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Genetics

Advances in genetics have changed epilepsy treatment – Times of India

For centuries, it was referred to as a sacred disease and the afflicted sought treatment in temples rather than the physician's shop. Little has changed in the way people look at epilepsy over the years, although treatment and diagnosis of the neurological disorder has made rapid strides. Dr Samuel F Berkovic is among those who have done extensive research on the causes of epilepsy, hoping, in the process, to break the stigma that still shrouds the often dehumanising ailment characterised by seizures. On Sunday, the director of the Epilepsy Research Centre at Austin Health, Australia, answered several questions linked to epilepsy, which affects nearly 50 million people worldwide and 10 million in India. "If you had asked me in the '70s about the cause of epilepsy, I wouldn't have had an answer backed by science," began Dr Berkovic, delivering the 37th T S Srinivasan Endowment Oration. "Today, we have multiple answers and ways to treat epilepsy," he said, adding that imaging of the brain was the first breakthrough in understanding the disease that was until then viewed as supernatural possession. According to him, the neuroimaging revolution, particularly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), was the biggest step taken towards diagnosis of epilepsy. Advances in the field of genetics, including the identification of genes that cause epilepsy and those that influence the efficacy of antiepileptic drugs, have also revolutionised treatment. "We now know that genetic epilepsy can occur without a family history. Even perfectly normal parents can have a child with epilepsy. At the same time a person with epilepsy can have a normal child," said Berkovic. Describing epilepsy as a highly misunderstood and stigmatised condition, Professor Berkovic said, "Epilepsy can be treated and people suffering from epilepsy can lead a normal, healthy life," at the programme organised by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (Nimhans), Bengaluru, and NEUROKRISH Neurosciences India Group, Chennai.

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Advances in genetics have changed epilepsy treatment - Times of India

Genetics

Predicting extinction via genetics – The New Indian Express

CHENNAI:The extinction of a species can be predicted by studying its genetic diversity, says Dr Uma Ramakrishnan who studies the decline in tiger population in India. Speaking on Sunday at Science at the Sabha, an annual event organised by the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), she said though tigers in India had a reasonable genetic diversity, they faced a number of other problems.

We found out that a poor genetic diversity was not causing the depletion of the species but that several other problems were contributing to it, said Uma. The higher the internal genetic diversity within a species, the higher its survival chance, as having more genes would also translate to having more ecologically adapted versions of the same genes of that species.

We have over 2,500 tigers living in different parts of India. But what we found out is, the average number of tigers living in a national park is only 19, she said. Having small isolated groups of tigers that are geographically widespread would lead to a wide genetic diversity, but lowering of diversity within each of these patches.

Multiple problems led to the present situation in India. For a species to survive, it must live in a large area in large numbers and must stay connected with genetically variant members of the same species for breeding. The tiger habitat was spread all across Asia before colonial rule. Now, its population is confined to patches in South Asia and mostly in India, says Uma.

One thing we observed from the data is that the growth of urban areas is directly proportional to the depletion of forest land. This means that we further reduce the habitat of these mammals, causing intense fragmentation, said Uma, adding that this would worsen the problems of inbreeding.

Although I worked extensively with tigers, the same problems haunt all dying species. One important solution to prevent fragmentation while still promoting development is to ensure that wildlife corridors must not be encroached upon, she told Express on the sidelines of the main event. She added that historical data showed that the chances of extinction of big animals, such as mammoths, were more.

Other speakers included Yashwant Gupta, who spoke of star-gazing and touring the universe through an astronomical medium; S Krishnaswamy, who spoke about the basics of molecular particles; and Amritanshu Prasad who triggered the minds of young children by speaking about coding and encrypting.

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Predicting extinction via genetics - The New Indian Express

Biochemistry

What is Biochemistry and Why it Matters – Nanalyze

If youre a regular reader of Nanalyze, youll know that were big fans of the work that Bryan Johnson of Kernel is doing, essentially trying to enable read/write access to the brain. In one of his interviews, he remarks thatever since we first booted up a cell with human engineered DNA, we entered a new era that according to his mentor Peter Diamandis 99.9% of people have no idea weve entered.

What theyre referring to is the fact that humans have essentially discoveredthe Engines of Creation that Eric Drexler was talking about. While everyone is running around slinging political mud at each other like a bunch of primitive monkeys, mankind is working on one of the most transformational technologies that may ever be invented. Its called synthetic biology and its why everyone should have a basic understanding of biochemistry.

