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Mechanical stress combines with planar polarised patterning during metaphase to orient embryonic epithelial cell divisions Read this Research Article by Guy Blanchard, Elena Scarpa, Leila Muresan & Sanson Lab PDN Cambridge Cambridge University:

13,838 Aufrufe • vor 2 Jahren •via X (Twitter)

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Single-cell technologies now let us profile entire transcriptomes in individual cells. But how do we make sense of this complexity in a biologically meaningful way? Many methods summarise cells into a single embedding, but this often comes at the cost of interpretability, especially when multiple gene programs are active at once. We developed Tripso, a self-supervised transformer model that represents cells through multiple gene program-specific embeddings, while also uncovering new programs directly from the data. Instead of collapsing biology into a single vector, Tripso decomposes cell state into multiple representations, each reflecting a different gene program. We explored this across multiple systems. In human hematopoiesis, spanning development to aging, Tripso identified distinct age-associated program activity, including stronger JAK-STAT signalling in early life and dynamic IKZF1-related changes during B cell maturation. By comparing in vitro culture conditions with in vivo hematopoietic stem cell states, Tripso suggested that targeting the SEC61 translocon could enhance stem cell maintenance ex vivo, a prediction that we subsequently validated experimentally. In parallel, we identified a previously uncharacterised tissue-resident memory T-cell program associated with atopic dermatitis and mapped it to distinct spatial immune niches Together, these results show how modelling cells through gene programs can lead to interpretable and experimentally testable insights. More broadly, this work points toward a more interpretable and biologically grounded models of cell state. As single-cell datasets continue to grow, we hope approaches like Tripso will help bridge the gap between data-driven representations and biological insight. This work wouldn’t have been possible without the contributions of an amazing team. Thank you to co-first authors Marie, Tomoya Isobe, Amirhosein Vahidi, Carlo Leonardi, and everyone from roser's Lab, Haniffa Lab, Nicola Wilson and Bertie Gottgens's Lab, bringing together expertise across Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, Open Targets, Wellcome Sanger Institute and Cambridge University. Marie is one of the very best PhD students I have ever supervised. She is truly a force of nature, exceptionally resourceful, deeply innovative, and one of the most impressive scientists I have worked with. I am immensely proud of her and all that she has accomplished. As she begins her internship at Genentech , I have no doubt she will do amazing work there and continue to make her mark. paper: code:

Mo Lotfollahi

22,402 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten

Excited to share our new work on building a multimodal atlas of human skin in health and inflammatory disease — a project I’m especially proud of, bringing together AI, high-throughput genomics, and clinical science to accelerate discovery. Over the past decade, single-cell genomics has transformed how we map cells in human tissues. But a major challenge remains: can we systematically decode how cells organize into functional niches in situ — including those invisible to standard histopathology? To address this, we integrated large-scale scRNA-seq, spatial transcriptomics, histopathology, and AI-driven modeling frameworks to build an in situ atlas of human skin across health and disease. Led by Lloyd Steele, an MD/PhD student working between Haniffa Lab and my lab at Wellcome Sanger Institute and Cambridge University . Another amazing collaboration with Muzz Haniffa, the mastermind behind the work as part of Human Cell Atlas. A key part of this study is that we didn’t build everything from scratch — we leveraged and combined AI methods that actually work! and showed how they can be used together to extract biological insight at scale. We used: • scArches to build and map into a reference scRNA-seq atlas of human skin: • NicheCompass to identify and characterize spatial niches: • MINT-Flow to extract microenvironment-induced cell states and gene programs: Together, these enabled an end-to-end workflow from atlas construction to spatial mapping, niche discovery, and cell state decoding. At scale, we integrated ~5 million cells and 100+ spatial sections, enabling a systematic view of tissue organization. Using this framework, we identified 26 niches in skin, including known histopathologic structures as well as hidden disease-associated niches not visible on H&E. Among the most striking findings were a resident memory T cell-rich sebaceous gland niche and a plasma cell-rich sweat gland niche, suggesting that appendageal structures act as active immunological microenvironments and may contribute to inflammatory memory and disease persistence. Importantly, this atlas is not just descriptive — it is usable. It can support mapping of new datasets, resolve finer cell types and niches, extract microenvironment-driven programs, and enable predictive analyses at scale. More broadly, this work shows what becomes possible when AI, spatial genomics, and atlas-scale data are integrated end-to-end: not just mapping tissues, but systematically decoding them. This was a massive collaboration, and I’m very grateful to the amazing scientists April Foster, Kenny Roberts, and Chloe Admane. Lloyd is an amazing scientist, and I’m especially excited for the community to see more of his work soon — stay tuned. The data and pre-trained models will be released soon. Preprint:

Mo Lotfollahi

11,759 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten

Excited to share our new work. Over the past decade, single-cell genomics has transformed our ability to map cellular systems. But a major question remains: Can we predict how perturbations reshape cellular trajectories over time? In 2018, we first showed that it is possible to predict cellular responses to perturbations — ranging from disease signals to chemical treatments — even in unseen contexts. In 2022, we introduced CPA (MSB 2022; NeurIPS 2022), extending this idea to predict responses to unseen chemical and genetic perturbations, including their combinations. Since then, the field of perturbation modeling has grown enormously. The community has pushed the space forward with many creative ideas and powerful models. It’s exciting to see how fast things are moving — even though many fundamental challenges remain. One of the biggest is that cells are not static. They move through trajectories during development, immune responses, and disease. Yet most current models still predict perturbation effects within a single state, rather than how early perturbations propagate across future states and reshape downstream outcomes. To address this, we developed PerturbGen, a trajectory-aware generative AI model that predicts how genetic perturbations reshape downstream cellular states. Huge credit to the people who made this work possible. Thanks to co-first authors Kevin Ly, Adib Miraki, Tomoya Isobe, AmirHoss3in Vahidi, Delshad Vaghari & Anthony Rostron. Special recognition to Kevin Ly and Adib Miraki for driving this work over the finish line. Grateful for our outstanding collaborators from Haniffa Lab, Bertie Gottgens lab Gosia Trynka and many others — a true cross-institute effort across Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, Open Targets ,Wellcome Sanger Institute and Cambridge University.🎉 PerturbGen learns transcriptional dynamics across cellular trajectories. By introducing perturbations at an early source state, it can simulate how these effects propagate into future states along differentiation trajectories. Scaling this across genes enables the creation of dynamic in silico perturbation atlases — maps of how perturbations reshape biological trajectories over time. We explored this idea across three biological questions. First, in a human in vivo LPS immune challenge, PerturbGen predicted that perturbing a transient IL1B signal dampens downstream inflammatory programs in myeloid cells, with pathway changes reversing signatures observed in an independent IL-1β stimulation experiment. Second, in human hematopoiesis, PerturbGen predicted transcriptional responses to CRISPR transcription factor knockouts and enabled construction of perturbation atlases revealing lineage- and age-specific regulatory programs. These programs could also be linked to human genetics and blood diseases, including recapitulation of signatures associated with ETV6-related thrombocytopenia. Finally, we asked whether perturbation modeling could help improve complex tissue models. We built a dynamic perturbation atlas of human skin organoids to identify perturbations that could guideorganoid cells towardhuman fetal skin states. PerturbGen prioritized activation of Wnt signaling via GSK3β inhibition. Experimental validation confirmed the prediction: treatment with CHIR99021 induced stromal gene programs and shifted organoid fibroblasts toward transcriptional states observed in fetal skin stroma. Together, these results show how trajectory-aware perturbation modeling can connect gene perturbations to developmental programs, human genetics, disease mechanisms, and experimental interventions. More broadly, we think these point toward a future where single-cell atlases become predictive systems. As atlases expand across tissues, developmental windows, and modalities, models like PerturbGen could enable dynamic, virtual perturbation atlases— allowing us to simulate interventions, generate hypotheses, and design experiments before stepping into the lab. Preprint Code Excited to see how the community builds on this work.

