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Oh Great, Surgeons Want To Shove These Robot Snakes Down Our Throats

In addition to completely freaking us out , it turns out that the robotic snakes being developed at universities like Carnegie Mellonsome serve some practical purposes as well. A company called Medrobotics Corporation will soon begin marketing robot snake-assisted surgical device designed to crawl down a patient's throat. Yeah, that's far less creepy.

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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/4_yJDMu4WSw/oh-great-surgeons-want-to-shove-these-robot-snakes-dow-1558497125
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Who Do You Hate-Follow On Instagram?

Admit it: there's someone you dislike who you follow on Instagram not in spite of your disdain, but because of it. Who is it? Spill. This is a safe space.

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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/phEkNfGosGU/who-do-you-hate-follow-on-instagram-1554739834
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Wednesday Political Mix: Obamacare IT Officials Face Issa

On Wednesday, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, finally got its turn to pummel the Obamacare rollout. The photo is from a Benghazi hearing in September 2013.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Good morning, fellow political junkies.

Pressure continues to rise on congressional Democrats with every new story about someone whose health plan was cancelled as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

A big story Tuesday was former President Bill Clinton adding to Democrats' psychic pain during an interview in which he essentially said President Obama should make good on his promise that Americans could keep health insurance they liked. He was saying something many Democrats already knew. But coming from him, one of the best Democratic political strategists of recent decades and the spouse of a potential Democratic presidential nominee, it made an impression.

With that, here are some of the more interesting pieces of political news or analysis I wanted to share this morning.

• If Obama administration officials have figured out how they're going to square the circle of allowing people to keep health insurance policies that the Affordable Care Act effectively bans, they're not widely sharing their solution. But they did share their resistance to the notion of letting people keep policies deemed substandard. White House press secretary Jay Carney said that idea isn't seen by administration officials as "fixing the problem" as the New York Times' Michael Shear and Robert Pear reported.
• Meanwhile, congressional Democrats seemed so eager for a way out that even someone as high in the pecking order as Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., second in the House Democratic hierarchy, didn't initially dismiss out-of-hand a House Republican bill to let people keep health policies facing cancellation, as I reported in NPR's "It's All Politics" blog. (Note that the New York Times has Obama "in a bind" while I place Democrats "in a vise." Feel free to supply your own torture metaphor.) Later, after Carney's comments, a top Hoyer aide said her boss, indeed, opposed the GOP bill, as Roll Call's Emma Dumain reported.
• Some of the Obama administration's top information technology officials will get a free stress test, though not the kind their doctors would necessarily recommend, when they appear Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, D-Calif. Issa is unquestionably one of the Obama administration's chief congressional antagonists. Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown set the stage for the hearing in a piece that flicks at one of Healthcare.gov's biggest mysteries: how could White House officials be caught so off-guard by the the Obamacare website meltdown when others inside the administration seemed to know it was a disaster waiting to happen.
• Anticipating Issa's hearing, the Washington Post reported that Healthcare.gov is unlikely to be fully working by November's end, contrary to assurances by top Obama administration officials. The software problems are proving more intractable than earlier thought, especially when it comes to handling high traffic volumes.
• One takeaway from The Hill's two-part series on what it calls the death of immigration reform is that Obamacare helped kill it. The Hill's Russell Berman reports that after Obama delayed the employer mandate in the health care law, House Republicans who were part of immigration negotiations saw that as an omen that the president might do the same to border-enforcement provisions in a new immigration law and that was that.
• For the second time in recent weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an attempt by Oklahoma to overturn anti-abortion laws that courts in that state had found unconstitutional. In its latest action, reports the Wall Street Journal's Jeff Bravin, the Supreme Court turned aside Oklahoma's request that the high court overturn a state court's ruling that pregnant women seeking abortions first submit to ultrasounds of their fetuses.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/11/13/244969856/wednesday-political-mix-obamacare-it-officials-to-get-issa-treatment?ft=1&f=1001
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Obama: 'We fumbled health care' law rollout

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says his administration "fumbled the rollout" of his signature health care law.

Obama is taking responsibility for problems with the launch of the program. He says, quote, "That's on me."

Obama says it's legitimate for Americans to expect him to have to win back some credibility on the health care law and in general.

The president acknowledges his assertion that Americans who like their health plan could keep it, in his words, "ended up not being accurate." He says that wasn't his intention.