When you werechoosing your major in college, you either had your mind set on a particular field already or you needed to peruse all thesubject areas to see what sounded like a good fit. Each subject area will have a certain stereotype associated with it.Some fields sound boring like electrical engineering or accounting. Some fields sound inherently difficult, like physics or mathematics. Other fieldsyou may not have an idea of what they do because they never sounded compelling enough to research. Thats the case for us withbiochemistry and thats why we thought as investors we should edify ourselves on what turned out to be a very relevant and interesting area of the sciences.

If we lookup the basic definition of biochemistry, this is what we get:

the branch of science concerned with the chemical and physico-chemical processes and substances which occur within living organisms.

So its a bit different from chemistry since itsall about the study of chemical processes in living organisms. Heres why it came about according to the American Chemical Society:

Biochemistry emerged as a separate discipline when scientists combined biology with organic, inorganic, and physical chemistry and began to study how living things obtain energy from food, the chemical basis of heredity, what fundamental changes occur in disease, and related issues.

The most basic premise is that you are using living things to take INPUT X and turn it into OUTPUT Y in the most efficient manner possible. If you think about humans as a complex organism, we are able to utilize the equivalent of several pounds of vegetative material to power one of the most complex and amazing machines on the planet. The problem with us though, is that the output from that process has no real use except maybe as fertilizer.

In the U.S. alone, there are approximately 13,500 chemical manufacturing facilities in the United States owned by more than 9,000 companies. These are giant operations which consume a great deal of energy, require a large workforce to maintain, and generate a great deal of pollution. Imagine how much energy and effort goes into building compex mechanical contraptions like this:

Your bog standard chemicals plant

Think about how inefficient these plants have been over the decades theyve sat there consuming resources and feeding the mass consumerism that we enjoy in todays modern society.Now think about this. What if instead of using these inneficient plants, we engineered biological organisms to produce chemicals by modifying the DNA of the organisms so they did what we needed.The simplest way to think about it is to visualize those punch-cards we used our dads used back in the day. If thats beyond your time, heres what an IBM punch card used to look like:

In the olden days of mainframe computing, we used apunch card like the ones seen above toprovide the computer with a set of instructions. With DNA, its pretty much the same idea except its like havingprecisely this many punch cards:

The above pile of phone books shows roughly the amount of data that a strand of DNA contains, approximately 700gigabytes of data. DNA is one giant punch card that just recently weve been given the hole punch for. That hole punch is called gene editing and its been all over the news lately due to a nasty lawsuit that will determine who has the commercial rights to one of the most exciting discoveries known to man. This biological hole punch called CRISPR will soon let us change every single characteristic we like for any organism and then boot it up so we have our own little biological nanobots doing things for us.Since organisms are the most efficient biological factories (or engines of creation) known to man, it makes sense that we should be modifying them to produce as many industrial chemicals as possible.

The use of synthetic biology for creating things like biofuels (primarily)was off to a rough start as evidenced by the cratering stocks involved in this space like Amyris (NASDAQ:AMRS) and Gevo (NASDAQ:GEVO). Fast forward to today and the potential is even greater but a different model is now being applied. Now you have nanobot factories like Ginkgo Bioworks and Zymergen that areusing artificial intelligence, robotics, and gene editing in order to create little tiny biological chemical manufacturing plants.

Lets say youre a chemical plant that uses a particular enzyme in your production process. Ginkgo or Zymergen can take that enzyme and modify it over millions and millions of iterations. The speed at which they can modify that enzyme has just hit hockey stick growth as seen below:

The end result is an optimized enzyme that meets your requirements and saves you millions of dollars. Startups like this that are using synthetic biology to completely overhaul the industrial chemical manufacturing process are as secretive as you would expect. While we may not have detailed information about what theyre working on, we can take a look at some examples of startups that are using biochemistry and synthetic bioogyin order to create some pretty complex and useful outputs from some basic interesting inputs:

These startups are backed by some big dollars and some big names, however the future business model is a bit hazy here. Will we have the chemical companies going directly to the creators of the synthetic organisms like Ginkgo or will we have startups like the ones mentioned above doing all the production and selling to the chemical companies, only to get acquired once the technology is proven? The one thing that we can be sure of here is that the large chemical producers will profit fromthe use of biochemistry, synthetic biology, and gene editing, consequently we can expect shareholders in these companies to reap the benefits.

This morning when youre tempted to talk about how much political mudslinging there was at the Oscars or who wore the cutest dress, do the world a favor and tell someone how exciting biochemistry is instead.

