Wednesday, July 27th, 2016
Joseph Dussault, - The Christian Science Monitor
Stephan: Here is the story of Luca, the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all living things, life's precursor. Absolutely fascinating.
Luca, life’s precursor. Scientists speculate that Luca, a four-billion-year-old organism, may have originated in a hydrothermal vent. Credit: Volcanoes of the Deep Sea/Rutgers University
What do humans, insects, and algae all have in common? Very little, except for Luca.
Evolutionary biologists have revealed a detailed genetic profile of Luca, the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all living things. A new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Microbiology, provides insight into where and how this ancient precursor may have lived.
There are three basic types of living organisms on Earth: eukaryotes, bacteria, and archaea. Eukaryotes include all plants and animals. Bacteria and archaea are both single-celled, asexual organisms with no nucleus or organelles, but have distinct genetic and biochemical backgrounds
Researchers say that all three groups can be traced back to Luca, a single-celled organism that lived around 4 billion years ago. It is commonly thought that Luca’s descendants diverged into bacteria and archaea, and that eukaryotes emerged later. The ancestor’s physiology and habitat were mostly left to speculation, until now.
A group of evolutionary […]
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Martha Rosenberg , Reporter - The Influence
Stephan: In a society that has only one social priority -- profit -- inevitably all social institutions become corrupted. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Illness Profit System that passes for healthcare in the United States. Here's an example of what I mean.
Credit: Shutterstock
At the 2010 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in New Orleans, a psychiatrist from the East coast shared her anger with me about the recent clamp down on Pharma financial perks to doctors. “They used to wine us and dine us. An SSRI maker flew my entire office to a Caribbean island…but now nothing,” she lamented.
She was right. Before news organizations and the 2010 Physician Financial Transparency Reports (also called the Sunshine Act, part of the Affordable Care Act) reported the outrageous amount of money Pharma was giving doctors to prescribe its new, brand-name drugs, there was almost no limit to what was spent to encourage prescribing.
At another medical conference I attended, soon after, when it was suggested that doctors not accept free meals from Pharma reps because of indebtedness, a doctor asked in all earnestness “but what do we do for lunch?”
He was right. Doctors seldom have to go hungry at lunchtime when Pharma reps are around. Not only do reps reliably bring lunch and free drug samples, until fairly […]
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Steven Rosenfeld, National Political Reporter - Alternet
Stephan: I have been making the point made in this essay for at least five years now. It's always nice to learn that you are right about something. But much more important is learning what is really going on. This is one of the reasons I am so concerned that the the U.S. is about to elect a psychopathic grifter for President.
Donald Trump, Republican Presidential Nominee
Credit: Reuters
White Christian America sees Donald Trump as their modern Moses.
If he is elected president, his victory will owe a great deal to white Christians who have been drawn to him for months in a desperate bid to save their slice of America from shrinking demographics, vanishing values and fading political and cultural power.
It doesn’t matter that he’s no saint. What matters is Trump understands their big picture. Christian America feels threatened to the core as their numbers, morality, fealty to authority, and privilege is ebbing and being replaced by a majority that’s more pluralistic, multicultural, tolerant and demographically ascendant.
That’s the takeaway of pollsters who specialize in tracking religion and American life and were initially startled as Trump beat a handful of preachers or their sons in the early primaries, namely Scott Walker and Ted Cruz. It’s what’s behind new polls finding that Trump is now doing better than Mitt Romney was at this point in 2012 among white […]
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Samantha Olson , - Medical Daily
Stephan: Here is some excellent news that may help a teenager you know, and once again the importance of meditation/mindfulness practices in your life is demonstrated.
Source: Strawn JR, Cotton S, Luberto CM, et al. Neural Function Before and After Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy in Anxious Adolescents at Risk for Developing Bipolar Disorder. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology. 2016.
Anxiety disorders plague more than one in four adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18, and many of them are treated with antidepressants and other medications to try and help them live a relatively healthy childhood. But a team of researchers from the University of Cincinnati set out to explore other treatment options that focus more on the mind and less on pharmaceutical solutions.
Their study, published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, recruited nine participants who were diagnosed with anxiety disorders between 9 and 16 years of age. These conditions included generalized, social, and separation anxiety disorder as well as having a parent with bipolar disorder. Over the course of 12 weeks, each participant underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while they practiced mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, a wide range of theraputic techiniques that include meditation, yoga, and learning how to pay nonjudgmental attention to one’s life.
“These integrative approaches expand traditional treatments and offer new strategies for coping with psychological distress,” said the study’s co-author Sian Cotton, director of the UC’s Center for Integrative Health and Wellness, in a […]
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Cal Colgan, - The Raw Story
Stephan: While I was in Italy two people asked me if it was safe to come to the U.S. I was gobsmacked by the question, but after thinking about it a moment, I said, "it depends..."
Here's why I said that.
Imagine, people asking whether it is safe to come to America, as if it is a war zone and with 33,000 Americans shot and killed by other Americans or themselves every year, I guess it is.
Credit: Shutterstock
Panic struck a Paducah, Kentucky movie theater on Saturday after a man in the audience pulled a gun during a fight caused by a child kicking the back of his seat.
According to the local TV news station KFVS 12, police were called to Paducah’s Cinemark Theater on Saturday morning, responding to calls that a gun was drawn inside the cinema. A man told one of the officers on the scene that another man sitting in front of him and his son grew irritated that the child was repeatedly kicking the back of the other man’s seat.
Witnesses said that a fight broke out between the two men after the aggrieved audience member cursed at the boy. As the father was winning the brawl, the other man pulled out a gun, asking, “What the [expletive] are you going to do now?”
Police said others in the audience ran for the exit as soon as they saw the gun. The gun-wielding patron was escorted out of the theater by Cinemark employees and patrons.
KFVS 12 […]
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