Obama says he wasn't informed directly that the Healthcare.gov website wouldn't be working, and wouldn't have rolled it out if he did. He says he wouldn't have been "stupid enough" to say it was going to be like shopping on Amazon had he known.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-11-14-US-Health-Overhaul-Obama-Credibility/id-62a38e83bfa34bf384d8ef946644b7cc
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Seiki brings a $1,500 55-inch 4K set to Sears stores

It's not quite an impulse buy, but it's getting close. And hey, who's to say we wouldn't swing by the electronics section after picking up a couple of power tools? Just in time for the holidays, Seiki's rolling out a 55-inch 4K set for the nice price of $1,499 -- a followup to the $700 39-incher we saw back in June. And look, the company's even tossing in a USB port and an HDMI 1.4 cable in for good measure. Can't beat that. Interested parties will have pop into a Sears or visit the store's site to take Seiki up on its offer.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/11/seiki-sears/?ncid=rss_truncated
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Russian report stirs new confusion in Arafat death

A Palestinian child works at a shop across from a poster of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Friday, Nov. 8, 2013. The writing on the poster, part of a quote from one of Arafat's speeches, reads, "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." Israel is the only suspect in the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, Tawfik Tirawi, the chief Palestinian investigator in the case, said Friday, a day after Swiss scientists said the Palestinian leader was probably poisoned by radioactive polonium. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

A Palestinian child works at a shop across from a poster of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Friday, Nov. 8, 2013. The writing on the poster, part of a quote from one of Arafat's speeches, reads, "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." Israel is the only suspect in the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, Tawfik Tirawi, the chief Palestinian investigator in the case, said Friday, a day after Swiss scientists said the Palestinian leader was probably poisoned by radioactive polonium. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

The mausoleum houses the grave of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Friday, Nov. 8, 2013. Israel is the only suspect in the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, Tawfik Tirawi, the chief Palestinian investigator in the case, said Friday, a day after Swiss scientists said the Palestinian leader was probably poisoned by radioactive polonium. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Palestinian investigator Tawfik Tirawi speaks during a press conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Friday, Nov. 8, 2013. Israel is the only suspect in the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, the chief Palestinian investigator, Tirawi, in the case, said Friday, a day after Swiss scientists said the Palestinian leader was probably poisoned by radioactive polonium. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Palestinian honor guard stands at the grave of the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Friday, Nov. 8, 2013. Israel is the only suspect in the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, Tawfik Tirawi, chief Palestinian investigator in the case, said Friday, a day after Swiss scientists said the Palestinian leader was probably poisoned by radioactive polonium. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Palestinian investigator Tawfik Tirawi speaks during a press conference in Ramallah in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Friday, Nov. 8, 2013. Israel is the only suspect in the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, Tirawi, chief Palestinian investigator in the case, said Friday, a day after Swiss scientists said the Palestinian leader was probably poisoned by radioactive polonium. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Four investigations, hundreds of testimonies and stacks of medical reports on Yasser Arafat's unexplained death in 2004 have failed to produce hard evidence of what killed him — and findings presented Friday only created more confusion.

Palestinian officials said a report they received from Russia on the role of radioactive polonium in Arafat's death was inconclusive. They spoke just a day after Swiss scientists said the Palestinian leader was probably poisoned by the rare and extremely lethal substance.

Despite those discrepancies, the Swiss and Russian reports agreed that Arafat's death "was not caused by old age or disease, but as a result of a toxic substance," said Dr. Abdullah Bashir, a medical expert in the three-member Palestinian team that has been investigating Arafat's death. This, he told a news conference, is in line with the long-standing Palestinian contention that Arafat was poisoned.

The reports revived Palestinian allegations that Israel was behind the attack, despite its denial.

The Palestinian team's leader, Tawfik Tirawi, said Israel had the technical means and the motive.

"I say, with all the details available about Yasser Arafat's death, that he was killed, and that Israel killed him," he said. The former Palestinian intelligence chief did not present evidence to back up the claims.

In the four years leading up to his death, Arafat's relationship with his longtime nemesis, Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, had become increasingly hostile. Sharon, a hard-liner, blamed Arafat for encouraging anti-Israeli violence instead of working toward a peace deal and kept him isolated at his West Bank compound for extended periods.

Former Sharon aide Raanan Gissin reiterated Friday that Israel had nothing to do with Arafat's death. "The Palestinians are using Israel as a scapegoat," he said. "If Arafat was murdered, then he (the killer) should be sought among the heads of the Palestinian Authority."

Tirawi said his team would spare no effort to solve the mystery, but it's not clear where an investigation could go from here, considering the Palestinians' limited technical means. Tirawi said a decision on a possible international tribunal — like the one that investigated the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri — would be up to Arafat's successor, President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas has not commented on the substance of the latest findings. A new probe could invite close scrutiny of Israel as well as Palestinian aides and bodyguards who surrounded Arafat in his compound.

Arafat died Nov. 11, 2004 at a French military hospital, a month after falling ill at his West Bank headquarters. At the time, French doctors said he died of a stroke and had a blood-clotting problem, but records were inconclusive about what caused that condition.

The Palestinians launched an investigation at the time, and Tirawi said Friday that it encompassed hundreds of statements from Palestinians and non-Palestinians in the West Bank and around the world. No suspects emerged and no arrests were made.