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What is Biochemistry and Why it Matters - Nanalyze

Anatomy

Anatomy of an Oscars fiasco: how La La Land was mistakenly announced as best picture – The Guardian

It will go down in history as the most awkward, embarrassing Oscar moment of all time: an extraordinary failure in the Oscars voting procedure. The traditional high point of the marathon Oscars telecast collapsed in ignominy as organisers were forced to acknowledge that the wrong film La La Land had been named best picture winner, instead of the actual victor, Moonlight. We piece together the sequence of events that led to the chaotic scenes.

1. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty emerge from the back of the stage to announce the best picture win.

2. A close-up photograph shows he is clearly carrying a winners envelope for best actress the award for which (to La La Lands Emma Stone) has just taken place.

3. Beatty begins to read out the winners card, and is obviously puzzled by what he is reading, looking in the envelope to see if there is anything else in there.

4. Beatty, uncertain, hands the card to Dunaway, who doesnt appear to know anything is wrong, and reads out the only film title she can see: La La Land.

5. As the La La Land producer Mark Platt (front) gives his thank you speech, a member of the shows staff (in headset) takes back the envelopes that have been given to the La La Land producers Jordan Horowitz (holding Oscar) and Fred Berger.

6. By now, the La La Land team know they havnt won. Producer Fred Berger says: We lost. Behind him, the PricewaterhouseCoopers overseers Brian Cullinan (holding envelope) and Martha Ruiz (in red dress) are on stage, examining the envelopes. The accountancy firm have apologised and promised an investigation.

7. Horowitz holds up his hand to stop the celebrations as the La La Land crew realise they havent won. This is not a joke, he tells the audience.

8. By now Beatty has been given the right card, and Horowitz takes it out of his hand and holds it up. Moonlight is clearly the winner.

9. As the Moonlight team come forward, Beatty steps out front to explain to Kimmel and the La La Land team what happened. The card he had been given, he says, read Emma Stone. I wasnt trying to be funny.

10. Horowitz hands his Oscar to Barry Jenkins, Moonlights director.

11. Jenkins closes the show by summing up the extraordinary turn of events. Even in my dreams this could not be true. But to hell with it, Im done with dreams because this is true.

Continued here:
Anatomy of an Oscars fiasco: how La La Land was mistakenly announced as best picture - The Guardian

Anatomy

Anatomy of a statistic: Do 80 percent of Americans oppose sanctuary cities? – PolitiFact

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers escort an arrestee in an apartment building in the Bronx on March 3, 2015, during a series of early-morning raids. (AP/Richard Drew)

On Feb. 22, websites favorable to President Donald Trump touted a poll result that showed wide support for one of the presidents highest-profile immigration policies -- cracking down on "sanctuary cities."

"SHOCK POLL: 80% OF AMERICANS OPPOSE SANCTUARY CITIES," said a headline in the conspiracy-minded site InfoWars. The poll also got prominent play on the conservative websites NewsMax, BizPacReview. Breitbart, Town Hall and American Thinker, as well as on the Russian websites RT and Sputnik.

One of our readers asked us to investigate. We decided not to put the 80 percent finding to the Truth-O-Meter, because we dont doubt the reliability of the poll itself. But questions phrased differently can show dramatically different results.

All told, the finding is a case study in how poll results can be seized by advocates for one side of an issue -- and how some of the nuances in the questions and the answers can be lost in the hubbub.

About the Harvard-Harris poll

The poll result in question came from a new and relatively little-known poll -- the Harvard-Harris survey -- that initially didnt put its full data documentation online. The shortage of information about the poll caused one contributor to the liberal website Daily Kos to wonder whether someone had "catfished" the media with fake data.

We can confirm that the polling partnership is real -- and legitimate. It is headed by longtime Democratic pollster Mark Penn and Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard University and the director of its Center for American Political Studies. The poll grew out of courses the two have taught together at Harvard. Penn and Ansolabehere are collaborating on the project with the Harris Poll, a venerable public-opinion pollster.

The poll, conducted online between Feb. 11 and 13, was initially released exclusively to the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill, and the pollsters posted a detailed presentation of the results here,

A closer look at the questions

The question in the poll that attracted the most attention -- certainly from the political right -- was this one: "Should cities that arrest illegal immigrants for crimes be required to turn them over to immigration authorities?" On this question, 80 percent of respondents said yes.

But as we looked into the question, we noticed a couple things.

