June 7, 2017

The mouse lemurthe world's smallest primatehas the potential to transform the field of genetics and serve as an ideal model for a wide range of primate biology, behavior and medicine, including cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers say.

For decades, scientists have relied on mice, fruit flies and worms as genetic models, but despite all their success, these organisms routinely fail to mimic many aspects of primate biology, including many human diseases, said Mark Krasnow, MD, PhD, professor of biochemistry.

Frustrated by the lack of a good study model, Krasnow and his colleagues turned to the mouse lemur and began conducting detailed physiologic and genetic studies on hundreds of these petite, docile creatures in the rainforests of Madagascar.

Working in a Stanford-funded lab on the island country, the scientists report that they already have identified more than 20 individual lemurs with unique genetic traits, including obesity, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, cardiac arrhythmias, progressive eye disease and motor and personality disorders. Their hope is that continued study of these abundant primates could lead to a better understanding, and possibly better treatments, of these and other conditions in lemurs and humans.

'Huge potential'

"I think mouse lemurs have great potential for our understanding of primate biology, behavior and conservation, in the same way that fruit flies and mice over the last 30 or 40 years have transformed our understanding of developmental biology and many other areas of biology and medicine," Krasnow said. "Some of the most fascinating and important questions that need to be answered are primate-specific. For those, we really need something besides humans to complement the work that has been done in fruit flies and mice."

A paper describing the researchers' findings will be published online June 9 in Genetics. Krasnow is the senior author. Lead authorship is shared by graduate student Camille Ezran and postdoctoral scholar Caitlin Karanewsky.

The project began in 2009 when Krasnow, frustrated by the lack of a good animal model for lung diseasehis area of expertisecommissioned three high school interns to search the animal world for something better. By the end of the summer, the interns had come up with the mouse lemur, which fits all the necessary criteria: Like mice, these animals are small (about twice the size of a mouse), develop quickly, reproduce rapidly, produce many offspring, and are inexpensive and easy to maintain and manage. In genetic terms, the mouse lemur is about midway between humans and mice, Krasnow said.

"When I talk to scientists, their faces light up when I tell them about mouse lemurs because they are about the size of a mouse but they are primates, so that makes a huge difference," said Ezran, who was one of the high school interns. "I think they really do present such great potential for biological, behavioral and medical research in general."

Early on in the project, Krasnow sought out the perspective of Stanford veterinarians, ultimately recruiting Megan Albertelli, DVM, PhD, assistant professor of comparative medicine. A geneticist and primate specialist, Albertelli said she was initially skeptical of the idea of lemurs as animal models, but soon became enthusiastic after realizing their enormous potential for contributions in understanding neurologic problems, eye disease and other conditions where mouse models have fallen short.

Trip to France

She accompanied the group on a trip to France to visit with scientists who had been studying lemurs in the laboratory for years. A French team had found that some aging lemurs develop a form of dementia and accumulate plaques in the brain that resemble those of Alzheimer's patients.

"I saw that they were promising models for Alzheimer's disease," Albertelli said. "Alzheimer's is a condition that is hard to model in other animal species, so that was very exciting."

Mouse lemurs live exclusively on Madagascar, where they are found in great abundance. Tens of millions of them populate the island. While lemurs generally are endangered due to habitat destruction, mouse lemurs are not under threat and freely roam the island, said Ezran, who calls them the "rodents of Madagascar."

The Stanford researchers began to develop collaborations with other scientists studying lemurs, including those at the Centre ValBio near the Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar, who have been examining lemur ecology, family structure and behavior for decades.

During periodic visits to the island, Krasnow and his colleagues learned how to catch brown mouse lemurs in the rainforest just outside the research station, using a tiny banana slice inside a trap as a lure. The scientists then tagged and photographed each animal, gave them a thorough physical examination, analyzed them for behavioral issues and abnormalities and removed a drop of blood for detailed genetic and serum studies. The animals then were released back into the wild so the researchers could follow them over time to see how their environments may influence their progress and health. In 2013, Stanford built a sophisticated molecular biology and genetics lab within the ValBio complex, where these studies could be carried out.

'Distinctive personalities'

Lemurs have distinctive personalities, Krasnow said, and the researchers gave each one a name, based on his or her looks or behavior. For instance, one was named Feisty for his unusually aggressive nature; most lemurs are docile.

