(10/01/2018) Human 2.0 Is Coming Faster Than You Think. Will You Evolve With The Times?

(01/24/2019) Chinese scientists cloned gene-edited monkeys, with horrifying

(08/05/2019) Spanish scientists are making 'very promising' human-monkey chimeras in

(09/15/2019) Three-Year-Olds Might Become Eligible for Sex Changes at UK Clinic. NHS Plans Referrals for 3-year-olds Struggling with Gender

(10/29/2019) Scientists Demonstrate Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication in

Today we report the use of base editing in patient-derived cells and in mice to correct the most common cause of progeria, the devastating rapid aging disease. Progeria is typically caused by a dominant negative C•G-to-T•A point mutation in LMNA. 1/11 https://t.co/O7dkEYpndg

The mutation (discovered by @NIHDirector’s lab in 2003) results in progerin, a toxic protein that damages nuclei. So providing more healthy LMNA is not a solution, and cutting the mutated gene with nucleases is also challenging due to indel mixtures & similarity with wt LMNA.2/11

We used an adenine base editor to convert the T•A that causes progeria back to C•G at the key position in LMNA. Base editing in cells from progeria children corrected the mutation efficiently (~90%) with minimal indels or off-target edits, and restored nuclear morphology. 3/11

We then performed in vivo base editing of a mouse model of human progeria developed by @NIHDirector’s lab. These mice have two copies of the mutated human LMNA gene, and develop heart disease, age rapidly, & die early (~7 mo.), resembling symptoms of the disease in children. 4/11

A single injection of AAV9 (10^11-10^12 total vg) encoding the base editor into the circulatory system of these mice resulted in ~10-60% correction of the mutation in various organs, corrected the RNA missplicing of LMNA, and reduced progerin protein levels in tissues. 5/11

Thread: No Black Hole - Proved by Indian Scientist- No means No
Indian Scientist A.K. Mitra who contested Stephen hawking since 1998 and proved that true black hole do not exist. His research is being avoided from last 22 Years , and Indians are just Sleeping. #BlackHoleMyth

1.Mitra 1st showed his proof regarding true black holes in 1998 , in his research paper he proved that the mass of black hole will be zero that means it do not exist.
2.He put forward a new alternative for such ultra massive object - Eternally Collapsing Object
#Blackholesmyth

3. He was the 1st scientist to solve Hawking's Black Hole Information Paradox, 13 years after his research hawking shown the same thing what mitra told.
4. His research papers were published in top science journals and no one disproved his basic Proofs till now.
#BlackHoleMyths

5. His alternative explanation MECO has many observational evidence while many Obs. Evidence are against Black Hole.
6. Harward University officially accepted his research in their press release.
7. Neither Mathematical nor Obs. evidence support black hole

8. Even the famous black hole image is also misleading, it was the shadow of black hole mimicker , there is no any single evidence for singularity and event horizon , so no black hole.

Best visual demonstration of God’s source code in action

The halal polemics has begun … yet again!
Race and religious bigots will spin to trigger tension
Important to stick to the back of basics of Shari’ah (Islamic jurisprudence) & Research ethics
The relationship between Shari’ah and Fiqh is represented by a tree and its parts.

The roots rep the Shari’ah & its primary sources of legislation-Qur’an &Traditions of the Prophet (Sunnah)
The trunk and branches rep the tools & methodologies (Usul al- Fiqh/foundations of Fiqh & Maqasid/Objectives) used by scholars to derive the fruits (fatwas/rulings)

For e.g. The primary sources constitute the raw ingredients of a medicine
The methodology & tools are how pharmacists process the raw ingredients into a medicine
The resulting medicine is dispensed by doctors.

The meds may be out of date or cause adverse effects.
It warrants an alternative prescription.
The relevance of a fatwa would dep on its quality, the societal context & its ability to effectively achieve Maqasid Shari’ah-bringing benefit (maslahah) or removing harm (mafsada).

The 2nd Maqasid Shari’ah aka Priorities of Islamic Law is the preservation of life
Global-70 Million cases & 1.6 million deaths
M’sia-78K cases & 396 deaths
A #COVID19 vaccine is one of the solutions to end the pandemic apart from masking, distancing and hygiene

Thrilled to announce our new paper by Victoria Junquera and Adrienne Grêt-Regamey, "Assessing livelihood vulnerability using a Bayesian network: a case study in northern #Laos”, is now out in @ecologyandsociety1 https://t.co/tEbZmiulDS #openaccess #WomenInSTEM. Short thread👇

This work analyzes the effect of #cashcrop production on livelihood #vulnerability, which we define in terms of the probability distribution of household income.

We use a #Bayesian network to estimate the probability distribution of household income, conditional on biophysical (e.g., yield), household (e.g., agricultural land), and commodity price variables.

By expressing all variables, including stressors such as price volatility and yield variability, as probability distributions, our model explicitly reflects exposure and sensitivity to shocks.

Our results show the effects of household land portfolio, including diversification between cash crops and between cash and food crops, on household income and income variability.