One was that, despite the blaring headlines about sanctuary cities, the question being asked didnt actually use the words "sanctuary cities." The other concerned words that the question did use -- "arrest" and "crimes."

To understand why such wording choices matter -- and why they could potentially change the results of the poll -- we first need to review what the term "sanctuary city" actually means.

What is a sanctuary city?

There isnt a federal law defining "sanctuary city." Different jurisdictions that use the term -- and even some that shy away from it -- may have some policies in place that other cities dont, and vice versa. But generally speaking, it means they have policies limiting how much local law enforcement assists federal immigration authorities seeking to apprehend and deport people in the United States illegally.

For instance, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego do not hold immigrants for immigration officials unless they have violent felonies on their records or current charges, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Supporters of sanctuary cities argue that not questioning people about their immigration status builds trust between police and the community, encouraging residents to report crime and help in prosecutions. If an undocumented immigrant gets arrested for a non-immigration offense, they can still be charged, tried and convicted for that crime, Lena Graber, a special projects attorney for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, told PolitiFact.

Opponents counter that sanctuary cities attract illegal immigration and undermine enforcement of the law. Any crime by someone in the country illegally is a crime that could have been avoided by having removed that person, Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks to reduce immigration levels, told PolitiFact in November.

The question wording

The specific wording used to ask any poll question is always important. Its not even necessarily a comparison of "good wording" vs."bad wording" -- if a question is asked a certain way, it could nudge respondents to answer in one direction.

In this case, respondents were asked about "crimes." To many, that could bring to mind "violent crimes," especially when paired with the term "arrest."

But the experts we spoke to said the jurisdictions described as sanctuary cities dont simply let murderers, rapists, armed robbers and other people they arrest for violent crimes go free. Not only would federal immigration officials be notified, but the violent crimes they were charged with would be prosecuted.

Instead, where the rubber hits the road with sanctuary cities is with lesser, non-violent offenses, even down to a broken tail light -- or simply any interaction with police, such as an undocumented immigrant becoming a happenstance witness to a crime. These are the cases in which police in sanctuary cities would typically be trained to refrain from asking for immigration status or informing federal immigration officials.

And this nuance is not captured by the question that garnered 80 percent support in the Harvard-Harris poll -- as well as the lions share of headlines.

"Question wording always affects responses," said Steven S. Smith, a political scientist and pollster at Washington University in St. Louis. "Arrest for crimes certainly primes the respondent to think that the person is dangerous and therefore should be a high priority in immigration law enforcement."

Karlyn Bowman, a polling analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, noted that there is little history of past polling on the issue of sanctuary cities. But she did uncover one poll released a few days after the Harvard-Harris poll that seems to back up the idea that different wording can substantially change the result.

The poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University and released on Feb. 23, asked, "Thinking about people who have immigrated to the U.S. illegally, who do you think should be deported: Should no illegal immigrants be deported, only illegal immigrants that have committed serious crimes, only illegal immigrants that have committed any crime, or should all illegal immigrants be deported?"

The results: Only 3 percent said no illegal immigrants should be deported, and 19 percent said all illegal immigrants should be deported. But 53 percent of respondents said deportations should only be done for "serious crimes," compared to 22 percent for "any crime."

Thats not just a plurality -- its a majority. And that tells a different story than the Internet headlines.

The pollsters speak

Both Ansolabehere and Penn responded to our inquiries.

Penn called our question about wording differences "an important one" and agreed that finding the right wording in a case like this one is tricky,

"We think the question is fair and clear as worded to obtain the sentiment on the issue," he said. "Had we said serious crimes, that would have tilted it one way and minor crimes would have tilted it the other way. In either case, it would be a different question about the gradations of policy, and a deep dive would surely find some nuances as with all policy."

He added that the task was made more difficult given his teams failure to find any questions on sanctuary cities that had been road-tested in previous polls.

Ansolabehere added, "If you can think of alternative wordings that capture the policy better, please send them to me."

