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Category: evolution

Here it is, part one of my new trilogy…Sleep Deprivation…it’s a killer. Personally, I used to miss whole nights clubbing and gigging, and even after that, I used to cut back the hours of sleep thinking I was getting the most from my life and being really clever. Then I heard of Matthew Walker, and read his book. I changed immediately and wow, I have never felt such a difference, it is like light and day. Every aspect of my life improved, from mental health, to physical wellbeing, to immune function (I never seem to be ill any more and never get cold sores!!! anecdotal but the truth). The most telling fact. If I tried to drive more than a couple of hours down the motorway I would be fighting to keep my eyes open by the end…now, that is never a problem (although I still want a Tesla). Sleep is now what I consider a non-negotiable. It comes first. It is the foundation on which everything else stands.

I will just break down exactly why depriving yourself of sleep is a fools errand. You may gain a hour or two here and there, but it does not compare to the years it wipes off your lifespan, and even worse the decrepit, run down years of pain and inactivity that blight the end decades.

All that pain, when you could be fully active and fulfilling your dreams and ambitions.

If you want to try Melatonin to aid your sleep, or any other of their products, I have arranged a discount for my friends and viewers at Do Not Age, the highest quality, the lowest prices and the best customer service, all in one place.
Just use the code MTB when checking out.
https://donotage.org.

And if you want to watch how stress effects the body and the evolution that set it all in motion, then you might find this video of interest.

Personally, I used to miss whole nights clubbing and gigging, and even after that, I used to cut back the hours of sleep thinking I was getting the most from my life and being really clever.
Then I heard of Matthew Walker, and read his book. I changed immediately and wow, I have never felt such a difference, it is like light and day.

Every aspect of my life improved, from mental health, to physical wellbeing, to immune function (I never seem to be ill any more and never get cold sores!!! anecdotal but the truth).

The most telling fact. If I tried to drive more than a couple of hours down the motorway I would be fighting to keep my eyes open by the end…now, that is never a problem (although I still want a Tesla)

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I have to admit, they really sound “alien-like” if you ask me. 😃

Just when we thought octopuses couldn’t be any weirder, it turns out that they and their cephalopod brethren evolve differently from nearly every other organism on the planet.

In a surprising twist, in April 2017 scientists discovered that octopuses, along with some squid and cuttlefish species, routinely edit their RNA (ribonucleic acid) sequences to adapt to their environment.

This is weird because that’s really not how adaptations usually happen in multicellular animals. When an organism changes in some fundamental way, it typically starts with a genetic mutation — a change to the DNA.

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University of rochester — working at the intersection of aging, DNA repair, and cancer.

Dr. Vera Gorbunova is the Doris Johns Cherry Professor, in the Department of Biology, and Co-director, Rochester Aging Research Center, at University of Rochester.

Her research is focused on understanding the mechanisms of longevity and genome stability and on the studies of exceptionally long-lived mammals.

Dr. Gorbunova earned her B.Sc. degrees at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia, and her Ph.D. at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel.

Dr. Gorbunova was instrumental in pioneering the comparative biology approach to studying aging and identifying rules that control the evolution of tumor suppressor mechanisms depending on the species lifespan and body mass.

Dr. Gorbunova also investigates the role of Sirtuin proteins in maintaining genome stability.

More recently the focus of her research has been on the longest-lived rodent species, the naked mole rat and the blind mole rat. Dr. Gorbunova identified high molecular weight hyaluronan as the key mediator of cancer-resistance in the naked mole rat.

Dr. Gorbunova’s work has received awards from the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Glenn Foundation, American Federation for Aging Research, and from the National Institutes of Health.

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The Big Bang might never have existed as many cosmologists start to question the origin of the Universe. The Big Bang is a point in time defined by a mathematical extrapolation. The Big Bang theory tells us that something has to have changed around 13.7 billion years ago. So, there is no “point” where the Big Bang was, it was always an extended volume of space, according to the Eternal Inflation model. In light of Digital Physics, as an alternative view, it must have been the Digital Big Bang with the lowest possible entropy in the Universe — 1 bit of information — a coordinate in the vast information matrix. If you were to ask what happened before the first observer and the first moments after the Big Bang, the answer might surprise you with its straightforwardness: We extrapolate backwards in time and that virtual model becomes “real” in our minds as if we were witnessing the birth of the Universe.

