Mexico Blames US

"Poverty and desperation" led to the deaths of at least 50 migrants abandoned in a Texas lorry, Mexico's president has said.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador blamed trafficking and "a lack of control" at the border - the worst case of migrant deaths due to smuggling in the US.

Nearly two dozen Mexicans, seven Guatemalans and two Hondurans were among the dead.

Those found alive, including four children, were taken to hospital.

The survivors were "hot to the touch" and suffering from heat stroke and heat exhaustion.

So far, Mexican authorities have said that at least two Mexican citizens are being treated for dehydration in hospital. Consular officials are working to confirm their identities.

Authorities are working to confirm the nationalities of remaining victims.

According to US authorities, three people "believed to be part of the smuggling conspiracy" have been taken into custody.

Speaking at his daily briefing, Mr Lopez Obrador, popularly known as Amlo, called the discovery a "tremendous tragedy", and said Mexico would work to repatriate the remains of its citizens.  READ MORE...

Whale

 

Bill Benefits Wealthy Americans

A retirement bill currently under negotiation in the Senate gives rich Americans a tax break by bringing forward the payment schedule to remain revenue-neutral within the 10-year budget window, but will ultimately add to the national deficit unless a future Congress raises taxes.

The Senate’s Enhancing American Retirement Now (EARN) Act raises the age at which taxpayers must start making withdrawals from 72 to 75, allowing them three extra years of tax-free growth.

Most Americans start living off their retirement accounts well before the age of 75, so the bumped-up age requirement really only affects the wealthy, who often use their retirement accounts as tax-sheltered investment vehicles rather than as savings to cover the cost of living in old age.

The bill throws another bone to rich taxpayers — and the Wall Street fund managers who look after their money — by allowing them to deposit an additional $10,000 a year into their retirement accounts beginning between the ages of 60 and 63. Setting aside an extra $10,000 a year is something most Americans can’t afford to do.  READ MORE...

Balance

 

China's Received Signals from Aliens

The signals were detected by the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) located in 

southwest China's Guizhou Province. (Image credit: NAO/FAST)

China is claiming that its enormous "Sky Eye" telescope may have picked up trace signals from a distant alien civilization, according to a recently posted and subsequently deleted report by Chinese scientists.


Astronomers at Beijing Normal University have discovered "several cases of possible technological traces and extraterrestrial civilizations from outside the Earth," according to a report published Tuesday (June 14) in Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China's Ministry of Science and Technology.


The signals were picked up by China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), nicknamed "Sky Eye," which is the largest radio telescope in the world. 

Sky Eye was put to work scanning deep space for radio signals that could indicate extraterrestrial life in 2019; sifting through that data in 2020, the researchers said they spotted two suspicious narrow-band, potentially artificial radio signals. 

Then, in 2022, a targeted survey of known exoplanets found another strange narrow-band radio signal, bringing the tally up to three.  READ MORE...

Fish Tank

 

Repeating Ball

 

Protein in Beans

Protein: it's not just for bodybuilders. Dietician Nancy Waldek explains that the human body doesn't naturally store protein, so folks need to consume protein regularly through their daily diets to create, maintain, and fuel cells, via Piedmont Healthcare.

Since everybody has different activity levels and calorie needs, it should come as no surprise that the amount of protein you should eat in a day varies from person to person. According to Harvard, a person's Recommended Dietary Allowance for protein is 0.8 grams per kilogram of their body weight.

For example, a person weighing 130 pounds would have an RDA of 46.8 grams of protein per day. In order to calculate your personal RDA, Harvard says, you can multiply your own weight in pounds by 0.36. Animal sources might be high in protein, but they're also high in saturated fat, according to Livestrong.

Plant-based protein sources like beans provide an easy and healthy way to bypass unwanted fat content and still fulfill your daily protein quota.  READ MORE...

Sunset

 

Britian's Early Inhabitants

Archaeologists have unearthed 600,000-year-old evidence of Britain’s early inhabitants near Canterbury, England.

The discovery, led by the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge has found evidence of early humans that date from between 560,000 and 620,000 years ago during the Palaeolithic Period.

The site was first identified in the 1920’s when labourers found handaxes in an ancient riverbed, which researchers have now applied modern dating techniques through radiometric dating, infrared-radiofluorescence (IR-RF) dating and controlled excavations of the site.