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Anatomy of a statistic: Do 80 percent of Americans oppose sanctuary cities? - PolitiFact

Human Behavior

Wilkinson: The history of personality theory – Daily Commercial

By Dr. Berney Wilkinson Ledger correspondent

Although he takes a bad rap on late night TV and he is roundly criticized by many in the profession, it is good to stop once in a while to give Freud the respect he deserves. He was, for example, the first to argue that children were not just little adults who didnt know how to act and talk. Thankfully (at least for kids) he taught us that they are still a work in progress, and that we shouldnt expect children to think like or behavior like adults. Likewise, he was the first to offer a unified theory of personality. Prior to Freud, we relied on religion and philosophy to explain human behavior. Freud gave us a biological and more human explanation. And while he may have been wrong about some things and only partially accurate about some others, he gave the foundation on which all other personality theory is built. Simply put, your personality is who you are and why you act and react the way you do. Your personality forms the foundation and provides the lens through which you perceive, interpret, and interact with the world around you. And while it explains why we do the things we do, our personality generally functions in the background. Thus, while we can often identify certain personality traits in others, we sometimes have a difficult time identifying our own. We are who we are, and we generally assume that other normal people are exactly the same. Personality is rooted in our biology. If you are a parent, for example, you were able to identify your childs temperament from very early infancy. Whether easy or difficult, that early appearing temperament formed the foundation from which personality develops. What we build on that foundation, though, is based in large part on our experiences. If a child is nurtured, develops a secure attachment, and has his or her needs met early in life, the child develops a healthy and safe view of the world. Conversely, if a child is neglected, abandoned, or abused, the child is at increased risk for developing a suspicious, fear-based, or even angry world view. Since Freud first wrote about personality, theorists have developed numerous organizing schemes to describe personality. Currently, most professionals refer to the Big Five theory of personality. The Big Five consists of five dimensions of personality that include Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Extraversion refers to the extent to which you direct your energy and focus to the outside world. Openness to Experience is related to the manner in which you actively seek new and interesting experiences. Conscientiousness explains your degree of organization, motivation, and self-discipline. Agreeableness refers to your interactions with others. Neuroticism identifies how prone a person is to psychological distress. Together, these five traits help to offer an understanding and appreciation of how individual manage their world and make decisions. It is important to keep in mind that while this Big Five model helps explain typical personality traits, it does not offer an adequate basis for a discussion on personality disorders. The latter are extreme or pathological variations in personality that can exert a negative influence and impair a persons ability to function. And that is a discussion for another time. For now, remember that who you are is rooted in an intricate combination of biology and experience. And that our understanding of this critical aspect of ourselves comes from one of the fathers of psychiatry, Dr. Sigmund Freud.

Dr. Berney, a licensed psychologist with Psychological Associates of Central Florida in Lakeland, is a national speaker and the co-author of "Handbook for Raising an Emotionally Healthy Child." You can hear Dr. Berney on his podcasts, "The Mental Breakdown and The Paedeia Education Podcast on iTunes.

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Wilkinson: The history of personality theory - Daily Commercial

Human Behavior

The political pendulum has swung to the right – Observer-Reporter

With the election of President Trump in November, the political pendulum has swung to the right after eight years of the Democratic Party pushing it as far to the left as it could.

As far as the pendulum was pushed left, liberals had to hold back with all their might to prevent the force of the pendulum from finding equilibrium. But they eventually could not withstand the weight of the pendulum seeking the center.

The arm had swung so far left in the past eight years that when released its kinetic energy swung the pendulum far right of center. Its equal and opposite force did not allow the normal centering of the swing. Hence, Donald Trump is president. The people rejected both the Republican candidates preferred by the partys establishment as well as Hillary Clinton, and a new popular candidate emerged for the people.

As you look over these historic swings, you begin to see that the preferred place of rest by most Americans is indeed somewhere in the center of the political spectrum. The push and pull of the far right and left points of view make the pendulum wobble off center, but never for very long in either direction. When either side pushes too hard, in time the force swings the political pendulum back with equal force.

Think of it as a normal distribution of political opinion. Most Americans share values and political points of view that gather in the middle of that distribution. Americans can find middle ground on most issues. The further you deviate from the center, to the extreme left or right, the fewer Americans you will find who hold those points of view.

Why then does it seem that the extremes get so much attention?

These groups are very vocal. They make the most noise and, unfortunately, make provocative news. We, for the most part, are not entertained by the normal, mundane life we all live in the center, so we flirt with the fringes of society. We are curious, we are voyeurs, and we have the news media to fill our insatiable need for this information. As we watch the off-center news over and over again, what was abnormal to the center now seems normal.

This has its greatest impact on the youth of our nation. They grow tired of the restrictions of a life controlled by their parents and seek new and worldly adventures. They are easily influenced in their formative years and will follow sometimes bizarre behavior. Often this behavior, if they survive the process, is replaced with real-life experiences that burst the utopian bubbles of youth. The one thing that will not change is human behavior. We will continue to see the worst and the best of humanity among our neighbors. There have been few periods where man was at peace with himself or others for any length of time. Greed, envy, lust and fear seems to propel humanity against itself. We look back on that history and wonder how a nation could become involved in such acts of violence against other nations and we deem them somehow inferior in the evolution of human understanding.

