Monthly Archives: October 2014
Apophis Will Probably Trigger Asteroid Avalanche
Scientists Resurrect 700-Year-Old Virus
VIEW RELATED GALLERY »WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/GOLDMANN, JO (U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE)
GALLERYTheArtofMicrobiology:Photos
VIEW CAPTION +
VIEW CAPTION +
VIEW CAPTION +
VIEW CAPTION +
VIEW CAPTION +
VIEW CAPTION +
VIEW CAPTION +
VIEW CAPTION +
VIEW CAPTION +
VIEW CAPTION +
UP NEXT
City Prints: Cities Take Four Main Shapes: Photos
When researcher Eric Delwart read about the many things that could be preserved in ice cores, hetold NPR he realized he might be able to find buried treasure: caribou poop.
Now, the work has paid off. The well-preserved, 700-year-old remains of, yes, caribou poop that Delwart found contained DNA that he and some colleagues were able to extract. Eventually, they used it to reconstitute an entire plant virus.
“I mean we’re constantly shoving viruses down our throat and if you look at poo samples from humans and from animals you will find a lot of viruses,” Delwart, a researcher at Blood Systems Research Institute in San Francisco, told NPR.
VIDEO: Are Viruses Alive?
The news, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is both exciting and scary: The virus “time capsules” found in Canada will undoubtedly help inform research on the evolution of viruses. But it also raises the possibility of unleashing ancient viruses as ice melts or Arctic regions are drilled.
“The find confirms that virus particles are very good ‘time capsules’ that preserve their core genomic material, making it likely that many prehistoric viruses are still infectious to plants, animals or humans,” Jean-Michel Claverie, of the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine in France, told New Scientist. “This again calls for some caution before starting to drill and mine Arctic regions at industrial scales.”
NEWS: Largest Viruses Ever Revealed
Although Delwart’s team was able to get the buried virus to infect a type of tobacco plant, he told NPR that this particular virus isn’t dangerous.
“There’s a theoretical risk of this, and we know that the nucleic acid of the virus was in great shape in our sample,” Delwart told New Scientist. “But old viruses could only re-emerge if they have significant advantages over the countless perfect viruses we have at present.”
Ebola Virus Lives in Human Sperm for 70 to 90 plus days
The Daily Sheeple
www.TheDailySheeple.com
`
Yeah, we apparently have to go there.
The World Health Organization released a statement earlier this month confirming that the Ebola virus can live in sperm for at least two but up to three months:
The Ebola virus is transmitted among humans through close and direct physical contact with infected bodily fluids, the most infectious being blood, faeces and vomit.
The Ebola virus has also been detected in breast milk, urine and semen. In a convalescent male, the virus can persist in semen for at least 70 days; one study suggests persistence for more than 90 days. [emphasis added]
Three months.
The Ebola virus can hide out in a man’s sperm who is recovering from Ebola for three whole months, meaning anyone he has unprotected sex with is at risk for catching Ebola.
According to Mother Jones, a 1999 CDC study found that one woman has already possibly been infected this way:
…A 1977 study of an outbreak in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo found Ebola in the semen of one survivor 61 days after the onset of his disease. And a 1999 study found the virus in an Ebola survivor’s semen 82 days after he first became ill. That study recommended that survivors use condoms for “at least” three months after contracting the disease.A separate 1999 study, backed by the Centers for Disease Control, identified one woman who tested positive for Ebola but never developed symptoms. The researchers concluded that it was unclear if she ever actually contracted the virus, but that it was “possible” that she was infected by a recovered Ebola patient via his semen. [emphasis added]
So if a woman contracts Ebola this way, if she shows no symptoms, could she also then become an asymptomatic carrier?
It’s a question that needs to be asked.
While the mainstream media and our government health officials have worked very hard to quell public fears by selling the idea that an asymptomatic person cannot transmit this virus period, obviously the fact that it lives on in sperm in men in recovery who appear otherwise healthy shows this is untrue on its face.
The very idea asymptomatic people cannot transmit a virus from a common sense biological standpoint is everything from at the very least highly risky to outright ludicrous, and has never once been proven.
