feature has been used to broadcast at least 50 acts of violence, according to theWall Street Journal, including murder, suicides and abeating of a special-needs teenagerin Chicago earlier this year. One of the problems is that Facebook didnt grasp the gravity of the medium during the planning process for the feature, an unidentified source told the newspaper.

Facebook Live, which lets anyone with a phone and internet connection live-stream video directly to Facebooks 1.8 billion users, has become a centerpiece feature for the social network. In the past few months, everyone from Hamilton cast members to theDonald Trump campaignhas turned to Facebook to broadcast in real time.

Soon, we believe a camera will be the main way to share, instead of the traditional text box, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during an earnings conference call last November. We think its pretty clear video is only going to become more important.

But the focus on video has prompted some tough philosophical questions, like what Facebook should and shouldnt show.

In July, a Minnesota woman named Diamond Reynolds used the service tolive-stream her fiance Philando Castileafter he was shot by police. The next day, Facebook Live captured the scene as five Dallaspolice officers were gunned downduring a peaceful demonstration.

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Police are searching for the gunman who fatally shot two people and wounded one more in a Chicago alley. The incident was captured in a Facebook ...

Both the Castile and Dallas videos were initially streamed unedited and uncensored. The Castile video temporarily disappeared from the social network because of a technical glitch, according to Facebook. It was restored later with a warning about its graphic nature.

Zuckerberg addressed this issue last month inan open letter to the Facebook community, conceding that errors in judgment were made.

In the last year, the complexity of the issues weve seen has outstripped our existing processes for governing the community, he wrote, referencing how some newsworthy videos were handled.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This article originally appeared onCNET.com.

2017 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

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Violence on Facebook Live presents censorship dilemma - CBS News

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Music, censorship and the industry – Quad (subscription)

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Musicwe all love it, in various forms and degrees. Some just enjoy a casual radio buzz in the background, while others need to listen to albums in their entirety to get any pleasure. This broad spectrum has led to a wide variety of music, from introspective concept albums to simple, catchy, so-called radio tunes, crafted to set an upbeat mood and stick in ones head.

Its very easy for these paths to cross. I mean, radios second purpose is to introduce the listener to new, interesting songs and bands that the station thinks they will enjoy, as fans of the stations repertoire.

So its natural that you find, every so often, an unconventional piece of music garnering radio time. No one would say that this is a problem; radio is good for the artist, good for potential fans and good for the already present fans, glad to see their favorite band getting the recognition that they deserve.

The problem, I feel, is when the song is viewed as unpalatable by either the FCC, the radio station or even the record label. With the rise of rap in popular culturea genre founded on the plight of the disenfranchisedas well as a push for artistic integrity and free speech, vulgar language is at its peak in music.

However, radio still finds the need to censor this music. This censorship ranges from the changing of lyrics (Cee Lo Greens claim to fame, Forget You, comes to mind) to the outright removal of words deemed inappropriate (as in the chorus of Starboy, by The Weeknd). This is done for one reason: to sell the song to radio, and to people who feel that foul language is a legitimate sign of immorality.

Those who deem vulgarity to be a negative aspect of music do it for a multitude of reasons, but the two most common appear to be:

While both of these points come from a place of real worry, I do not feel that they are effective arguments for the censorship of music. Lets address each point individually, and then answer the question of censorship as a whole.

Children are the pride of American culture. We view children as fragile tokens of youth and innocence, unable to understand the nuance of humanitys interactions with itself. Thus, we must shelter them from anything that could corrupt that innocence.

In protecting from that corruption, we do things like censor media. However, in the digital age, this censorship does not work as we want it to. Most children have access to the internet, and the idea that they will be able to avoid the uncensored media is laughable.

Censoring radio merely piques the interest of these children, who will then search for the naughty words, sidestepping their parents attempt at protecting them and avoiding any positive dialogue on the use of adult language.

The second issue is a more complex one. Class issues throughout the centuries have led to a demonization of bad language, and is why we as a culture do not feel that it is a proper thing to do.

The problem with this stance, especially in media, is that media defies culture. Rock, punk and rapthese movements started as counterculture, before evolving into fully fleshed out genres that became adopted by the mainstream.

These movements were born out of cultural defiance, taboo behavior and the freedom of expression. Censorship kills this freedom of expression, as well as defanging any relevant criticism that the movement has against the mainstream.

But then, keep the vulgarity out of the mainstream and separate the counterculture from the popular movements, you say. The issue with this is twofold:

There is nothing to gain from separating the subversive elements of a musical movement from its appealing ones, and any attempt to do so should be viewed exclusively as a controlling form of censorship.

Music has become a product. Art for arts sake, while existent, is hard to come by in the mainstream these days. The industry, in fear of losses, allows for the perverted censorship of an art form to be maintained.

