Oh šit.., Great Science Gone Bad Leaves Nitwits Fiddling With Their Bowels

nautil-us |  In April 1901, after crossing an unusually calm English Channel, Metchnikoff for the first time exposed his newly formulated theory of aging to the public in the notoriously rainy Manchester. He traveled there to receive the Wilde Medal of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, the first foreigner to achieve this honor. In the society’s compact lecture hall, he delivered an hour‐long lecture in French, “The Flora of the Human Body,” in which he outlined his brand‐new explanation of why we age and die too soon.

The culprit, he announced, was the body’s flora—microscopic organisms inhabiting our internal organs, primarily the large intestine, or colon, the body’s largest microbe container. The idea that waste products in the intestines poison the human body went back at least to ancient Egyptians. In the late 19th century, with the establishment of the link between germs and disease, this belief had gained new validity, turning into a short‐lived obsession among physicians. The contents of the gut were thought to putrefy and release toxins through the action of bacteria.  Physicians were attributing anything from headaches and fatigue to heart disease and epilepsy to these toxins, having their patients swallow disinfecting mixtures containing charcoal, iodine, mercury, or naphthalene to “sterilize” the intestines.

Metchnikoff conceded that intestinal flora could be beneficial too, but most of these microbes, he argued, exert a harmful effect on the body, “and this leads to premature aging of our tissues and organs.”

Lashing out with a bitter invective against the colon, Metchnikoff, as a zoologist and a Darwinist, pointed to the animal origins of human beings. In our evolutionary past, the colon had helped mammals to survive. It contained not only microbes that facilitated the digestion of plant food but also remnants of digested food, enabling the animals to chase prey and escape predators without stopping to empty their bowels. Humans, on the other hand, he said, “derive no benefit from this organ,” particularly since they cook their food, making it easier to absorb. Though the colon was already known to play a role in the absorption of water and minerals, Metchnikoff believed it was less essential in this respect than the stomach or the small intestine. He was certain the colon should have long been eliminated by natural selection, if only the latter were more effective.

The Fountains Of Youth Are NOT For Peasants...,

nautil.us |  What impact will your work have on aging research?

I’m studying whether we can separate the process of functional reprogramming of cells from the process of aging reprogramming of cells. Typically these two processes happen at the same time. My hypothesis is that we can induce cellular rejuvenation without changing the function of the cells. If we can manage to do this, we could start thinking about a way to stall aging.

What is the difference between functional and aging reprogramming?

The function of a skin cell is to express certain proteins, keratins for example that protect the skin. The function of a liver cell is to metabolize. Those are cell-specific functions. Reprogramming that function means that you no longer have a liver cell. You now have another cell, which has a totally different function. Age, on the other hand, is just the degree of usefulness of that cell, and it’s mostly an epigenetic process. A young keratinocyte cell is younger than an older keratinocyte but it is still a keratinocyte. The amazing thing is that if you take an aged cell that is fully committed to a certain function, and you transplant its nucleus into an immature egg cell called an oocyte, then you revert its function to a pluripotent, embryonic one, which means it can become any other cell of the body—and you also revert the age of that cell to the youngest age possible. It’s mind-blowing to me.

This could be a paradigm shift in the way we approach aging.

How can you make a pluripotent cell in the lab?

Historically, the way pluripotency was induced from non-pluripotent cells was by doing the procedure I’ve just described: so-called “somatic cell nuclear transfer.” You take a non-pluripotent cell, let’s say a liver cell or a fibroblast or any other cell. You isolate its nucleus and transplant it into an egg, an oocyte, which was previously deprived of its own nucleus. This produces what is known as a reconstituted embryo, in which the cytoplasm is the original egg’s cytoplasm, and the nucleus is the nucleus of the cell that you isolated. The egg has this amazing ability to reprogram the nucleus to an embryonic-like state. Since embryonic cells are naturally endowed with a pluripotency program, if you then take that embryo and put it in culture, you can establish pluripotent stem cell lines. Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese researcher that got a Nobel prize for his work three years ago, demonstrated another technique, called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS. He showed that if you simply boost the expression of four particular transcription factors inside a non-pluripotent cell for a few weeks, you also could create an embryonic-like program. The factors also somehow wipe off the epigenetic memory of the cell, making them younger.

How close are we to using pluripotency induction in therapies?

iPS in mice was described in 2006, and in humans in 2007, so it’s been already 10 or 11 years. The first clinical trials using iPSCs are just about to get to early phase I and phase II. There has been a lot of hope and promise but it’s been a little slow. The reason being that when it comes to clinical applications, you have to consider a number of complications. You need to know how to make the cells very efficiently, and then they need to be safe. There will be more clinical trials coming up based off iPSs. For example, I am collaborating with an iPS-based platform for the cure of a skin disease called epidermolysis bullosa. We’re trying to move this to the pre-clinical stage over the next few years, and then if we pass that, we will potentially start moving into a phase I clinical trial. Things are moving forward pretty fast now.

The Inflammasome and Beyond...,

elysiumhealth |  The Takeaway: In his lab at Yale School of Medicine, immunobiologist Vishwa Deep Dixit and his team are researching the ties between the immune system, metabolism, and aging-related diseases, with a specific focus on an oft-misunderstood biological phenomenon — inflammation.

We all know inflammation: the painful red swelling that happens when we are injured or a wound becomes infected. But why would a Yale scientist interested in the mechanisms of aging and age-related disease be leading a lab researching such a thing?

Turns out there’s a lot more to the condition than most people realize. “‘Inflammation’ is not just a word not understood properly by the lay public, it’s often not properly understood by scientists,” said Vishwa Deep Dixit, a professor of comparative medicine and immunobiology at Yale’s School of Medicine. Dixit and eight other students, postdoctoral fellows, and professors study the intersection between the immune system and metabolism at Dixit Lab. Their focus is not these signs of “classic” inflammation, like redness, swelling, pain, and loss of function. Instead, they believe a different, underlying condition, “low-grade chronic inflammation,” is part of a wider immune system process linked to aging and age-related diseases. By studying the connections between inflammation and other bodily systems, like metabolism and the immune system, they hope to help humans live longer. We asked Dixit about his lab’s work, the future of immunobiological research, and the potential for effective interventions in human health.