In fact, the opposite has been documented regarding viral shedding of other viruses in studies:
A physician knowledgeable about viremia called Rush Limbaugh (10-14-2014) to discuss how viral replication and dissemination through the body precedes symptom appearance, therefore raising the possibility of transmitting Ebola to others from asymptomatic (without symptoms) individuals. This is consistent with extensive research documenting viral shedding in asymptomatic people, even those who seem perfectly healthy, for many virus species (example 1, example 2).
(source)
As Ebola continues to ravage Africa, and this single outbreak is now to blame for over 5,000 deaths and 12,000 infections, it leaves one to wonder: where are the massive education campaigns focused on informing the public about sperm and unprotected sex as a prolonged mode of Ebola virus transmission?
– See more at: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/the-ebola-virus-lives-on-in-human-sperm-for-two-to-three-months_102014#sthash.XJUGDzzY.dpuf
Scientists Build ‘Mini-Stomachs’ in Lab
Scientists using stem cells said on Wednesday they had built the world’s first “mini-stomachs” — tiny clusters of human gastric tissue that could spur research into cancer, ulcers and diabetes.
Called gastric organoids, the lab-dish tissue comprises buds of cells that are “a miniature version of the stomach”, the researchers said.
They were made from pluripotent stem cells which were coaxed into developing into gastric cells, according to the study, published in the journal Nature.
Youthful and versatile, pluripotent stem cells have excited huge interest as a dreamed-of source for transplant tissue grown in a lab.
Sources for them include stem cells derived from early-stage embryos and adult cells reprogrammed to their juvenile state, called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS).
But the field has encountered many problems, led by the challenge of getting cells to “differentiate”, or become cells for specific organs.
The exploit entailed identifying the chemical steps that occur during embryonic development, when cells differentiate into the specific types that form the stomach.
These steps were then replicated in a Petri dish so that pluripotent stem cells developed into endoderm cells, the building blocks of the respiratory and gastro-intestinal tracts.
These were then biochemically nudged into becoming cells of the antrum, the stomach region that secretes mucus and hormones.
Still at a preliminary stage, the organoids are a long way from being replacement tissue or a fully-fledged stomach.
Early tests on mice, though, suggest they could one day be a “patch” for holes caused by peptic ulcers.
The organoids also mark an important step forward in how to tease stem cells into becoming 3-D structure, the scientists said.
And, as “mini-stomachs,” they also provide a testbed for studying diseases such as cancer, diabetes and obesity, the team said in a press release.
“Up until now, there’s been no good way to study stomach diseases in humans,” said Jim Wells, a researcher in developmental biology at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio.
“The human stomach is very different than the stomach of other animals. The different cells and their structure and arrangement in our stomach tissues in a dish were virtually identical to that that we would find in the stomach normally.”
In a first experiment, the researchers have used the organoids to see how the notorious ulcer-causing germ Helicobacter pylori infects cells lining the stomach, the Cincinnati facility said.
UFO Seen In 15th Century Painting From Birthplace Of ‘Dracula’ Vlad Tepes — What Does This Mean?
A UFO appears to hover over a building that may be connected to the real-life Dracula in a recently uncovered painting from the town of Sighisoara, Romania. A photo of the mysterious painting that appears on the wall of a 700-year-old monastery was snapped this summer by tourist Catalina Borta, who sent it to a prominent UFO research group for evaluation.
The bizarre painting shows what appears to be a church — perhaps the same one where the painting was found — seemingly engulfed in flames. Over the church, a large, floating disc hovers, sending a column of smoke billowing toward the sky above.
The town of Sighisoara is believed to be where Vlad Tepes, the notorious “Vlad the Impaler,” also known as Vlad III Dracula, was born in 1431 — not long after the monastery where the painting appears was constructed.
The name “Vlad III Dracula” translates as “Vlad III, Son of the Dragon. The nickname “Impaler,” not imposed on Vlad Tepes until after his death sometime around 1477, came from the bloodthirsty warlord’s practice of spiking the bodies of his enemies on sharpened poles and leaving them on public display as show of power.
Vlad III Dracula was Irish author Bram Stoker’s inspiration for the vampire Count Dracula in the 1897 novel Dracula in which the now-legendary fictional villain first appeared.