In a study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the researchers have confirmed the presence of Homo heidelbergensis, an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene and an ancestor of Neanderthals. 

Homo heidelbergensis is thought to have descended from the African Homo erectus during the first early expansions of hominins out of Africa beginning roughly 2 million years ago.

Early humans are known to have been present in Britain from as early as 840,000, and potentially 950,000 years ago, but these early visits were fleeting due to cold glacial climatic changes driving populations out of northern Europe which colonised Britain during a warming phase between 560,000 and 620,000 ago. 

During this period, Britain was connected to Europe on the north-western peninsular of the European continent, allowing populations to migrate to new hunting grounds probably during the warmer summer months.  READ MORE...

Another Sloth

 

Microscopic Mites Mating on our Faces

First ever comprehensive DNA analysis of mites that live in the hair follicles of all humans reveals explanations for their bizarre mating habits, body features, and evolutionary future.

Microscopic mites that live in human pores and mate on our faces at night are becoming such simplified organisms due to their unusual lifestyles that they may soon become one with humans, according to new research findings.

The mites are passed on during birth and are carried by almost every human, with numbers peaking in adults as the pores grow bigger. 

They measure around 0.3mm long, are found in the hair follicles on the face and nipples, including the eyelashes, and eat the sebum naturally released by cells in the pores. They become active at night and move between follicles looking to mate.


The first ever genome sequencing study of the D. folliculorum mite found that their isolated existence and resulting inbreeding is causing them to shed unnecessary genes and cells and move towards a transition from external parasites to internal symbionts.  READ MORE...

Immitations

 

Silent Running

 

Mysterious Impact Site on Moon

Artist’s animation of a rocket booster crashing into the moon.

Astronomers discovered a rocket body heading toward a lunar collision late last year. Impact occurred on March 4, 2022, with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) later spotting the resulting crater. 

Surprisingly the crater is actually two craters, an eastern crater (18-meter diameter, about 19.5 yards) superimposed on a western crater (16-meter diameter, about 17.5 yards).

The double crater was unexpected and may indicate that the rocket body had large masses at each end. Typically a spent rocket has mass concentrated at the motor end; the rest of the rocket stage mainly consists of an empty fuel tank. 

Since the origin of the rocket body remains uncertain, the double nature of the crater may indicate its identity.

No other rocket body impacts on the Moon created double craters. The four Apollo SIV-B craters were somewhat irregular in outline (Apollos 13, 14, 15, 17) and were substantially larger (greater than 35 meters, about 38 yards) than each of the double craters. 

The maximum width (29 meters, about 31.7 yards) of the double crater of the mystery rocket body was near that of the S-IVBs.  READ MORE...

Happy Horses

 

Hair Growth & Immune System Link

Source: Salk Institute

Salk scientists have uncovered an unexpected molecular target of a common treatment for alopecia, a condition in which a person’s immune system attacks their own hair follicles, causing hair loss.

The findings, published in Nature Immunology on June 23, 2022, describe how immune cells called regulatory T cells interact with skin cells using a hormone as a messenger to generate new hair follicles and hair growth.

“For the longest time, regulatory T cells have been studied for how they decrease excessive immune reactions in autoimmune diseases,” says corresponding author Ye Zheng, associate professor in Salk’s NOMIS Center for Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis.

“Now we’ve identified the upstream hormonal signal and downstream growth factor that actually promote hair growth and regeneration completely separate from suppressing immune response.”

The scientists didn’t begin by studying hair loss. They were interested in researching the roles of regulatory T cells and glucocorticoid hormones in autoimmune diseases. (Glucocorticoid hormones are cholesterol-derived steroid hormones produced by the adrenal gland and other tissues.) They first investigated how these immune components functioned in multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease and asthma.

They found that glucocorticoids and regulatory T cells did not function together to play a significant role in any of these conditions. So, they thought they’d have more luck looking at environments where regulatory T cells expressed particularly high levels of glucocorticoid receptors (which respond to glucocorticoid hormones), such as in skin tissue.

The scientists induced hair loss in normal mice and mice lacking glucocorticoid receptors in their regulatory T cells.

