Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday, 11 June 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 10 Jun 2015 06:59 AM PDT


An amazing discovery could rewrite textbooks, after a paleontologist accidentally found blood and soft tissue preserved in tattered dinosaur fossils. If proven, science expects answers to age-old questions, including: “Can we resurrect dinosaurs?”
The red blood cells and collagen fibers were discovered by chance when Imperial College London’s Sergio Bertazzo and Susannah Maidment were examining the buildup of calcium in human blood vessels. Bertazzo wanted to perform a few tests using electronic microscopes and ended up asking the Natural History Museum for some fossils to test his findings, according to the IB Times.
They received eight pieces, all estimated at 75 million years old.
What the pair found could prove we’ve consistently been looking at dinosaurs in the wrong way: it suggests that nearly every fossil science studied in the past century could contain similarly well-preserved blood and tissue samples, answering questions on dinosaur evolution, physiology, behavior, and whether their DNA could also be intact. From there on in, we’re entering sci-fi territory.
Most of the fossils studied by the pair were very poorly-preserved fragments, including toes and claws from what could be several different species.
While collagen – the protein that helps form skin – had previously been found in a very well-preserved bone, finding it together with blood cells in a shabby one is remarkable, according to Maidment and Bertazzo. It means we could go about re-examining every bone in the museum and come up with potentially ground-breaking findings that enable us to understand how creatures lived in prehistoric times.
“One morning, I turned on the microscope, increased the magnification, and thought ‘wait – that looks like blood!’” Bertazzo said, according to the Guardian. He had already been examining the fragments for months.
At first, the two scientists thought it might have been contamination from a museum worker with a cut on their finger. But mammal blood cells don’t contain nuclei, while these blood cells did. This fact ruled out human blood.
“I thought there must be another explanation. That it was bacteria, or pollen or modern contamination. We went into it with a great deal of skepticism then attempted to eliminate every other possibly hypothesis there could possibly be,” Maidment told the IB Times.
Similar to the discovery of blood, the pair found amino acids that make up collagen, embedded inside the bone fragments. Its presence could be used to identify previously unknown specimens, unraveling whole dinosaur family trees.
Blood has its own set of secrets. The scientists believe its discovery in the fossils to be the first step towards understanding whether dinosaurs were cold, or warm-blooded, and when the switch began to occur and why.
“I think one of the key things from the blood cells is that there’s a very well constrained relationship to do with metabolic rate and blood cells size among vertebrates,” Maidment explained. “Within specific vertebrate groups, the smaller the blood cells the faster the metabolic rate. Animals with a faster metabolic rate tend to be warm-blooded, whereas those with a slow metabolic rate tend to be cold-blooded.
“The ancestors of dinosaurs are thought to have been cold-blooded animals, while birds’ descendants are warm-blooded, so somewhere along that evolutionary lineage, from proto-dinosaurs up through to birds, you’ve got the evolution of warm-bloodedness,” she continued.
“That’s been a subject of interest among paleontologists for some time because if they were warm-blooded that gives you the idea that these are very active, very bird-like animals. And perhaps much more bird-like than they were reptilian. If they were cold-blooded that gives us more this reptilian idea of their behavior, their habits and lifestyles.”
It’s time now for more detailed studies, the pair says. “It may well be that this type of tissue is preserved far more commonly than we thought. It might even be the norm,” said Maidment, as cited by the Guardian. “This is just the first step in this research.”
Bertazzo believes the discovery “opens up the possibility of loads of specimens that may have soft tissue preserved in them, but the problem with DNA is that even if you find it, it won’t be intact. It’s possible you could find fragments, but to find more than that? Who knows?”
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Posted: 10 Jun 2015 06:45 AM PDT


Both probiotics and prebiotics are involved in nurturing good bacteria that our digestive tract requires for proper health. It has been scientifically established that prebiotics improve intestinal health, enhance the immune system and inhibit cancer. Moreover, prebiotics reduce symptoms of bowel related diseases, such as ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome and celiac disease.
Probiotics are live, active cultures capable of multiplying in numbers whereas prebiotics serve as the food source for probiotics and do not grow or reproduce.
According to regulation standards, prebiotics are made up of nondigestable carbohydrates (fiber) that are used by bacteria in the colon to produce measurable health benefits. Naturally found in food, a prebiotic is not broken down or absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract. Beneficial bacteria use this fiber as a food source in a process called fermentation.
Prebiotics are considered functional foods in that they provide numerous health benefits and aid in the prevention and treatment of diseases and health conditions. Currently, there are only two major types of prebiotics well documented: Inulin and oligosaccharides. Examples of food sources that contain prebiotics are onions, leeks, asparagus, bananas, garlic, honey, dandelion greens, Jerusalem artichoke.
Inulin and oligosaccharides are short-chain polysaccharides, or chains of carbs, which act at different locations in the colon ensuring complete intestinal health. By increasing and maintaining the populations of good bacteria, the body is less susceptible to pathogenic bacteria that can lead to a diverse range of negative health consequences.
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Posted: 10 Jun 2015 06:10 AM PDT