Before You Start: Terms to Understand

Inflammation: The immune system’s local, short-term response to cellular damage by increasing blood flow and other repair-focused compounds.

Low-grade chronic inflammation: A “slow drip” response to widespread cell damage caused by aging, with the byproduct of impairing the function of cells and organs.

Inflammasome: A multiprotein intra-cellular complex that regulates inflammatory responses.

Metabolism: The sum of every chemical reaction that happens in the body. It breaks down (catabolism) food for energy and also rebuilds (anabolism) those basic molecules into cells.

Macrophage: Immune cells that reside in every organ in the body and are critical to maintaining organ function.

Baking Soda Anti-Inflammatory

healthimpactnews |  There was a time, decades ago, when doctors would prescribe bicarbonate of soda, aka baking soda, mixed with water to patients suffering from influenza or other temporary ills. By the way, baking soda does not contain aluminum, baking powder usually does.

Now its efficacious use is known by only a handful of holistic medical practitioners. Though not part of the medical establishment’s “standard of care,” which if not followed can result in an MD’s loss of license to practice, bicarbonate of soda has been used by paramedics and ER attendants for extreme emergencies. A handful of MDs have even discretely used it on kidney patients to augment or avoid dialysis.

Now a medical study has reported indications of dampening inflammation that bring on autoimmune diseases. The study was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Immunology in April of 2018 to confirm the hypothesis that bicarbonate of soda does have medical merit, and can be a simple cure to autoimmune diseases.

The Study and What It Means

The research report is titled Oral NaHCO3 Activates a Splenic Anti-Inflammatory Pathway: Evidence That Cholinergic Signals Are Transmitted via Mesothelial Cells. (Abstract)

Time for a few nomenclature explanations:

NaHCO3 is the chemical makeup of bicarbonate of soda, commonly known as baking soda. Splenic refers to the spleen. Cholinergic refers to choline, a primary component of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine found in nerve fibers, are thin plate-like calls that cover the walls of fluid containing cavities within the body.

The study was conducted at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University and funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health. The researchers’ message is:

Our data indicate that oral NaHCO3 activates a splenic anti-inflammatory pathway and provides evidence that the signals that mediate this response are transmitted to the spleen via a novel neuronal-like function of mesothelial cells.

The Georgia Medical College study determines the mechanics of how baking soda manages all of the wonderful things it does despite its efficacy not being heralded by the “orthodox” medical industry.

Their research discovered the spleen’s role in mitigating inflammation beyond raising acidic pH levels to higher alkaline levels, which is a recognized attribute of baking soda even in mainstream medicine.

The spleen creates macrophages, large white blood cells that clear cellular and microbial debris, and lymphocytes or killer cells that go after bacterial and viral infections. This is an aspect of the immune system, which if unnecessarily overstimulated, creates chronic inflammation

The Georgia Medical College researchers observed that when rats or healthy people drink a solution of small amounts of sodium bicarbonate it ironically becomes a trigger for the stomach to make more acid to digest the next meal.

Regarding the inflammation/autoimmune disease link, after drinking water with baking soda for two weeks, the population of macrophages shifted from those that promote inflammation, (M1), to those that reduce it (M2).

The researchers became aware that the little-studied mesothelial cells sitting on the spleen receive cholinergic messages telling the fist-sized organ that there’s no need to mount a protective immune response.

This eliminates an unnecessary inflammatory response, which may become an endless immune response feedback loop leading to a cytokine storm, which can be fatal, or chronic inflammation, the precursor to almost all autoimmune diseases.  Fist tap Dale.

The Roots of Neoconservatism are 100% Imperialistic, Colonialist, Supremacist, and Blatantly Evil

strategic-culture |  Neoconservatism started in 1953 with Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the Democratic Party US Senator from the state of Washington (1953-1983), who became known as a ‘defense’ hawk, and as “the Senator from Boeing,” because Boeing practically owned him. The UK’s Henry Jackson Society was founded in 2005 in order to carry forward Senator Jackson’s unwavering and passionate endorsement of growing the American empire so that the US-UK alliance will control the entire world (and US weapons-makers will dominate in every market).

Later, during the 1990s, neoconservatism became taken over by the Mossad and the lobbyists for Israel and came to be publicly identified as a ‘Jewish’ ideology, despite its having — and having long had — many champions who were ‘anti-communist’ or ‘pro-democracy’ or simply even anti-Russian, but who were neither Jewish nor even focused at all on the Middle East. Republicans Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and John McCain; and the Democrat, CIA Director James Woolsey — the latter of whom was one of the patrons of Britain’s Henry Jackson Society — were especially prominent neoconservatives, who came to prominence even before neocons became called “neoconservatives.” What all neocons have always shared in common has been a visceral hatred of Russians. That comes above anything else — and even above NATO (the main neocon organization).

During recent decades, neocons have been hating Iranians and more generally Shiites — such as in Syria and in Lebanon, and now also in Yemen — and not only hating Russians.

When the Israel lobby during the 1990s and after, pumped massive resources into getting the US Government to invade first Iraq and then Iran, neoconservatism got its name, but the ideology itself did not change. However, there are a few neoconservatives today who are too ignorant to know, in any coherent way, what their own underlying beliefs are, or why, and so who are anti-Russians (that’s basic for any neocon) who either don’t know or else don’t particularly care that Iran and Shia Muslims generally, are allied with Russia. Neoconservatives such as this, are simply confused neocons, people whose underlying ideology is self-contradictory, because they’ve not carefully thought things through.

What's Missing From the DC-NYC War Profiteer Consensus?

theamericanconservative |  1) It’s clear now that Europeans will increase their contributions to NATO. But Big Media totally ignored the trillion dollar gorilla in room: Why does anyone have to spend so much on NATO in the first place?

Are we planning a ground attack on Russia because we really think the former Soviet Empire will invade Poland or the Baltic nations? Are we planning for a land war in Europe to intervene in the Ukraine? What for is the money? The Trump administration and Big Media, for all their noise, mainly argue that more spending is good. There is no debate about the reasons why. Meanwhile Russia is cutting its military spending.