“But why would a painting that may have been created in the real Dracula’s lifetime, in his own hometown, depict what appears to be a flying disc-shaped craft, of the type described today as a UFO?”
Acording to Gilli Schechter and Hannan Sabat of the Israel-based Extraterrestrials and UFO Research Association, the painting in the Church of the Dominican Monastery in Sighisoara depicts a flying disc that appears very similar to other UFO type objects scattered through artworks of medieval times.
They cite, in particular, an illustration from a book called the Prodigiorum Liber, an account of an ancient Roman battle during which a mysterious round object appeared in the sky. The flying disc in the illustration looks very similar to the UFO in the Sighisoara church painting.
Similar discs have also appeared on French coins from the 17th century. But UFO expert Marc Dantonio says that the images on those coins are actually intended to depict military shields. The shields were supposed to symbolize the military might of the French king Louis XIV.
Experts have had some trouble dating the strange UFO painting from the birthplace of Vlad Dracula. The inscription below the painting is a Biblical quotation in German, suggesting that the painting was created no earlier than 1523, the first year that the Bible was translated into German.
Does the UFO painting date from the lifetime of the Vlad Dracula or a nearly a century later? Is the painting supposed to symbolize the military power of Dracula? Or is there some connection between the warlord who became a fictional vampire and extraterrestrials?
UFO experts remain baffled as they wait for more information about the startling painting from the home of Dracula.
Ten glaring Ebola contradictions told by government authorities who think we’re all just stupid
(NaturalNews) New York Governor Cuomo began yesterday’s Ebola press conference by gently waving his hand at reporters and uttering, “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”
When that didn’t work, he pulled out a pocket watch and let it swing back and forth like a pendulum, slowly repeating “Ebola is hard to catch. Ebola is hard to catch. You are feeling sleepy…”
As anybody with a brain has figured out by now, everything we’re being told about Ebola by government authorities is a distortion, a contradiction or an outright lie. But what are the best lies and contradictions we’ve heard so far?
Here’s the list:
#1) We are wearing space suits just because they make us look cool
There’s absolutely no risk that Dr. Spencer infected anyone in New York City, which is why we are going to closely monitor four people he came into contact with.
We do that because we like to monitor random people for no real reason.
#2) We are fully prepared for an outbreak which will never happen
There is almost zero risk of Ebola ever coming to New York City, which is exactly why we have been preparing for an Ebola outbreak in New York City.
Huh?
#3) Ebola is so hard to catch that we can’t believe anyone managed to catch it
Ebola is hard to catch. It’s so hard to catch that the world’s best-trained doctors accidentally caught it without even knowing they did.
We don’t understand how this happens, unless Ebola was easy to catch, which it isn’t. Trust us. We are expert virologists when we’re not running for office and making political promises we’ll never keep.
#4) Please quarantine yourself even though you don’t need to
Ebola can’t possibly be spread by people who don’t show any symptoms, but we would prefer that doctors who return from West Africa quarantine themselves for 21 days even when they show no symptoms.
But even when doctors break those self-quarantine rules, we will praise them and talk about how much they “tried” to limit their exposure to the public.
#5) Riding the subway is a form of self-quarantine
Dr. Spencer is so awesome! He “tried” to limit his exposure to the public, and he did that by riding the subway, sharing an UBER vehicle and hanging out at bowling alleys with his fingers touching his [bowling] balls.
Because, y’know, the very best way to quarantine yourself is to go out in public. How could anyone not know that? Shouldn’t we give Dr. Spencer a humanitarian award of some kind for putting the safety of others ahead of his own social needs?
#6) Please deposit all biomedical viral waste in the nearest public trash can
Here in New York City, we like to use public trash cans to dispose of biomedical waste that’s contaminated with Ebola virus. (That’s what NYPD cops were just caught on camera doing.) [1]
Because we figure the rats in NYC already carrying at least 18 deadly viruses anyway, so why not give ’em some Ebola to see what mutations might happen? What could possibly go wrong?
#7) Stopping public awareness of Ebola is far more important than stopping Ebola
In the great city of New York, we have decided that the real risk is not from Ebola itself but from public awareness of Ebola.
