More research shows Morgellons disease has a physiologic (physical not mental) basis.

Progress moves forward as more research shows Morgellons disease has a physiologic (physical not mental) basis. The Morgellons break through started with the research publication, Filament Formation Associated with Spirochetal Infection: a comparative approach to Morgellons Disease by Marianne Middelveen, a Canadian veterinary microbiologist and Raphael Stricker, MD. The CEHF first announced this news last fall when this peer reviewed publication appeared in the November, 2011 issue of Clinical, Cosmetic and Investigational Dermatology. In November, 2011, Middelveen and Stricker reported to have found evidence of a veterinary analog to Morgellons (MD). BDD, an infectious disease which has plagued cattle for decades, has fibers/filaments within their tissue and lesions that were recognized as a match to those found in the controversial disease known as Morgellons (MD) in humans. Studies on fibers/filaments from cattle with the bovine hoof disease and those found in MD suffers provided startling evidence challenging the dermatologists’ unfounded assumption that MD is a psychiatric disorder called “Delusions of Parasitosis”. Anyone who suffers from Morgellons knows how real these symptoms are and how disheartening it is to be told it is all in your head. Although the publication stated that the etiology (cause) of MD was not yet known, the findings by Middelveen and Stricker provided corroborative evidence to support a physiological and, perhaps, infectious etiology, lending a new direction for further research.

via Morgellons Disease Research Update August 2012.

It’s all in their minds.  That’s what doctors are saying about people with Morgellons disease, who claim to be infested with mysterious parasites that trigger itching, rashes, and creepy-crawly sensations in the skin. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic studied 108 patients who believed their inflamed, itchy skin was the result of a bug infestation. But biopsies and skin tests uncovered no physical cause of the unpleasant symptoms.  The study was published in the May 16 issue of Archives of Dermatology. One thing the doctors and patients both agree on – the disease is incredibly frustrating. “Patients often complain that the physician isn’t examining their skin closely enough to see the infesting organisms,” study author Dr. Mark Davis, professor of dermatology at the Mayo Clinic, told Reuters . “This study indicates that even when skin biopsies are obtained, and specimens of the organisms brought by the patients are carefully examined, there is no objective evidence of skin infestation.” But even after being told there aren’t any bugs, Morgellons patients often refuse to go along – and that threatens to drive some dermatologists nuts. “People with delusions of parasitosis are a great challenge to us,” Dr. Bruce Strober, assistant professor of dermatology at New York University Langone Medical Center, told WebMD. “It’s clearly a psychiatric disorder.”

via CBSNews

Liu Bolin: The Invisble Man

Liu Bolin: The Invisble Man – YouTube.

Censorship of Reality: Apple Rejects App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes

A new iPhone app that would send text messages to users each time a U.S. drone strikes has been repeatedly blocked and deemed “not useful” by the Apple app store.

Calling it “objectionable and crude,” Apple will not allow the program’s developer to offer the app to iPhone users, stating it violates the “objectionable content” guideline pertaining to developers that submit new programs.

Josh Begley, the New York-based programmer that created the Drones+ app, says there’s absolutely nothing offensive about his app. “If the content is found to be objectionable, and it’s literally just an aggregation of news, I don’t know how to change that,” Begley told Wired Magazine.

The app would effectively report drone strikes conducted around the world, sending a map with the strike location, an optional push notification and a short report from the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism to users. It also tallies up recent strikes showing the most affected regions in the Middle-east.

Begley told Wired that his intention was not to bring about a controversial application, but rather to bring drone awareness into mainstream public consciousness, allowing app-owners to decide what to do with the information, hopefully contributing an engaging conversation topic.

In their last rejection on August 27th, Apple denied Begley’s app, telling him by email, “We found that your app contains content that many audiences would find objectionable, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.”

According to TheBlaze.com, if Apple strikes down Begley’s app a fourth time, he will consider configuring the app for Android users instead.