In his theoretical work, Andrew Strominger of Harvard University speculates that the Alpha Point (the Big Bang) and the Omega Point form the so-called ‘Causal Diamond’ of the conscious observer where the Alpha Point has only 1 bit of entropy as opposed to the maximal entropy of some incredibly gigantic amount of bits at the Omega Point. While suggesting that we are part of the conscious Universe and time is holographic in nature, Strominger places the origin of the Universe in the infinite ultra-intelligent future, the Omega Singularity, rather than the Big Bang.

The Universe is not what textbook physics tells us except that we perceive it in this way — our instruments and measurement devices are simply extensions of our senses, after all. Reality is not what it seems. Deep down it’s pure information — waves of potentiality — and consciousness orchestrating it all. The Big Bang theory, drawing a lot of criticism as of late, uses a starting assumption of the “Universe from nothing,” (a proverbial miracle, a ‘quantum fluctuation’ christened by scientists), or the initial Cosmological Singularity. But aside from this highly improbable happenstance, we can just as well operate from a different set of assumptions and place the initial Cosmological Singularity at the Omega Point — the transcendental attractor, the Source, or the omniversal holographic projector of all possible timelines.

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A new study has found that a novel T cell genetically engineered by University of Arizona Health Sciences researchers is able to target and attack pathogenic T cells that cause Type 1 diabetes, which could lead to new immunotherapy treatments.

The immune system fights bacteria, viruses and other pathogens by utilizing several types of T , all of which have receptors that are specific to particular antigens. On killer T cells, the receptor works in concert with three signaling modules and a coreceptor to destroy the . Michael Kuhns, Ph.D., an associate professor in the UArizona College of Medicine—Tucson Department of Immunobiology, copied the evolutionary design to engineer a five-module , or 5MCAR, T cell.

“The 5MCAR was an attempt to figure out if we could build something by biomimicry, using some of evolution’s natural pieces, and redirect T cells to do what we want them to do. We engineered a 5MCAR that would direct killer T cells to target autoimmune T cells that mediate Type 1 diabetes,” said Dr. Kuhns, who is member of the UArizona Cancer Center, BIO5 Institute and Arizona Center on Aging. “So now, a killer T cell will actually recognize another T cell. We flipped T cell-mediated immunity on its head.”

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Mice, fruit flies and dogs are common creatures of laboratories across the country, valuable to researchers for their genetic proximity to humans. But what about lampreys?

A new Yale School of Public Health study has enlisted this unlikely and slimy ally in the fight against .

By carefully tracing the evolution of a select number of cancer-causing genes in a variety of species, the researchers evaluated which animals are—and are not—effective in gauging how an analog of those genes in humans can lead to cancer. What they found is surprising: such as lampreys share significant similarities in these certain genes compared to humans, while do not. Their findings, published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution, will help molecular biologists and other scientists as they work to find potential cures to certain cancers, such as lymphoma.

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Summary: A new method identified a large set of gene regulatory regions in the brain, selected throughout human evolution.

Source: Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.

With only 1% difference, the human and chimpanzee protein-coding genomes are remarkably similar. Understanding the biological features that make us human is part of a fascinating and intensely debated line of research. Researchers at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the University of Lausanne have developed a new approach to pinpoint, for the first time, adaptive human-specific changes in the way genes are regulated in the brain.

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Dogs are cool!

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Dogs were shaped during the course of domestication both in their behavior and in their anatomical features. Here we show that domestication transformed the facial muscle anatomy of dogs specifically for facial communication with humans. A muscle responsible for raising the inner eyebrow intensely is uniformly present in dogs but not in wolves. Behavioral data show that dogs also produce the eyebrow movement significantly more often and with higher intensity than wolves do, with highest-intensity movements produced exclusively by dogs. Interestingly, this movement increases paedomorphism and resembles an expression humans produce when sad, so its production in dogs may trigger a nurturing response. We hypothesize that dogs’ expressive eyebrows are the result of selection based on humans’ preferences.

Domestication shaped wolves into dogs and transformed both their behavior and their anatomy. Here we show that, in only 33, 000 y, domestication transformed the facial muscle anatomy of dogs specifically for facial communication with humans. Based on dissections of dog and wolf heads, we show that the levator anguli oculi medialis, a muscle responsible for raising the inner eyebrow intensely, is uniformly present in dogs but not in wolves. Behavioral data, collected from dogs and wolves, show that dogs produce the eyebrow movement significantly more often and with higher intensity than wolves do, with highest-intensity movements produced exclusively by dogs. Interestingly, this movement increases paedomorphism and resembles an expression that humans produce when sad, so its production in dogs may trigger a nurturing response in humans.

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