Trabalho realizado com Draw Plus (Serif) por José Sidenei de Melo – Nota: Não é dessa espécie de árvore da ilustração que se refere Fernando Pessoa em seu poema. A árvore da composição e os demais elementos foram inseridos apenas à título ilustrativo. Suas “velhas árvores” são, frondosas, antigas ou novas, porém eretas, soberbas, de grande porte.
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When you touch a surface, you leave behind fingerprints—distinctive swirling patterns of oils that reveal your identity. You might also deposit traces of DNA, which can also be used to identify you. And you leave microbes. You are constantly bleeding microbes into your surroundings, and whenever you touch something, bacteria hop across from your skin. It’s increasingly clear that everyone has a unique community of microbes—or microbiome—living on their bodies. We share species and strains but the exact roll call varies from person to person. “If you take a collection of people, their microbes will look very different but their genomes will look mostly the same,” says Curtis Huttenhower from the Harvard School of Public Health. So, could the DNA of these tiny variable residents also reveal our identity, just like fingerprints or our own DNA? A few studies have suggested so. In 2010, Noah Fierer from the University of Colorado found that bacteria swabbed from keyboards and mice matched those on their owners’ skins more closely than those from other people. (The match wasn’t quite accurate enough for forensic use, although that didn’t stop CSI Miami from running with it.) And last year, Simon Lax and Jack Gilbert from the University of Chicago managed to identify people, from a pool of 18 volunteers, based on the microbes they left behind in their homes. More recently, Lax and fellow student Sean Gibbons spent two days swabbing their mobile phones, the soles of their shoes, and the floor around them, on an hourly basis, to many strange looks. They found that the shoes and phones retained traces of their owners, so that an algorithm could accurately identify whose items any given sample came from. The objects were also heavily influenced by their environment; the shoes, in particular, quickly picked up microbes from the floors they walked over, suggesting that it might be possible to track a person’s movements from the microbes on their belongings. But what would happen if you scaled these studies up to larger populations? Could you still accurately pinpoint a person using their microbes, without false alarms? Would the results be consistent? And while fingerprints and genomes are largely constant, microbiomes change a lot—so will a person’s abandoned microbes still identify them weeks or months later? To answer these questions, Eric Franzosa and other members of Huttenhower’s team worked with data from the Human Microbiome Project, which collected microbes from the guts, skin, and other body sites of 120 people, at several points in time. They used an algorithm that took data from each volunteer’s first visit, extracted features like the presence of certain species, strains, or genes, and combined the most distinctive ones into a “code” that was unique to each individual, but also consistent over time. They then compared these codes to samples collected several months later to see if they could still identify the right owners. They only managed to recognise a third of their volunteers in this way. That’s nothing to sniff at, but it certainly doesn’t match the forensic utility of the human genome, or even fingerprints. The results were more promising when the team focused on gut microbes, which proved to be exceptionally stable; gut-based codes identified 86 percent of the volunteers. “That’s a floor. The accuracy can only go up if we have more sequencing data and better algorithms,” says Huttenhower. He also notes that “since the microbiome changes over time, we wanted to get as few things wrong as possible, so we biased the algorithm in favour of false negatives.” That is, the program might fail to identify people based on their microbes, but it will almost never identify the wrong person. Their results reflect our growing understanding of the human microbiome. Our bodies—and our guts, in particular—are colonised by a surprisingly stable set of bacterial strains. Their levels might fluctuate, but the same coterie persists for decades. Perhaps our genes or our immune systems determine who gets to stay. Perhaps there’s a “first-mover advantage”, where the first strains to set up shop then dictate which others get to immigrate. Either way, as Huttenhower says, “Not only are we robots for microbes, but each of us is a robot for a specific set of clones or strains that ride around with us for a long period of time.” He doubts that these results are important for forensic science. “If you deposit your microbes, you’re probably depositing your DNA too and DNA forensics is so well developed,” he says. But he adds that microbiome researchers need to be wary of these issues to protect the privacy of study volunteers. The data from such studies is always anonymised, but if people have unique and consistent signatures, there’s a risk that information from different data sets could be compared in ways that break anonymity. Consider what happened with Netflix. In 2007, the online media company released movie rankings from 500,000 of its customers, so that others could help to improve its recommendation algorithms. Even though the data were anonymised, researchers still managed to identify some of the individuals by comparing their rankings to non-anonymous profiles from IMDB, another movie site. And unlike movie rankings, our microbiome could reveal potentially sensitive information about what we eat, and whether we suffer from health problems. “This isn’t an issue now and it’s not a high-risk issue, but it’s still important for us to consider,” says Huttenhower. “No one study has any danger of releasing private information but due to uniqueness, the ability to link across studies becomes a possibility.” Reference: Franzosa, Huang, Meadow, Gevers, Lemon, Bohannan & Huttenhower. 2015. Identifying personal microbiomes using metagenomic codes. PNAS http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1423854112 Lax, Hampton-Marcell, Gibbons, Colares, Smith, Eisen & Gilbert. 2015. Forensic analysis of the microbiome of phones and shoes. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40168-015-0082-9