Washington is so dominated by our military-industrial-congressional complex that spending money is a major intent. Remember when Washington first insisted that putting up an anti-missile system in Poland and Romania was supposed to protect Europe from an Iranian attack? Of course, it was really directed against Russia. Washington was so eager to spend the money that it didn’t even ask the Europeans to pay the cost even though it was supposedly for their defense. As of 2016 Washington had spent $800 million on the site in Romania. Now it appears that Poland and Romania will pay billions to the Raytheon Corporation for the shield to comply with their commitment to increase military spending to 2 percent of gross national product.

2) There was no focus on the real, growing threat of nuclear war, intentional or accidental. No one, including journalists at the joint press conference, spoke about the collapsing missile treaties (the only one who reportedly seemed keen to discuss it was ejected beforehand). Scott Ritter details these alarming risks here on TAC.

The U.S. is now funding new cruise missiles with nukes which allow for a surprise attack on Russia with only a few minutes of warning, unlike the ICBMs which launch gives a half an hour or more. This was the reason Russia opposed the anti-missile system in Eastern Europe, because they could have little warning if cruise missiles were fired from the new bases. Americans may think that we don’t start wars, but the Russians don’t. The old shill argument that democracies don’t start wars is belied by American attacks on Serbia, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen.

3) For all the Democratic and Big Media attacks on Trump for supposedly caving in to Putin, he gave Putin nothing. His administration is still maintaining an increasingly stringent economic attack on Russian trade and banking, announcing (just days after his meeting) $200 million of new aid to Ukraine’s military and threatening Europeans with sanctions if they go ahead with a new Baltic pipeline to import Russian natural gas. Consequently, some analysts believe that Putin has given up on wanting better relations with the U.S. and instead is just trying to weaken and discredit America’s overwhelming power in the world. In a similar vein Rand Paul writes how we never think about other nations’ interests.

4) The release of intelligence agency findings about Russians’ intervention in the last election just a day before the conference precisely shows the strength of the “Deep State” in dominating American foreign policy. An article by Bruce Fein in TAC argues we should “Forget Trump: The Military-Industrial Complex is Still Running the Show With Russia,” showing how Washington wants to keep Russia as an enemy because it’s good for business.

‘AMERICAN PRESIDENT PAWN FOR PUTIN; PROMOTES SOVIET STRATEGY ON NATO’

Counterpunch |  Joe: I think you know that the NATO you are talking about was formed in 1949, four years after the German defeat (at the hands basically, as you know, of the Red Army), as a U.S.-led anti-Soviet military alliance. It was part of the Truman Doctrine, which legitimated all efforts to contain the communist “enemy” whether by military force (the suppression of the Greek communist partisans who had heroically resisted the fascists), by rigged elections (in France and Italy in 1946-48), by espionage, political assassinations, disinformation campaigns and military alliances.

I assume you know this history anyway. It might have been taught at Pensacola Catholic High School in the late seventies, or at the University of Alabama in the early 1980s, or you might have learned it during your law school years in Florida or during your brief tenure in Congress.

Anyway (as you know), when NATO expanded in 1956 to include the U.S.-occupied West Germany, Moscow responded—you might say, somewhat belatedly—by creating the Warsaw Pact. There were then 15 members of NATO (Spain joined in 1982). But the Warsaw Pact included only 8 nations at its height. Its forces were deployed precisely once during its existence, in Czechoslovakia in 1968 to suppress the Prague Spring movement. Albania had already been expelled from the pact, and Romania in this instance refused to participate. (Indeed Bucharest denounced the Soviet-led intervention in Czechoslovakia and sought closer relations with both the U.S. and China in its aftermath.)

The Soviets were less interested in “dividing” NATO than in preserving control over their own cordon sanitaire in “eastern” Europe—their control over the sphere they had conquered while destroying the Wehrmacht in 1944-45. (Moscow was no doubt pleased when Charles De Gaulle pulled France out of NATO’s military structure in 1966, but that was clearly the French president’s decision based on French nationalism.) The Soviets of course hoped for allies win in contested elections and to be appointed to high office in western Europe (although as you know, Joe, Truman forbade allies from allowing communists into their cabinets). Of course the Soviets were interested in dividing NATO—not to invade the NATO countries, but rather to defend themselves. This remains Russia’s objective.

As the Berlin Wall fell in 1988 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to the expansion of NATO to include East Germany, as it was reunited with the West; in return he demanded a commitment from George H. W. Bush that the alliance would not advance “one inch” towards the east. You know very well that James Baker averred this publicly in Moscow.

And as you know, Joe, the U.S. has broken this promise since 1999 when Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary (the core of the Warsaw Pact dissolved in 1991 along with the Soviet Union) joined NATO. And then in 2004 George W. Bush (who had looked into Putin’s eyes and seen his soul, and welcomed his help after 9/11) further broke it when he expanded the alliance to include Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. And then in 2009 with Albania and Croatia, and Montenegro last year (so Trump could join in on the process). Look at a map and see how NATO’s expanded and ask what would you think if you were watching from Moscow.

The anti-Russian NATO military alliance numbering 16 nations in 1991 now numbers 28, including four that border Russia. It is not your daddy’s NATO. It’s foolish of you talk about Moscow now using “Soviet strategy.” What do you mean by that? Do you know yourself? Make a specific comparison; I challenge you.

Joe, if you do not see why the Russian state (and people) would view this expanding alliance with anxiety you really are ignorant of history. The Russians are at once aware that they, not the NATO countries, have more often been the victims of aggression in the past, and they have no intentions of invading Europe. The Warsaw Pact has been gone 26 years. And Russians know better perhaps than people in this country how NATO has been used since the USSR collapsed. And how U.S. governments and mass media whip up fears among the people of this country that often become pretexts for aggression.

How has NATO ever been deployed? Never during the Cold War; it was not necessary. It was first used in Bosnia in 1994-5, then in Serbia 1999, then Afghanistan, 2001-present, then Libya in that disgraceful war crime in 2011. As for Russia wanting to divide NATO—well of course! RT reports positively on the rise of Eurosceptics and nationalists in NATO member states; the fact is, there is a lot of anti-NATO sentiment in Europe, especially in some eastern European countries. The anti-Russian sanctions the EU has adopted under U.S. pressure (exercised largely through the Brexiting UK) following the Kiev events and Russia’s re-annexation of Crimea, are not popular among European farmers and manufacturers. There are internal tensions in NATO that may weaken it. The Russians can try to exploit and exacerbate the contradictions but they can’t create them.