Mo Lotfollahi

17,035 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten

CRITICAL: Joe Rogan connects the dots between the AIDS and Covid scams (my term): "Maybe [AIDS was] the same as what happened during Covid, but maybe back then, there's no internet, and... they could just get away with it... [and it's Fauci who pushed] the vaccine during... [AIDS and] during the Covid crisis." Rogan (Joe Rogan), who's talking with stand-up comic Brian Redban here, goes on to highlight several key points: 1. The fact that Peter Duesberg, a genius German-American molecular biologist and professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, known for his early research into the genetic aspects of cancer, said that AIDS was not due to HIV, but rather namely heavy drug usage among the gay community. 2. AZT (zidovudine), a drug—supposedly—used to treat HIV infection by inhibiting the virus from replicating, was actually doing immense harm. 3. Tony Fauci was the face of both the AIDS and Covid scams (again, my term). Rogan even notes that Fauci pushed both the Covid injections and AZT as quote-unquote "safe and effective." 4. Reading an article in Spin Magazine written by Bob Guccione, Jr., Rogan even highlights the fact that AIDS journalist Cecilia Farber (Celia Farber) had "unearthed hard evidence of the cold-bloodedness of the AIDS establishment pushing a drug [AZT] that was worse than the disease and killed faster than the natural progression of AIDS left untreated." Regarding Covid, note that there are parallels between AZT and Remdesivir, the deadly drug physicians and nurses used to kill "Covid patients" in hospitals. (See tweets 4 and 5.) Critically, note that Rogan's conclusions in this clip almost perfectly parallel those of cancer and AIDS research titan Dr. David Rasnick, who has said that the "bogus" HIV pandemic established the "playbook" for the bogus Covid "pandemic." (See tweet 2.) Also note that a documentary film was made about the possibility AIDS was a scam, dubbed House of Numbers. In the film, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of the PCR technique Kary Mullis noted that there was no link (that he could find) between HIV and AIDS. (See tweet 3.) ----------------Partial transcription of clip--------------- "Suge Knight was on— I think he was on Jimmy Kimmel show, talking about how you just inject somebody with AIDS. You can inject them with AIDS. What was my question? Oh, Peter Duesberg, Spin Magazine. "So he wrote this article about it, and then he— I believe he wrote a book about it. But he's fucked. Like, his career completely stalled out after that. He couldn't get funding for things and, you know, widely dismissed by all— most all other scientists. And back then, I used to think it doesn't make sense that this one guy has figured things out and that nobody else does. But now I'm like, maybe it's the same as what happened during COVID but maybe back then, there's no Internet, and maybe back then they could just get away with it. "Maybe back then they got used to getting away with it, which is why they tried it again in 2020. That's why they did the exact same thing to all those, like, legitimate professors, legitimate doctors. They shamed them and banned them. They didn't want anybody deviating. And that's, I think, what they might have done to this guy. "That's crazy to think that the the whole AIDS crisis might have really been about people destroying their immune system through hardcore drug use. That was his contention. People were saying, it's very homophobic. It's like, okay, let's. Let's not. Let's say a bunch of nice things about gay people. Let's. We love them. We appreciate. You know, I have no problem with gay. Let's say it. Like, if you're. If we're talking about this. If you were a doctor back then, gay people are amazing. However, all these gay people are doing drugs. All these gay people that are getting AIDS, like, something like 90% of them were hardcore drug users. This was his contention. "And you would say, 'Well, that's what opens them to the type of behavior that you get AIDS with.' Like, oh, okay, right. But Sam Kinison had a bit about that. Do you remember his bit? He was like, they say, 'Sam, AIDS is a communicable disease. Straight people get it too.' He goes, 'Name one. Name one fucking guy. Name one. It's not our fucking dance.' He didn't write the article, but he's definitely in the article. Right, there was an article about him... No, he didn't write the article. Did I say he wrote it? "Bob Guccione, Spin Magazine. Isn't he the guy that owns Penthouse? I think so. Right? Bob Guccione, Jr. Founder of Spin. "Okay, listen to this. So this is what he wrote, what Bob Guccione Jr. wrote. Scroll up a little higher. At the end of 1989, two years after we started the highly controversial AIDS column, in Spin, we published an article by Cecilia Farber called the Sins of Omission about the truly bad and corrupt science surrounding promoting AZT as a treatment for the syndrome of diseases. Celia was the editor and frequent writer of the column, and unearthed hard evidence of the coldbloodedness of the AIDS establishment, pushing a drug that was worse than the disease and killed faster than the natural progression of AIDS left untreated. "AZT had been an abandoned cancer drug, discarded because of its fatal toxicity, resurrected in the cynical belief that AIDS patients were going to die anyway. So trying it out was sort of like playing with the house's money, because the drug didn't require the usual massive expensive research and trial processes. Having gone through that years earlier, it was insanely profitable for its maker, Burroughs Wellcome. "It was a tragically perfect storm of windfall profits, something to pacify AIDS activists and the media, and a convenient boom to the patient holders for HIV testing. Patent. Excuse me, patent owners, patent holders for HIV testing. Celia, who should get the Congressional Medal of Honor for her brave and relentless reporting here and throughout the 10 years we ran the column, exposed the worthlessness of the drug, the shady studies and deals to suppress the negative findings and its awful and final consequences. "This piece very literally changed the media's view of AIDS and sharpened their discerning and skeptical eye. And soon after, AZT was once again shelved, hopefully this time forever. Many times over the years since, people have come up to me and said that reading this article saved their lives, that they either stopped taking the drug and their health improved vastly, or they never took it because of what we reported. Nothing ever made me prouder. Bob Guccione, Jr. Founder of Spin October 3, 2015. So this is all— This article is all about Peter Duesberg's perspective on this. And, it's very complicated. And it's certainly not for me, a guy like me, to figure out, if he's telling the truth or if he's correct. But what they said about AZT and chemotherapy and pushing AZT through and how they made a bunch of money, that's all true. "Not only that, but they were giving AZT to people that showed no symptoms like Arthur Ashe. Arthur Ash tested positive. They gave him AZT. There's a bunch of people died from taking AZT that probably didn't have to die. That's scary shit, man. If it's the same guy that pushed the vaccine during the AIDS crisis, during the COVID crisis, it's kind of fucked that he got to do it twice. "And if he didn't do it twice, nobody probably would be aware that it was the same guy. Because, even if you know about AZT, nobody was going Anthony Fauci. Nobody was saying that guy's name. You know, you weren't saying when you would talk about the AIDS crisis even. They even made a movie about it, right? Dallas Buyers Club. That's the movie. That's what it's about. The bad guy in Dallas Buyers Club is Anthony Fauci. "That's the guy keeping them from getting other medications and pushing AZT. They do the same thing. We— We played a video the other day where Fauci's talking about AZT. The reason why they use it is because it's both safe and effective. He used the exact same terminology. Fucking wild."