THREAD: Understanding pivot. Growing pressure from world population life-style will reach a point where it is damaging the capacity of Earth systems to an extent where life support will be challenged. It is simply a question of at what stage governments act. 1/X

Pivot is the same at each point 1-4. I use the STOP acronym. a) Stop, or halt, all increase of extraction/drawdown. b) Think, plan measures that will restore Earth system capacity and keep delivering basic services. c) Organise, re-work old regulations and agencies and then 2/x

Proceed to act. Notice that pivots are different depending on where measures are set in. It is MUCH harder to change when carrying capacity is challenged to an extent where people are dying. However, the pivot idea is a useful decision framework as you will see in 3/x

Pivot planning will be informed by three different criteria:
-which societal services and Earth systems are involved?
-how well is the societal system performing now?
-what drawdown stage has been reached? For example: 4/x

Water: FAO identify five levels of water extraction stress. Measures introduced in the light green countries will be far different than those in high stress areas. That is one dimension for pivot but not sufficient. The other level is societal performance. 5/x

@Profepps @VolokhC Garrett, I'd be happy to send you all sorts of scientific citations from my forthcoming chapter on the issue, but I'm not convinced you would understand them, or if you did, whether you'd be willing to understand them.

@VolokhC Ah, what the hell, just in case someone out there wants to do some actual research instead of being obnoxious and snarky.

@VolokhC Javier Perez-Rodriguez & Alejandro de la Fuente, Now is the Time for a Postracial Medicine: Biomedical Research, The National Institutes of Health, and the Perpetuation of Scientific Racism, 17 Am. J. Bioethics 36, 41 (2017).

@VolokhC Norman G. Osborne & Martin Feit, The Use of Race in Medical Research, 267 J. Am. Med. Assoc. 275 (1992).

@VolokhC Dorothy Roberts, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century 72 (2011).

A short thread on what I think is particularly useful intuition for the application of computational statistics.

Deterministic methods, like variational Bayes, utilize _rigid_ approximations. Ultimately these methods try to find the best way to wedge an approximating solid into the desired solid. If the two shapes are close enough then you can get a good fit.

But this rigidity also means that the approximating solid can't always contort to fit into the desired solid. If the two shapes don't match up well enough then we will end up in lots of awkward configurations no matter how hard we push.

In particular it's hard to quantify how good the fit of the approximate solid into the desired solid might be without knowing the shape of the desired solid already, which isn't possible in practice. This is one reason why these methods have such limited empirical diagnostics.

Stochastic, methods, on the other hand, utilize more fluid approximations that are able to take the shape of their container given enough time. In this respect we can think of them like a liquid or gas filling the desired shape.

China’s Super Soldiers with Bio-enhancement Capabilities

On December 3rd, 2020, John Ratcliffe, the Director of National Intelligence, posted an article1 in the Wall Street Journal warning the American people that ,

“the People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War II.”

The message is loud and clear, and most Americans agree with Director Ratcliffe’s description of the danger that the CCP regime poses to the American people but would not know how to react to this statement:

“U.S. intelligence shows that China has even conducted human testing on members of the People’s Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities.” Things like that are only found in sci-fi movies.

https://t.co/0BbPc11eTD
The Top 10 Psilocybin Research Papers of 2020
- FS Barrett, MK Doss, ND Sepeda, et al. – Emotions and brain function are altered up to one month after a single high dose of psilocybin. @FredBarrettPhD 1/10

SB Goldberg, BT Pace, CR Nicholas, et al. – The experimental effects of psilocybin on symptoms of anxiety and depression: A meta-analysis. “meta-analysis of studies using psilocybin along with behavioral interventions to treat elevated symptoms of anxiety and depression.” 2/10

GI Agin-Liebes, T Malone, MM Yalch, et al. – Long-term follow-up of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for psychiatric and existential distress in patients with life-threatening cancer. “follow-up approx 3.2 and 4.5 years later, w/ 15 of the 16 participants still alive” 3/10

F Blei, S Dörner, J Fricke, et al. – Simultaneous production of psilocybin and a cocktail of β‐carboline monoamine oxidase inhibitors in “magic” mushrooms “paper was chosen for Psychedelic Science Review’s 2020 Editor’s Choice Award for best study on psychedelics and nature” 4/10

J Sloshower, J Guss, R Krause, et al. – Psilocybin-assisted therapy of major depressive disorder using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a therapeutic frame “lays out how to combine therapy using antidepressant medication (like psilocybin) w/evidence-based psychotherapy” 5/10

Omega-3 Research (thread):

I've been discussing omega-3 fats on here more recently, so I wanted to put together a short collection of larger meta-studies on some of their various health benefits

I tried to pick a variety of studies, with as much data in each one as possible, I may add more over time

Omega-3 fats seem to have the most benefits when it comes to reducing chronic inflammation, many mental illnesses like depression, ADHD, and schizophrenia, promoting gut/microbiome health, and preventing neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers and dementia

Interestingly, evidence for improvement with cardiovascular disease is more variable than many other issues, though there are many promising studies

The majority of studies with omega-3 fats and cancer seem to generally show benefit, but this also varies in a few studies

Keep in mind that the majority of these studies are done with fish oils rather than whole seafood

Personally I believe that with this taken into account we will likely see much more benefit to health issues using whole seafood as it's PUFA are less likely to be oxidized