Richard Webby, health expert, on the new deadly flu strainlast spring, on April 9, 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) raised its Emergency Operations center to Level II
The Chinese government reported increasing numbers of humans falling dangerously ill due to a powerful new flu strain, H7n9,
The World health organization quickly launched a full effort toward creating a vaccine for this new strain.
The vaccine is now complete and will be moving into clinical trials any day now. So far it appears H7n9 has a difficult time moving between humans.
Most cases transfer from an animal host to human. However, there is a quality that makes the H7n9 strain particularly dangerous.
Smartplanet spoke with Dr. Richard Webby, Director of the World health organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds at St jude Children's Research Hospital.
We know that the H7n9 flu has infected humans, and some of the cases were fatal.
It's essentially still a disease of chickens. I imagine there are a great number of flu strains that are carried by animal populations at any given time.
So if a strain is not yet moving easily between humans how do you assign risk to it?
Or what warranted a vaccine for this particular virus? This is one of the big problems.
Trying to predict which of these viruses we ought to be worried most about. In the animal population there is a whole soup of flu viruses.
We are not good at determining which of those are most likely to jump into humans.
Was there any overt indication that this strain of flu was more of a risk?
Consider the epidemiology that was going on in China at the time and compare it with H5n1
--which is the other bird flu that has been going for a decade or more now-there has been 600 cases in humans.
but it did have some signatures that we associate with mammalian virus. Where does this virus rank among the flu viruses we know about already?
But if we rank it highest amongst the avian flu viruses, what does that mean? The next leap is:
I think the chances are still most likely that it is going to remain a chicken virus that will spread human infections.
But flu viruses do change. If you give them enough opportunity they will adapt to a new host.
So it may have the ability to turn into a real bona fide human pathogen. That is why we continue to monitor this in the bird populations,
control it and reduce the number of human infections. I understand that of those infected last spring with H7n9,
Is it stronger than a regular flu? are infected humans much sicker? Is there a higher chance of pneumonia?
The H7 is variable. The one thing we know is what stops a lot of the severe disease of the normal human flu strains is immunity.
Essentially anyone over the age of 10 years has had probably the flu a couple of times, and at least in the U s.,most have been vaccinated a couple of times.
So we have quite a bit of immunity to the human flu viruses. And that probably stunts a lot of the ability of that virus to cause disease.
It can still get in and make you a little bit sick. It can still transmit but the severity is limited by your immunity.
The H-type is the most variable part of that virus. That is why we call them H1, H3,
H5 and H7 because they are very different. We are expected not to have immunity to the H5
That is one reason they cause disease. It is a little bit of a mystery as to why this H7n9 causes such severe disease
but it does. Why is it a mystery? We group flu viruses into pathogenic types.
Highly pathogenic or low pathogenic. Some viruses of the H5n7 type fall into a very virulent form.
And it's associated with severe disease in humans. Even though H7 can also do that,
It does not cause a lot of disease in chickens, quails, etc. So with the H5n1 you see a lot of disease in your birds
and you know the virus is there. With the H7 you cannot tell just by looking at the chickens.
With any flu viruses there is a period when you're infectious before you start to get clinical signs.
With the H5 you eventually see sick birds. With the H7 they do not get sick at all.
What do you think avian flu will do over the next 10 to 15 years? What is the potential for a possible pandemic?
I think it is inevitable that there will be another pandemic. But if you look at the pandemics we've seen they have all been from viruses of the H1, H2 and H3 type.
In 1918 with H1, 1957 with H2, 1968 with H3 and in 2009 with H1 again.
So in terms of H1, H2 and H3 types I think it is a matter of when it will happen again rather than
I personally believe that they probably have the ability to become a human pathogen. What can we do to prevent a pandemic?
The best hope is to monitor what is going on in these animal populations. If we find viruses like the H7 that we perceive as high-risk then we start making viable vaccine strains.
We would like to be on course toward a universal flu vaccine. We have vaccinated against the H1
but essentially you are protected only from a portion of these H1 viruses. And you are protected not against the H5 or H7.
There is some hope that perhaps we can target other parts of the virus. There is a lot of work toward creating a universal flu vaccine.
We are not close right now. But hopefully in 10 or 15 years we will have a much better handle on how to do that
What if we had a food pill that could take care of hunger when you didn't want to spend time preparing food.
I talked to my doctor about measuring the physiological effects. I also connected with different government agencies like the FDA and USDA, Institute of Medicine and the World health organization.