Sense Receptor

18,528 Aufrufe • vor 8 Monaten

This battery is about to change the world in 3 months, or make this guy a fool | Fred Lambert, Hacker News Donut Lab lit the EV and energy storage industry on fire last week with its announcement of a 400 Wh/kg solid-state battery cell that can last for 100 years. At face value, if true, we are looking at the single most disruptive announcement in the history of the electric vehicle industry and energy storage as a whole. We aren’t just talking about a better motorcycle battery. If the claims of a 5-minute charge, 100,000-cycle life, and ~400 Wh/kg energy density are accurate and scalable, as Donut Lab claims, this is the holy grail of energy storage. Battery breakthrough announcements generally don’t catch fire like this, but Donut Lab’s did because it said that the cell was already in production and will be in a production vehicle, Verge’s electric motorcycle, this quarter. It gave credibility to the claim, pushing everyone to report on it. Now, we have interviewed Donut Lab’s CEO and investigated the technology. At this point, it looks like either this battery changes the world within the next 3 months, or it will make the CEO look like a fool. In this article, we discuss the impact of the battery, whether real or not, as well as clues about the secret sauce behind its chemistry. The Holy Grail of Energy Storage Consider the implications. A battery that lasts 100,000 cycles is effectively immortal in human terms. You could charge it every single day for 270 years, and it would still be working. It means the battery outlives the vehicle, not just once, but ten times over. It changes the economics of transportation entirely: you buy the battery once, and you swap it into your next five cars. The power density required for a 5-minute charge and the 400 Wh/kg of energy density opens the door to commercial electric aviation, a sector currently strangled by the weight and slow charging speeds of lithium-ion. It solves the grid storage problem by offering a medium that doesn’t degrade, meaning utility companies could amortize the cost over a century rather than a decade. If this is real, the internal combustion engine didn’t just die today; it was buried 100 feet deep, and every other battery is not far behind. But, and this is a massive “but”, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and Donut Lab has yet to release that proof. And that brings us to the man making them. The Man Betting His Reputation I spoke with Marko Lehtimäki, the CEO of Donut Lab and Chairman of Verge Motorcycles. My goal was simple: ask him about the chemistry behind his battery and, if that doesn’t work, look him in the eye and figure out if he’s selling vaporware or if he’s sitting on the breakthrough of the century. Marko isn’t a random guy shouting about a battery breakthrough that will change the world. He is a legit entrepreneur. A computer scientist who built a no-coding app builder years before “vibe coding” was even a thing and sold it to SAP. After the successful exit, he became an investor and serial entrepreneur with his biggest, or most well-known, company being Verge Motorcycles, which has real products on the road. By announcing that this “miracle battery” is already in production and will be shipping in customer vehicles within 10 weeks, he is betting his entire personal reputation on this technology. If he misses this timeline or if the specs are fake, Donut Labs and Verge Motorcycles might not survive the credibility loss. He has a lot to lose here. In my article about the battery announcement last week, I noted that Marko’s presentation was incredible. He basically described a perfect battery: record energy density, incredible charge rate, unprecedented longevity, no rare metals, a cost lower than traditional Li-ion cells, and in scalable production right now. Sounds too good to be true? The only thing he didn’t share was details about the chemistry, beyond saying it doesn’t use lithium or other rare metals. What’s the point of protecting the chemistry if the battery is already in production and it will be in a product shipped this quarter? If that’s true, the battery will be reverse-engineered before the snow completely melts. We discussed it with Marko during our interview. His logic is that once the bikes ship, competitors will tear them down and figure it out anyway. But that won’t happen for another 10 weeks or so, and the head start is critical for a technology this disruptive. In the meantime, Donut Lab’s goal with the announcement was to get the attention of OEMs and ship them battery packs for validation. Marko said: We are right now shipping demo packs to OEMs under NDAs and under tight disclosures so that they can test that all of that is true, which serves our business very well [better than disclosing the chemistry]. But these programs with OEMs are likely to take a long time before they become public. Shorter term, there’s Verge Motorcycles shipping bikes with the battery by the end of the quarter. Before that, Marko also said that we should soon see third-party testing of those cells: We rather right now ship it to authorized research and science center that tests everything without opening it and telling everybody what’s in there. In short, we should have a good idea whether the claims are true or not in just a few weeks no matter what. What does Marko, or Donut Lab, have to gain by lying about this? I also discussed this with Marko and the only thing I could come up with is if he happens to be raising capital right now, but he shut that down: There are a million investors chasing us right now, but we are literally not talking to anybody. We tell investors that we can discuss terms after we have done all our disclosures. Marko insisted that Donut Lab is not taking any investment until they have proven their cells work. In short, it’s hard to find an upside for Donut Lab in making this announcement if the claims are not true. It doesn’t mean that they are, but it makes you think. The Investigation: What Is the “Donut Battery”? So, what is the secret sauce? Marko wouldn’t say, but after digging into public records, supply chains, and research papers, I believe we have a pretty good idea. Let me preface this by saying that I’m not a chemist or physicist, but I’ve been a journalist covering electric vehicles for more than a decade, and I’m pretty good at connecting the dots, and in this case, I’ve had the help of a couple of great sources, too. I’m not saying that this is the Donut Lab battery, but since they are not sharing much, we have to speculate, and all evidence points to a Finnish nanotechnology startup called Nordic Nano and its Chief Scientist, Dr. Bela Bhuskute. Donut Lab invested in Nordic Nano in October 2025, just months before this announcement. At the time of writing this, the press release has fewer than 200 views. The announcement went under the radar, and while Marko said that Nordic Nano is more of a “solar company” during our interview, the announcement mentions both solar and energy storage. Dr. Bhuskute’s research at Tampere University focuses on amorphous Titanium Dioxide nanostructures, which could benefit many different technologies, including batteries. It fits the “miracle” specs perfectly: - 100,000 Cycles: Traditional solid-state batteries are crystalline (like a brick wall) and crack when ions rush in. Dr. Bhuskute’s amorphous Titanium Dioxide is disordered (like a sponge) and “breathes,” allowing it to expand and contract without breaking. - 5-Minute Charge: This chemistry stores energy via “pseudocapacitance,” which is basically like Velcro. Ions stick to the surface almost instantly rather than having to burrow deep inside the material. - The Manufacturing: Nordic Nano uses a “nanofluid” printing process for its solar product using the technology. This aligns with Donut Lab’s description of a “clay-like” material that enables an easier manufacturing process. Some call this “battery printing”, which could explain Donut Lab’s ability to bring this to production in record time. When I asked Marko for the volumetric energy density (Wh/L), he claimed he “couldn’t remember”. Volumetric energy density is one of the few specs that Donut Lab hasn’t released. This battery is lighter than lithium-ion, but it could be bigger due to the amorphous nature of the titanium dioxide. However, the CEO claimed it has a higher volumetric density than traditional Li-ion batteries, without providing a specific number. If that’s true, not only could electric vehicles and energy storage switch to this new chemistry, but even personal electronics, such as smartphones. In 2025, Nordic Nano has been making moves, including securing a former large retail location in Imatra, Finland, near the Russian border: It could be where the company has set up production. Following investment from the Finnish government, Nordic Nano had to elaborate a bit on its products and confirmed that it is working on “solar energy systems and energy storage solutions”: The company’s range of products includes two product families: solar energy systems and energy storage solutions: The ultra-thin and flexible solar film collects twice the amount of energy compared to traditional silicon-based solar panels. Solid-state salt batteries are manufactured by printing from nanofluid, which enables the efficient use of space and the production of batteries in varying shapes. Furthermore, the company confirmed that it is using a “screenprinting” manufacturing method. This is not new. Other companies have produced battery cells with this technology with varying degrees of success. It appears that the bet is that the amorphous rather than crystalized titanium dioxide nanostructure could be more easily adapted and scaled with this manufacturing technology. Electrek’s Take I’m naturally skeptical, and this screams “too good to be true”, but I can’t find anything that categorically rejects the claims. I get battery breakthrough announcements in my inbox every week, and most of the time they never amount to anything. If I decide to spend some time researching them and talking to experts, I generally quickly hit a problem or two that make them commercially unviable. This announcement is different. We can’t really investigate the actual breakthrough; we can only speculate about it, since it is guarded. Marko’s logic for guarding the chemistry is sound, and the incentives to lie about what they have aren’t clear if he is not currently raising money. Then, because they claim this is already in production and will be in a deliverable product within weeks, we will know whether the claims are true in short order, and their reputations, especially Marko’s, are on the line. During my interview, Marko didn’t seem too worried about it. It doesn’t sound like someone who needs to quickly figure out how to deliver this, but rather someone who has a couple of aces in their hand and is looking to maximize them. It’s also strange that this innovation and then production quickly comes from a relatively small company. I thought researching Donut Lab would make me more skeptical about the claims, but it’s the contrary. It confirms that their technology stems from years of research, backed by university and government funding for its commercialization. Could it be that this critical research went under the radar and a small electric motorcycle startup in need of a significant bump in energy density stumbled upon it? Then, a savvy entrepreneur quickly found a way to optimize the impact of this potentially groundbreaking tech by spinning out a startup from the motorcycle company to market the battery to a broader market. Maybe? This could be real, or it could be hype. Again, I’m still skeptical, but I can’t point to anything specific that would disprove any claim made about this miracle battery. Again, if this is true, we are talking about a complete reset of the entire energy and transportation sectors. Donut Lab would become one of the biggest companies in the world. A Nobel Prize would be coming to Dr. Bhuskute and her colleagues in the near future. If it’s not, Marko and Donut Lab’s reputation would be destroyed. There might also be a middle conclusion where the battery is nearly as good as they claim, but when you ramp up production, other problems arise, such as scrap, which has been the undoing of another company that recently tried screenprinting batteries. Who knows? But it sounds like we should find out soon. Within weeks, we should get independent verifications of the specs. Then the bikes get delivered within months. You can fake a presentation, but there are things you can’t fake.