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Changing seasons (stock image). Scientists have known for some time that various diseases, including cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, and psychiatric disorders, display seasonal variation, as does vitamin D metabolism. Credit: © Naj / Fotolia Our immune systems vary with the seasons, according to a study led by the University of Cambridge that could help explain why certain conditions such as heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis are aggravated in winter whilst people tend to be healthier in the summer. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that the activity of almost a quarter of our genes (5,136 out of 22,822 genes tested) differs according to the time of year, with some more active in winter and others more active in summer. This seasonality also affects our immune cells and the composition of our blood and adipose tissue (fat). Scientists have known for some time that various diseases, including cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, and psychiatric disorders, display seasonal variation, as does vitamin D metabolism. However, this is the first time that researchers have shown that this may be down to seasonal changes in how our immune systems function. "This is a really surprising -- and serendipitous -- discovery as it relates to how we identify and characterise the effects of the susceptibility genes for type 1 diabetes," says Professor John Todd, Director of the JDRF/Wellcome Trust Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory. "In some ways, it's obvious -- it helps explain why so many diseases, from heart disease to mental illness, are much worse in the winter months -- but no one had appreciated the extent to which this actually occurred. The implications for how we treat disease like type 1 diabetes, and even how we plan our research studies, could be profound." An international team, led by researchers from the JDRF/Wellcome Trust Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory in the Department of Medical Genetics, Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, examined samples from over 16,000 people living in both the northern and southern hemispheres, in countries including the UK, USA, Iceland, Australia and The Gambia. These samples included a mixture of blood samples and adipose tissue. The researchers used a variety of techniques to study the samples, including looking at the cell types found in the blood and measuring the level of expression of the individuals' genes -- a gene is said to be 'expressed' when it is active in a particular cell or tissue, usually involving the generation of proteins. They found that the thousands of genes were expressed differently in blood and adipose tissue depending on what time of year the samples were taken. Similarly, they identified seasonal differences in the types of cells found in the blood. Seasonal differences were present across mixed populations in geographically and ethnically diverse locations -- but the seasonal genes displayed opposing patterns in the northern and southern hemispheres. However, the pattern of seasonal activity was not reflected as strongly in Icelandic donors. The researchers speculate that this may be due to the near-24 hour daylight during summer and near-24 hour darkness in winter. One gene of particular interest was ARNTL, which was more active in the summer and less active in the winter. Previous studies have shown that, in mice at least, the gene suppresses inflammation, the body's response to infection; if the gene has the same function in humans, then levels of inflammation will be higher during winter in the northern hemisphere. Inflammation is a risk factor for a range of diseases and hence in winter, those at greatest risk will likely reach the 'threshold' at which the disease becomes a problem much sooner. Drugs that target the mechanisms behind inflammation could offer a way of helping treat these diseases more effectively during the winter periods. A particularly surprising finding was that a set of genes associated to an individual's response to vaccination was more active in winter, suggesting that some vaccination programmes might be more effective if carried out during winter months when the immune system is already 'primed' to respond. During European and Australian winters, they argue, the thresholds required to trigger an immune response may be lower as a direct consequence of our coevolution with infectious organisms, which tend to be more prevalent during winter. Interestingly, people from The Gambia showed distinct seasonal variation in the numbers of immune cells in the blood that correlated with the rainy season (June-October), during which time infectious diseases, particularly mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, are more rife. "We know that humans adapt to changing environments," says Dr Chris Wallace. "Our paper suggests that human immune systems adapt to show different seasonal variation in equatorial regions with fewer distinct seasons compared to regions at higher and lower latitudes with more pronounced differences between winter and season." It is not clear yet what mechanism maintains the seasonal variation seen in the immune system, though it may be due to environmental cues such as daylight and ambient temperature. Our internal body clock -- known as our circadian rhythm -- is in part coordinated by changes in daylight, which explains why people in jobs that do not fit with the daily cycle, such as factory shift workers or crews on long haul flights, can be affected by poorer health. Professor Todd adds: "Given that our immune systems appear to put us at greater risk of disease related to excessive inflammation in colder, darker months, and given the benefits we already understand from vitamin D, it is perhaps understandable that people want to head off for some 'winter sun' to improve their health and well-being." The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust, the type 1 diabetes charity JDRF and the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre. Professor Mike Turner, Head of Infection and Immunobiology at the Wellcome Trust said: "This is an excellent study which provides real evidence supporting the popular belief that we tend to be healthier in the summer. Seasonal variation to this extent is a fascinating find -- the activity of many of our genes, as well as the composition of our blood and fat tissue, varies depending on the seasons. Although we are still unclear of the mechanism that governs this variation, one possible outcome is that treatment for certain diseases could be more effective if tailored to the seasons." Karen Addington, Chief Executive of JDRF in the UK, said: "We have long known there are more diagnoses of type 1 diabetes in winter. This study begins to reveal why. It identifies a biological mechanism we didn't previously know of, which leaves the body seasonally more prone to the autoimmune attack seen in type 1 diabetes. "While we all love winter sun, flying south for the whole of each winter isn't something anyone can practically recommend as a way of preventing type 1 diabetes. But this new insight does open new avenues of research that could help untangle the complex web of genetic and environmental factors behind a diagnosis."