Filler does not exist in art. Artists pick lyrics with purpose, to convey emotion, make a point or satirize an establishment. The censorship of these artists takes the power that they have over their own creation away, and reduces them to nothing more than a vessel for public appeal, the antithesis of art as a whole.

Dean Cahill is a first-year student majoring in English literature. He can be reached at [emailprotected]

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Arizona …

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History shows that, if individuals have the freedom to choose what to use as money, they will likely opt for gold or silver. Of course, modern politicians and their Keynesian enablers despise the gold or silver standard. This is because linking a currency to a precious metal limits the ability of central banks to finance the growth of the welfare-warfare state via the inflation tax. This forces politicians to finance big government much more with direct means of taxation.

Despite the hostility toward gold from modern politicians, gold played a role in US monetary policy for sixty years after the creation of the Federal Reserve. Then, in 1971, as concerns over the US governments increasing deficits led many foreign governments to convert their holdings of US dollars to gold, President Nixon closed the gold window, creating Americas first purely fiat currency.

Americas 46-year experiment in fiat currency has gone exactly as followers of the Austrian school predicted: a continuing decline in the dollars purchasing power accompanied by a decline in the standard of living of middle- and working-class Americans, a series of Federal Reserve-created booms followed by increasingly severe busts, and an explosive growth in government spending. Federal Reserve policies are also behind much of the increase in income inequality.

Since the 2008 Fed-created economic meltdown, more Americans have become aware of the Federal Reserve's responsibility for America's economic problems. This growing anti-Fed sentiment is one of the key factors behind the liberty movements growth and represents the most serious challenge to the Fed's legitimacy in its history. This movement has made Audit the Fed into a major national issue that is now closer than ever to being signed into law.

Audit the Fed is not the only focus of the growing anti-Fed movement. For example, this Wednesday the Arizona Senate Finance and Rules Committees will consider legislation (HB 2014) officially defining gold, silver, and other precious metals as legal tender. The bill also exempts transactions in precious metals from state capital gains taxes, thus ensuring that people are not punished by the taxman for rejecting Federal Reserve notes in favor of gold or silver. Since inflation increases the value of precious metals, these taxes give the government one more way to profit from the Federal Reserves currency debasement.

HB 2014 is a very important and timely piece of legislation. The Federal Reserves failure to reignite the economy with record-low interest rates since the last crash is a sign that we may soon see the dollars collapse. It is therefore imperative that the law protect peoples right to use alternatives to what may soon be virtually worthless Federal Reserve notes.

Passage of HB 2014 would also send a message to Congress and the Trump administration that the anti-Fed movement is growing in influence. Thus, passage of this bill will not just strengthen movements in other states to pass similar legislation; it will also help build support for the Audit the Fed bill and legislation repealing federal legal tender laws.

This Wednesday I will be in Arizona to help rally support for HB 2014, speaking on behalf of the bill before the Arizona Senate Finance Committee at 9:00 a.m. I will also be speaking at a rally at noon at the Arizona state capitol. I hope every supporter of sound money in the Phoenix area joins me to show their support for ending the Feds money monopoly.

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Trump’s ‘libertarianism’ endangers the public – CNN

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President Trump's recent executive order, titled "Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Cost," speaks the language of the principled libertarians, but its beneficiaries are likely to be the thugs.

The order prohibits any agency from issuing any new regulation unless it also repeals two regulations that cost as much as the new one. "Costs" mean the cost of complying with the regulation. The harms that were the reason for the regulation don't count at all.

David Dana and Michael Barsa observe the implications of Trump's order. The Department of Interior created a set of new regulations in response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, in which BP spilled nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It was the largest marine oil spill in history, and, Dana and Barsa wrote, it cost "nearly $9 billion for lost fisheries and $23 billion for lost tourism, not to mention the catastrophic effects on marine life and birds. Yet under the president's order, the only costs that matter are those to the oil companies. Costs to the public and to the environment are completely ignored." The regulations aren't cheap; the cost to the industry has been estimated at hundreds of millions. But that's peanuts compared to the costs of another spill.

Trump is a big fan of Ayn Rand. Like her fictional hero John Galt in "Atlas Shrugged," he wants to free business from the heavy hand of government. But this is an oddly distorted libertarianism, in which Rand's villains masquerade as her heroes: those who talk most of liberty are the looters and moochers.

Conservatives worry about "regulatory capture": the danger that regulators will abandon the public interest at the behest of regulated industries, keeping prices high and stifling competition. The solution is to get rid of regulation: the state should butt out and let the market operate. There's no doubt that capture has sometimes happened. A notorious example is the Civil Aeronautics Board: after it was abolished in 1985, airline competition intensified and prices plunged.