Thus, instead of going out of our way to stop Ebola, we are focusing our efforts on stopping awareness of Ebola.
Because it’s far better for the public to be ignorant than afraid. In fact, that’s pretty much also how we run the New York City budget, too.
#8) Everything tests negative. Whew!
As part of our effort to calm public fears, we are going to tell you that everybody who once had Ebola now tests negative for Ebola. It’s all cleared!
We tested the nurses from Dallas, and it came up negative. We tested the friends of Thomas Duncan, and they came up negative. Heck, we even tested the Ebola virus for Ebola and it came up negative too. Thank goodness Ebola is now Ebola free.
#9) Enhanced airport screening catching everything except Ebola
Just to calm public fears, we are going to stage some medical theater for you at the airports, acting like we are stopping people with Ebola from entering the country.
…People like Dr. Spencer, of course, who walked right through our “enhanced screening” procedures because, well, it’s all just for show anyway.
If you’re wondering why such medical theater is necessary, refer to point #7, above.
#10) Twenty isolation hospital beds and 100,000 body bags… hmmm…
We are all so totally prepared for an Ebola outbreak in New York City that we have a whopping 20 hospital beds ready with viral isolation capabilities.
And just in case that doesn’t work, we’ve got 100,000 body bags ready to deploy.
It’s sort of a “Plan B” approach, but we’re pretty sure that won’t ever be necessary as long as all Ebola carriers self-quarantine by riding the subway and visiting bowling alleys, which we fully endorse because we are government authorities who always know what we are talking about.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/047388_ebola_outbreak_government_lies_new_york_city.html#ixzz3HgNcG8uD
Ebola Virus Spreads to Halloween Outfits
An online retailer in California is making no apologies for marketing Ebola-themed outfits for grown-ups looking to add some shock value to their Halloween party get-ups.
Brands On Sale has so far sold “hundreds” of men’s white Ebola containment suit costumes — complete with face shield, breathing mask, safety goggles and latex gloves — for $79.99 a pop, CEO Johnathon Weeks said Monday.
“We can barely keep them in stock,” Weeks told Agence France Presse by telephone.
Last Thursday, responding to customer demand, Brands On Sale added a “sexy” version for women at $59.99 that substitutes the coveralls with a white short-sleeve nurse’s mini dress.
“The short dress and chic gas mask will be the talk of Milan, London, Paris and New York as the world’s fashionistas seek global solutions to hazmat couture,” says the blurb on the company’s website.
With fear of Ebola sweeping the United States, the latter costume has stirred up an online furor, with the left-wing Mother Jones magazine calling it “the stupidest Halloween thing ever.”
Weeks begged to differ, saying shoppers can easily find edgier alternatives, like children’s marijuana leaf costumes, pregnant nun costumes, even “priest-holding-boys-around-the-genitals costumes.”
In any event, Brands On Sale has sold “less than a dozen” so far, he said, although it is accepting orders — and shipping to 50 countries — right up to Halloween night.
After a decade in the Halloween costume business, Weeks said his company, with its own costume factory, has noticed how media attention and current events drive consumer tastes — and sales — when October 31 draws near.
“When Michael Jackson died, everybody wanted to be ‘Thriller’, and when Heath Ledger died, everyone wanted to be the Joker” from the Batman superhero franchise, he said.
He added: “America and the rest of the world need to lighten up. Halloween is the one day of the year when you can dress up and be anybody you want.”
The National Retail Federation, an industry group, forecasts that Americans this year will spend $2.8 billion on Halloween costumes — including $1.4 billion for adult costumes to be worn by an estimated 75 million grown-ups.
Ebola Drug Maker Fujifilm to Buy U.S. Vaccine Maker
Fujifilm said Monday it would buy a U.S. vaccine maker as the Japanese firm boosts its supply of an experimental Ebola drug to help stem the spread of the virus.
The deal would see Fujifilm take a 49 percent stake in Kalon Biotherapeutics, with plans to buy the whole company “in the future”, the company said, without supplying financial details.
Japan’s leading Nikkei business daily said the acquisition would be worth several billion yen (tens of millions of dollars).
Kalon, established in 2011 by the State of Texas and Texas A&M University as a contract maker of biopharmaceutical products, can safely handle and produce vaccines against deadly pathogens, including anthrax, Fujifilm said, as it looks to further tap the health sector.