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The Caproni Ca.60 Noviplano was a nine-wing flying boat intended to be a prototype for a 100-passenger trans-atlantic airliner. The prototype only made one short flight on 4 March 1921 over Lake Maggiore in Italy. The aircraft attained an altitude of only 18 m (60 ft), then dived and crashed, breaking up on impact. The pilot escaped unscathed.
Alexander Lippisch’s Aerodyne, a wingless experimental aircraft. The propulsion was generated by two co-axial shrouded propellers (1968).
De Lackner HZ-1 Aerocycle flying platform, designed to carry one soldier to reconnaissance missions (1954).
Lockheed XFV, “The Salmon,” an experimental tailsitter prototype escort fighter aircraft (1953).
Snecma Flying Coleoptere (C-450), a French experimental, annular wing aeroplane, propulsed by a turbo-reactor, able to take off and land vertically (1958).
Ames-Dryden (AD)-1 Oblique Wing, a research aircraft designed to investigate the concept of a pivoting wing (1979 – 1982).
B377PG – NASA’s Super Guppy Turbine cargo plane, first flew in its outsized form in 1980.
Bartini Beriev VVA-14, a Soviet vertical take-off amphibious aircraft (1970s).
Dornier Do 31, a West German experimental VTOL tactical support transport aircraft (1967).
Hyper III, a full scale lifting body remotely piloted vehicle, built at the NASA Flight Research Center in 1969.
Proteus, a tandem-wing, twin-engine research aircraft, built by Scaled Composites in 1998.
The Airbus A300-600ST (Super Transporter) or Beluga, is a version of the standard A300-600 wide-body airliner modified to carry aircraft parts and oversized cargo. It was officially called the Super Transporter at first, but the name Beluga became popular and has now been officially adopted.
Vought V-173, the “Flying Pancake”, an American experimental fighter aircraft for the United States Navy (1942).
Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar, a VTOL disk-shaped aircraft developed as part of a secret U.S. military project (1959).
McDonnell XF-85 Goblin, an American prototype jet fighter, intended to be deployed from the bomb bay of the Convair B-36 (1948). Photo: U.S. Air Force
Northrop XB-35, an experimental flying wing heavy bomber developed for the United States Army Air Forces during and shortly after World War II. Photo: U.S. Air Force
X-29 forward swept wing jet plane, flown by the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, as a technology demonstrator (1984 – 1992).
Stipa-Caproni, an experimental Italian aircraft with a barrel-shaped fuselage (1932).
The Caspian Sea Monster, also known as the “Kaspian Monster”, was an experimental ekranoplan, developed at the design bureau of Rostislav Alexeyev in 1966.
X-36 Tailless Fighter Agility Research Aircraft, a subscale prototype jet built by McDonnell Douglas for NASA (1996 – 1997).
Libellula, a tandem-winged and twin-engined British experimental plane which gives the pilot an excellent view for landing on aircraft carriers (1945).