Owen Gregorian

123,291 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has moved swiftly to dismantle the federal censorship infrastructure. In his first week, he signed an executive order barring agencies from funding or facilitating the monitoring or removal of lawful domestic speech. His administration has phased out censorship-related NSF grants, eliminated the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which had coordinated with outside groups to shape online narratives, and shut down USAID, which funded censorship advocacy in Europe and Brazil. And Trump’s 2026 budget proposes cutting $491 million from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency, which oversaw election and Covid censorship in 2020 and 2021. But the threat to free speech remains and has even grown stronger around the world, particularly in Europe. The UK is arresting 30 people per day for speech crimes. In Germany, 14 little-known state media agencies (SMAs) empowered by the 2020 “Media State Treaty” now monitor private journalists for compliance with vague “journalistic diligence” standards while exempting public broadcasters from the same scrutiny. French authorities want mandatory digital identification for users of social media platforms. The European Commission appears to desire the power to ban or censor whole platforms, particularly Elon Musk’s X. And an Irish newspaper this week reported that the European Commission accused Ireland of “failing” to comply with laws regulating hate speech. The wind remains at the back of free speech lovers. The change of government in the U.S. is already influencing Europe, where officials appear to be reconsidering some of the most aggressive censorship policies. In the UK, American negotiators have raised concerns about free speech tied to the Online Safety Act. At the same time, in the EU, the Digital Services Act enforcement faces legal and logistical delays. France has drawn criticism for prosecuting satirical speech, and in Germany, a CBS 60 Minutes segment has fueled backlash against selective speech policing. Meanwhile, some in Brussels worry that the EU’s growing alignment with censorship risks its credibility as a champion of liberal democracy. Even so, there is reason to be alarmed by what’s happening in Europe, says the Foundation for Freedom Online’s Mike Benz. “The most existential threats are now shifting around the international landscape and how that boomerangs back to the U.S.,” he said in a new podcast. American censorship leaders are working with European governments and NGOs to impose European censorship on social media platforms. “The University of Cambridge Social Decisionmaking Lab works with the Global Engagement Center at the State Department,” he said. “It works with CISA at DHS. It works with the entire USAID network and USAID funds dozens of these funds — University of Cambridge’s censorship work, London School of Economics, King's College, Sheffield College, Oxford Internet Institute — the State Department and USAID fund all these. And they effectively are a foreign group that is paid for by taxpayers to subvert the agenda taxpayers voted for. It's an incredible scandal.” And Europe is reacting to the Trump administration by seeking to replace the financing it cut for censorship. “Just this week,” Benz said, “the EU announced a a giant science research fund, $500 million, as an initial pool of funding and said they are actively recruiting researchers from the United States who USAID funded to come get their funds so they can continue their work by going to the EU. And this is happening in tandem with a tense standoff between the Trump administration and the EU over everything from Russia-Ukraine to tariff policy to tech regulation to you name it. And so the EU is basically pumping up the shadow diplomacy aspect of the US.” All of this is happening at a time when the ruling parties in Germany, France, and Romania are resorting to increasingly undemocratic tactics in what appear to be desperate attempts to hold onto power as populist challengers surge in the polls. In Germany, the domestic intelligence service has officially labeled the AfD “extremist” a transparent response to the new government’s weakness and the AfD’s new status as the nation’s most popular political party. In France, prosecutors banned Marine Le Pen from running for president at a time where she too is polling first nationwide. And in Romania, the high court disqualified the leading opposition candidate from running for president, which most believe is a reaction to his opposition to a new NATO base in Romania. “What's happening in Europe right now is simultaneously highly optimistic, white-pilling, inspiring, but also dark, twisted, sadistic, calamitous, catastrophic, and apocalyptic,” said Benz. Populist political success has caused NATO and the EU establishment to have “prosecutors and judges nullifying or barring candidates from running when they're winning, and prosecutors taking them out so they can't run again or can't make their voices heard or can't campaign because they're in prison or outright barred.” Why is this happening? What can be done about it? Please subscribe now to support Public's defense of free speech, read the rest of the article, and watch the full video!

Michael Shellenberger

189,345 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

Soccer Headers Damage Brains Even Without Concussions, Large Study Finds | Carly Cassella, ScienceAlert The world's most popular sport is reckoning with serious health concerns. The largest study of its kind has now found that repetitively heading a soccer ball can negatively impact the brain, even in amateur players who don't report concussions. Among 352 amateur adult soccer players, those who took more than a thousand headers a year showed microscopic changes to the outer wrinkles of their brains, right behind their eyes, regardless of their age or sex. These players also performed slightly but significantly worse on memory and learning tests. "What's important about our study is that it shows, really for the first time, that exposure to repeated head impacts causes specific changes in the brain that, in turn, impair cognitive function," explains neuroscientist Michael Lipton at Columbia University. Lipton's lab has been leading research on how soccer heading impacts the brain for over a decade now. Contact sports, like American football, Australian rules football, and rugby, are also contending with the downsides of repetitive head trauma, but in these cases, the discussion is often framed as a concussion crisis typically reserved for professionals. Lipton's research at Columbia University suggests that even mild bumps to the head can add up, and it's not just professional athletes or those who report concussions who are affected. Previous studies by Lipton have shown alterations to white matter among amateur soccer players compared to swimmers. Meanwhile, other studies have found white matter changes even without a history of concussion. But linking these brain changes to clear alterations in cognitive function has proven tricky. Lipton and his team have now developed a novel method that detects damage in the outermost wrinkles of the brain – a tricky spot to study using diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI). This layer is called the cortical gray matter–white matter interface (GWI), and until recently, not much was known about it. Using their new imaging technique, Lipton and his team scanned the brains of amateur soccer players, who had played for at least five years and within the last six months. Those who said they took more headers showed significant changes in the GWI at the front of their brains – a spot consistent with the trajectory of a soccer ball during a header. The authors suspect that this injury site reflects a contrecoup force – a sort of bruise to the brain that occurs on the opposite side of the skull. Injuries to the GWI may have gone undetected or underestimated in other imaging studies, which is possibly why there are conflicting results on the neurological impact of soccer headers. A graduate student in Lipton's lab, Joan Song, developed a way to characterize what they were seeing in the MRI scans. "In healthy individuals, there's a sharp transition between these tissues," Song explains. "Here, we studied if an attenuation of this transition may occur with minor impacts caused by heading." Sure enough, the boundary between white and grey matter was fuzzier in those who took more headers. "It's very strong evidence that these microstructural changes are likely to be a cause of cognitive deficits," Lipton says. Further investigation is needed, but the findings suggest that the GWI is a good place to image in future studies on soccer heading impacts. It may even be associated with disorders like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Read more:

Owen Gregorian

92,909 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten

I WENT TO SPEAK at China’s incredible Tsinghua University. Amazing place: You can see why it’s zooming up the global academic charts. I’m with a very dynamic group of people at an international workshop at a place which has speedily become one of the world’s top places of learning. In some ways it’s like Harvard or Cambridge – big gardens interspersed with big old buildings. But it’s much less politicized and more strongly education-focused—no wonder it makes so many breakthroughs. . THE CAST Let me introduce you to a few people at this gathering. - That’s Yan Hairong and that’s Barry Sautman. They are professors who know more about China and its ethnic minorities than all the journalists I know put together. Literally. - That’s Daniel Dumbrill, a businessman who shot to fame in 2019 when he went on YouTube to tell the truth about the Hong Kong unrest. - That’s Sun Yan, a New York professor who gave us an interesting perspective from the United States. - That’s Jaq James, an Australian lawyer whose gobsmacking work comparing Chinese and western laws reveals which side really deserves to be called “authoritarian”. Her reports are a must-read. - Also present were Tibetan scholar Kalsang Drolma, commentator Ben Norton, and others; all fine people doing great work. One of the ways you can tell that Tsinghua University is full of smart people is that everyone goes everywhere by bicycle—and the fact that most of it is green. Wish the whole world was like that! . YEARS OF RESEARCH The great thing about academic conferences is that people’s work is based on research. It’s not like in journalism, where the CIA make up a story and reporters obediently make it front page news. [video shows examples] No. In academia, you need to do actual research, gather original data, and then do statistical analysis and comparative studies on it. You spend months or years doing this. The result is that you end up with the truth—which is very often diametrically opposite to what politicians and journalists tell you. . FICTION VS FACT I’m just going to give you one example. In the US a few days ago senators launched a motion that accused the Chinese of committing genocide on the people of who live in Tibet, that’s the area known as Xizang in the southwest of China. Genocide is of course the worst crime of all, trying to wipe out an entire ethnicity, so they would need an extraordinary amount of evidence to show that. But the Senators have literally none at all. They just made it up. Compare that to academics. Here they have raw data about Tibet from people who live there and who spend literally years researching it. And what do we find? Tibetans have the fastest expansion rate of any ethnic community in China. Between the 2010 census and the 2020 census the population of Tibet grew 21.5 percent—the exact opposite of a genocide. And that, boys and girls, is the difference between the media—and the facts. So, stay smart. Stay skeptical. Peace. .

