Body clock receptor linked to diabetes in new genetic study

ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2012) ? A study recently published in Nature Genetics has found new evidence for a link between the body clock hormone melatonin and type 2 diabetes. The study found that people who carry rare genetic mutations in the receptor for melatonin have a much higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

The findings should help scientists to more accurately assess personal diabetes risk and could lead to the development of personalised treatments.

Previous research has found that people who work night shifts have a higher risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Studies have also found that if volunteers have their sleep disrupted repeatedly for three days, they temporarily develop symptoms of diabetes.

The body's sleep-wake cycle is controlled by the hormone melatonin, which has effects including drowsiness and lowering body temperature. In 2008, a genetic study led by Imperial College London discovered that people with common variations in the gene for MT2, a receptor for melatonin, have a slightly higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

The new study reveals that carrying any of four rare mutations in the MT2 gene increases a person's risk of developing type 2 diabetes six times. The release of insulin, which regulates blood sugar levels, is known to be regulated by melatonin. The researchers suggest that mutations in the MT2 gene may disrupt the link between the body clock and insulin release, leading to abnormal control of blood sugar.

Professor Philippe Froguel, from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, who led the study, said: "Blood sugar control is one of the many processes regulated by the body's biological clock. This study adds to our understanding of how the gene that carries the blueprint for a key component in the clock can influence people's risk of diabetes.

"We found very rare variants of the MT2 gene that have a much larger effect than more common variants discovered before. Although each mutation is rare, they are common in the sense that everyone has a lot of very rare mutations in their DNA. Cataloguing these mutations will enable us to much more accurately assess a person's risk of disease based on their genetics."

In the study, the Imperial team and their collaborators at several institutions in the UK and France examined the MT2 gene in 7,632 people to look for more unusual variants that have a bigger effect on disease risk. They found 40 variants associated with type 2 diabetes, four of which were very rare and rendered the receptor completely incapable of responding to melatonin. The scientists then confirmed the link with these four variants in an additional sample of 11,854 people.

Professor Froguel and his team analysed each mutation by testing what effect they have on the MT2 receptor in human cells in the lab. The mutations that completely prevented the receptor from working proved to have a very big effect on diabetes risk, suggesting that there is a direct link between MT2 and the disease.

The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust, the National Institute for Health Research and the Medical Research Council in the UK and the Agence National de la Recherche, the Contrat de Projets Etat-R?gion Nord-Pas-De-Calais, the Soci?t? Francophone du Diab?te, the Fondation Recherche M?dicale and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Imperial College London, via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Am?lie Bonnefond, Nathalie Cl?ment, Katherine Fawcett, Lo?c Yengo, Emmanuel Vaillant, Jean-Luc Guillaume, Aur?lie Dechaume, Felicity Payne, Ronan Roussel, S?bastien Czernichow, Serge Hercberg, Samy Hadjadj, Beverley Balkau, Michel Marre, Olivier Lantieri, Claudia Langenberg, Nabila Bouatia-Naji, Guillaume Charpentier, Martine Vaxillaire, Ghislain Rocheleau, Nicholas J Wareham, Robert Sladek, Mark I McCarthy, Christian Dina, In?s Barroso, Ralf Jockers, Philippe Froguel. Rare MTNR1B variants impairing melatonin receptor 1B function contribute to type 2 diabetes. Nature Genetics, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/ng.1053

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/zIiEzhAwqCs/120129151052.htm

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Gingrich says commission should look at in vitro clinic management of embryos (Star Tribune)

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Missing Maine toddler's relatives take polygraphs (AP)

PORTLAND, Maine ? A website devoted to a Maine toddler who vanished six weeks ago says her uncle and maternal grandmother have taken polygraph tests as part of the police investigation.

Police are investigating the disappearance of Ayla Reynolds, who was reported missing from her father's Waterville home Dec. 17.

The website aylareynolds.com says Ayla's uncle passed a polygraph Thursday and her grandmother took one Friday but couldn't complete it because her prescription medication interfered.

State police spokesman Steve McCausland says investigators aren't commenting on details such as polygraph tests.

Ayla's father told police she wasn't in her bed when he checked on her the morning of Dec. 17.

The 1-year-old was wearing pajamas with the words "Daddy's Princess" on them and had a cast on her broken left arm before she vanished. Her mother lives in Portland.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120127/ap_on_re_us/us_missing_toddler

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Subpoenas issued to financial firms in expanded probe (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The Justice Department issued civil subpoenas to 11 financial institutions as part of a new effort to investigate misconduct in the packaging and sale of home loans to investors, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Friday.

Holder declined to provide specifics, including the names of the firms.

"We are wasting no time in aggressively pursuing any and all leads," Holder said at a news conference announcing details of a new working group to investigate misconduct in the residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) market, "you can expect more to follow."

President Barack Obama said he directed Holder to create the new unit in his State of the Union speech late Tuesday, saying it was needed to "help turn the page on an era of recklessness."

On Friday a slew of federal and state officials appeared at the news conference to provide details about the new group.

Housed within an earlier financial fraud task force that Obama created in 2009, it is expected to be staffed with around 50 attorneys, analysts and agents, officials said.

Some skeptics have questioned whether the new group is largely a political move because the other fraud task force already exists.