It’s obvious Apple is trying to save face for the very nation conducting the strikes, where, in Pakistan, it is believed that more than 1,000 innocents have been killed from drone strikes since 2004. …

via » Apple Rejects App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!.

Police: 100-year-old driver hits 11 people in Los Angeles

A 100-year-old man is apologetic after barreling into a crowd of mostly school kids in Los Angeles and sending 11 people to the hospital.

“I’m sorry,” Preston Carter told CNN affiliate KTLA. “I lost control of the car. The brakes failed, I think.”

Nine children and two adults were taken to hospitals, according to Erik Scott, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

None of the victims suffered life-threatening injuries, and most had bumps and bruises.

The incident occurred Wednesday afternoon when Carter was backing up from a grocery store near an elementary school in southern Los Angeles.

His Cadillac jumped the curb and plowed into the crowd, according to Richard French, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Classes had let out at Main Street Elementary School and students were waiting to be picked up by their parents when the crash happened.

Officers are investigating the incident, but it does not appear that Carter will be charged, police told the affiliate .

Police will also try to determine whether a malfunction with Carter’s car led to the accident.

But whether the crash was caused by faulty brakes or not, the centenarian, who will turn 101 next month, will not be driving anymore, his daughter told the affiliate.

via Police: 100-year-old driver hits 11 people in Los Angeles – CNN.com.

Bizarre poodle moth

A Venezuelan poodle moth is mystifying researchers, baffling the internet, and confusing everyone at a first casual glance. The insect, seemingly a blend of a large moth and a bright, fluffy white poodle, was discovered in 2009 and may be a new species.

The Venezuelan poodle moth was first captured on film by Dr. Arthur Anker of Bishkek, Krgyzstan, who posted all 75 photographs of his time at the Gran Sabana National Park on Flickr. His trip to the Venezuelan park didn’t gain much fame at the time, however, until last week, when someone noticed and posted the picture online.

Another researcher, Dr. Karl Shuker, took an interest in the fuzzy white creature with bulging black eyes and strange brown antennae. He used his background in zoology, cryptozoology, and science writing to showcase the animal on his blog among other amazing finds.

“These photographs formed just one set of numerous spectacular images that Art has taken while visiting tropical rainforests and other exotic locations worldwide, and which he has placed in photosets on the Flickr website,” he wrote on his blog ShukerNature.

One of Shuker’s colleagues speculated that the Venezuelan poodle moth bears some small resemblance to Diaphora mendica- the muslin moth of the leptidopteran family Arctiidae. Although it does have some of the same fuzzy parts, its antennae, coloring, and front legs are much different. In addition, the muslin moth is common to the U.K. and Russian Palearctic- they would never be as far south as Venezuela.

It could be that the muslin moth and the Venezuelan poodle moth are related- especially with only 6,000 of the estimated 11,000 in the Arctiidae family. Shuker thinks a new species may have been discovered.

Read more at http://global.christianpost.com/news/venezuelan-poodle-moth-confuses-scientists-80766/#zYIGmiMMGlOBxv3K.99

Israel Ancient Jewelry Uncovered In Archaeological Dig

In this photo taken Wednesday, May 23, 2012, ancient jewelry discovered by Israeli archaeologists is displayed at the Tel Aviv University, Israel. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

Israeli archaeologists have discovered a rare trove of 3,000-year-old jewelry, including a ring and earrings, hidden in a ceramic jug near the ancient city of Megiddo, where the New Testament predicts the final battle of Armageddon.

Archaeologists who unearthed the jug during excavations at the site in 2010 left it in a laboratory while they waited for a molecular analysis of what was inside. When they were finally able to clean it, pieces of gold jewelry – a ring, earrings, and beads – dating to around 1100 B.C. poured out.

Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, who co-directed the dig, said that the find offers a rare glimpse into ancient Canaanite high society. He said the fact that the jewelry was found inside the jug suggested that the owner hid them there.