Nury Vittachi

22,192 Aufrufe • vor 27 Tagen

The Dangerous Cult of 'Fasting' Influencers. Fasting has its anecdotal benefits, yes. But it is overrated. And water fasting is highly overrated. But this video featuring a Cardiologist is amusingly nonsense. There is no study from Boston (from a "University?" - how vague!) that says 7-days water fasting reduces risk of cancer (what cancer?) by 70%. And there is no proof that fasting kills cancer cells in humans. Here is what fasting does to cancers in humans. Nothing. Fasting is now become a sort of religion-like cult for wellness influencers to rake in views and engagement. From a scientific standpoint, there are no realistically good human studies to prove anything from fasting that benefits cancers. I know, I know, "autophagy" and all that. Autophagy: Autophagy is the natural, conserved degradation of the cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components. Yes, its a legit term and all. But in the context of cancer reduction and fasting in humans, it sounds like "immunity boosting," another wellness fraud term. The effects of fasting on cancer cells are all based on MOUSE studies, and none explicitly translated to humans. See this paper: everything is based on cells and tissues and small animal experiments: "While research on the subject is tantalizing, there’s little clinical evidence involving humans to substantiate the claims. Studies on the potential impacts on cancer treatment from various forms of fasting or calorie restriction, including the possibility that they reduce side effects, have been limited." "Fasting may not be appropriate for malnourished individuals or those with cancer cachexia, which results in a continuing loss of skeletal muscle mass, or for people with chronic diseases. Those with diabetes need to be very careful, because of the risk of hypoglycemia." "Based on our systematic review and meta-analysis, there is currently no evidence supporting the superiority of therapeutic fasting over non-fasting in preventing chemotherapy toxicity." - see here: Even intermittent fasting (IF) is overrated in cancer. "IF may be considered in adults seeking cancer-prevention benefits through means of weight management, butwhether IF itself affects cancer-related metabolic and molecular pathways remains unanswered. See here: Also this: "Fasting for short periods does not have any beneficial effect on the quality of life of cancer patients during treatment. Evidence on fasting regimes reducing side effects and toxicities of chemotherapy is missing." See here: The whole aspect of "fasting reducing cancer incidence" in the real world is just due to weight loss. Obesity is associated with at least 13 types of cancers and reversing obesity reduces risk of cancer - nothing to do with fasting killing off cancers cells in the body. And one can lose weight even without fasting. See here: Everything from prevention of adverse events of cancer, to reduction in side effects from chemotherapy, to slowing cancer growth by reducing glucose levels, to promoting cell regeneration by affecting autophagy is all LAB BASED MOLECULAR LEVEL HYPOTHESIS that has not been proven conclusively in humans. See here: Cancer patients must not starve. They must remain hydrated and they must eat a well balanced diet because cancer condition is highly demanding. And dont water fast for 7 days. Easy for people to make reels on it, but in real life, it may prove disastrous. Water fast does make you lose weight (because of starvation) but it is not at all a healthy way to lose weight. Stop with this fasting and cancer madness already.