There is, however, another way in which unworthy special interests can seize control of government. They can work to cripple regulation, so that they can hurt and defraud people. Libertarian rhetoric has turned out to be a rich resource for them.

Barack Obama is actually a better libertarian than Trump. He spent years teaching at the University of Chicago, where the idea of regulatory capture was developed. That had an impact: when he was President, he demanded (following a principle laid down by Ronald Reagan!) that any new regulations survive rigorous cost-benefit analysis. That immunizes regulations from capture, and makes sure that regulators take account of just what worries Trump, the cost to businesses. The overall net value -- benefits minus costs -- of Obama's regulations was upward of $100 billion.

Trump, on the other hand, has replaced cost-benefit analysis with cost analysis. Benefits are ignored. This isn't even business-friendly. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill destroyed hundreds of well-functioning businesses. On the other hand, the businesses that were crushed were small and had nothing like BP's political connections.

There's room for reasonable disagreement with Obama's regulations. The calculation of both costs and benefits inevitably involves some guesswork. The cumulative effect of regulation can hamper businesses. The big difference between Trump and the standard conservatives' critique of Obama is that Trump's executive order holds, as a matter of principle, that benefits don't matter. Consumer fraud, tainted food, pollution, unsafe airplanes and trains, epidemic disease all have to be put up with, if stopping them would increase the costs of regulation.

Trump's new "regulatory reforms" show a persistent pattern. One targets a rule that requires retirement advisers to put clients' interests ahead of their own. Conflicts of interest in retirement advice, for example steering clients into products with higher fees and lower returns, costs American families an estimated $17 billion a year. You can understand why some parts of the financial industry hated the rule. That $17 billion was going into someone's pocket, and that someone finds libertarian rhetoric right handy.

The Libertarian Party, which got more than 4 million votes in the last presidential election, is enthusiastic about the order. It shouldn't be. The order is a deep betrayal of libertarianism, which holds that people should do what they want as long as they don't hurt anyone else.

Freeing businesses to hurt people is not libertarian. The libertarians -- at least, the ones who don't see through Trump -- are being played. If the crippling of the state allows economic behemoths to do whatever they like to others, then what libertarianism licenses, in the garb of liberty, is the creation of a new aristocracy, entitled to hurt the commoners. This is just a different kind of mooching and looting.

It is a new road to serfdom. It reinforces the prejudices of those on the left who repudiate capitalism. The libertarians who embrace it, thinking that they are thereby promoting freedom, are useful idiots, like the idealistic leftists of the 1930s whose hatred of poverty and racism led them to embrace Stalin. John Galt is a sap.

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Could This Transhumanist Be the next Governor of California? – Big Think

Posted: at 12:44 pm

Its a good time to be a transhumanist politician. As faith in the political establishment declines, new technologies, from gene editing to artificial intelligence, are transforming our lives faster than ever. The transhumanist author and politician Zoltan Istvan agrees. He thinks the time is ripe for pro-science and technology governance, and for leaders who will embrace the technologies that could fundamentally transform our conceptions of what it means to be human.

Istvan is a maverick who appears to thrive in an 'outsider' role. He self-published a sci-fi novel, The Transhumanist Wager, in 2013, which became a surprise bestseller on Amazon. In 2016, he made an unlikely run for US president as the leader of the Transhumanist Party. Now, hes making a bid for Governor of California in the 2018 election under a Libertarian Party ticket.

As a libertarian, Istvan believes in promoting maximum freedom and personal accountability, a sentiment that gels well with his championing of human enhancement technologiesand robot and cyborg rights.

Like all transhumanists, Istvan believes in using science and technology to enhance human capabilities and transcend current biological limits. He wants to be smarter, live longer, and eventually merge with advanced technologies to become a posthuman beingone that is impervious, or at least resilient, to aging, and most mortal risks.

jason-silva-on-transhumanism

All Aboard the Immortality Bus

The primary role of transhumanist politicians and parties at present is not to win elections, but to spread awareness and garner political clout. Istvan acknowledges this, and he plays the role well.

When running for president in 2016, he drove around the country in a coffin-shaped Immortality Bus spreading the word that death should be conquered. He got a lot of media attention and helped to generate awareness about transhumanist ideas and technologies. He also seemed to be the only candidate actively desiring to be superseded. Eventually, Istvan hopes that an artificial intelligence will become president, as he thinks it will do a better job.

In 2017, the political newcomer set his sights on a smaller goal: California. He also made the pragmatic decision to switch to the Libertarian Party, which has a larger support base than his own Transhumanist Party. But Istvan hasnt abandoned transhumanism. Many transhumanists are libertarians, or have libertarian sympathies, and Istvan believes that he can promote libertarian and transhumanist interests in tandem.