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“Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organisations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them.” (source) The above quote comes from Linus Pauling, Ph.D, and two time Nobel Prize winner in chemistry (1901-1994). He is considered one of the most important scientists in history. He is one of the founders of quantum chemistry and molecular biology, who was also a well known peace activist. He was invited to be in charge of the Chemistry division of the Manhattan Project, but refused. He has also done a lot of work on military applications, and has pretty much done and seen it all when it comes to the world of science. A quick Google search will suffice if you’d like to learn more about him. This man has been around the block, and obviously knows a thing or two about this subject. And he’s not the only expert from around the world expressing similar beliefs and voicing his opinion. Here is another great example of a hard hitting quote when it comes to scientific fraud and manipulation. It comes from Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and long time Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ), which is considered to be one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world. I apologize if you have seen it before in my articles, but it is quite the statement. “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine” (source) The list goes on and on. Dr. John Bailer, who spent 20 years on the staff of the National Cancer Institute and is also a former editor of its journal, publicly stated in a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that: “My overall assessment is that the national cancer program must be judged a qualified failure. Our whole cancer research in the past 20 years has been a total failure.” (source) He also alluded to the fact that cancer treatment, in general, has been a complete failure. Another interesting point is the fact that most of the money donated to cancer research is spent on animal research, which has been considered completely useless by many. For example, in 1981 Dr. Irwin Bross, the former director of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Institute (largest cancer research institute in the world), said that: “The uselessness of most of the animal model studies is less well known. For example, the discovery of chemotherapeutic agents for the treatment of human cancer is widely-heralded as a triumph due to use of animal model systems. However, here again, these exaggerated claims are coming from or are endorsed by the same people who get the federal dollars for animal research. There is little, if any, factual evidence that would support these claims. Practically all of the chemotherapeutic agents which are of value in the treatment of human cancer were found in a clinical context rather than in animal studies.” (source) Today, treating illness and disease has a corporate side. It is an enormously profitable industry, but only when geared towards treatment, not preventative measures or cures, and that’s an important point to consider. Another quote that relates to my point above was made by Dr. Dean Burk, an American biochemist and a senior chemist for the National Cancer Institute. His paper, “The Determination of Enzyme Dissociation Constants (source),” published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 1934, is one of the most frequently cited papers in the history of biochemistry. “When you have power you don’t have to tell the truth. That’s a rule that’s been working in this world for generations. And there are a great many people who don’t tell the truth when they are in power in administrative positions.” (source) He also stated that: “Fluoride causes more human cancer deaths than any other chemical. It is some of the most conclusive scientific and biological evidence that I have come across in my 50 years in the field of cancer research.” (source) In the April 15th, 2015 edition of Lancet, the UK’s leading medical journal, editor in chief Richard Horton stated: “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Science has taken a turn toward darkness.” (source) n 2005 Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis, currently a professor in disease prevention at Stanford University, published the most widely accessed article in the history of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) entitled Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. In the report, he stated: “There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false.” In 2009, the University of Michigan’s comprehensive cancer center published an analysis that revealed popular cancer studies are false, and that there were fabricated results arising due to conflicts of interest. They suggested that the fabricated results were a result of what would work best for drug companies. After all, a large portion of cancer research is funded directly by them. You can read more about that story here. There is so much information out there, and so much of it is coming from people who have been directly involved in these proceedings. There is really no shortage of credible sources willing to state that we live in a world of scientific fraud and manipulation. All of this can be attributed to the “corporatocracy” we live in today, where giant corporations owned by a select group of “elite” people have basically taken control over the planet and all of its resources. This is precisely why so many people are flocking towards alternative treatment, as well as focusing on cancer prevention. Much of what we surround ourselves with on a daily basis has been linked to cancer. Everything from pesticides, GMOs, multiple cosmetic products, certain “foods,” smoking, and much much more. This is something that is never really emphasized, we always seem to just assume that donating money to charities will make the problem go away, despite the fact that their business practices are highly questionable. That being said, so many people have had success with alternative treatments like cannabis oil – combined with a raw diet or even incorporated into their chemotherapy regimen – that we should not feel as though there is no hope for the future. The official stance on cannabis is a great example of the very practice of misinformation that I’m talking about. Its anti-tumoral properties have been demonstrated for decades, yet no clinical trials are taking place.
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The Mother Of All Antioxidants
We have all heard of antioxidants, but have we heard of the mother of all antioxidants? One that is the secret to prevent cancer, heart disease, aging, neurological issues and more? This single antioxidant has been studied in great depth yet most of us know nothing about it and many doctors have no idea how to address the epidemic of its deficiency in humans. We are of course talking about Glutathione (pronounced “gloota-thigh-own.”) This is a powerful detoxifier and immune booster and is crucial to a healthy life. Although the body does make some of its own Glutathione, poor food quality, pollution, toxic environments, stress, infections and radiation are all depleting out bodies glutathione. What is Glutathione?Glutathione is a simple molecule produced naturally in the body at all times. It’s a combination of three building blocks of protein or amino acids — cysteine, glycine and glutamine. The best part of glutathione is that is contains sulfur chemical groups that work to trap all the bad things like free radicals and toxins such as mercury and heavy metals in our body then flush them out. This is especially important in our current world of heavy metal bombardment. Where Can You Get Glutathione?The body makes it, but it’s often not enough in our strenuous environment. Here are some food sources that either contain glutathione or its precursors to help the body produce more.