“After two weeks, we saw a noticeable difference between the mice—the normal mice grew back their hair, but the mice without glucocorticoid receptors barely could,” says first author Zhi Liu, a postdoctoral fellow in the Zheng lab.  READ MORE...

Kookaburra

 

Drug Stops Depression

The researchers showed that the systemic administration of the new drug alters neurobehavioral 

in mice, reducing anxiety-like behavior. It also provides a promising landscape for future studies 

to assess whether the drug could help combat stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, cancer, and neurodegeneration.

The preclinical drug works by inhibiting the kinase Cdk5 which is found in mature neurons. Cdk5 has long been linked to neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, but prior inhibitors have largely failed to cross the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain.


A new preclinical drug reported by James Bibb, Ph.D., and colleagues has the potential to combat depression, brain injury, and cognitive disorders. The drug, which is notable for being brain-permeable, works by inhibiting the kinase enzyme Cdk5.


Cdk5 is an important signaling regulator in brain neurons. Over three decades of research, it has been linked to neuropsychiatric and degenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Knocking out the enzyme in mice makes them more resilient to stress, improves cognition, protects neurons from stroke and brain trauma, and slows neurodegeneration.


While Cdk5 inhibitors may offer potential therapeutic benefits and new ways to study basic brain function, previous first- and second-generation anti-Cdk5 compounds largely get blocked at the blood-brain barrier, which restricts solute movement from the blood to the extracellular fluid of the central nervous system. So far, no Cdk5 inhibitor has been authorized for the treatment of any neuropsychiatric or degenerative condition.  READ MORE...

Tornado

 

Flawed Declaration and Constitution

Declaration of Independence

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

US Constitution

Does not mention RACE, COLOR, ABORTION, FEMALE

Does not mention slaves or slavery

The 3/5 clause was merely a way of assigning value to slaves for state representation in the legislature

It does not give the right to vote but gives that power to the states

NOTE:  if some foreign person read our constitution, they would have no idea that raced-based slavery existed in the United States.

Our Founding Fathers were:

• Wealthy
• Arrogant
• Racists
• Elitists
• White Supremacists
• Had no intention of practicing equality or equity

How does the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution justify this?  (See below)

1. Blacks were slaves
2. Blacks were considered property
3. Blacks were not equal
4. Blacks could not vote
5. Females could not vote
6. Females were not equal
7. Females could not hold office
8. Females could not own property in some states

NOW, looking at the equality issue...   there is no way in hell that our creator gave us equality...

>>>Some people are taller than others

>>>Some people are prettier than others

>>>Some people are smarter than others

>>>Some people are musically talented, others not

>>>Some people are artistically talented, others not

>>>Some people have outstanding physical abilities, others not

SO HOW IN THE HELL ARE WE EQUAL???

A Divided America

Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, recently stated on camera:  "...YOU AINT SEEN NOTHING YET...  TO HELL WITH THE SUPREME COURT..."

This lady is a US Congresswoman who is opening defying the laws of the land...  the media would have been all over this if Trump has said it or even implied it...

But more importantly, is the fact that for the first time ever, the US is incredibly divided and the divide revolves around the politics of two parties.

Interestingly, when the Dems don't win, they get into the streets and protest which turns into violence and destruction of public and personal property...  But, when the Republicans don't win, they also protest and oftentimes as well, the protest turns into violence and destruction of property...

• Both sides are to blame...
• Both sides are wrong...
• Both sides are hurting this country...

And, nobody seems to care...

Big Versus Small

 

If you were playing professional basketball or American football, one would want BIG...  but, if you are looking for a spouse, one typically wants small...

This may not have been the best analogy to use for the size of government, but you think about it, the analogy hits the mark...

The bigger the government, the more taxes the government has to collect from its citizens to pay for everything.  Businesses and the wealthy can shelter their money away from taxes, so the burden falls on the general population...

In other words, you and I pay for the government that we have...  but, taxes alone will not pay the bills, so our government has to borrow money and 1/3 of the money that we have borrowed we owe to CHINA...

Everything that is referred to as PUBLIC is paid for by the government which is paid for through our taxes.