The work has led to a whole new way of doing genetic studies, said Krasnow, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Instead of using the traditional method of introducing genetic mutations into mice to create "knockout" miceor animals with customized genesthey found they were able to find naturally occurring variants among animals in the wild. Moreover, in working with lemurs in their native habitats, the researchers could better understand how the animals interact with their surroundings and the relationship between genes and the environment.

"Instead of introducing mutations in mice or fruit flies, we are doing something much more similar to what is done in humans," he said. "We are looking at all the wonderful genetic variation already existing in nature, since there are so many millions of mouse lemurs out there. We calculate that most 'knockout' mutations are already present in nature, and all we have to do is find them. And because the cost of sequencing a genome is rapidly dropping, it's now possible to sequence the genomes of thousands of mouse lemurs to see what mutations they are carrying."

In doing so, the researchers could accomplish in a few years for a tiny fraction of the cost what the International Knockout Mouse Consortium will accomplish in 10 years, at a cost of nearly $1 billion, he said.

But the project could use some additional staff, as the process of capturing the animals and screening them in the laboratory is labor-intensive, he said. He and his colleagues have come up with a multipurpose solution that will contribute to the local educational system while helping preserve the lemur populations in Madagascar, whose habitats are threatened by farming, mining and logging interests, he said.

Help from students

The group is developing a science curriculum for use in Malagasy high schools in which students learn about biology by exploring the rich environment right outside their school houses. Among the instructors is Manu Prakash, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford and a pioneer in the field of "frugal science," who has brought his powerful $1 paper microscopes to Madagascar and taught students how to explore the microscopic world in which they live, including the lice in their hair, the pathogens in their water and the disease-causing parasites in their environment. The curriculum was first introduced among university students, some of whom now are screening lemurs at the Stanford lab in Madagascar.

"We saw this as an opportunity because we are going over there to study the unique animals and biology and ecology of Madagascar, which is unsurpassed in the world," Krasnow said. "It is the No. 1 hotspot for biodiversity, but most of the students don't realize what they have in their backyards because they are being taught from textbooks and from teachers who have learned from Europeans."

He said the researchers hope to expand scientific curricula at all levels of education, helping train the Malagasy scientists of the future and build scientific capacity in the country, all the while creating an appreciation among the local population of the need to understand and preserve lemurs and other species for the future.

"We are trying to do this in a way that is respectful and will help the lemurs and the people of Madagascar, while enlightening many aspects of primate biology and human disease," he said.

The researchers plan to make the genetic sequencing and phenotyping information they obtain from the lemurs publicly available so that researchers around the world can take advantage of this trove of knowledge, Albertelli said.

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Mouse lemur could serve as ideal model for primate biology and human disease - Phys.Org

This week, two of Donald Trumps top advisers, H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, wrote the following passage in The Wall Street Journal: The president embarked on his first foreign trip with a cleareyed outlook that the world is not a global community but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.

That sentence is the epitome of the Trump project. It asserts that selfishness is the sole driver of human affairs. It grows out of a worldview that life is a competitive struggle for gain. It implies that cooperative communities are hypocritical covers for the selfish jockeying underneath.

The essay explains why the Trump people are suspicious of any cooperative global arrangement, like NATO and the various trade agreements. It helps explain why Trump pulled out of the Paris global-warming accord. This essay explains why Trump gravitates toward leaders like Vladimir Putin, the Saudi princes and various global strongmen: They share his core worldview that life is nakedly a selfish struggle for money and dominance.

It explains why people in the Trump White House are so savage to one another. Far from being a band of brothers, their world is a vicious arena where staffers compete for advantage.

In the essay, McMaster and Cohn make explicit the great act of moral decoupling woven through this presidency. In this worldview, morality has nothing to do with anything. Altruism, trust, cooperation and virtue are unaffordable luxuries in the struggle of all against all. Everything is about self-interest.

Weve seen this philosophy before, of course. Powerful, selfish people have always adopted this dirty-minded realism to justify their own selfishness. The problem is that this philosophy is based on an error about human beings and it leads to self-destructive behavior in all cases.

The error is that it misunderstands what drives human action. Of course people are driven by selfish motivations for individual status, wealth and power.

But they are also motivated by another set of drives for solidarity, love and moral fulfillment that are equally and sometimes more powerful.