The investigation hit a dead end, and was only revived when the satellite TV station Al-Jazeera persuaded Arafat's widow, Suha, last year to hand over his hospital bag with underwear, headscarves and other belongings. Mrs. Arafat has lived in exile since her husband's death and is estranged from most of the Palestinian leadership.

The items in the bag were examined by Switzerland's Institute for Radiation Physics, which found elevated traces of polonium.

Earlier this year, Arafat's grave in his Ramallah compound was reopened. Swiss, Russian and French scientists were given samples of the remains and burial soil.

The Russians had been invited by Abbas who wanted another opinion, and the French team was part of a legal case Mrs. Arafat was pursuing in France. The French team has not yet released its findings.

The Swiss scientists said Thursday that they found elevated traces of polonium-210 and lead in Arafat's remains, and that the timeframe of Arafat's illness and death was consistent with poisoning from ingesting polonium.

Francois Bochud, a member of the Swiss team, said that the results "reasonably support the poisoning theory."

Bashir, the Palestinian physician, said the Russian team sent its findings to the Palestinian Authority several days ago and the full report would be made public at a later time.

Bashir said that the Russian scientists did not find enough evidence to determine that polonium-210 "caused the acute radiation syndrome leading to death."

He did not elaborate at the news conference. He later told The Associated Press that the Russian investigators did find elevated levels of polonium, but declined to answer further questions.

Al-Jazeera posted online what it said was a 15-page excerpt from the report by Russia's Institute of Medical and Biological Research. Officials at the state-run institute were not available for comment late Friday on whether the excerpts are authentic.

In another twist, Al-Jazeera quoted the source from whom it obtained the report as saying the Russian government asked the scientists to keep the findings intentionally vague.

The station said the excerpts show that only four of 20 samples were examined by the Russian team.

___

Associated Press writer Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-11-08-Arafat's%20Death/id-ca1a3e7e17a349ab88b3863cb0763940
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Elaborate Dioramas Model the Apocalypse in Miniature

We can do a lot with Photoshop, from faking entire military operations to whatever this is. But sometimes, low-tech trickery is just more fun. Such is the case with the work of Lori Nix, a photographer who specializes in shooting urban dioramas containing scenes of complete and utter destruction.

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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/4gMlQ8zKVzQ/elaborate-dioramas-model-the-apocalypse-in-miniature-1458430063
Category: happy halloween   ricin   darren sproles   mark sanchez   Never Forget 9/11  

I want a ride in the sleekest Lego spaceship I've seen in a long time

I love Lego everything, but spaceships are by far my favorite subject. The great ones—like this one by sioka sculpting—are outstanding examples of sci-fi design and engineering—it's the best way to materialize your future space exploration dreams.

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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/9KYVx19o_a4/@jesusdiaz
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Notre Dame research finding may help accelerate diabetic wound healing

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

30-Oct-2013

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Contact: Mayland Chang
[email protected]
574-631-2965
University of Notre Dame

University of Notre Dame researchers have, for the first time, identified the enzymes that are detrimental to diabetic wound healing and those that are beneficial to repair the wound.

There are currently no therapeutics for diabetic wound healing. The current standard of care is palliative to keep the wound clean and free of infection. In the United States, 66,000 diabetic individuals each year undergo lower-limb amputations due to wounds that failed to heal.

A team of researchers from Notre Dame's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, led by Mark Suckow, Shahriar Mobashery and Mayland Chang, searched for metalloproteinases (MMPs) in the wounds of healthy and diabetic mice.

Gelatinases, a class of enzymes, have been implicated in a host of human diseases from cancer to cardiovascular conditions. Chang has been researching activation of MMPs, particularly gelatinase B or MMP-9.

The MMPs remodel the extracellular matrix in tissue during wound healing.

"We show that MMP-9 is detrimental to wound healing, while MMP-8 is beneficial," Chang said. "Our studies provide a strategy for diabetic wound healing by using selective MMP-9 inhibitors."

The team treated diabetic mice with an inhibitor of MMP-9 and discovered that wounds were healed 92 percent after 14 days, as compared to 74 percent healing in untreated mice.

The identification of the enzyme that interferes with diabetic wound healing and that which repairs the wound opens the door to new, novel treatment strategies.

"Currently, advanced wound dressings containing collagen are used for diabetic wound healing," Chang said. "The collagen provides a substrate so that the unregulated MMP-9 chews on the collagen in the dressing, rather than on the wound. It would be better to treat the diabetic wounds with a selective MMP-9 inhibitor to inhibit the culprit enzyme that is impeding wound healing while leaving the beneficial MMP-8 uninhibited to help repair the wound."

The study appeared in the American Chemical Society's journal ACS Chemical Biology.