The firm’s shares jumped 2.88 percent to 3,691.0 yen in Tokyo on Monday.
Fujifilm said last week it would increase its stock of Avigan, which has been given to several patients who were evacuated from Ebola-hit West Africa to Europe.
The firm said it has enough Avigan tablets — approved as an influenza drug in Japan — to treat 20,000 people and enough of its active ingredient for 300,000 treatments.
Some research papers report that Avigan has been effective in testing with mice, the company said.
The governments of France and Guinea are planning to conduct clinical trials with Avigan in mid-November.
Like some other major Japanese firms, Fujifilm, once among the biggest makers of camera film, has been transitioning into new sectors as it traditional business suffers
Are you awake yet? Government-enforced medical quarantines just went from ‘conspiracy theory’ to official policy in NJ and NY
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
NaturalNews.com
NaturalNews) The states of New York and New Jersey have leapfrogged federal guidelines and set up their own mandatory 21-day quarantine requirements for arriving passengers who had direct contact with Ebola patients in West Africa.
“The patients with the highest level of possible exposure will be automatically quarantined for 21 days at a government-regulated facility,” reports CBS News. [1] Government-run quarantine camps, in other words, are now a present-day reality in America.
“We believe it within the State of New York and the State of New Jersey’s legal rights” says Governor Cuomo. And it almost certainly is. In fact, this move by New Jersey and New York is one of the smartest things any government official has yet done in the United States to thwart the spread of Ebola.
But take notice of something worth considering: Do you see how quickly we are calling for mandatory government quarantines? It didn’t take much, either. Just one returning passenger with Ebola in New York City was all it took, in fact. Suddenly, we are all supporting a police which was considered a whacky theory just a few years ago.
Five years ago, talk of government quarantines was called a “conspiracy theory”
Consider the history of the very idea of government-mandated medical quarantines. Just five years ago, anyone suggesting that such a thing could be happening in the USA was called a “conspiracy theorist.” I know this because I’m one of the few people who warned about precisely this scenario many years earlier, and I’m often called a conspiracy theorist for accurately predicting things that would come true years later.
As soon as Ebola arrived in America, however, all talk of mandatory quarantines suddenly shifted from “conspiracy theory” to “medical protocols.” Suddenly the idea of forcing certain people into government-run facilities from which they are not allowed to leave — a sort of medical prison — was being openly talked about as an important option to consider.
In Dallas, the family members of the late Thomas Duncan were spotted violating their self-quarantine and were ordered back into a self-enforced lockdown. Not long after that, NBC’s “just get your damn flu shot” medical correspondent Dr. Snyderman got caught violating her self-quarantine after returning from West Africa where she might have picked up Ebola. And just a few days ago, Dr. Spencer in NYC decided to spend a night on the town while claiming he was also “self-quarantined.” It didn’t take long for officials to realize that the entire idea of a self-quarantine is completely bogus for the simple reason that nobody follows it.
It turns out that even doctors and journalists violate self quarantines, meaning that we can’t trust people to faithfully quarantine themselves. Suddenly the idea of a government-enforced mandatory quarantine made all kinds of sense. It didn’t sound like a conspiracy theory anymore. It sounded like a sensible idea to help stop the spread of Ebola.
If a forced quarantine is justified for one person, it can be justified for one million
Now we live in a nation where public sentiment openly supports government-enforced quarantines of people who might carry Ebola. Notice how quickly this all happened? Some might even point out the problem-reaction-solution overlay to all this, proposing that Ebola has been hyped up for precisely the purpose of rolling out a medical police state in America. I don’t personally think we are there yet, but we are clearly on the path towards it, and there’s nothing stopping the President from announcing a nationwide medical police state right this very minute.
If the government claimed the authority to detain one person suspected of carrying Ebola, that same authority must also apply to one million people, you see. What you are witnessing right now, in other words, is absolute proof that all of us who warned about government quarantines and the mass rounding up of citizens to be placed into FEMA camps were, in fact, rather prophetic.