Henotably opposes federal regulations that could hamper the development of advanced technologies, like artificial intelligence and gene editing, which have many marketable applications, from driverless cars, to the broad and growing field of personalized medicine. These industries are big in California, and Istvan believes they will be instrumental in promoting economic growth.

But what if robots end up taking all the jobs? As a left-leaning libertarian, Istvan thinks that some form of basic income will eventually be necessary to solve this problem.

The gubernatorial candidate is also a passionate defender of the joint transhumanist-libertarian view that the individual should have the right to choose what they do with their own body. The principle ofmorphological freedom,as its called in transhumanist circles, includes basic forms of DIY biohacking (Istvan has an RFID chip implanted in his wrist, which opens his front door)and extends to much more ambitious forms of body modification, like gene therapy, and other biomedical interventions that could stop or reverse aging, enhance physical and cognitive prowess, and even delay death.

Like many transhumanists, Istvan is also adamant that the government needs to classify aging as a disease. He views the fight against aging and death as a (trans)human rights issue, a stance he explained in a 2017 interview:

My entire goal, and one of the things I'm standing behind is that we all have a universal right to indefinite lifespans. That's something I can promise you in the 21st century will become one of the most important civil and ideological rights of humanity. That everybody has a right to live indefinitely.

Who Wants to Live Forever?

Apparently, quite a few people. Billions of dollars are being spent by tech corporations and entrepreneurs to unlock the secrets of human biology, reverse aging, and cure disease. Googles Calico Labs, a $1.5 billion initiative,focus purely on anti-aging and life-extension research, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan havepledged $3 billionto cure all diseases by the end of the century.

PayPal co-founder and prominent libertarian transhumanist Peter Thiel is another keen investor in life-extension initiatives. He famously expressed interest in"parabiosis"an experimental procedure in which individuals over 35 receive blood transfusions from those under 25 in the hope of experiencing regenerative effects. Thiel hassaid of death:

You can accept it, you can deny it or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison has also donated in excess of $430million to anti-aging research, and is similarly outspoken about the tragedy of death:

Death has never made any sense to me Death makes me angry. Premature death makes me angrier still.

But the question remains, is life-extension actually possible? Biogerontologist and co-founder of the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senesence (SENS) Foundation, Aubrey de Grey, thinks so.

aubrey-de-greys-plan-to-stop-aging

De Grey believes that aging, and age-related diseases should be thought of as the various types of molecular and cellular damage that the body does to itself as a side effect of its normal metabolic operation. De Greys research focuses on figuring out how to repair that damage and prevent it from developing into a pathology of old age.

Other scientists, like the theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, and the Harvard geneticist George Church are also optimistic that cheap genomic sequencing, gene-editing techniques like CRISPR-Cas9, and the explosion of genetic and lifestyle data will help us to unlock and reverse the biological mechanisms of aging in the near future.

Is Life Extension Ethical?

Of course there aremanywho think that living indefinitely is infeasible, or just plain wrong. Like the Jewish historian Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, whobelieves that death gives life meaning and that without it we would be less human. She also wonders: What will people live for, if they live indefinitely? and notes that in the Jewish tradition:

The ideal of indefinite postponement of death is the highest form of human hubris, one more example of human rebellion against God who created humans as finite beings whose life narrative has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Other common concernsare population growth, resource scarcity, the fear that the old will refuse to make way for the young, and the worry that only the rich will benefit.

In a more philosophical vein, the American astronomerSeth Shostakhas mused that if we radically extend our lives but remain biological we could become ultra risk averse and avoid doing everyday things like getting into a car. With so much potential ahead of us, even a small probability of dying would seem unacceptable.

Yet when it comes to upgrading the human condition, Istvan thinks we should go for broke. When asked what he thought about a posthuman future he declared:

Oh I'm totally embracing it! I have called for the end of humanity as we know it. The reality is that I think the human body is frail. I don't want to say the human body is evil, but I don't like it. I'm not a fan of the human body. I think it's something that is designed to be replaced and replaced as quickly as possible.

He makes a bold statement. And, like any politician, he argues (in line with Aubrey de Grey) that it will be good for the economy.

the-economics-of-immortality

But just how open minded is California? It's previously embracedthe Governator, butifIstvan were elected it could end up with a real-life cyborga human who gets upgraded to be more like a machine. For his part, Zoltan Istvan thinks that this is exactly what California, and humanity, needs.

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The human toll of suicide bombings in Afghanistan – Washington Post

Posted: at 12:43 pm


Washington Post
The human toll of suicide bombings in Afghanistan
Washington Post
Such shocking acts of violence are hard to visualize in remote locations whether at a desert police post or on a snow-covered highway. Often there are few witnesses and no television coverage; the victims remain nameless and faceless. But when ...

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