Delightful ASMR For No Good Reason...,

The Pig Caught Squealing Under The Gate

PCR |  The article is long but very important and is worth a careful read. It shows that the military/security complex has woven itself so tightly into the American social, economic, and political fabric as to be untouchable. President Trump is an extremely brave or foolhardy person to take on this most powerful and pervasive of all US institutions by trying to normalize US relations with Russia, chosen by the military/security complex as the “enemy” that justifies its enormous budget and power. 

In 1961 President Eisenhower in his last public address to the American people warned us about the danger to democracy and accountable government presented by the military/industrial complex. You can imagine how much stronger the complex is 57 years later after decades of Cold War with the Soviet Union.

The Russian government, Russian media, and Russian people desperately need to comprehend how powerful the US military/security complex is and how it is woven into the fabric of America. No amount of diplomacy by Lavrov and masterful chess playing by Putin can possibly shake the control over the United States exercised by the military/security complex.

Professor Roelofs has done a good deed for the American people and for the world in assembling such extensive information documenting the penetration into every aspect of American life of the military/security complex. It is a delusion that a mere President of the United States can bring such a powerfull, all-pervasive institution to heel and deprive it of its necessary enemy.

joanroelofs |   Among the businesses with large DoD contracts are book publishers: McGraw-Hill, Greenwood, Scholastic, Pearson, Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt, Elsevier, and others. Rarely have the biases in this industry, in fiction, nonfiction, and textbook offerings, been examined. Yet the influences on this small but significant population, the reading public, and the larger schooled contingent, may help explain the silence of the literate crowd and college graduates.

Much of what is left of organized industrial labor is in weapons manufacture. Its PACs fund the few “progressive” candidates in our political system, who tend to be silent about war and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Unlike other factories, the armaments makers do not suddenly move overseas, although they do use subcontractors worldwide.

Military spending may be only about 6% of the GDP, yet it has great impact because: 1. it is a growing sector; 2. it is recession-proof; 3. it does not rely on consumer whims; 4. it is the only thing prospering in many areas; and 5. the “multiplier” effect: subcontracting, corporate purchasing, and employee spending perk up the regional economy. It is ideally suited to Keynesian remedies, because of its ready destruction and obsolescence: what isn’t consumed in warfare, rusted out, or donated to our friends still needs to be replaced by the slightly more lethal thing. Many of our science graduates work for the military directly or its contractee labs concocting these.

The military’s unbeatable weapon is jobs, and all members of Congress, and state and local officials, are aware of this. It is where well-paying jobs are found for mechanics, scientists, and engineers; even janitorial workers do well in these taxpayer-rich firms. Weaponry is also important in our manufactured goods exports as our allies are required to have equipment that meets our specifications. Governments, rebels, terrorists, pirates, and gangsters all fancy our high tech and low tech lethal devices.

Our military economy also yields a high return on investments. These benefit not only corporate executives and other rich, but many middle and working class folk, as well as churches, benevolent, and cultural organizations. The lucrative mutual funds offered by Vanguard, Fidelity, and others are heavily invested in the weapons manufacturers.

Individual investors may not know what is in their fund’s portfolios; the institutions usually know. A current project of World Beyond War (https://worldbeyondwar.org/divest) advocates divestment of military stocks in the pension funds of state and local government workers: police, firepersons, teachers, and other civil servants. Researchers are making a state-by-state analysis of these funds. Among the findings are the extensive military stock holdings of CALpers, the California Public Employees Retirement System (the sixth largest pension fund on earth), the California State Teachers Retirement System, the New York State Teachers Retirement System, the New York City Employees Retirement System, and the New York State Common Retirement Fund (state and local employees). Amazing! the New York City teachers were once the proud parents of red diaper babies.

The governmental side of the MIC complex goes far beyond the DoD. In the executive branch, Departments of State, Homeland Security, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Interior; and CIA, AID, FBI, NASA, and other agencies; are permeated with military projects and goals. Even the Department of Agriculture has a joint program with the DoD to “restore” Afghanistan by creating a dairy cattle industry. No matter that the cattle and their feed must be imported, cattle cannot graze in the terrain as the native sheep and goats can, there is no adequate transportation or refrigeration, and the Afghans don’t normally drink milk. The native animals provide yogurt, butter, and wool, and graze on the rugged slopes, but that is all so un-American.

Elven Queen Plumbing The Abyssal Reaches Got Me Wanting To Live Forever...,

Quantamagazine |  Furey has gone further. In her most recent published paper, which appeared in May in The European Physical Journal C, she consolidated several findings to construct the full Standard Model symmetry group, SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1), for a single generation of particles, with the math producing the correct array of electric charges and other attributes for an electron, neutrino, three up quarks, three down quarks and their anti-particles. The math also suggests a reason why electric charge is quantized in discrete units — essentially, because whole numbers are.

However, in that model’s way of arranging particles, it’s unclear how to naturally extend the model to cover the full three particle generations that exist in nature. But in another new paper that’s now circulating among experts and under review by Physical Letters B, Furey uses C⊗O to construct the Standard Model’s two unbroken symmetries, SU(3) and U(1). (In nature, SU(2) × U(1) is broken down into U(1) by the Higgs mechanism, a process that imbues particles with mass.) In this case, the symmetries act on all three particle generations and also allow for the existence of particles called sterile neutrinos — candidates for dark matter that physicists are actively searching for now. “The three-generation model only has SU(3) × U(1), so it’s more rudimentary,” Furey told me, pen poised at a whiteboard. “The question is, is there an obvious way to go from the one-generation picture to the three-generation picture? I think there is.”

This is the main question she’s after now. The mathematical physicists Michel Dubois-Violette, Ivan Todorov and Svetla Drenska are also trying to model the three particle generations using a structure that incorporates octonions called the exceptional Jordan algebra. After years of working solo, Furey is beginning to collaborate with researchers who take different approaches, but she prefers to stick with the product of the four division algebras, R⊗C⊗H⊗O, acting on itself. It’s complicated enough and provides flexibility in the many ways it can be chopped up. Furey’s goal is to find the model that, in hindsight, feels inevitable and that includes mass, the Higgs mechanism, gravity and space-time.