The things we warned about five years ago that sounded crazy at the time are now national news headlines. If I had said in 2009 that a level-4 biohazard viral infection would be running loose across New York City, most people would have utterly dismissed the idea as loony tunes. And yet that’s exactly where we are right now.
Those of you who are among the more astute observers of reality will notice that the domains http://www.BioDefense.com and BiologicalTerrorism.com were registered 15 years ago. In other words, yes, I saw this coming 15 years ago and had the domains registered with the intention of sitting on them until the future arrived.
I have also purchased domain names on other future events which I know are coming, but if I were to mention any of those right now, they would seem just as crazy as an Ebola outbreak in NYC would have seemed until recently. The simple truth is that most people aren’t ready for a future that’s any different from their present. They can’t envision change coming, so they live in a state of denial about what that future may bring.
Those who see what’s coming are the most sane of all
There are some of us who are blessed (or cursed) with the ability to see what’s coming. I’ve often said that a person who knows what will happen in 1-2 years is considered a “genius” by society, while a person who knows what will happen in 10 – 20 years is called a kook. That’s because there is a psychological phenomenon known as a normalcy bias which functions as a kind of mental momentum, keeping people cognitively locked into a very narrow set of expectations while dissuading them from exploring any real change in the world around them.
If I told you that the United States of America as we know it today will come to an end before 20 years from now, most people can’t cognitively process the concept because of their normalcy bias. So I don’t bother explaining the details until the time comes, because only then will people have enough evidence in front of their own eyes to realize the magnitude of the changes unfolding before them.
You wouldn’t believe how many feature stories I’ve written and then archived without publishing them for this very reason. Recently, I wrote a story about the risk of Ebola terrorism taking place in New York City, but I realized the public wasn’t ready to hear that yet so I shelved it. I may still publish it, but not before the public is ready to grasp the message with more clarity. If I publish it right now, too many people will remain in a state of denial and anger because they hate any new information that challenges their Matrix-like mental constructs.
There are many other things the public isn’t ready to hear. Remember, America is a place where people are so willing to remain willfully hypnotized by socially-accepted delusions that they still think JFK was assassinated by a lone gunman and that the WTC 7 building collapsed in perfect symmetry due to a small office fire. We are all living in a nation dominated by delusional people who are sleepwalking through a fictional construct, which is precisely why they are so psychological shocked when something happens that they never considered: A viral outbreak, a solar flare, a grid down power failure, a nuclear accident, a debt implosion or even 98 million people being injected with primate cancer viruses as part of a nationwide polio vaccination scheme, which is exactly what already happened in U.S. history.
Three serious threats to America right now
If you want to know what’s really on my radar right now, there are three things that I suppose I will dare to mention briefly. The first is the Ebola outbreak, which I believe will be kept under control in the USA for the next 12 months or so, but if Ebola becomes endemic in Central or South America, then North America will be in serious trouble and may have an uncontrolled spread within 24 months.
The second thing on my radar right now is an impending stock market crash that would rival the “Black Monday” crash of 1987. The market is being pumped up right now with $200 billion a quarter in money creation by the Fed. Interest rates are near zero while inflation is around 6% or more. Right now, a massive wealth confiscation scheme is taking place, siphoning billions of dollars in purchasing power from the American people without them even knowing it. The minute the Fed stops pumping dollars into the system, it will catastrophically collapse.
The third thing on my mind is the possibility of the Russians waging a nuclear attack on the USA immediately after the country is weakened either by a viral pandemic or a devastating stock market crash. The mainstream news hasn’t covered it much lately, but Russian strategic nuclear bombers have been making practice runs near Alaska. Russian warplanes are conducting aggressive probing maneuvers on attack vectors to U.S. targets. While neither Russia nor China would dare attack the USA on a normal day, a weakened nation suffering from a devastating economic collapse or a nationwide viral pandemic would create precisely the circumstances during which aggressor nations (like Russia) might pounce.
These three things are fast approaching and represent real, legitimate risks to our nation. Everyone interested in preparedness, self-reliance and survival should seriously consider these scenarios. Learn about Ebola survival and preparedness at http://www.BioDefense.com
And remember: The government quarantines of suspected Ebola carriers has now begun. It is no longer a conspiracy theory; it is now policy.
Alex Infohub 