As we do more research and have more understanding we can continue to optimize it
Of course, there are allergies, which is based on the geometry of certain proteins, so we use a protein source from rice that is minimally allergenic.
but are also literally killing themselves from inhaling the toxic soot. These are things we should be doing right away to buy us some time to solve the harder problem of how to stop burning fossil fuels.
For example, when you go to the doctor, they'll ask you about your family history. High blood pressure and heart disease in your family can be signs that you might be impacted, as well.
We as human beings have this notion of appreciating our family history. All the tree of life does is take that to another level.
A lot of people talk about the tree of life from the medicinal perspective. But for me it's this whole notion of understanding who we are
they weaved around the room as local health educator and rap artist Sterlen Barr shouted, â Å That
classrooms and businesses around the globe as much of the world struggles with an obesity epidemic.
Health problems that were once adult conditions--namely diabetes and cardiovascular diseases--now strike children, said Dr. James Marks, senior vice president and director of the Health Group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. â Å Since the late 1970s,
the rates of obesity have gone up in children three-to fourfold, â Â he said. â Å It increases the likelihood of so many serious illnesses. â Â To stem the tide,
national and regional healthy food initiatives are targeting schools. â Å Why are we going to schools?
â Â Marks said. â Å Because that where the kids are. â Â Children consume as many as half their meals in schools, according to the U s. Department of agriculture,
a decline. â Â The Institute of Medicine reported that if other communities followed the lead of the most successful cities and states,
children health would continue to improve. â Å If we act, â Â Marks said,
Because Rosario children watch her deal with diabetes, including regular finger pricks for blood-sugar testing,
Another four years with the Obama administration--and a first lady who has prioritized children health--will help institutionalize positive changes,
Â--The latest finding in the world's  bottomless cup of coffee studies reveals that the drug helps us remember things.
Johns hopkins university in Baltimore  observed that people who took a caffeine pill scored higher on memory tests than did swallowed those who a dummy tablet, the BBC reportsâ in a summary of an article in Nature Neuroscience.
it gave pills to 160 participants about 5 minutes after it showed them a set of images.
Some of the pills contained 200 milligrams of caffeine-an amount comparable to a large cup of java.
the individuals who had taken the caffeine-laced tablets outperformed those who took placebos. Many of the dummy takers thought similar images were the same.
Lead researcher Prof Michael Yassa cautioned against jumping to bold conclusions about the drug's benefits
and issued a reminder that caffeine can trigger side effects like jitteriness and anxiety. He noted:
Dr Anders Sandberg from the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford added:
Marijuana sauceyou're not in Indiana. Amsterdam's Manneken Pis chip shop, named after Brussels'famous pissing boy statue,
So it comes as no surprise that one of the latest gastronomical innovations-marijuana sauce-comes from Indianapolis.
paranoid or whatever it is weed real does to you. Â But some customers will have achieved already that mental state
At the Manneken Pis chip shop, owner Albert van Beek has created a mayo spread for his chips (what red-blooded Americans call french fries) that tastes like cannabis,
but contains no THC, inspired by the marijuana aroma from the adjacent coffee shop. It's just about the taste,
whether the dope dip will catch on and sweep across the globe. Â But it does leave you wondering what the Dutch might serve up next.
Radiation serves us broadly in the medical field, both as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool.
In fact we are currently enduring a shortage of medical isotopes, which we could rectify if we had more nuclear reactors from
It can provide clean power and medical miracles. Let it spread its wings. Updated Jan 29 around 10:05 a m. PST adding reference to alternative nuclear's improved waste managementcover photo of Half Dome at Yosemite is from Diliff via Wikimediathe land of milk and honey-and radiation:
â Â said there is an â Å invisible forest health crisis â Â today the loss of forest and agricultural lands to growth and development.
With poisoned sap, infected trees are left dry, red-needled, and dead. Many scientists suggest global warming could be exacerbating the infestations,
The process must first pre-treat the wood's toxic sap, which can be harmful to the bacteria used in the fermentation process.
About 90 percent of the satellite is expected to burn up in the atmosphere--NASA claims there's little harm from the rest,
land-restriction and decontamination efforts, together with Japan natural iodine-rich seafood diet, make Fukushima food today safer than an average CT scan.
¢tightlipped secrecy around its data and laughably low-tech decontamination strategies that don seem like a match for nuclear contamination.