Amazon and Google are racing each other to acquire and store data on human DNA, with both companies competing for market share in an industry estimated to be worth around $1 billion by 2018.
That has led academic institutions and healthcare companies to choose one cloud computing service or the other: Google Genomics or Amazon Web Services.
The growth of the industry is due, in part, to the increasing demand for personalized medicine, which patients are treated based on their DNA profile.
In order to understand how certain genetic profiles respond to different treatment, a large amount of data is required. Drug manufactures and universities, alike, have already begun projects to sequence the genomes of thousands of people.
Clients rely on Google and Amazon to store genomics data rather than housing it on their own computers because they believe the tech giants do a better job keeping it secure, controlling costs and allowing it to be easily shared.
Google is charging $3 to $5 per month for its service, while Amazon charges $4 to $5 per month. The companies also charge for computing data and data transfer, when scientists use the analytical software.
Now an estimated $100 million to $300 million business globally, the cloud genomics market is expected to grow to $1 billion by 2018, research analyst Daniel Ives told Reuters. By that time, the entire cloud market should have $50 billion to $75 billion in annual revenue, up from about $30 billion now.
Google and Amazon are also working to develop analytics for this kind of DNA data, which helps scientists analyze their data more easily. Microsoft Corp. and IBM are also trying to enter that segment of the industry.
Neither company discloses the amount of genomics data it holds, but based on interviews Reuters conducted with analysts and genomic scientists, as well as the companies’ own announcements of what customers they have won, Amazon Web Services may hold a larger share.
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Posted: 10 Jun 2015 05:41 AM PDT


US President Barack Obama has lashed out at his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, saying he is destroying the country’s economy in order to recreate the Soviet empire.
During a speech to world leaders at the G7 summit in Germany, Obama attacked Putin over the Ukraine crisis.
“Does he continue to wreck his country’s economy and continue Russia’s isolation in pursuit of a wrong-headed desire to recreate the glories of the Soviet empire?” Obama asked.
“Or does he recognize that Russia’s greatness does not depend on violating the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other countries?” he added.
The Obama administration accuses Moscow of supporting and arming pro-Russian forces fighting in eastern Ukraine since last year. The Kremlin says the allegations are baseless.
Washington and its allies have imposed sanctions against Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine.
President Obama convinced the world leader to toughen sanctions against Russia.
He said “additional steps” could be taken over Russia’s “aggressive behavior” in Ukraine.
However, Russian journalist Dmitry Zolotarev believes that Washington can no longer continue its self-imposed sanctions against Moscow due to its economic reliance on Russian companies.
“The United States will have to look into Russian corporations. The United States will have to look into Russian engines,” Zolotarev said in an interview with Press TV last week.
The New York Times reported the US military urged Congress to call off legislation that banned the purchase of Russian rocket engines for launching military and intelligence satellites into space.
A bill was passed five months ago that forced the Pentagon not to buy the RD-180 rocket engines from Russia. The US military says it needs the engines for the next several years.
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Posted: 10 Jun 2015 05:31 AM PDT


Department of Justice officials have asked a federal court to restart the NSA spy programs shut down when portions of the Patriot Act expired on June 1. The US government claims the Freedom Act allows surveillance to continue for six more months.
In a filing to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), revealed Monday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) requested permission to continue the “bulk production of call detail records” for 180 days, arguing that the USA Freedom Act allows a six-month transition period.
The motion was filed at 9:50 PM on Tuesday, June 2, shortly after President Obama enacted the Freedom Act following its passage in the Senate. It was signed by Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart J. Evans.
“The Government respectfully submits that such authorization is appropriate notwithstanding the Second Circuit’s recent panel opinion in ACLU v. Clapper, No. 14-42 (2d Cir. May 7, 2015),” Carlin and Evans wrote, referring to the Second Circuit Court’s decision ruling the Section 215 of the Patriot Act illegal.
“Second Circuit rulings do not constitute controlling precedent for this Court,” the officials wrote to the FISC. “Although each such request sought a large number of call detail records, the vast majority of which ultimately will not be terrorist-related, the Government has argued and this Court has agreed… that the NSA bulk telephony metadata collection program is authorized by Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act.”
Furthermore, the officials wrote, the USA Freedom Act extended Section 215 powers from the Patriot Act through December 15, 2019.
On June 5, former Virginia attorney-general Ken Cuccinelli and the conservative group FreedomWorks filed their own motion with the FISC, urging the court not to approve the government’s request, on grounds that the NSA program violated the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.
“As we’ve repeatedly stated before, we believe the program is lawful,” replied Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi. “Moreover, in passing the Freedom Act Congress provided for a 180 day transition period for the government to continue the existing collection program until the new mechanism of obtaining call detail records is implemented.”
Section 215 actually expired on May 31, after the extraordinary Sunday session of the Senate adjourned without passing the Freedom Act, partly thanks to the delaying tactics by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM). The NSA had to shut down the program by the evening of May 31, to comply with the law. Senators eventually voted to pass the House-approved text of the USA Freedom Act on June 2.
Reacting to the rumors the government might request permission to restart the program, Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and one of the Senators who crossed the aisle to work with Paul against the Patriot Act extension, urged against it.
“I see no reason for the executive branch to restart bulk collection, even for a few months, and I urge them not to attempt to do so,” Wyden told the Guardian on June 4. “This illegal dragnet surveillance violated Americans’ rights for 14 years without making our country any safer, and the administration should leave it on the ash heap of history.”
The FISC has given the government until June 12 to respond to the challenge by Cuccinelli and FreedomWorks. Until then, the NSA cannot restart the bulk collections program.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 08:43