Already, there’s a sense of space-time in the math. She finds that all multiplicative chains of elements of R⊗C⊗H⊗O can be generated by 10 matrices called “generators.” Nine of the generators act like spatial dimensions, and the 10th, which has the opposite sign, behaves like time. String theory also predicts 10 space-time dimensions — and the octonions are involved there as well. Whether or how Furey’s work connects to string theory remains to be puzzled out.

So does her future. She’s looking for a faculty job now, but failing that, there’s always the ski slopes or the accordion. “Accordions are the octonions of the music world,” she said — “tragically misunderstood.” She added, “Even if I pursued that, I would always be working on this project.”

Father Of Synthetic Genomics Better Be Careful Tampering With Whydte Folks Money....,

Genomeweb |  Human Longevity (HLI) is suing the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) and a number of unknown defendants over the misappropriation and use of trade secrets passed along by Craig Venter, the founder of both the company and the institute that bears his name.

In a complaint filed last Friday with the US District Court for the Southern District of California, Human Longevity alleges that upon his termination from HLI on May 24, Venter took a company-owned laptop with trade secrets and passed on protected information to the Venter Institute, of which he is chairman and CEO. HLI also claims that the institute is working on a product that will compete with its own business.

According to the complaint, Venter was CEO of Human Longevity from 2014 until January 2017, when he became the firm's executive chairman and signed a "proprietary information and inventions" agreement. He assumed the role of interim CEO in November of 2017 until his employment was terminated in May of this year. During his time at HLI, Venter used a company-owned laptop computer, the contents of which were backed up in the cloud, and consistently used his JCVI email address rather than his HLI email to conduct company business, the complaint states.

In the spring of this year, Venter "withheld critical information from the board and the HLI investors regarding the conduct of an HLI key executive which would likely result in termination," the complaint says. Further, in May, Venter had an HLI-paid counsel "draft a Venter-favorable employment contract" and appointed a new interim president without conferring with the HLI board first.

On May 24, the HLI board "considered a rushed investor deal which Venter presented to them only less than two weeks earlier," the terms of which the board considered one-sided. The deal would have provided financial incentives to Venter and offered the new investor rights that had already been granted to another party, according to the complaint. "At that point, the HLI board voted to terminate Venter from HLI," it states.

Following his termination, Venter left the HLI offices with the company-owned laptop and "immediately began using the HLI computer and server to communicate to the public, solicit HLI investors and employees," the complaint says. In a Twitter message on May 24, Venter said that he was retiring from HLI and returning to JCVI.

His access to the HLI server and HLI emails was disabled the next day, but the company alleges that "even after his HLI termination, Venter used the HLI computer, accessed and sent HLI proprietary information and trade secrets," including communications involving Series C and Asia JV Series A documents.

Tampering With Mitochondrial DNA Demonstrates Interesting Aging Reversibility

UAB |  Wrinkled skin and hair loss are hallmarks of aging. What if they could be reversed?

Keshav Singh, Ph.D., and colleagues have done just that, in a mouse model developed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. When a mutation leading to mitochondrial dysfunction is induced, the mouse develops wrinkled skin and extensive, visible hair loss in a matter of weeks. When the mitochondrial function is restored by turning off the gene responsible for mitochondrial dysfunction, the mouse returns to smooth skin and thick fur, indistinguishable from a healthy mouse of the same age.

“To our knowledge, this observation is unprecedented,” said Singh, a professor of genetics in the UAB School of Medicine.

Importantly, the mutation that does this is in a nuclear gene affecting mitochondrial function, the tiny organelles known as the powerhouses of the cells. Numerous mitochondria in cells produce 90 percent of the chemical energy cells need to survive.

In humans, a decline in mitochondrial function is seen during aging, and mitochondrial dysfunction can drive age-related diseases. A depletion of the DNA in mitochondria is also implicated in human mitochondrial diseases, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, age-associated neurological disorders and cancer.

“This mouse model,” Singh said, “should provide an unprecedented opportunity for the development of preventive and therapeutic drug development strategies to augment the mitochondrial functions for the treatment of aging-associated skin and hair pathology and other human diseases in which mitochondrial dysfunction plays a significant role.”

What's The Matter With John Brennan?

theburningplatform |  Putin moved against the so-called “oligarch’s, a mainly Jewish gang of ex-Communists who were in the forefront of looting the country.  Those he did not chase off to London (where you can see their greasy mugs swilling in the best restaurants, hookers on each arm) he placed under firm control.  He reorganized the economy for Russia’s benefit, not ours.  Meddling?  The United States and various European countries sent in armies of international do-gooders and busy bodies to undermine the Russian government and, among other things, promote the homosexual agenda and corrupt Russian youth.  Loudmouth journalists, the Russian equivalents of Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, Trevor Noah and similar troublemakers (“pro-democracy” activists, all of them) were put on a leash.  Most surprisingly for me, and effectively for Putin, he restored the Russian Orthodox Church to its former importance and influence, a very Russian thing to do.  Is Putin a real Christian?  I don’t know.  Go ask him.  If it is merely a cynical ploy it has worked.  I might add that I admire the Russian Orthodox Church.  It is one of the few Christian churches that has rejected the filth and garbage of the modern world and remains focused on its real job, saving souls.  There are no faggot priests in it, I can tell you that.  Orthodox priests marry.

Putin shrewdly decided to focus on quality rather than quantity in his rebuilding of the Russian military.  If news reports are accurate (and I sure as hell hope they are not) the Russians have developed new generations of weapons against which we have no real defense.  China has done exactly the same thing.

There is no reason at all to believe that Russia has any intention of actually using those weapons against us in some new Pearl Harbor.  That being the case, Putin has made it crystal clear that he will not allow Russia to be pushed around.  Where is his redline?  Who knows?  I don’t want to find out.

The sight of a rejuvenated Russia, proud, controlling its own economy, conducting its won foreign policy in what it believes to be its own interests, throwing pedophiles and other perverts in jail, running foreign subversives out of the place, arresting or exiling Jewish gangsters, well, all of this is just too much for the globalists and the Neo-Con’s to take.