Nancy Foust, a U s.-based researcher and technology and communications specialist with Simplyinfo. org, a multi-disciplinary U s.-based research group monitoring the Fukushima decontamination efforts,
The decontamination techniques so far have involved either deep tilling to shove the top soil down deep,
a rice farmer in Iidate and former systems engineer who has emerged as a widely cited grassroots expert on decontamination.
A technician at the lab said he was informed actually better than most Japanese government officials on the subject of contamination.
â Å Even the Ministry of the Environment, the ones who actually lead the decontamination work,
The rock fish, for example, almost always show some level of contamination, though it usually low.
Geraldine Thomas, Professor of Molecular Pathology at the Imperial College in London, and the scientific director of the Chernobyl Tissue bank, was asked to assess likely health effects from Fukushima after her extensive work on thyroid cancer cases in Russia.
Thomas finds the food fear in Japan baffling a sign of modern and misbegotten hysteria. â Å The most important thing to do immediately after the accident was to restrict the consumption of locally produced milk and green leafy vegetables
which are known to concentrate radioactive iodine, â Â she says, as opposed to the healthy,
and they have imposed even stricter limits on radiation in foodstuffs from Fukushima prefecture than we have for our own produce in the U k. and the U s. â Â Â Dr. Ian Fairlie,
â Å Both the World health organization and the United nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation agree that the biggest threat to health post Fukushima is the fear of radiation, not the radiation itself.
and prevent the contamination of rivers and lakes through stromwater runoff. The U s. Conference of Mayors, the official organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more, recently adopted a number of resolution that call the 1,
the type of feed they are receiving or one of a very large spectrum of health complications.
It could also slash the annual $5 billion that bovine illnesses cost the U s, . and the $60 billion hit worldwide, according to the story.
We want to get past the mega-industrialized food production systems that are often more of a harm than a benefit to our health
because the toxins they contain wind up in our indoor and outdoor environments. Such materials, they say,
As technologies that strip toxins from plant emissions improve, pollutants such as mercury may become more concentrated in the combustion residue, reports 60 minutes.
He says many businesses were spurred to help fortify the bee population by previous reports of a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, in
and environmental contaminants and have created even a better artificial nose to sniff out explosives, but it looks like researchers are finally zeroing in on the smallest possible detection system ever:
MIT researchers created a carbon nanotube with a bee venom-based sensor, designed to detect traces of explosives.
when the bee venom peptides target molecules found in explosives. Since the proteins reacted differently,
and drugs Engineered plants detect bombs and environmental contaminants Chemists create a better artificial nose to sniff out explosives
and sour milk German airports use honeybees to sniff out air quality Breath test can detect cancer New remote sensing system can detect explosives
and drugs A cheap landmine detector made from ebay parts Sensor robots sense out environmental changes
Smart move: Shoppers buy real Xmas trees to save doughhome Depot and Lowe's are reportedly stocking fewer fake Christmas trees this year as consumers look to save money.
The production process does not involve any use of pesticides, chemicals, herbicides, fungicides, antibiotics or hormones.
Grey mould (Botrytis cinerea) is a very damaging disease to strawberry crops worldwide. Symptomless infections can develop in strawberry flowers
and cause fungal growth on fruit as they ripen and after picking. Control currently consists of careful management
and conventional crop protection products applied to flowers to protect against infection. ADAS and East Malling Research have been using bumble bee pollinator hives
preventing the latent flower infection which causes the fruit to rot. During the last two years of field trials this harmless bee-delivered control system was demonstrated to be a practical alternative to fungicide applications
"We see from the new data that the activities of China have been overestimated,"Dr Ward Anseeuw,
such as contract farming or through bank control,"said Dr Answeeuw.""Instead of buying land through a foreign entity, they are buying stakes in local agribusiness that are controlling these lands."
"said Dr Answeeuw.""We need these investments; the public sector alone can't do this. We need the private sector to come in,
They might even help pollinate plants in places where natural bee populations have fallen due to the still-mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder.
Dr John Marshall, said:""Not only will this pave the way for many future advances in autonomous flying robots,
and warns that the banana's unique reproductive system each new fruit is a genetic duplicate of the next makes it especially susceptible to epidemics
Gustavo Castro is an environmental chemist at who says he'd heard for a long time that the peel of the banana was the best part of the fruit,
trusts, hospitals, housing associations and public buildings). About FCFCG What is the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens?
hospitals, housing associations and public buildings). Who supports us? We enjoy widespread support from a number of Government departments, regional development organisations and local authorities.
and are more resistant to diseases. The cocoa crop in Brazil, for instance, was decimated some years ago by a fungal disease called witches broom.