Notice they are all healthy foods we often don’t get enough of? This is another big issue with our diets. We consume a lot of junk, meat, dairy and processed foods, items that clinically have been proven to be the number one causes of heart disease and illness yet we consume them in huge quantities. The key is to limit these and eat a lot of fresh, lively foods that provide nutrients and don’t ask the body to perform a mega job to digest. You can also increase your exercise as glutathione production increases when you exercise. Breathing and sweating are also great ways to get rid of toxins in the body. Glutathione Protects Against Chronic IllnessWhat makes glutathione so important and powerful is that it recycles antioxidants. When your body is dealing with free radicals, it is essentially passing them from one molecule to another. They might go from vitamin C to vitamin E to lipoic acid and then to glutathione where they are cooled off. Antioxidants are recycled at this point and the body can now regenerate another glutathione molecule to go back at it again. Glutathione is crucial for helping your immune system fight chronic illness as it acts as the carrier of toxins out of your body. Like a fly trap, toxins stick to glutathione and they are carried to the bile into the stools and out of the body. Glutathione is also powerful enough that it has been shown to help in the treatment of AIDS greatly. The body is going to get in touch with oxidants and toxins, the more we can deal with those the better our body will be at staying strong, this is why glutathione is so important. 9 Final TipsDr. Mark Hyman has given 9 tips to increase your Glutathione levels. Check them out! 1. Consume sulfur-rich foods. The main ones in the diet are garlic, onions and the cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, kale, collards, cabbage, cauliflower, watercress, etc.). 2. Try bioactive whey protein. This is great source of cysteine and the amino acid building blocks for glutathione synthesis. As you know, I am not a big fan of dairy, but this is an exception — with a few warnings. The whey protein MUST be bioactive and made from non-denatured proteins (“denaturing” refers to the breakdown of the normal protein structure). Choose non-pasteurized and non-industrially produced milk that contains no pesticides, hormones, or antibiotics. Immunocal is a prescription bioactive non-denatured whey protein that is even listed in the Physician’s Desk Reference. 3. Exercise boosts your glutathione levels and thereby helps boost your immune system, improve detoxification and enhance your body’s own antioxidant defenses. Start slow and build up to 30 minutes a day of vigorous aerobic exercise like walking or jogging, or play various sports. Strength training for 20 minutes 3 times a week is also helpful. One would think it would be easy just to take glutathione as a pill, but the body digests protein — so you wouldn’t get the benefits if you did it this way. However, the production and recycling of glutathione in the body requires many different nutrients and you CAN take these. Here are the main supplements that need to be taken consistently to boost glutathione. Besides taking a multivitamin and fish oil, supporting my glutathione levels with these supplements is the most important thing I do every day for my personal health. 4. N-acetyl-cysteine. This has been used for years to help treat asthma and lung disease and to treat people with life-threatening liver failure from Tylenol overdose. In fact, I first learned about it in medical school while working in the emergency room. It is even given to prevent kidney damage from dyes used during x-ray studies. 5. Alpha lipoic acid. This is a close second to glutathione in importance in our cells and is involved in energy production, blood sugar control, brain health and detoxification. The body usually makes it, but given all the stresses we are under, we often become depleted. 6. Methylation nutrients (folate and vitamins B6 and B12). These are perhaps the most critical to keep the body producing glutathione. Methylation and the production and recycling of glutathione are the two most important biochemical functions in your body. Take folate (especially in the active form of 5 methyltetrahydrofolate), B6 (in active form of P5P) and B12 (in the active form of methylcobalamin). 7. Selenium. This important mineral helps the body recycle and produce more glutathione. 8. A family of antioxidants including vitamins C and E (in the form of mixed tocopherols), work together to recycle glutathione. 9. Milk thistle (silymarin) has long been used in liver disease and helps boost glutathione levels. Sources: http://drhyman.com/blog/2010/05/12/what-is-glutathione-and-how-do-i-get-more-of-it/ http://glutathionepro.com/what-is-l-glutathione/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hufj2AIPxQ
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