Finkelstein said the jewelry likely belonged to a Canaanite family.

“We can guess that it was a rich family, probably belonging to the ruling elite,” he said.

Tel Aviv University called the trove “among the most valuable ever found from the Biblical period,” adding that one piece in particular, a gold earring decorated with molded ibexes, or wild goats, is “without parallel.”

It said in a statement this week that the objects were either owned by Egyptians living in the area or inspired by the Egyptian style of the period.

Aren Maeir, an archaeologist at Bar Ilan University, said that because the raw materials used come are not from the area, the find “tells us about international relations … and about technical traditions used at the time.”

Megiddo was an important trade center in ancient times. According to the New Testament, Megiddo will be the site of the final apocalyptic battle between good and evil.

via Israel Ancient Jewelry Uncovered In Archaeological Dig.

Clever Bird Goes Fishing with a Scrap of Bread

Clever Bird Goes Fishing – YouTube.

Alien planets found with twin suns like Luke Skywalker’s homeworld

Astronomers have for the first time discovered two alien planets whirling around a pair of stars: a complete solar system with twin suns just like Luke Skywalker’s fictional home world Tatooine.

Most stars like our sun are not singletons, but rather come in pairs that orbit each other. Scientists had found planets in these binary systems, so-called circumbinary planets with two suns like Tatooine in the “Star Wars” universe.

To find more circumbinary planets, astronomers analyzed data from NASA’s prolific Kepler space telescope, which has detected more than 2,300 potential alien worlds since its March 2009 launch. Kepler had to date detected four systems with circumbinary planets — Kepler-16, 34, 35 and 38.

The scientists have now announced the detection of Kepler-47, the first system seen with multiple worlds encircling a pair of stars. The star and its planets, called Kepler-47b and Kepler-47c, dwell about 5,000 light-years away, in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan.

The planets are much too far away to see with the naked eye. Rather, they were discovered by the drop in brightness they cause when they cross in front of, or transit, their host stars.

This dimming is tiny, only 0.08 percent for planet Kepler-47b and 0.2 percent for planet Kepler-47c. By comparison, Venus blocked about 0.1 percent of the sun’s surface during its recent transit. Data from Kepler enabled researchers to deduce the relative sizes of the objects and orbits. They also relied on follow-up observations performed by telescopes at the McDonald Observatory in West Texas.

One of the stars is much like our sun, and the other is about a third its size and 175 times fainter. The inner and outer planets are respectively 3 and 4.6 times Earth’s diameter — the smaller planet is the smallest circumbinary planet seen yet.

Read more: foxnews.com

Antibiotic residues in sausage meat may promote pathogen survival

Antibiotic residues in uncured pepperoni or salami meat are potent enough to weaken helpful bacteria that processors add to acidify the sausage to make it safe for consumption, according to a study to be published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, on August 28.

Sausage manufacturers commonly inoculate sausage meat with lactic-acid-producing bacteria in an effort to control the fermentation process so that the final product is acidic enough to kill pathogens that might have existed in the raw meat. By killing the bacteria that produce lactic acid, antibiotic residues can allow pathogenic bacteria to proliferate.

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and University College Cork, Ireland, found that antibiotic concentrations within limits set by US and European Union (EU) regulators are high enough to slow fermentation, the process that acidifies the sausages and helps destroy foodborne pathogens like Salmonella or E. coli.

“At low concentrations and at regulatory levels set by authorities, we could see that the lactic acid bacteria are more susceptible to the antibiotics than the pathogens are,” says Hanne Ingmer, of the University of Copenhagen, a researcher on the study. “So basically, we can have a situation where residual antibiotics in the meat can prevent or reduce fermentation by the lactic acid bacteria, but these concentrations do not effect survival or even multiplication of pathogens.”