• Public Education
• Public Transportation
• Public Parks and Recreation
• Public Highways and Bridges
• Public Healthcare
• Medicare and Medicaid
• Social Security
• Unemployment Insurance
• Public Officials
• Agriculture Subsidies
• Health Insurance
• Subsidies of all kinds
• Welfare of all kinds
• Amtrak
• Public Beaches

These programs are also considered to be examples of SOCIALISM but put that aside and look at what you tax dollars pay for and could you not do a better job...

How many city supervisors do you see standing around watching 2-3 others dig a hole?

How long do you have to wait on hold whenever you need to talk to a government worker about a mistake?

This Will Leave You Speechless

 

More Galaxies Than Ever Imagined

The Universe is a vast place, filled with more galaxies than we’ve ever been able to count, even in just the portion we’ve been able to observe. Some 40 years ago, Carl Sagan taught the world that there were hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way alone, and perhaps as many as 100 billion galaxies within the observable Universe. 

Although he never said it in his famous television series, Cosmos, the phrase “billions and billions” has become synonymous with his name, and also with the number of stars we think of as being inherent to each galaxy, as well as the number of galaxies contained within the visible Universe.

But when it comes to the number of galaxies that are actually out there, we’ve learned a number of important facts that have led us to revise that number upwards, and not just by a little bit. Our most detailed observations of the distant Universe, from the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, gave us an estimate of 170 billion galaxies. 

A theoretical calculation from a few years ago — the first to account for galaxies too small, faint, and distant to be seen — put the estimate far higher: at 2 trillion. But even that estimate is too low. There ought to be at least 6 trillion, and perhaps more like 20 trillion, galaxies, if we’re ever able to count them all. Here’s how we got there.

The first thing you have to realize about estimating the number of galaxies in the Universe is that the part of the Universe we can see — both today and ever, even into the infinite future — is and will always be finite. The Universe, as we know and perceive it, began with the hot Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago. 

With some 1080 atoms within it, about five times as much mass in the form of dark matter, as well as billions of times as many photons and neutrinos, gravitation has had plenty of time to pull the matter into clumps, collections, groups, and clusters. This has led to the formation of stars and galaxies with a variety of different properties: masses, sizes, brightnesses and more.  READ MORE...

Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

First of It's Kind

SEVIERVILLE, Tenn.--Tennessee's Soaky Mountain Waterpark in Sevierville will debut a water coaster promising to be the first-of-its-kind.

Soaky Mountain Waterpark announced the opening of the water coaster which will be known as "The Edge" will open to the public on Wednesday after first being announced last November. The slide will feature two lanes on a 70 foot tower.

The two slides will have riders sit on double tubes before they are dropped three stories into a valley. Riders will then be propelled up a hill into an enclosed tube and dropped again where they will blast up a wall and dropped once again feeling extreme G forces.

At the end of the line, riders will see which of the two is the winner of the duel. In a statement release when the attraction was first announced, Soaky Mountain GM Dave Andrews says "Our new water coaster, fittingly named, ‘The Edge’ is going to be a showstopper! 

It will be perched on the edge of our waterpark, and span two football fields in length. It’s fusing together WhiteWater’s Master Blaster water coaster with their iconic Boomerango. But, we are not adding just one slide, we are doubling it for a dueling thrill!”  READ MORE...

Rock & Roll

 

Visit a Museum to Eliminate Stress

It turns out that visiting a museum is good for your health: New research from the University of Pennsylvania found reductions in anxiety and depression and increases in cognitive function and empathy, among a number of other promising outcomes.

“Art museums have great potential to positively impact people, including reducing their stress, enhancing positive emotional experiences, and helping people to feel less lonely and more connected,” researcher Katherine Cotter told Hyperallergic.

The study, titled “Art Museums As Institutions for Human Flourishing,” was published in the Journal of Positive Psychology by Cotter and James O. Pawelski of the University of Pennsylvania.

Their work is encompassed in the burgeoning field of positive psychology, which studies “the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive.”

Drawing on research from different academic disciplines, the study is part of an initiative that examines how the arts and humanities affect “human flourishing” — a comprehensive framework that takes into account both “ill-being” (living with disease, disorders, or in negative states) and “well-being” (practicing positive health habits).

“We believe our collaborative and interdisciplinary work is all the more vital at a time when so many individuals and communities lack the levels of well-being they need to thrive,” Pawelski said.  READ MORE...

Sometime You Need Help...