Yet, our television screens are filled with the same destruction, the same hate, the same fear of our fellow man. I was ashamed of the protests and riots in Washington, D.C., following President Trumps inauguration. We are becoming less tolerant as a nation, which was demonstrated when we could not put our differences aside for one day and celebrate the peaceful transfer of power.

We have evolved little as better human beings, having more understanding towards our neighbor, or being more tolerant of those who are different. I can only find redemption of the human spirit in the blood of my creator, Jesus Christ. I seek to be a follower of His teachings and pray for the redemption of all mankind. I pray for peace and understanding, tolerance and respect for all.

Flickinger is president of Tom Flickinger & Associates Inc., a management consulting firm.

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The political pendulum has swung to the right - Observer-Reporter

Genetics

Genetics Are the New Eugenics: How GMO’s Reduce the Human Population – Center for Research on Globalization

The following is from an interview transcript

Last year, we had a series of mergers in the agribusiness GMO-corporations worldwide. This has created an alarming concentration of corporate power in the hands of basically three corporate groups.

The first one is Bayer AG of Germany, which made a friendly takeover of Monsanto. The reason for this was that Monsanto became identified in the public mind as pure evil and everything bad about GMOs, which was accurate. This became a burden on the whole GMO project. So, Bayer stepped in, which has a friendly image of an aspirin, harmless, nice company, but in fact is the company that invented heroin in the 1880s and made gas for the ovens of Auschwitz during WWII. Its one of the dirtiest agribusiness companies in the world with a series of homicides and pesticides that killed off bee colonies and many other things that are essential to life and to nature.

Flickr.com/Miran Rijavec (public domain)

ChemChina China State Chemical giant for some reason took over Swiss Syngenta, which makes weed-killers.

Then, Dow Chemicals and DuPont merged their GMO businesses together.

So, we have three gigantic corporate groups worldwide controlling the genetically-modified part of the human food chain. As dangerous as the GMO crops are and the more they sell, it is becoming more and more obvious that they are the chemicals that by contract must be applied to those GMO seeds by the corporations. They demand that if you buy roundup ready soybeans or corn, you must use Monsanto (now Bayer) roundup.

Therefore, this is giving more corporate power to the GMO industry than ever before and thats an alarming trend. They are putting pressure on the bureaucracy in Brussels. One example: there was a massive public campaign against the renewal of the license of the European Commission for Glyphosate. Glyphosate is the most widely used weed-killer in the world. Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Monsantos roundup. The other ingredients are Monsantos corporate secret, but the combination of them is one of the most deadly weed-killers.

The World Health Organizations body responsible for assessing genetic dangers made a ruling the last year that Glyphosate was a probable cancer-causing agent.

The license came up for automatic renewal last year a 15-year license. The EU commission for health was prepared to automatically renew it for 15 years. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which is responsible allegedly for the health and safety of European citizens, recommended approval based on a German study by the German Food Safety Agency that was simply lifted 100% from studies given by the private corporation Monsanto! So, the whole chain was corrupt from the beginning and all the information was rigged. In reality tests have shown that in minuscule concentrations, lower than in recommended levels in Europe and in the US, Glyphosate causes kidney disease, liver disease, and other illnesses that are potentially fatal.

Now, Glyphosate has shown up in urine tests, in urban drinking water, in gardens, in ground water and so forth. And that gets into the system of childbearing women, for example, with embryo. Its all in this!

The EU commission, despite a million petitions this is a record setting and despite recommendations from leading scientists around the world to not renew the license, made a compromise under huge industry pressure and renewed it for 18 months. Why did they renew it for that time? Because at the end of 18 months, they were told by Bayer and Monsanto that the takeover of those two giant corporations will be completed and Bayer is going to replace Glyphosate with another, likely more deadly toxin, but not so well-known as Glyphosate. So, they simply bought time. And that is just one example.

This agenda of GMO is not about the health and safety; its not about increasing crop yields thats a lie that has been proven in repeated tests in North America and all around the world. Crop yields for farmers, using GMO plants, may increase slightly for the first 1-2 harvest years, but ultimately decline after 3-4 years. And not only that! Weve been promised by Monsanto and other GMO giants that the use of chemicals will be less, because of these wonderful traits that GMO plants resist. In fact, the weeds become resistant and you have super weeds, which are 5-6 feet in a height and choke out everything. Its a catastrophe. So, farmers end up using added weed killers to kill the super weeds. This whole mad playing around with the genetic makeup of nature is a disaster from the beginning.

