Hippocratic oath updated to include vow of loyalty to insurance giant

© The Onion

New York - In an effort to modernize the ancient ethics pledge, officials from the American Medical Association announced Tuesday an update to the Hippocratic Oath that includes a vow of loyalty to national health insurance giant Blue Cross Blue Shield.

"This newly revised pledge requires doctors to uphold their allegiance to Blue Cross Blue Shield, to avoid pricey tests and referrals whenever possible, and to do no harm to any in-network patient so far as it remains sufficiently cost-effective," said AMA spokesperson Amanda Cummings, noting a further addition to the professional oath that obligates doctors to enforce all co-pays and coinsurance payments.

"The updated text also requires physicians to have a comprehensive working knowledge of their specific financial agreement with Blue Cross Blue Shield. And above all, a doctor must, at all times, avoid inflicting any injury or wrong upon the company's bottom line."

Officials added that the new pledge would no longer require doctors to swear by "Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius the surgeon, and likewise Hygeia and Panacea," but rather by Blue Cross Blue Shield CEO Scott Serota.

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Major snowstorm to plaster Northeast U.S.

A major storm will impact the Northeast through Thursday, complete with gusty winds, substantial snow, heavy rain, a wintry mix and flooding.

A strengthening storm along the mid-Atlantic coast will push northward on Tuesday, then inland Tuesday night through Thursday.

According to AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Elliot Abrams, "This will be a snowstorm for some areas well inland, while impacts similar to a tropical storm will occur along the coast, including much of Interstate-95."

Heavy Interior Snow

The heaviest snow, a general 6 to 12 inches is forecast to fall on the Endless, Catskill and Adirondack mountains. Locally higher amounts can occur.

While the snow will be welcome by those with skiing interests, travel will become extremely treacherous and AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Ben Noll stated that the "wet-clinging nature of the snow could lead to downed trees and power outages."

Interstates that could quickly become snow-covered and treacherous for motorists include stretches of 81, 87, 88, 90, 91, and 93 in upstate New York and northern New England.

Outside of the mountains, the rate of the snow in the interior Northeast will determine travel troubles and amounts.

"Marginal temperatures could cause the snow to melt as it falls on some of the roads for a time," stated AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski.

"The snow would have to fall at a heavy rate to accumulate on paved surfaces outside of the mountains."

Communities at risk for one or more rounds of heavy snow and slippery travel include Scranton, Pennsylvania; Lebanon, New Hampshire; Caribou, Maine; Binghamton and Syracuse, New York; and Rutland and Burlington, Vermont.

"However, enough warm air could come into some of these areas to switch snow over to a wintry mix, or even rain for a time," Sosnowski said.

Aside from any heavier burst and icy spots to start, the snow should be light enough for much of interstates 68, 70, 79, 80, 81 and 86 in the central Appalachians and toward the eastern Great Lakes to be mainly wet or slushy Tuesday through Wednesday.

In the transition zone from snow to rain in the Northeast, a bit of icing could occur and add to the hazards for motorists. Icy conditions have already led to several accidents and road closures on major highways early Tuesday from central Pennsylvania to northern Virginia.

Downpours, Poor Drainage Flood Threat for I-95

The storm will be a mainly rain event for the I-95 corridor from Boston southward to Washington, D.C., but AccuWeather.com meteorologists will be monitoring the potential for some wet snow at the storm's onset or end.

The rain alone could bring some impacts to residents and travelers. The heavy rain threatens to trigger flooding in low-lying and poor drainage areas.

Airline passengers should prepare for an increasing number of flight delays and cancellations. Poor visibility from wind-swept rain and the risk of hydroplaning will be a concern for motorists. Such travel disruptions will spread from Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City during the day on Tuesday to Boston for the evening commute.

Strong Wind, Coastal Flooding Potential

The danger of coastal flooding will exist Tuesday from the Delaware and New Jersey beaches to New York City and southern New England, then will increase Tuesday night farther north along the eastern New England coast as howling northeasterly winds whip the region.

The risk of coastal flooding will generally be limited to within a couple of hours of the scheduled high tides.

The winds along the coast could be strong enough to cause localized damage and power outages. Gusts could top 50 mph on some coastal areas.

The strong onshore winds at the coast will shut off as the storm moves northward and inland at midweek.