TheLiverDoc™

269,452 Aufrufe • vor 2 Jahren

United States government officials have for decades reassured the public that they are releasing all they have, save for the most sensitive information, on the origin of Covid, the CIA mind control program known as MKUltra, the JFK assassination, and the Church Committee investigation into the intelligence community (IC) abuses in 1975. In 2023, then-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines delivered a five-page summary of Covid origins in response to a unanimously passed law requiring the declassification of files. MKUltra involved drugging individuals without their knowledge in an effort to control their thoughts and behaviors. The CIA stated in 2022 that it had released 95% of its JFK collection, and the Trump administration released roughly 80,000 pages of JFK records on March 18, 2025. But an active-duty CIA official testified to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today that the CIA and the Intelligence Community (IC) are still hiding information. James Erdman III, a senior CIA operations officer who led the Director’s Initiatives Group investigation into Covid origins under DNI Tulsi Gabbard, appeared under subpoena from committee Chairman Rand Paul. Erdman told senators that the CIA “did not comply with lawful oversight” during his investigation, and said, “CIA managers retaliated against [analysts] for their refusal to agree with management’s middle-of-the-night anonymous review.” Erdman testifie,d “The CIA illegally monitored the computer and phone usage of DIG [Director’s Initiative Group] personnel, their investigations, and contact with whistleblowers…One CIA contractor assisting with the DIG’s investigation into the events that transpired between 2022 and 2023 was fired by the CIA one day after meeting with the DIG.” Erdman said the CIA had not cleared his testimony or written statement before the hearing. The CIA denounced the hearing as “dishonest political theater,” and not a single Democratic Senator showed up for it. A CIA spokesperson, Liz Lyons, said in a statement that “the Committee acted in bad faith by subpoenaing an Agency officer for testimony today without notifying CIA.” She added that “the witness testifying today is not appearing as a whistleblower in pursuit of the truth, but instead in response to the subpoena issued by Chairman Paul.” And she implied the hearing was not needed since “the CIA has already assessed Covid-19 most likely originated from a lab leak, and efforts to undermine that conclusion are disingenuous.” But the public CIA statement quoted at the hearing did not address Erdman’s specific claims about DIG monitoring, the contractor firing, or the 40 boxes of JFK and MKUltra files. Sen. Paul, who noted that “closed-door testimony doesn’t provide oversight” and “public testimony provides oversight.” The CIA made public in January 2025 a low-confidence assessment that COVID-19 likely had a research-related origin, while saying both lab and natural-origin scenarios remained plausible, which Paul called “a cleanup operation.” Nor did she address Erdman’s claim that, “When the DIG ceased operations, the CIA also took back 40 boxes of JFK files and MKUltra files being processed for declassification by DNI.” Public reached out to the CIA for comment on Erdman’s specific allegations and will update this article if it replies. Support for Erdman’s claims came from former CBS News investigative reporter Catherine Herridge. “As early as February,” she wrote on X, “I began receiving credible reporting that DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s investigative team was being tracked and communications collected because their work was revealing ‘uncomfortable facts.’” Paul opened the hearing by describing the Biological Sciences Experts Group (BESG), an ODNI advisory body that he said included Dr. Ralph Baric and Dr. Peter Daszak, both of whom collaborated with Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers on coronavirus gain-of-function studies. Daszak, Paul noted, received “hundreds of millions of dollars from the US government and worked with Dr. Zhengli Shi in Wuhan to create gain-of-function coronaviruses,” and that Baric “was also part of BSEG and an active consultant to intelligence agencies on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Paul noted that “Dozens of times, [former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci] referred to the idea that the pandemic originating in the lab was a conspiracy theory.” Erdman said that as of August 12, 2021, the CIA was considering calling Covid a lab leak, but that the conclusion “changed on August 17th of 2021.” Erdman told the panel that “the CIA would not provide us documentation that we asked for” and “we have no idea why that changed.” Erdman also testified that “Director Gabbard is working through, I believe, 2,000 pages” of Covid origins records the CIA had been resisting releasing. That figure contrasts with the five-page summary the ODNI delivered to Congress in 2023. Senator Josh Hawley asked Erdman whether the five-page report was “all the information the United States government had,” and Erdman replied, “that is not all the information.” Erdman described a 2022 CIA “re-look” in which eight of 10 analysts and six of seven technical experts leaned toward a lab leak. He said management overruled the team and changed the analytic line to read that “we may never precisely know the origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Paul noted that there have been over 1,500 major lab leaks. Sen. Paul revealed that the CIA is still denying him information that Senators are entitled to see under the Constitution, which requires Congressional oversight of the executive branch. Paul said the CIA had resisted releasing to him the underlying Covid origins analyses by its own scientists, even in classified form. Paul also said, “I’ve been trying to get the classified version of the [1975] Church Committee [files] for over two years,” he said, “but I’m being blocked by