Today, about 70 percent of the world crop is grown in West Africa, and several million small farmers depend on it for their livelihoods.
Dr. Shapiro said a goal of the project was to make sure the genetic data was available for all to use without intellectual property restrictions.
Dr. Guiltinan said the new genetic information could lead to chocolate that tastes better and contains more flavonoids,
Dr. Guiltinan said there had initially been efforts to do one genome project, but that Mars and the Agriculture department oedecided to go it alone,
The Mars group used so-called second generation sequencers made by Illumina and 454, a division of Roche.
Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.
Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, idwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides,
Bayer is already selling cotton and soybeans resistant to glufosinate, another weedkiller. Monsanto newest corn is tolerant of both glyphosate and glufosinate,
Glyphosate oeis as important for reliable global food production as penicillin is for battling disease, Stephen B. Powles,
iphone doctorbrendan Mcelroy living room in an apartment on the top floor of an East Village walk-up is crowded with anxious patients,
Everyone is awaiting a prognosis not for an ailing child or pet, but for an iphone.
inspiring some iphone owners to seek out alternative ways to restore their phones health. Enlisting the services of Mr. Mcelroy or Dr. Brendan,
if you prefer his Web moniker costs markedly less. Replacing the battery on a 3g or 3gs iphone for example
but she did say that cracked screens were the most common malady. Apple recommends finding authorized repair shops on its Web site at apple. com/support. oewe can t vouch for the quality of unauthorized repairs
Despite the trauma, he said, oei was able to get it up and running for him.
she said. oethat means Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability the green crowd. It worth mentioning that most of those categories would appear to describe the 47-year-old Ms. Bernstein.
Snelgar's dream is for each village to combine cooperatively to employ a food grower with as much status as the local teacher or doctor.
Volunteers have replaced"inedible"planting outside the town's health centre with apple and pear trees, made watercress beds in a local park
Mr Jankowski likens the current state of biohacking to the years in which amateurs first began working with personal computers, a metaphor that Dr Kelly also uses.
who had died of congenital heart failure, for examination. This took place over the protestations of Mr Kurtz, his colleagues and the local commissioner of public health, all of
whom insisted that nothing in the exhibit could be harmful. The right way to regulate biohacking may not become apparent for some time.
Many DNA sequences, including those for harmful diseases, are published already widely, and can hardly be retracted.
Dr Carlson, who has a book on biohacking coming out later this year, is a proponent of light regulation at most. oeif you look at our ability to respond to infectious diseases at this point in time,
we're essentially helpless, he says. oethe quandary we face is need that we the garage hackers,
Disease, wet summers and certain pesticides have all been blamed for the fall in numbers, but no definitive cause has yet been found.
CA to develop strategies to delay aging and age-related disease. Genescient's primary business focus is on the development of pharmaceuticals for age-related diseases,
but in conjunction with its spinoff firm Life Code LLC, it has provided testing services for the development of nutraceuticals based on its unique genomics platform.
We succeeded in doubling animal lifespan using a novel class of nutrigenomic supplements that modulate genes involved in both aging and age-related disease.
which selects the best genotype for fitness in a particular ecological niche. In 1952 The british Nobel zoologist Peter Medawar proposed that aging is the simple result of the failure of natural selection to maintain fitness in older animals with declining fertility.
As fertility wanes, then the chances to correct inappropriate gene expression via natural selection also decline, generating the aging phenotype.
Thus, according to Medawar hypothesis, aging is caused indirectly by the declining forces of natural selection to select the best fitness genes for the aged animal as reproductive capacity declines.
wherein a gene may promote fitness in young fertile animals (and thus be selected for) but become a liability late in life leading to a subsequent decline in fitness.
Modern versions of Medawar and William evolutionary theories of aging are believed still widely today by most experts in aging science,
Dr predicted that he should be able to select populations of long-lived animals by simply selecting for reproductive longevity.
Dr. Rose started with 5 lines of wild type Drosophila flies and selected for reproductive longevity over a 27-year period.
Dr. Rose finally obtained robust Methuselah flies with a demonstrated lifespan of some 3 to 4 times that found in the non-selected control lines,
as some of the youthful gene expression is inconsistent with longevity (e g. genes promoting rapid growth that can lead to cancer.
The typically poor longevity effects of single compounds argue against the use of drug-like therapeutics directed to a single target for longevity treatments.