Outlook for Wednesday Night and Thursday

Colder air will wrap into the slow-moving storm, along with bands of snow and flurries over New England and the mid-Atlantic during Wednesday night through Thursday.

While there is a chance of a ground whitening snow shower as far east as I-95, the mostly likely area for a small additional accumulation of snow will be in parts of interior New England and the central Appalachians.

Parts of northwestern Pennsylvania and western and central New York state are likely to receive heavier lake-enhanced snow.

Gusty winds from the northwest will add to the chill around the eastern Great Lakes and mid-Atlantic into Friday.

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Antibiotics kill our cells with each use - Harvard study

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in the 1940s, and it has been used as a poster child for 'safe' antibiotics ever since. Fleming's discovery heralded the 'age of antibiotics,' but new research from Harvard scientists reveals concerning information about antibiotics, confirming that the

Penicillin has been called better than the 'big gun' antibiotics for treating pneumonia and other childhood diseases, but it that really true in a new age of antibiotic resistance created by their overuse? Even the corrupt FDA admits that antibiotic misuse and overuse is a problem.

According to the Harvard summary:

"One of the oldest and most widely used antibiotics, penicillin, attacks enzymes that build the bacterial cell wall. Researchers have now shown that penicillin and its variants also set in motion a toxic malfunctioning of the cell's wall-building machinery, dooming the cell to a futile cycle of building and then immediately destroying that wall."

This would be a simple microbial process that we could take for granted if it weren't for the resistance to penicillin and other antibiotics that has emerged in the last few decades. The fact is that scientists still don't really know how the original 'age of antibiotics' worked.

Thomas Bernhardt, associate professor of microbiology and immunobiology at Harvard Medical School, are looking closer at this phenomenon.

Their findings, published in the journal , explain how penicillin can be devastating to bacteria - which may lead to new ways to thwart drug resistance, but could also explain why 'good' bacteria is harmed by antibiotics. How do these drugs differentiate after all?

GASP! CDC Admits Age of Antibiotics is over as Super Bacteria Grow

Bernhardt and his team have shown that antibiotic drugs do more than simply block cell-wall assembly. Penicillin and its variants also This downstream death spiral depletes cells of the resources they need to survive."

Bernhardt explains the ramifications concerning drug-resistance:

"It seems to be a common theme with some of the best antibiotics that we have: They don't just inhibit the enzyme they are targeting; they actually convert that target so that whatever activity it has left becomes toxic."

Penicillin and some other antibiotic drugs are included in a class called beta-lactams, all of which are derived from natural antibiotics produced by fungi and have known bacteria-fighting capabilities.

If a drug prohibits a cell from synthesizing new strands by blocking the enzymes that build cross-links, weakening the cell walls (meaning the cell wall can't hold together), how do we keep the healthy cells from dying? It's a bit like treating cancer cells with chemotherapy. All the cells die, not just the cancerous ones.

Bernhardt and Hongbaek Cho, lead author of the paper, used a specific derivative of penicillin that targets only one enzyme in cell-wall assembly. Their aim was to genetically manipulate their study subject, to make this enzyme dispensable for the life of the cell.

Surprisingly, the scientists noticed that targeting the nonessential enzyme with the penicillin still killed the cell. This finding was quite a conundrum. The enzyme could be removed from cells completely without harm. Yet, when it was present and bound by the drug, the cells would die.

The investigators discovered that the root cause of the problem was that the drug not only inhibited the enzyme, but it also caused it to malfunction in such a way that its activity became toxic.

Solutions: 5 Natural Antibiotics to Combat Antibiotic-Resistance

Bernhardt stated:

The problem is that more and more unwanted bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics, and in many cases, disease-causing bacteria are actually influenced to grow more.

Antibacterials usually work in one of two ways:

• A bactericidal antibiotic like penicillin hopefully kills the unwanted or 'bad' bacteria.

• A bacteriostatic antibiotic stops bacteria from multiplying.

Simple. natural antibiotics like garlic and onions, basil, chamomile, aloe vera, astragalus and others; however, don't cause side effects like antibiotic resistance, diarrhea, nausea, fungal infections, and the disruption of healthy gut flora that help to fight disease.

Furthermore, with many antibiotics, bacteria are killed, but resistant germs may be left to grow and multiply.

"Some bacteria develop the ability to neutralize the antibiotic before it can do harm, others can rapidly pump the antibiotic out, and still others can change the antibiotic attack site so it cannot affect the function of the bacteria."