the [Intelligence] Committee, including someone from our own party who is blocking me. They’ve shown me a room with 400 boxes. I can go look in all the boxes to see if I can find it. My staff’s not allowed to go in the room.” The CIA told Senate investigators in 1977 that, after the Church inquiry, it had discovered seven additional boxes of MKUltra files in its retired records center that prior searches had missed. The 1977 hearing identified 149 MKUltra subprojects involving human testing and 33 additional subprojects whose subject matter remained undisclosed. Reuters reported that in early April 2025, an ODNI team led by Defense Intelligence Agency official Paul Allen McDonald II arrived unannounced at a CIA archival facility in the Washington area to seize Kennedy assassination files. The team included Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a former CIA officer and daughter-in-law of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The standoff stretched into the early morning hours and ended only after the CIA agreed to transfer a “massive trove” of documents to the National Archives for digitization. Why did these cover-ups occur and why are some of them still ongoing? And why didn’t any Democratic senators participate in the hearing?... Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning investigative journalism, read the rest of the article, and watch the full video!

Michael Shellenberger

31,434 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten

ICYMI: An unknown man entered my private home and made his way to my home office door during Monday's livestream. This happened as I was looking into $31,518,409 in missing stock transactions from a shadow non-profit operated by Jeffrey Epstein until his death in 2019. I eventually found that Epstein sold stocks after he was jailed in 2019, and moved $31,518,409 of stock 2018 without reporting any of the required transactions on the firm's federal 990 tax form that year (despite doing so every other year). I refused to be intimidated during the livestream, demanded the man leave, and continued my investigation until I found the discrepancy in a 2018 tax return filed by Epstein's Gratitude America, LTD non-profit that confirmed the unaccounted-for 2018 stock trades totaling $31,518,409. The unaccounted for stock transactions in 2018 transactions are as follows; Bought; $9,651,059 $1,730,674 $20,136,676 Sold; $9,741,132 $1,604,011 $20,103,887 Total stock moved through Epstein's non-profit in 2018 without any supporting documentation = $31,518,409 Stock transactions after Epstein was jailed on July 6th, 2019: 7/10/2019 (3 sales of stock) -Cardlytics, Inc (2 sales of stock, both originally purchased 7/2/2019) - Microsoft Corp. (1 sale of stock, originally purchased 9/4/2018) - this single trade netted someone $258,911 (just in gains on the stock) after Epstein was jailed. 7/11/2019 (4 sales of stock) - Cardlytics, Inc (1 purchased 6/10/2019, 3 purchased 07/02/2019) 7/12/2019 (4 sales of stock) - Cardlytics, Inc (1 purchased 6/23/2019, 1 purchased 7/2/2019) 7/22/2019 (2 sales of stock) - Bank Of America Corp 5.475% S-KK (1 sale of stock, originally purchased 9/28/2019) - Duke Energy Corp 6.75% - A (1 sale of stock, originally purchased 3/25/2019) Further, it seems Epstein may have been involved with insider trading, in 2017, related to the Chinese commie-affiliated firm TenCent (although that was only $1,000,000 and Epstein hid his move about as well as a first year CPA figuring out they can use prediction markets to pump and dump as long as they submit a few fake cover trades before doing so). The company still has roughly $8.175 million in accounts that could potentially be clawed-back and disbursed to survivors of Epstein's child sexual abuse ring. Also, here are some of the charities Epstein was donating money to using the non-profit (the non-profit appears to have used donations, sourced from a $10,000,000 "gift" from Leon Black, as cover for insider trading and money laundering via stock purchases and sales); Bruce Marsha Moskowitz Foundation (Florida) $100,000 in 2016, $50,000 Melanoma Research Alliance Foundation (Washington D.C.) $225,000 in 2016 The Hasty Pudding Institute (New York) $50,000 in 2016 (Confirm this is Harvard's thing with the weird parade) Chron's Colitis Foundation Of American (New York) $10,000 in 2016, $10,000 Verse Video Education (Cambridge Ma) $110,000 in 2016 Women's Global Cancer Initiative $10,000 in 2016 New York Concert Artists Association (New Jersey) $50,000 in 2016 Icahn School Of Medicine Mt. Sinai (New York) $10,000 in 2016 The Hewitt School $15,000 (New York) $15,000 in 2016 Association Mind Education (Rome, New York), $60,000 in 2017 Cancer Research Wellness Institute (California) $75,000 in 2017 Chopra Foundation (California) $50,000 in 2017 Friends Of Elton John (London, UK) $15,000 in 2017 Independent Feature Project (New York) $10,000 in 2017 International Peace (New York) $375,000 in 2017 "IPI was founded in 1970 by US philanthropist Ruth Forbes Young and Indian Major General Indar Jit Rikhye, in close consultation with then-UN Secretary-General U Thant. They recognized that a thoroughly independent institution, free from official constraints, could make a unique contribution to multilateral efforts to prevent and resolve armed conflict around the world." Junior Tennis Champions Center (Maryland) $25,000 in 2017 Kuhn Foundation (California) $150,000 in 2017 MET Orchestra (New York) $50,000 in 2017 MIT (Cambridge, Mass.) $150,000 in 2017 Nautilus Think Tank (New York) $25,000 in 2017 Run by Tom Miller who knew Robert Kennedy (the original RFK) the Film Society Of Lincoln Center (New York) $25,000 in 2017 The International Police And Fire Chaplains Association (Michigan) $50,000 in 2017 The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (New York) $5,000 in 2017 The O'Gorman Garden (New York) $30,000 in 2017 UJA Federation Of New York (New York) $50,000 in 2017 University of Arizona Foundation (Arizona) $50,000 in 2017 Walk MS (New Jersey) $5,000 in 2017