Then comes Trump!  Who woulda thunk it?  I seriously doubt if a single senior Russian ever imagined that Trump would emerge as a presidential candidate.  Did you?

This man, seen by the self-proclaimed elites of the U.S. and Europe as a turd in their punchbowl, is by any measure the most extraordinary person ever to occupy the White House.

Trump is not a Russian agent, he has not been blackmailed, he is not selling out the U.S., his interest in improving ties with Russia has nothing to do with his personal business empire, he did not have two Russian whores do pee-pee on Obama’s mattress.   Any person who claims to believe any of these things should be immediately marked down as either a fool, a Jew with an irrational ancestral hatred of Russia, a globalist, a Neo-Con, a leftist angry that Putin and Trump are both standing up for traditional culture (though neither are saints themselves), or somebody who either lost out on the Great Russia Piñata of the early 1990’s or fears that Russia will in some way hit them in the pocketbook, directly or indirectly.

There are several interest groups desperate to stop the building of a rational, normal, civilized relationship between the United States and Russia.  They include:

Please Download, Save, and Share This Film

It is possible to see it online at this site

An Opportunity to Rethink

unz |  Putin’s problem is the hybrid warfare carried out by the United States against Russia. Despite accusations you hear in your media (alleged Russian ads in the Facebook and Twitter influencing voters), American pressure on Russia is very real and very painful. American officials try to wreck every international deal Russia attempts to clinch. It is not only, or even mainly about weapons. If a country A wants to sell Russians, say, bananas, the US ambassador will come to A’s king, or his minister, and will expressly forbid him to sell bananas to godless Russians. Otherwise, do not expect the US aid, or do not count on US favours in your disputes with your neighbours, or the US won’t buy your production, or US banks will take another long and jaundiced view at your financial transactions. You witnessed the scene, when the crazed Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, threatened sovereign nations with severe punishment for voting against the US desires, so you have an idea of American delicacy and caution while pushing their will through.

Russians are in a very uncomfortable seat. All their neighbours are subject to American pressure to annoy Russia, be it Georgia (once they even attacked Russia militarily being led by American and Israeli advisers) or the Ukraine (Americans arranged a coup d’état and installed extremely hostile to Russia government in Kiev). American military bases surround Russia and NATO troops drew closer and closer to its centres. American military budget of 600 billion dollars dwarfs the Russian one, while the armaments’ race can undermine Russian finances. If Russia were a woman, she would scream: stop it!

Perhaps our colleague Mr Andrei Martyanov is right and the US can’t destroy Russia militarily; perhaps Immanuel Wallerstein is correct and American power is in decline; but meanwhile the US is perfectly able to make life hard and difficult for any state. It made life unbearably hard for North Korea, extremely hard for Iran. Russia is not doing half as good as she could do without ceaseless American meddling.

President Putin would like Trump to relent. There is no reason for this incessant picking on Russia; it is not Communist anymore; it is much smaller and less populous than the former USSR; it wants to live in peace as a member of the family of nations, not as a great alternative. The anti-Russian offensive began in earnest in the days of previous US presidents, namely Obama and Clinton; so it would make sense for Trump to stop it.

Problem is, President Trump is also actively engaged in war against Russia. Just a few days ago he pressured the German Chancellor to give up on the North Stream-2, to stop buying Russian gas. His advisers demanded that Turkey desist from buying a Russian antimissile system. The US Air Force bombed Russian troops in Syria.

Still Putin made a good try. He proposed to hold a referendum in the Donbas area of Eastern Ukraine which is presently independent though lacking international recognition. The people of Donbas had their own referendum in 2014, and voted for independence; Kiev regime and its Western sponsors denied its validity as it was done under Russian army’s protection, they claimed. Now Putin proposed a re-run under international auspices.

Hindsight Shows Quite Clearly Why It's Easier To Trust And Respect Putin

medium |  We were scheduled to have sixty minutes with Putin. After pleasantries were exchanged, Obama opened the conversation by expressing his optimism for U.S.-Russia relations. Putin interrupted him early to express a different view.

For the next hour, Putin walked through the complete history of U.S.-Russian relations during his time as president. He punctuated his narrative with several instances of disrespect from the Bush administration. He liked President George W. Bush as a person, he told Obama, but loathed his administration. As Putin explained, he had reached out to Bush after September 11, believing that the United States and Russia should unite to fight terrorists as a common enemy. He had helped persuade leaders in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to allow the U.S. to open air bases in their countries to help fight the war in Afghanistan. But in return, so he claimed, the Bush administration had snubbed him. 

Putin even suggested that Russia and the United States could have cooperated on Iraq had the Bush administration treated Russia as an equal partner. But it did not, and that’s why U.S.-Russia relations deteriorated so dramatically while Bush was president. The Bush team had supported color revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine — a blatant threat to Russia’s national interests. In Putin’s view, Russia had done nothing wrong; America was to be blamed for the poor relations between the two countries.

Putin knew how to tell a dramatic story. For each vignette of disrespect or confrontation, he told the president the date, the place, and who was at the meeting. During one story, he pointed to a chair he recalled Condoleezza Rice sitting in at the time, right next to Sergei Ivanov, then Putin’s defense minister. He must have rehearsed all these details beforehand. For one story about counterterrorism cooperation, Putin told Obama how the Russians had benefited from some information shared with them by American officials. Dramatically, he waved away the waiters serving us tea, leaned in, and told Obama that they had used this information to “liquidate” the terrorists.

As I remember it, Putin spoke uninterrupted for nearly the entire time scheduled for the meeting, documenting the injustices of the Bush administration. This was a guy with a chip on his shoulder. Obama listened patiently, maybe too patiently. I was amazed. There was no way I could have sat for a full hour without saying something. I was also nervous. The meeting was scheduled for sixty minutes, and by minute fifty-five the U.S. president had not said a thing. It was my assignment to read out this meeting to our press corps later that day. I couldn’t tell them that Obama had merely listened the entire time!

My worries were misplaced. In the end the meeting went well beyond three hours, and Obama had plenty to say. His main message was again about Reset. He asked Putin to have an open mind about resuming engagement with the United States on issues of common interest. He explained to Putin that he was different, representing a break with many of the policies of the Bush administration. Obama avoided flowery language about friendships and strategic partnerships. Instead, he pledged to always be straight with Putin and to respect Russia.