Pharmaceutical antibiotics simply kill bacteria indiscriminately throughout the body. That is how they are manufactured. So, if you contract strep throat, for example, the antibiotic you take will kill the good bacteria, lactobacillus, which you need to crowd out Candida and other issues. This is why vaginal and intestinal yeast infections are so common after antibiotic use.

Natural antibiotics don't seem to cause the phenomenon of antibiotic resistance, and many are simply foods you eat on a daily basis. For example, these 8 natural antibiotics could possibly replace pharmaceutical antibiotics for good. Natural, non-pharmaceutical antibiotics even fight anti-biotic resistant diseases, like MRSA, and E Coli.

Why use Big Pharma drugs at all? It doesn't take a room of Harvard scientists to figure out better options that are less expensive and still effective.

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More fear: Islamic State claims 'radioactive device' now in Europe

© AP

An alleged weapons maker for the Islamic State (IS) claimed that a "radioactive device" has been smuggled into an undisclosed location in Europe, according to an intelligence brief released Monday by the SITE Intelligence Group.

"A Radioactive Device has entered somewhere in Europe," according Twitter user Muslim-Al-Britani, who claims to be a freelance jihadist weapons maker now working alongside IS (also known as ISIL or ISIS), according to tweets captured and disseminated by SITE.

BREAKING NEWS# WARNING A Radioactive Device has entered somewhere in Europe. http://ift.tt/1w8sOpR

- Muslim-Al-Britani (@TNTmuslim) December 6, 2014

The claim by Al-Britani comes just days after reports emerged that IS could have in its possession a dirty bomb, the elements of which were obtained via earlier IS raids on a university research facility in Mosul that contained uranium. Al-Britani is also responsible for the flurry of reports on the dirty bomb.

Al-Britani, who has disseminated on his Twitter feed "weapon instructions and manuals," claimed on Nov. 23 that the "Islamic State does have a dirty bomb. We found some radioactive material from Mosul university," according to the tweets reproduced by SITE.

While it is difficult to assess the veracity of Al-Britani's claims, U.S. officials have expressed concern about IS potentially smuggling nuclear and radioactive material out of Iraq.

U.S. and Iraqi officials inked a pact in September meant to step up efforts to combat this type of smuggling, which the United States deemed a "critical" threat.

"There's always a concern about radiological or radioactive sources," a State Department official told the at the time.

While the United States, at that time, was "not aware of any cases of these types of material being smuggled out of the country thus far," ISIL could potentially use these radioactive materials to create a crude bomb, the official said.

"This is the kind of thing where if ISIL got its hands on enough radioactive sources or radioactive sources of a sufficient radioactivity level and they decided to turn it into a bomb and blow it up in a market, that would be a very unpleasant thing," the official said.

Iraq reportedly informed the United Nations in July that terrorists had seized nuclear materials being housed at Mosul University. Some 90 pounds of uranium were said to have been stolen, according to reports.

Former Pentagon adviser Michael Rubin said that intelligence officials should be considering the information disseminated by purported IS confidants.

"Too often, counterterrorism officials plan to prevent replication of the last terror attack," Rubin said. "Terror groups, however, plan to shock with something new."

"Maybe Britani is lying, and maybe he's not. But Western officials would be foolish to assume that just because something hasn't happened yet, it won't," Rubin said. "The terrorist groups have the motivation and, thanks to post-withdrawal vacuum created in Iraq, the means to strike the West like never before."

The threats also should factor into the ongoing debates about border control, according to Rubin.

"Perhaps it's also time to recognize that open borders and successful counter-terrorism are mutually exclusive," he said. "It's a lesson that might fly in the face of Obama's ideology, but reality will always trump political spin."

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Scientists find brain mechanism that keeps us reaching for the glucose

© Unknown

British scientists have found a brain mechanism they think may drive our desire for glucose-rich food and say the discovery could one day lead to better treatments for obesity.

In experiments using rats, researchers at Imperial College London found a mechanism that appears to sense how much glucose is reaching the brain and prompts animals to seek more if it detects a shortfall. In people, the scientists said, it may play a role in driving our preference for sweet and starchy foods.

Glucose, a component of carbohydrates, is the main energy source used by brain cells.