Grant Smith Ellis

554,590 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten

Many persons have shared this video with me. It has 11 million views on Instagram and 70K likes. Thats 70K people without critical thinking or lack of ability to fact check. Stay with me. This is a wild ride. I am not going into details of the person making the claim - because it is Deepak Chopra. Deepak Chopra is like turmeric-milk. You think milk becomes a "super-food" when turmeric enters the scene, but the fact is, turmeric is there just to waste your time. Same with Deepak Chopra. He is an 'embodiment of pseudoscience,' who, once upon a time was a physician, but now fully evolved into shell of "what was once a doctor" currently filled with mystic beliefs, white-washing Ayurveda, preaching transcendental meditation and quantum healing to prevent sickness. Sir Richard Dawkins called Chopra's claims "quantum jargon as plausible-sounding hocus pocus" and the scientific community has found that Chopra's treatments generally elicit nothing, because Chopra is a fraud who sells $350 meditation glasses to people who cant think for themselves. and Now the video. In it, a younger Deepak Chopra claims "with the power of the mind, one can change poison into nectar and nectar into poison." And he cites an actual scientific study to prove his claims. Only one little problem - that is not what the study concluded. As per Chopra, a study performed at the Ohio State University looked at a group of rabbits fed diet rich in cholesterol. One group showed high cholesterol, while the other showed lower levels of cholesterol. This was stunning, because all the rabbits were the same, they consumed same diet. So, what was different in the rabbit group that had lower cholesterol levels? Chopra says – it was happiness in those rabbits which led to better chemicals and chemical reaction in the brain that changed the cholesterol into a different pathway that did not hurt the heart. Why were they happy? Let us get into one of the most bizarrely misinterpreted study which led to what we now call as “The Rabbit Effect.” A type of rabbit, used in experiments, called the New Zealand white male rabbits, develop heart disease much like humans if fed a high-fat diet. So these rabbits are used to study effects of cholesterol in the heart using “diet experiments.” In 1978, Dr. Robert Nerem and his group fed a group of these rabbits high fat diet. At the end of the study, he measured the animals’ cholesterol, heart rates, and blood pressure. As expected, the cholesterol values were all high and virtually identical to one another. The rabbits had similar genes and ate the same diet. Now they all seemed destined for a heart attack or stroke. Only one aberrant problem. As the last step, Dr. Nerem needed to examine the rabbits’ tiny blood vessels to show cholesterol deposits there too. Looking through the microscope, he expected all the rabbits to show similar fatty deposits on the inside of their arteries. Instead, there was a huge variation in the fatty deposits between the animals. One group of rabbits had 60 percent fewer deposits than the other. What was happening? There was no clear biological explanation to this. They checked every little item they used in the experiment to see if that had caused changes. But every little thing was controlled and accounted for. Except one small thing. The researchers themselves. A Canadian postdoc named Murina Levesque had recently joined the lab. She was an unusually kind and caring individual. When it became apparent that all the animals with fewer fatty deposits were under Murina’s care, the team dug deeper. They noticed that Murina handled the animals differently. When she fed her rabbits, she talked to them, cuddled, and petted them. She did not throw the food at the little animals. She gave them food with love. So, prove this, the research group repeated the experiment, this time with tightly controlled conditions. They compared the little blood vessels of one group of rabbits cared for by Murina (food+love) to the arteries of another group of rabbits cared for in the standard way (only food). They found the same effect again. The paper was published in Science Magazine. This one: Social Environment as a Factor in Diet-Induced Atherosclerosis - So did the study prove that if you are happy, and the mind is free, poisonous substances can turn into nectar? - No, that was not what the study says. Remember – the study showed that high cholesterol levels in the blood was same in all rabbits who were on high fat diet. Only that the cholesterol deposits were lesser in the arteries of those who were fed with “kindness” – meaning who were less “stressed.” The study took the medical world on a wild ride because all the rabbit experiments would have to now look at how emotionally these animals were, to come to better conclusions from the interventions studied. So, a group of researchers specifically looked at “handling” and diet induced cholesterol deposits (atherosclerosis) in rabbits. They found that handling the animals did not have any effect on the atherosclerosis size inside the blood vessels and this was only roughly determined by the amount of cholesterol in food eaten. In the original “Rabbit Effect” study, the amount of food eaten between groups was not looked at. We now know that chronic stress leads to different behavioral patterns which also includes increased eating. Chronic life stress seems to be associated with a greater preference for energy- and nutrient-dense foods, namely those that are high in sugar and fat. Higher the stress, higher amount of food eaten, more the cholesterol and more importantly, more deposits inside the arteries which can be independent of cholesterol levels. How? One possible mechanism for this process is that chronic stress causes small blood vessel injury (endothelial damage), directly activating macrophages (an inflammatory cell), promoting foam cell formation, and generating the formation of atherosclerotic plaque inside small vessels. This mechanism involves numerous variables, including inflammation, signal pathways, lipid metabolism and endothelial function – and has nothing to do with cholesterol going to another pathway because of brain chemicals. Cholesterol is the body is metabolized through the same pathway whether you are happy, sad, or delirious. That is not what the rabbit study claimed or what it proved. It only made way for other studies to show that chronic stress could be an important factor that negatively impact heart and brain health which was independent of the food that you consume. Poison does not become nectar if you are happy and nectar does not become poison if you are sad. That is just Ayurvedic mumbo-jumbo from hocus-pocus self-help gurus who cite “Agni and the Digestive Fire” as the mechanism. “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” is more believable. If you take rat poison happily, you will still die. If you eat a banana while crying, you won’t die.

TheLiverDoc™

409,193 Aufrufe • vor 3 Jahren