People are wired to cooperate. Far from being a flimsy thing, the desire for cooperation is the primary human evolutionary advantage we have over the other animals.

People have a moral sense. They have a set of universal intuitions that help establish harmony between peoples. From their first moments, children are wired to feel each others pain. You dont have to teach a child about what fairness is; they already know.

People have moral emotions. They feel rage at injustice, disgust toward greed, reverence for excellence, awe before the sacred and elevation in the face of goodness.

People are attracted by goodness and repelled by selfishness. Good leaders like Lincoln, Churchill, Roosevelt and Reagan understand the selfish elements that drive human behavior, but they have another foot in the realm of the moral motivations. They seek to inspire faithfulness by showing good character. They try to motivate action by pointing toward great ideals.

Realist leaders like Trump, McMaster and Cohn seek to dismiss this whole moral realm. By behaving with naked selfishness toward others, they poison the common realm and they force others to behave with naked selfishness toward them.

By treating the world simply as an arena for competitive advantage, Trump, McMaster and Cohn sever relationships, destroy reciprocity, erode trust and eviscerate the sense of sympathy, friendship and loyalty that all nations need when times get tough.

By looking at nothing but immediate material interest, Trump, McMaster and Cohn turn America into a nation that affronts everybody elses moral emotions. They make our country seem disgusting in the eyes of the world.

George Marshall was no idealistic patsy. He understood that America extends its power when it offers a cooperative hand and volunteers for common service toward a great ideal. Realists reverse that formula. They assume strife and so arouse a volley of strife against themselves.

I wish H.R. McMaster was a better student of Thucydides. Hed know that the Athenians adopted the same amoral tone he embraces: The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

The Athenians ended up making endless enemies and destroying their own empire.

David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times. Reach him c/o The New York Times, Editorial Department, 620 8th Ave., New York, NY 10018. 2017 New York Times News Service

Read more from the original source:
Brooks: Selfishness makes enemies and destroys empires - The Durango Herald

This is part two of a five-part series. Read the first part here.

Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission (IJM) cites 45 million slaves worldwide; President Trump cites 27 million slaves; Ivanka cites 20 million slave. They are all in the same room and yet, these are their discrepancies.

Kevin Bales concocted the 27 million number years ago. By 2012, International Labor Organization (ILO) claimed 20.9 million. That number never took into consideration the internet that was reported and exposed as the elephant in the trafficking arena by Homayra Sellier in 1999, and by this journalist in 2000. The 45 million is a number used by an Australia NGO to which Bales has consulted.

Poverty, hunger, mass migrations, war zones,terrorists groups, corrupt states, lack of education and other factors, including earthquakes and tsunamis are fertile grounds for human trafficking. If you analyze how many live on $2 a day, that is almost half the planet.

UNICEF claims 10 million child prostitutes worldwide. UN claims approximately 120 million street children globally; 10 million orphans in Africa due to AIDS, 250 million Dalits in India alone, and somehow the so-called human trafficking experts claim anywhere from 20 45 million slaves. Hardly plausible.

Years ago, David Batstone of Not for Sale, when challenged why he then posted 27 million on his website, apologetically stated that he could not get a seat at the table unless he went along with the US anti-trafficking cabals narrative. That alone makes this coercive data. That is why ethics is needed in this arena.

Innocents at Risk claims, In Washington DC, trafficking innocent children is a $100 million industry. U.S. local NGOs claim their cities are the hubs. Yet, Gary Haugen now claims that human trafficking really flourishes in 12 primary countries. How does that compute if poverty is a factor and 2 billion live on $2 a day, according to Haugen in his TED talk?

In 2014, Jean Baderschneider, another Global Fund architect, gave a speech to the ILO, citing their own outdated numbers.

While none of them seem to agree on the landscape, they do agree that a $1.5 billion fund is needed for data they contradict! US congressional teams say that they too believe that these large U.S. NGOs are only interested in money. It only seems logicalto ask Who has the gall to ask for $1.5 billion when they contradict each other, but who would possibly think this was a sane idea to award $1.5 billion to anyone whose data is wrong?

Or, are there other reasons behind their motives? Are these large US NGOs tired of raising monies, and now, they want a hedge fund like monopoly for their financial sustainability to hijack human trafficking for political agendas? Is not that the very globalization issue that candidate Trump campaigned against? With no blame to the Trumps here at all, these large US NGOs are tenacious and clever as they have built their cottage industry cabal for the last 17 years, but they have proven their model of self-sustainability financially is not doing the job. Bigger is not better with this particular social issue. If anything, it should be run like a business fighting a business of crime.