The real agenda of GMO, which I have documented in great detail in my book Seeds of Destruction, comes from the Rockefeller Foundation. It comes out of the 1920s-1930s Eugenics movement. The Rockefeller Foundation during the 1930s, right up to the outbreak of World War II when it became politically embracing too, financed the Nazi Eugenics experiments of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and in Munich. Why did they do this? Their goal was the elimination of what they called undesirable eaters. That is called population reduction.

After the war, the head of the American Eugenic Society, who was a good friend of John D. Rockefeller, at the annual conference of the American Eugenic Society said: From today, the new name of eugenics is genetics. Moreover, if you keep that in mind genetic engineering, the Human Genome Project and so forth they all are scientific frauds. Russian scientists have proven that the entire Genome Project utterly disregarded 98% of the scientifically valuable data in favor of 2% that was completely nonsense and a waste of billions of dollars.

Therefore, they have been obsessed with the idea of how to reduce human population in a way that would not be so obvious as simply going out and carrying out mass-sterilization.

Actually, they have done that in Central America together with the World Health Organization by giving certain vaccines that they cooked-up to have abortive effects. Therefore, the women of child-bearing age in Central America were given these vaccines against tetanus. The organization of the Catholic Church became suspicious because the shots were given only to women, not to men. And they found that there was buried in the vaccine an abortive effect that made it impossible for women to conceive and bear children. This is all covert population reduction.

These are the Western patriarchs who believe they are the gods, sitting on the throne with great dignity, controlling mankind. I think they are a bunch of fools, but they have this agenda of genetic manipulation. Its against nature, its chemically unstable. And I have to congratulate the Russian Federation that they had the courage and the moral concern for their own population to ban GMO cultivation across Russia. That was a step forward for mankind. I would hope that Russia will use its influence to get China to do the similar thing, because their agriculture is in dire need of some healthy Russian input. But this step by Russia to make a GMO-free agriculture is a great step for mankind.

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Genetics Are the New Eugenics: How GMO's Reduce the Human Population - Center for Research on Globalization

Anatomy

Former Grey’s Anatomy star Katherine Heigl’s new show has been cancelled after TWO episodes – Digital Spy

Getty Images Randy Holmes / ABC

Katherine Heigl's newest series, Doubt, has been cancelled after just TWO episodes. Yikes!

Two episodes hardly seems like enough time to pass judgement, but it seems like CBS had seen enough, according to TVLine and already have a replacement filling its slot.

The former Grey's Anatomy star was leading an all-star cast that included the likes of Laverne Cox and Dule Hill and it was forecast to be a hit, but ratings have bombed something sharpish.

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The series focused on Heigl, an attorney that falls for her client who has been accused of murdering his girlfriend.

CBS has not made a decision when or if the further 11 episodes will air.

The actress was tweeting about the show on Thursday (February 23) after the second episode aired and all seemed fine then.

Oh how things have changed.

Elsewhere, she and husband Josh Kelley welcomed their first son, Joshua Bishop Kelley, on December 20.

The couple are already parents to two adopted daughters and now big sisters 8-year-old Naleigh and 4-year-old Adelaide.

Last year, she opened up about her 2008 Emmy Awards controversy that saw her withdraw herself from the race because she didn't consider her Grey's Anatomy material was enough "to warrant an Emmy nomination".

Grey's Anatomy is currently in it's 13th season and airs on ABC.

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Former Grey's Anatomy star Katherine Heigl's new show has been cancelled after TWO episodes - Digital Spy

Genetics

Many genetic changes can occur early in human development – Baylor College of Medicine News (press release)

The genetic material of an organism encodes the instructions that guide its development. These codes are not written in stone; they can change or mutate any time during the life of the organism. Single changes in the code can occur spontaneously, as a mutation, causing developmental problems. Others, as an international team of researchers has discovered, are too numerous to be explained by random mutation processes present in the general population. When such multiple genetic changes occur before or early after conception, they may inform scientists about fundamental knowledge underlying many diseases. The study appears in Cell.