###

---

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

30-Oct-2013

[ | E-mail ] Share

Contact: Mayland Chang
[email protected]
574-631-2965
University of Notre Dame

University of Notre Dame researchers have, for the first time, identified the enzymes that are detrimental to diabetic wound healing and those that are beneficial to repair the wound.

There are currently no therapeutics for diabetic wound healing. The current standard of care is palliative to keep the wound clean and free of infection. In the United States, 66,000 diabetic individuals each year undergo lower-limb amputations due to wounds that failed to heal.

A team of researchers from Notre Dame's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, led by Mark Suckow, Shahriar Mobashery and Mayland Chang, searched for metalloproteinases (MMPs) in the wounds of healthy and diabetic mice.

Gelatinases, a class of enzymes, have been implicated in a host of human diseases from cancer to cardiovascular conditions. Chang has been researching activation of MMPs, particularly gelatinase B or MMP-9.

The MMPs remodel the extracellular matrix in tissue during wound healing.

"We show that MMP-9 is detrimental to wound healing, while MMP-8 is beneficial," Chang said. "Our studies provide a strategy for diabetic wound healing by using selective MMP-9 inhibitors."

The team treated diabetic mice with an inhibitor of MMP-9 and discovered that wounds were healed 92 percent after 14 days, as compared to 74 percent healing in untreated mice.

The identification of the enzyme that interferes with diabetic wound healing and that which repairs the wound opens the door to new, novel treatment strategies.

"Currently, advanced wound dressings containing collagen are used for diabetic wound healing," Chang said. "The collagen provides a substrate so that the unregulated MMP-9 chews on the collagen in the dressing, rather than on the wound. It would be better to treat the diabetic wounds with a selective MMP-9 inhibitor to inhibit the culprit enzyme that is impeding wound healing while leaving the beneficial MMP-8 uninhibited to help repair the wound."

The study appeared in the American Chemical Society's journal ACS Chemical Biology.

###

---

[ | E-mail Share ]

 

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/uond-ndr103013.php
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Almonds For Skinny Snackers? Yes, They Help Curb Your Appetite

The protein, unsaturated fat composition and fiber in almonds all very likely play a role in helping to curb appetites.

iStockphoto.com

The protein, unsaturated fat composition and fiber in almonds all very likely play a role in helping to curb appetites.

iStockphoto.com

Americans seem to have a love affair with snacking.

As a society, we eat twice as many snacks as we did a generation ago. Women, on average, nosh on upwards of 400 snack calories per day, according to federal survey data. And men consume almost 600 calories a day in between meals.

So, if nibbling is our new pastime, researchers have a suggestion for one satiating snack that seems to help control our appetites: almonds.

According to the findings of fresh research published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, people who added 1.5 ounces of almonds to their diet each day reported reduced hunger, and they compensated for the extra calories from nuts by eating less at other times of the day.

"This research suggests that almonds may be a good snack option, especially for those concerned about weight," says Richard Mattes, a professor of nutrition science at Purdue University. "Despite adding 250 calories to the diet, there was no change in total energy intake."

And after a month of eating almonds each day, the participants did not gain weight.

If you listen to my story on All Things Considered, you'll hear how Glenn Reed of East Orange, N.J., manages to stay slim. We met up with him at Union Station, in Washington, D.C., during the late afternoon commuting rush.

"There's a lot of junk and sugar here [at the train station]," Reed noted, "so I always look for something with nuts in it."

As he munched on trail mix that included almonds and dried cranberries, he says nuts may be calorie dense and full of fat — which many Americans are wary of — but for him, nuts are the perfect snack.

"I love the crunchiness, and this is a snack that will definitely ... hold you over [until dinner]," Reed told me.

So what is it about nuts that can help curb our appetites? It's most likely a combination of factors, explains Mattes.

"The protein, the unsaturated fat composition, the fiber" all very likely play a role, he says. And almonds are low in carbohydrates, which tend to stimulate our appetites.

One other factor? Chewing. As we've reported, research has shown that if we don't chew our almonds thoroughly, some of the calories move right through us — undigested.

Prior research has already shown that almonds help increase satiety, both in people of normal weight and those prone to being overweight.

The new observation here, according to Mattes, is that almonds are even "better at controlling appetite when consumed as snacks."

His team found that eating almonds in between meals tended to blunt the rise in hunger, compared with when people ate the nuts as part of a meal.

It's not clear whether all nuts have this effect. This study was funded by the almond industry, and researchers didn't evaluate other types of nuts.

Mattes explains that industry-funded studies are becoming more common, especially as government funding becomes harder to obtain. But he emphasizes that the research is carried out completely independently and is peer-reviewed before being published.

"So it does have the checks and balances," Mattes concludes.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NprProgramsATC/~3/-efD1hMw3Rc/almonds-for-skinny-snackers-yes-they-help-curb-your-appetite
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