The two most contentious subjects that morning were missile defense and Iran. Putin explained to Obama why planned American missile deployments in Europe threatened “strategic stability” — otherwise known as mutual assured destruction (MAD) — between our two countries. Putin seemed annoyed — irrationally annoyed — with the Bush administration’s plan for missile-defense deployments so close to Russia’s borders. Obama pledged to review America’s missile-defense plans and get back to Putin on his decisions. Putin expressed less concern about the Iranian threat than Medvedev had. He talked more generally about the strategic importance of Russia’s bilateral relationship with Iran as its most significant partner in the Middle East.

Full Spectrum Subversion by Russian Electronic Warfare and Anti-Satellite Systems..,

unz |  But there is more bad news for the AngloZionist Empire: in a recent interview by General Iurii Borisov, Deputy Prime Minister for Defense and Space Industry named six weapons systems which, in his opinion, have no counterpart in western arsenals. These include two almost never (or very rarely) mentioned before:

1. The “Sarmat” heavy MIRVed ICBM
2. The Sukhoi Su-57 aka “PAKFA”, the 5th generation jet fighter being developed for air superiority and attack operations
3. The revolutionary T-14 “Armata” main battle tank
4. The long-range S-500 air defense system
5. The mobile anti-satellite system “Nudol“
6. The ground-based mobile jamming system for satellite communications “Triada-2S“

While the first four systems listed have been known for a while, very little is known about the Nudol ASAT or the Triada-2S jamming systems. A couple of years ago, in 2015, The Washington Free Beacon wrote one article about the Nudol system entitled “Russia Flight Tests Anti-Satellite Missile Moscow joins China in space warfare buildup” but I did not find anything at all in English about the Triada-2S. There are a few articles published about these two systems in Russian however, and I will summarize them here beginning with the Nudol system.

The Russian plan to counter the US military threat is becoming clearer and clearer with each passing day. I would summarize as follows:

US Capability	Russian Response
ABM system	maneuverable hypersonic ballistic and very long-range cruise missiles
US aircraft carriers and surface fleet	maneuverable hypersonic ballistic and very long-range cruise missiles
US airpower and cruise missiles	advanced and integrated air defenses + 5th generation multirole fighters
US attack submarines	advanced diesel-electric/AIP submarines in littoral and coastal waters
US command, control, communications, networks, and satellites	electronic warfare and anti-satellite systems
US/NATO deployments near Russia	Tank Armies with T-14s, doubling of the size of the Airborne Forces, Iskander missiles (see here)
US nuclear forces	Deployment of a next-generation SSBNs, road-mobile and rail-mobile ICBMs, PAK-DA (next generation bomber) and ABM systems

By targeting US space-based capabilities Russia is aiming at an exceedingly important and currently extremely fragile segment of the US armed forces and the impact of that cannot be overstated. It is already well known that the US military has almost no practice operating in a highly contested electronic warfare environment and that, in fact, US EW capabilities have stagnated over the years. In the age of advanced communication and network-centric warfare, the disruption or elimination of any meaningful segment of the US space-based capabilities would have a dramatic impact on US warfighting capabilities. Just like US tactical air is practically completely dependent on AWACs support, all the branches of the US military have grown accustomed to enjoying advanced command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities (C4ISR) and this is what the Russians want to deny them (and you can bet that the Chinese are working along the exact same lines).

This is not to say that Russia has achieved anywhere near full-spectrum dominance over the United States but it does mean that the United States has totally failed in its efforts to achieve anything near full-spectrum dominance over Russia and, therefore, over the rest of the planet. It is important to understand that while, for the US, it is crucial to achieving superiority, for Russia it is enough to deny that superiority to the US. Russia, therefore, has no need to achieve anything even remotely resembling full-spectrum dominance over the US/NATO – all she needs to achieve is to make it impossible for the Empire to make her submit by force or threat of force.

The Untouchable Bill Browder

unz |  Enter Mr Andrey Nekrasov, a Russian dissident filmmaker. He made a few films considered to be highly critical of Russian government. He alleged the FSB blew up houses in Moscow in order to justify the Chechnya war. He condemned the Russian war against Georgia in 2008, and had been given a medal by Georgian authorities. He did not doubt the official Western version of Browder-Magnitsky affair, and decided to make a film about the noble American businessman and the brave Russian lawyer fighting for human rights. The European organisations and parliamentarians provided the budget for the film. They also expected the film to denounce Putin and glorify Magnitsky, the martyr.

However, while making the film, Mr Nekrasov had his Road to Damascus moment. He realised that the whole narrative was hinging on the unsubstantiated words of Mr Browder. After painstaking research, he came to some totally different conclusions, and in his version, Browder was a cheat who run afoul of law, while Magnitsky was his sidekick in those crimes.

Nekrasov discovered an interview Magnitsky gave in his jail. In this interview, the accountant said he was afraid Browder would kill him to prevent him from denouncing Browder, and would make him his scapegoat. It turned out Browder tried to bribe the journalist who made the interview to have these words expunged. Browder was the main beneficiary of the accountant’s death, realised Nekrasov, while his investigators were satisfied with Magnitsky’s collaboration with them.

Nekrasov could not find any evidence that Magnitsky tried to investigate the misdeeds of government officials. He was too busy covering his own tax evasion. And instead of fitting his preconceived notions, Nekrasov made the film about what he learned. (Here are some details of Nekrasov’s film)

While the screening in the EU Parliament was been stopped by the powerful Mr Browder, in Washington DC the men are made of sterner stuff. Despite Browder’s threats the film was screened, presented by the best contemporary American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who is 80 if a day, and still going strong. One has to recognise that the US is second to none for freedom of speech on the globe.

What makes Browder so powerful? He invests in politicians. This is probably a uniquely Jewish quality: Jews outspend everybody in contributions to political figures. The Arabs will spend more on horses and jets, the Russians prefer real estate, the Jews like politicians. The Russian NTV channel reported that Browder lavishly financed the US lawmakers. Here they present alleged evidence of money transfers: some hundred thousand dollars was given by Browder’s structures officially to the senators and congressmen in order to promote the Magnitsky Act.