As a part of the clinical evaluation of young patients with a variety of developmental issues, we performed clinical genomic studies and analyzed the genetic material of more than 60,000 individuals. Most of the samples were analyzed at Baylor Genetics laboratories, said lead author Dr. Pengfei Liu, assistant professor of molecular and human genetics Baylor College of Medicine and assistant laboratory director of Baylor Genetics. Of these samples, five had extreme numbers of genetic changes that could not be explained by random events alone.

The researchers looked at a type of genetic change called copy number variants, which refers to the number of copies of genes in human DNA. Normally we each have two copies of each gene located on a pair of homologous chromosomes.

Copy number variants in human DNA can be compared to repeated or missing paragraphs or pages of text in a book, said senior author Dr. James R. Lupski, Cullen Professor of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor. For instance, if one or two pages are duplicated in a book it could be explained by random mistakes. On the other hand, if 10 different pages are duplicated, you have to suspect that it did not happen by chance. We want to understand the basic mechanism underlying these multiple new copy number variant mutations in the human genome.

A rare, early and transitory phenomenon that can affect human development

The researchers call this phenomenon multiple de novo copy number variants. As the name indicates, the copy number variants are many and new (de novo). The latter means that the patients carrying the genetic changes did not inherit them from their parents because neither the mother nor the father carries the changes.

In this rare phenomenon, the copy number variants are predominantly gains duplications and triplications rather than losses of genetic material, and are present in all the cells of the child. The last piece of evidence together with the fact that the parents do not carry the alterations suggest that the extra copies of genes may have occurred either in the sperm or the egg, the parents germ cells, and before or very early after fertilization.

This burst of genetic changes happens only during the early stages of embryonic development and then it stops, Liu said. Interestingly, despite having a large number of mutations, the young patients present with relatively mild neurological problems.

The researchers are analyzing more patient samples looking for additional cases of multiple copy number variants to continue their investigation of what may trigger this rare phenomenon.

We hope that as more researchers around the world learn about this and confirm it, the number of cases will increase, Liu said. This will improve our understanding of the underlying mechanism and of why and how pathogenic copy number variants arise not only in developmental disorders but in cancers.

A new era of clinical genomics-supported medicine and research

This discovery has been possible in great measure thanks to the breadth of genetic testing performed and genomic data available at Baylor Genetics laboratory.

The diagnostics lab Baylor Genetics is one of the pioneers in this new era of clinical genomics-supported medical practice and disease gene discovery research, Lupski said. They are developing the clinical genomics necessary to foster and support the Precision Medicine Initiative of the National Institutes of Health, and generating the genomics data that further drives human genome research.

Using state-of-the art technologies and highly-trained personnel, Baylor Genetics analyzes hundreds of samples daily for genetic evaluation of patients with conditions suspected to have underlying genetic factors potentially contributing to their disease. Having this wealth of information and insight into the genetic mechanisms of disease offers now the possibility of advancing medicine and basic research in ways that were not available before.

There is so much that both clinicians and researchers can learn from the data generated in diagnostic labs, Liu said. Clinicians receive genomic information that can aid in diagnosis and treatment of their patients, and researchers gather data that can help them unveil the mechanisms underlying the biological perturbations resulting in the patients conditions.

Other contributors to this work include Bo Yuan, Claudia M.B. Carvalho, Arthur Wuster, Klaudia Walter, Ling Zhang, Tomasz Gambin, Zechen Chong, Ian M. Campbell, Zeynep Coban Akdemir, Violet Gelowani, Karin Writzl, Carlos A. Bacino, Sarah J. Lindsay, Marjorie Withers, Claudia Gonzaga-Jauregui, Joanna Wiszniewska, Jennifer Scull, Pawel Stankiewicz, Shalini N. Jhangiani, Donna M. Muzny, Feng Zhang, Ken Chen, Richard A. Gibbs, Bernd Rautenstrauss, Sau Wai Cheung, Janice Smith, Amy Breman, Chad A. Shaw, Ankita Patel and Matthew E. Hurles. The researchers are affiliated with one of more of the following institutions Baylor, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the U.K., Fudan University in China, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Houston, the Clinical Institute of Medical Genetics in Slovenia and the Medical Genetics Center in Germany.

This work was supported in part by grants from the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS058529), the National Human Genome Research Institute (U54HG003273), a joint NHGRI/National Heart Blood and Lung Institute grant (U54HG006542) to the Baylor Hopkins Center for Mendelian Genomics, and the BCM Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center, IDDRC Grant Number 5P30HD024064-23, from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The work was also partially supported by the Wellcome Trust (WT098051).

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Many genetic changes can occur early in human development - Baylor College of Medicine News (press release)