"Our brains rely heavily on glucose for energy,.. but in our evolutionary past it would have been hard to come by. So we have a deep-rooted preference for glucose-rich foods and seek them out," said James Gardiner, who led the study and published its findings in the Journal of Clinical Investigation on Monday.

Gardiner's team started with a hypothesis that an enzyme called glucokinase, involved in sensing glucose in the liver and pancreas, might play a role in driving glucose desire. Glucokinase is found in part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which regulates various functions including food intake.

In their experiments they first found that when rats go 24 hours without eating, glucokinase activity in an appetite-regulating center in the hypothalamus increases sharply.

The rats were given access to a glucose solution as well as their normal food pellets, called chow. When the researchers increased the activity of glucokinase in the hypothalamus using a virus, rats consumed more glucose in preference to chow. When glucokinase activity was reduced, they consumed less glucose.

Gardiner suggested that in people it might be possible to reduce glucose cravings by changing the diet, and said a drug that could act on this system may potentially prevent obesity.

"People are likely to have different levels of this enzyme, so different things will work for different people," he said in a statement about the study.

"For some people, eating more starchy foods at the start of a meal might be a way to feel full more quickly by targeting this system, meaning they eat less overall."

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Ripples in space-time fabric could reveal 'strange stars'

© phys.org

The three valence quarks that make up each proton account for about one percent of its mass; the rest comes from interactions among the quarks and gluons.

By looking for ripples in the fabric of space-time, scientists could soon detect "strange stars" - objects made of stuff radically different from the particles that make up ordinary matter, researchers say.

The protons and neutrons that make up the nuclei of atoms are made of more basic particles known as quarks. There are six types, or "flavors," of quarks: up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange. Each proton or neutron is made of three quarks: Each proton is composed of two up quarks and one down quark, and each neutron is made of two down quarks and one up quark.

© cerntruth.wordpress.com

Strangelet atom reaction.

In theory, matter can be made with other flavors of quarks as well. Since the 1970s, scientists have suggested that particles of "strange matter" known as strangelets - made of equal numbers of up, down and strange quarks - could exist. In principle, strange matter should be heavier and more stable than normal matter, and might even be capable of converting ordinary matter it comes in contact with into strange matter. However, lab experiments have not yet created any strange matter, so its existence remains uncertain.

One place strange matter could naturally be created is inside neutron stars, the remnants of stars that died in catastrophic explosions known as supernovas. Neutron stars are typically small, with diameters of about 12 miles (19 kilometers) or so, but are so dense that they weigh as much as the sun. A chunk of a neutron star the size of a sugar cube can weigh as much as 100 million tons.

Under the extraordinary force of this extreme weight, some of the up and down quarks that make up neutron stars could get converted into strange quarks, leading to strange stars made of strange matter, researchers say.

A strange star that occasionally spurts out strange matter could quickly convert a neutron star orbiting it in a binary system into a strange star as well. Prior research suggests that a neutron star that receives a seed of strange matter from a companion strange star could transition to a strange star in just 1 millisecond to 1 second.

© www.bbc.com

Neutron stars creating gravity waves.

Now, researchers suggest they could detect strange stars by looking for the stars' gravitational waves - invisible ripples in space-time first proposed by Albert Einstein as part of his theory of general relativity.

Gravitational waves are emitted by accelerating masses. Really big gravitational waves are emitted by really big masses, such as pairs of neutron stars merging with one another.

Pairs of strange stars should give off gravitational waves that are different from those emitted by pairs of "normal" neutron stars because strange stars should be more compact, researchers said. For instance, a neutron star with a mass one-fifth that of the sun should be more than 18 miles (30 km) in diameter, whereas a strange star of the same mass should be a maximum of 6 miles (10 km) wide.

The researchers suggest that events involving strange stars could explain two short gamma-ray bursts - giant explosions lasting less than 2 seconds - seen in deep space in 2005 and 2007. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) did not detect gravitational waves from either of these events, dubbed GRB 051103 and GRB 070201.

Neutron star mergers are the leading explanations for short gamma-ray bursts, but LIGO should, in principle, have detected gravitational waves from such mergers. However, if strange stars were involved in both of these events, LIGO would not have been able to detect any gravitational waves they emitted, researchers said. (The more compact a star is within a binary system of two stars, the higher the frequency of the gravitational waves it gives off.)