Much bigger sums were transferred via good services of Brothers Ziff, mega-rich Jewish American businessmen, said the researchers in two articles published on the Veteran News Network and in The Huffington Post.

These two articles were taken off the sites very fast under pressure of Browder’s lawyers, but they are available in the cache. They disclose the chief beneficiary of Browder’s generosity. This is Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland. He was the engine behind Magnitsky Act legislation to such an extent that the Act has been often called the Cardin List. Cardin is a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton, also a cold warrior of good standing. More to a point, Cardin is a prominent member of Israel Lobby.

Browder affair is a heady upper-class Jewish cocktail of money, spies, politicians and international crime. Almost all involved figures appear to be Jewish, not only Browder, Brothers Ziff and Ben Cardin. Even his enemy, the beneficiary of the scam that (according to Browder) took over his Russian assets is another Jewish businessman Dennis Katsiv (he had been partly exonerated by a New York court as is well described in this thoughtful piece).

Browder began his way to riches under the patronage of a very rich and very crooked Robert Maxwell, a Czech-born Jewish businessman who assumed a Scots name. Maxwell stole a few million dollars from his company pension fund before dying in mysterious circumstances on board of his yacht in the Atlantic. It was claimed by a member of Israeli Military Intelligence, Ari Ben Menashe, that Maxwell had been a Mossad agent for years, and he also said Maxwell tipped the Israelis about Israeli whistle-blower Mordecai Vanunu. Vanunu was kidnapped and spent many years in Israeli jails.

A Good Start and a Success

theduran |  The result was an agreement between Putin and Trump to reopen channels of communication between their governments and to meet regularly with each other as they feel their way towards a rapprochement.

To be clear, that rapprochement will not mean and is not intended to mean that the US and Russia will cease to be adversaries and will become friends.

Instead what is being discussed are steps to bring to a stop the downward spiral in their relations, with each side obtaining a better understanding of the other side’s moves and red lines, so that hopefully geopolitical disasters like the 2014 Maidan coup can be avoided in future.

That would be a major advance over what has existed previously given that since the USSR collapsed in 1991 the US has refused to acknowledge that Russia has any right to any opinions at all, let alone to act independently or set out red lines.

Needless to say the more often Putin and Trump meet the more ‘normalised’ relations between the US and Russia become, with each meeting provoking less controversy than the previous one, with the whole process beyond a certain point becoming routine so that it attracts ever less attention and (hopefully) eventually becomes uncontroversial.

It is because the powerful forces in the US who scorn the idea of a ‘geopolitical ceasefire’ and want ever greater confrontation between the US and Russia do not want to see relations ‘normalised’ in this way that their reaction to the summit has been so hysterical.

As of the time of writing it is these people who in the media and on twitter are making the running.  However it may be a mistake to see in the volume of the noise they are making a true reflection of their influence.

Last February’s Nuclear Posture Review suggests that there is a very powerful constituency within the US and specifically within the Pentagon which might potentially support the sort of ‘geopolitical ceasefire’ with Russia that Donald Trump appears to be gradually working towards.

The Nuclear Posture Review shows that some sections of the US military understand how dangerously overstretched the US has become as it responds simultaneously to challenges from Russia in Europe and from China in the Pacific.  Both Putin and Trump mentioned during their news conference the extent to which their respective militaries are already in contact with each other and are working well together

Donald Trump: Well, our militaries do get along. In fact, our militaries actually have gotten along probably better than our political leaders for years, but our militaries do get along very well and they do coordinate in Syria and other places. Ok? Thank you.
Vladimir Putin:……..On the whole, I really agree with the President. Our military cooperation is going quite well. I hope that they will continue to be able to come to agreements just as they have been…..

That may be a sign that there is more understanding of what Donald Trump is trying to do – at least within the US defence establishment – than the hysteria the Helsinki summit has provoked might suggest.

Overall, provided it is clearly understood that what Putin and Trump are working towards is a detente style ‘geopolitical ceasefire’ and not ‘friendship’ – and certainly not an alliance –  it can be said that their summit in Helsinki was a good start and a success.

What happens next depends on whether the forces of realism and sanity in the US can prevail over those of megalomania and hysteria.  Given how entrenched the latter have become unfortunately no one can count on this.

However some sort of process which may in time lead to detente and an easing of tensions between the nuclear superpowers has begun.  Given the circumstances in which it has been launched that is more than might have been expected even a short time ago, and for that one should be grateful.

Lost White Military Supremacy: The Real Reason The U.S. Must Talk With Russia

atimes |  It’s crystal clear that President Trump is applying Kissingerian divide-and-rule tactics, trying to reduce Russian political/economic connectivity with the two other Eurasian integration poles, China and Iran.

Still, the swamp cannot possibly contemplate The Big Picture – as this must-watch conversation between two of the very few Americans who actually know Russia in-depth attests. Professor Stephen Cohen and Professor John Mearsheimer go to the jugular: Nothing can be done when Russophobia is the law of the land.

Over and over again, we must go back to Putin’s March 1 speech, which presented the US with what can only be described, writes Martyanov, as “a military-technological Pearl Harbor-meets-Stalingrad.”

Martyanov goes all the way to explain how the latest Russian weapons systems present immense strategic – and historical – ramifications. The missile gap between the US and Russia is now “a technological abyss,” with ballistic missiles “capable of trajectories which render any kind of anti-ballistic defense useless.” Star Wars and its derivatives are now – to use a Trumpism – “obsolete.”

The Kinzhal, as described by Martyanov, is “a complete game-changer geopolitically, strategically, operationally, tactically and psychologically.” In a nutshell, “no modern or prospective air-defense system deployed today by NATO can intercept even a single missile with such characteristics.”

This means, among other things – and stressing it is never enough – that the whole Eastern Mediterranean can be closed off, not to mention the whole Persian Gulf. And all this goes way beyond asymmetry; it’s about “the final arrival of a completely new paradigm” in warfare and military technology.

Martyanov’s must-read book is the ultimate Weapon of Myth Destruction (WMD). And unlike the Saddam Hussein version, this one actually exists. As Putin warned (at 7:10 in the video), “They did not listen to us then.” Are they listening now?