Antibiotics used as growth promoters or to treat disease in livestock can eventually end up in meat, and regulators in the US and EU have set limits on the concentrations of antibiotics in meat for consumption by humans. Ingmer and her colleagues set out to determine whether antibiotics falling within statutory limits might interfere with the process of fermentation in products like pepperoni, salami, or chorizo – sausages that are fermented using lactic- acid-producing bacteria in a curing process many cultures have employed for hundreds of years. She says fermented sausages occasionally cause serious bacterial infections, but it’s never been understood why that might be.

In small-scale experiments in the lab, Ingmer and her colleagues added the antibiotics oxytetracycline or erythromycin to meat inoculated with lactic-acid-producing bacteria and pathogens Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella enterica. They followed the progress of the fermentation and tracked the survival of the pathogens. Ingmer says several different starter cultures of lactic-acid-producing bacteria were sensitive to these antibiotics and hence did not acidify the sausage meat effectively – results that could explain why people sometimes get sick from eating fermented sausage. …

How can we be sure antibiotic residues don’t interfere with the safety of these products? Ingmer sees two possible solutions. If antibiotics are present in meat, boosting the survival and activity of the lactic-acid-producing bacteria is important. In the future, Ingmer hopes to work with manufacturers to develop cultures of lactic-acid-producing bacteria that tolerate low levels of antibiotics.

But the ultimate solution to the problem of antibiotics in meat may be harder to achieve. “The obvious solution is to eliminate the use of antibiotics as growth promoters and closely monitor the use of antibiotics in treating farm animal diseases,” Ingmer says. The European Union and other countries have banned the use of antibiotics in livestock as growth promoters, Ingmer points out, a move the US is unlikely to follow very soon.

via Antibiotic residues in sausage meat may promote pathogen survival.

According to researchers from University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and University College Cork, Ireland, the levels of antibiotics used in meats in the United States and European Union are so high that it kills all the bacteria that would have otherwise made the meat acidic and didn’t allow the pathogens to grow. Instead, now pathogens can flourish because the use of antibiotics lowers the acidity in the meat.

via Medical Daily

Again, it isn’t the fermentation that is dangerous, it is fermentation of drug laced meat.  I’m off to my local co-op to see if I can find some antibiotic free chicken….

US Terror Chief Challenged on US Drone Warfare

Youtube comments:

“One human in a room full of zombies. “

“I would have stood up and started clapping if I was there. seriously. That woman probably doesn’t even realize “on behalf” how many people she spoke for. Utmost respect for that woman.”

Code Pink Challenges John Brennan on US Drone Warfare – YouTube.

John O. Brennan (born September 22, 1955) is chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama; officially his title is Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President.^[1][2][3] His responsibilities include overseeing plans to protect the country from terrorism and respond to natural disasters, and he meets with the President daily.^[4][5] Previously, he advised Obama on foreign policy and intelligence issues during the 2008 presidential campaign and transition.^[6] Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for Director of the CIA in the new Obama administration over concerns about his views regarding the CIA under President George W. Bush.^[2][4] Instead, Brennan was appointed Deputy National Security Advisor, a position which did not require Senate confirmation.^[2][4][7]

via Wikipedia

Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation. “He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go,” said Thomas E. Donilon, his national security adviser.

via NYTimes |  Secret ‘Kill List’

I strongly disapprove of my country killing people by remote control without due process. It is a cruel and unusual punishment without a fair trial. The use of drones in this way violates our Constitution. We are murdering innocent people.

As Americans they were entitled to Rights to a Fair trial under Amendment VI of the Constitution. That trial to be speedy, public. Amendment VIII reminds that “nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” I think being offed by an Obama drone is pretty cruel and unusual but a bit more permanent. -  Link

Obama took this oath twice, because the first time it was done, a word was misplaced:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

As Sting said years ago, “Murder is the sport of the elected.”  Taking this oath and then violating the Constitution by killing people with drones is even lamer than AT&T throttling my unlimited data plan and justifying it by claiming that slowing it down to the point where it just barely works is not the same as limiting it.

Just curious, did John O. Brennan swear an oath to the Constitution as well?