The 2012 ILO numbers do not incorporate the massive upside down world we live in which contributes to the increase in human trafficking the implosive effect by the internet, Arab Rising ramifications, increase in mass migrations unknown since World War II from West Africa across Northern Africa and the Middle East, from the Arabian Peninsula into Central Asia, onto Europe and even landing in the Australian-paid detention centers in Nauru and Papa New Guinea. ILO does not take into consideration the parades of unaccompanied children headed north from Guatemala into Mexico and transported and trafficked along the way on the beast trains to the U.S. southern border. ILO does not count ISIS and the blood, organ, sex, and labor spikes even in Libya, or the Yemen torture chambers, the tens of thousands of children gone missing in Europe, the Boko Haram girls, and the spike in public auctions.

The data today does not take into consideration the massive underbelly of transnational and trans-criminal human trafficking enterprises that engulf terrorism on a scale not witnessed in human history, while transported over the internet by images, and buried in the Dark Net internet recesses of Tor and Bitcoin. The data does not take into consideration the opiate issue in the US and Australia where homeless children engage in survival-sex to get their next fix. Recently, in Maryland, a 15 year old girl, hooked on heroin, was sold by her own mother in state and across state lines.

None of these figures fully grasps the nearly 2 million homeless children in America where homeless shelters for youth close at 5 or 6pm and they have no place to go unless they negotiate a trick for a bed, nor those 65 million migrants worldwide. Nor does it address children at risk who are institutionalized, disabled, in foster care, or recycled through jails, who were repeatedly raped starting at four or five years of age when the suffering began that Philadelphia psychiatrist, Dr. Jean Langberg, calls compounded trauma that spirals their lives out of control.

This U.S. NGO cabal leading this Global Slush Fund has no shame because they know their narratives and facts are inconclusive. We needbrazen ethics, critical thinking and analysis to grasp the breath and width of this global phenomenon, not promises of funds. No one is addressing the child rape that leads to livesspentin spiritual, physical, and emotional in pain, mental illness, broken relationships, and cycles of humantrafficking, except the older survivors whose lives have been impacted for years. In the background, is the ever present Internet thatnormalizes what in decades past was not accepted normal human behavior, yet the hypocrisy is played out with these large U.S. NGOs because they fall short of fully demanding a zero tolerance of Silicon Valley because they accept their donations.

ILO numbers should be questioned fully. The ILO is a UN agency. The UN still does not fully address their own human trafficking issues. They still have employees and contractors engaged in food for sex trafficking models. While the UN Global Impact wants corporations to take the deep dive on their internal supply chains, the United Nations to date has never cleaned up their own internal contribution to human trafficking. Nor, have these NGOs ever cleaned up their contribution to this disinformation campaign. Instead, they lead with what sells. Instead of reality.

Homayra Sellier, Founder and CEO of Innocence in Danger in Europe challenges the hypocrisy of these US NGOs,

The UN must go beyond their declarations of child protection claiming they stand for fighting all forms of abuse and trafficking. It is a fact that UN soldiers abuse children in countries and war zones where they are commissioned to protect marginalized communities. If the UN ceases to stand up for the very values it was created for, then the UNs utility is in question. All member states should stop financing an organization whose priorities are no longer to keep populations safe. The UN must be held accountable for fueling the very child abuse that they publicly denounce. Institutionally, they are no different than any other institution. We are not what we say. We are what we do!

Rivers Teske, Founder and CEO of Hidden Choices of Westport, Connecticut also challenges them, It is time to acknowledge that big is not better, that small NGOs on the ground do the work, and that these larger U.S. NGOs want to take credit for their work. We need results. We need ethics front and center. Too many children and families are being profoundly harmed. The internet must be challenged for the sake of humanity.

Christine Dolan is an investigative journalist, and the former CNN Political Director. She is an authority on human trafficking globally having covered it for over 17 years. She is the author of Shattered Innocence The Millennium Holocaust, and In the Name of God, two authoritative investigations on the global phenomenon of human trafficking.

Originally posted here:
A Global Fund To Fight Human Trafficking's Data - The Daily Caller