Still, future research could detect strange-star events. Using the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (aLIGO), whose first observing run is scheduled for 2015, the researchers expect to detect about 0.13 mergers per year of neutron stars with strange stars, or about one such merger every eight years. Using the Einstein Telescope currently being designed in the European Union, the scientists eventually expect to detect about 700 such events per year, or about two per day.

There may also be a chance that scientists can re-examine LIGO data from GRB 051103 and GRB 070201 to look for signs of strange-star involvement.

"The possibility of a re-analysis of LIGO signals for GRB 070201 and GRB 051103, taking into account some possible cases involving strange stars, is really exciting," lead study author Pedro Moraes, an astrophysicist at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, told Space.com.

Moraes and his colleague Oswaldo Miranda detailed their findings in the Nov. 21 issue of the journal .

Comment: You would think that the Earth should be experiencing gravity waves continuously since they should be coming from any cosmic event that significantly disturbs the fabric of space-time, as they describe it. If you think about other kinds of waves, granted we primarily have knowledge about those that take place on the planet, we have earthquakes, tornadoes, tidal waves and airwaves as models. Every time you walk into a room, you are disturbing the air around you. A land mass creaks and you have radiating ground waves. These are observable because they are motion and we are equipped with motion sensors. So, if a dying star explodes into a supernova, the force expelled should send a literal tsunami of telltale gravitational waves. These should be detectable if they are there. Any particle possesses wave properties.

The first LIGO hunted the waves for nearly a decade and found none - limited range and sensitivity? or inadequate filters? Or, is the space-time aspect a not-fully-understood game-changer? According to Einstein's theory of relativity, when a gravitational wave arrives, space-time is distorted. Are we unable to detect this motion because we are in the same space-time as the occurrence, or because we are within our own gravity wave or because what is relative just is?

Strangelets have been thought to be a concern of sorts. Some scientists believe their composition has the properties that would "puncture" planets and leave tracer exit craters. Others speculate that when a strangelet comes into contact with ordinary matter, it hits a nucleus that is immediately catalyzed and converted into strange matter, and the process keeps going until all matter in the vicinity is converted. If true, you can imagine the problem, especially when scientists have actually produced this peculiar particle in the collider at Brookhaven. The "strange matter" hypothesis remains unproven and no one, so far, has witnessed the little assimilator in action!

Strange stars sure make strange articles!

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NASA's 'Curiosity' discovers more evidence for lakes, and possibly life, on Mars

© Handout/AFP/Getty Images

Artist's depiction shows water in Gale Crater on Mars

Billions of years ago, a lake once filled the 96-mile- (154-km) wide crater being explored by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, bolstering evidence that the planet most like Earth in the solar system was suitable for microbial life, scientists said on Monday.

The new findings combine more than two years of data collected by the rover since its sky-crane landing inside Gale Crater in August 2012.

Scientists discovered stacks of rocks containing water-deposited sediments inclined toward the crater's center, which now sports a three-mile (5 km) mound called Mount Sharp. That would mean that Mount Sharp didn't exist during a period of time roughly 3.5 billion years ago when the crater was filled with water, Curiosity researchers told reporters during a conference call.

"Finding the inclined strata was ... a complete surprise," said lead scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

"Sedimentary geology ... is the cutting edge for trying to understand the Earth. When oil companies collect seismic surveys across places, they are looking for inclined strata because ... then you get geometry that tells you where the rocks are that you're looking for," he added.

Shortly after landing, Curiosity found that Mars once had the chemical ingredients and the environmental conditions needed to support microbial life, fulfilling the primary goal of its mission.

The rover then began driving toward Mount Sharp to look for other habitable niches and learn if the life-friendly environments actually existed long enough for life to evolve, a complicated question since scientists don't even know how long it took for life to form and take hold on Earth.

"The size of the lake in Gale Crater and the length of time and series that water was showing up implies that there may have been sufficient time for life to get going and thrive," said NASA's Mars Exploration Program scientist Michael Meyer.

The new studies, which have not yet been published, point to a series of wet and dry times at Gale Crater, challenging a previously held notion that Mars' period of warm climate was early and relatively short-lived, scientists said.

"All that driving we did ... just didn't get us to Mount Sharp. It gave us the context to appreciate Mount Sharp," Grotzinger said of the rover, which has traveled around 5 miles (8 kms) since landing on Mars in 2012.

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