I decided to test mixtures of medicinal herbal extracts, as these have had a long history of success in Chinese
and Indian traditional medicine and are known to have a wide spectrum of positive effects in humans.
I focused on complementary herbal extracts that have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and metabolic potential (known factors in driving aging) along with a positive effect on longevity genes and a proven history of use in traditional herbal medicine to treat a wide spectrum of diseases.
In selecting a group of herbal extracts, I did not take the traditional route of choosing an existing herbal mixture
or the normal scientific route of choosing a mix of herbal extracts that target a particular disease or target.
or Western medicine based on its long term traditional use and data indicating that the herbal extract can target multiple longevity genes identified by Genescient or by other research groups.
In Chinese traditional medicine, Astragalus membranaceus (Huang Qi) appeared to be the best Chinese herb because of its many traditional uses
%In traditional Chinese medicine astragalus is considered a true tonic that can strengthen debilitated patients and increase resistance to disease in general.
Modern herbal treatments with Astragalus membranaceus root (often in concert with other herbs) are partly based on clinical trials showing benefits in strengthening immune function during viral (e g. chronic hepatitis)
or bacterial infection or in those individuals undergoing dialysis for kidney failure. Clinical trials at the US National Cancer Institute and other world centers have indicated that Astragalus can strengthen immunity
and improve survival in some individuals with cancer. In western herbal medicine Astragalus root is used to enhance immunity and to help in wound healing.
Astragalus compounds have also been shown to stimulate stem cells, promote peripheral nerve regeneration in rats,
and inhibit mtor (a major longevity gene shown by extensive government studies to extend lifespan in mice).
In looking for the best herb in the Indian Ayurvedic medicinal tradition, I soon focused on the potent antidiabetic herb, Pterocarpus marsupium.
Crude extracts of Pterocarpus marsupium (Indian keno tree) bark naturally have high concentrations of pterostilbene (more than 4%by weight
and extraction can get this level much higher) and have been used as a traditional herbal treatment for diabetes in India for thousands of years.
More recent studies in animals show potent antidiabetic activity. Published studies have shown also that pterostilbene is a potent anticancer compound.
For example, pterostilbene, an analog of resveratrol has dose-dependent anticancer activity in five cancer cell lines.
As an herbal medicine, Pterocarpus marsupium is popular in India for its diverse health benefits. Besides diabetes, the herb is reported also to cure a wide spectrum of ailments like skin diseases, fractures, bruises, constipation, hemorrhages, and rheumatoid arthritis.
These diverse health benefits of Pterocarpus marsupium make it a clear favorite to include in a preventive herbal cocktail along with Astragalus.
Having selected two of the biggest stars in the traditional herbal medicines of China and India
I looked for an effective herb with wide-spectrum health effects from the Western herbal tradition.
In this case, pine bark proanthocyanidins stand out as the best wide-spectrum herbal extracts in the Western herbal medicine tradition.
Proanthocyanidins are polymer chains of flavonoids (flavan-3-ols) that were discovered by Jacques Masquelier in 1948
and have been a major therapeutic supplement in Europe since the 1980s. Most of the research and commercial success with proanthocyanidins has come from extracts of a French maritime pine bark called Pycnogenol (65 to 75%proanthocyanidins) and various grape seed extracts (80-90%proanthocyanidins.
One interesting claim of health benefits from proanthocyanidins is the hypothesis that they are responsible for the oefrench Paradox,
wherein The french tend to have reduced much rates of cardiovascular disease compared to other Western countries on a high-fat diet because of their high intake of red wine made with grapes.
Besides their cardiovascular effects, Oligo-Proanthocyanidins (OPCS as attached units of proanthocyanidins are called) are known to have many other health benefits.
OPCS have also been shown in clinical trials to promote blood flow and endothelial nitric oxide while reducing edema, capillary fragility,
and damage from pollution, toxins, and cigarette smoke. These diverse health benefits make Pine Bark proanthocyanidins another perfect candidate to combine with wide-spectrum herbal extracts from Astragalus membranaceus and Pterocarpus marsupium bark.
To round out the above herbs, I wanted an herbal compound that provided neural protection in the brain.
Among its psychoactive properties, theanine is reported to reduce mental stress and improved cognition and mood via its binding to the GABA brain receptors in the parasympathetic nervous system.
and the most common cause of death is heart failure. Like humans and other mammals (e g. mice), it is quite difficult to increase their lifespan significantly.
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