Also, the Obama administration has received heat from left-leaning activist groups that believe a separate effort to investigate misconduct in processing foreclosures and servicing home loans may not be rigorous enough to extract a meaningful settlement.

In exchange for providing up to $25 billion in housing relief, much in the form of cutting mortgage debt for distressed borrowers, the top U.S. banks are expected to put behind them government lawsuits about lending and servicing abuses - but not securitization claims.

The banks involved in the discussions include Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup and Ally Financial Inc.

Those talks have dragged into their second year as some states, including California and New York, criticized the direction of the negotiations and said the proposed settlement would release the banks from too many claims.

The deal appears to be getting closer, with last-ditch efforts to lure the hold-out states to join.

California has said it still has reservations about the deal, but California Attorney General Kamala Harris has met in recent weeks with federal officials in Washington to discuss her concerns about the settlement, people familiar with the matter said.

The attorney general in New York, Eric Schneiderman, was named as a co-chair of the new working group, prompting speculation that the position was partly aimed at persuading him to join the settlement.

In an interview with Reuters, Schneiderman said: "The releases have become narrow enough so that I'm confident a full investigation can go forward." Asked if he was signing on, he said, "Not yet," because "other issues" are still outstanding.

MULTIPLE EFFORTS

At the news conference, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan also said that the multistate deal will not prevent the working group from pursuing its own claims about the securitization of home loans.

"We would not be standing here today if we weren't absolutely confident that the releases that are being contemplated were quite narrow, focused on the conduct that was actually investigated," Donovan said.

"There will be concrete actions taken in the next few weeks to confirm we're serious," Schneiderman added in the interview.

Exactly what the new group will tackle is unclear, since the construction and sale of mortgage securities is already the subject of massive government and private lawsuits.

"The simple fact is that this is an election year, and politics will inevitably play a role in every aspect of what is at its core a superfluous investigation," said Richard Gottlieb, who heads the financial industry group at the law firm Dykema.

"Others have already done the leg work, the lawsuits have already been filed, and the courts will already be deciding these issues," said Gottlieb.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, for example, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, sued 17 large banks last September over losses on about $200 billion of subprime bonds and said the underlying mortgages did not meet investors' criteria.

Speaking at the news conference, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement director Robert Khuzami said his agency has already reviewed 25 million pages of documents on related investigations.

"To be clear, investigations into RMBS offerings have been ongoing at the SEC," Khuzami said.

Holder said the Justice Department had discussed the subpoenas with the SEC, and said the new requests do not duplicate earlier efforts from the SEC.

He also responded to criticism that federal enforcers have brought few marquee cases in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Holder said the department has brought around 2,100 mortgage-related cases.

"The notion that there has been inactivity over the course of the last three years is belied by a troublesome little thing called facts," Holder said.

Several top banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan, RBS Americas and Deutsche Bank, declined to comment when contacted by Reuters about the new working group's efforts.

(Reporting By Aruna Viswanatha and Jim Vicini in Washington, D.C. and Karen Freifeld in New York; Editing by Tim Dobbyn and Matthew Lewis)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120127/bs_nm/us_mortgages_subpoenas

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Tomorrow's Spies Will Drop F-BOMBS Everywhere [Spying]

Fuck. It's a word that commands attention. These F-BOMB computers, however, are designed to do just the opposite—quietly and inconspicuously gather sensitive information from within secure areas. And if the F-Bomb is discovered or destroyed, fuck it! It only cost $50 to build in the first place. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Ejx6ye4w12Y/tomorrows-spies-will-drop-f+bombs-all-over-the-place

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Researchers shed light on magnetic mystery of graphite

Friday, January 27, 2012

The physical property of magnetism has historically been associated with metals such as iron, nickel and cobalt; however, graphite ? an organic mineral made up of stacks of individual carbon sheets ? has baffled researchers in recent years by showing weak signs of magnetism.

The hunt for an explanation has not been without controversy, with several research groups proposing different theories. The most recent suggestion, published today, 27 January, in the journal EPL (Europhysics Letters), has been put forward by a research group from the University of Manchester that includes Nobel prize-winning scientist Professor Sir Andre Geim.

The research group, led by Dr Irina Grigorieva, found that magnetism in many commercially available graphite crystals is down to micron-sized clusters of predominantly iron that would usually be difficult to find unless the right instruments were used in a particular way.

Finding the way to make graphite magnetic could be the first step to utilising it as a bio-compatible magnet for use in medicine and biology as effective biosensors.

To arrive at their conclusions, the researchers firstly cut up a piece of commercially-available graphite into four sections and measured the magnetisation of each piece. Surprisingly, they found significant variations in the magnetism of each sample. It was reasonable for them to conclude that the magnetic response had to be caused by external factors, such as small impurities of another material.

To check this hypothesis, the researchers peered deep into the structure of the samples using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) ? a very powerful microscope that images samples by scanning it with a beam of electrons ? and found that there were unusually heavy particles positioned deep under the surface.

The majority of these particles were confirmed to be iron and titanium, using a technique known as X-ray microanalysis. As oxygen was also present, the particles were likely to be either magnetite or titanomagnetite, both of which are magnetic.

The researchers were also able to deduce how many magnetic particles would be needed, and how far apart they would need to be spaced in order to create the originally observed magnetism. The observations from their experiments agreed with their estimations, meaning the visualised magnetic particles could account for the whole magnetic signal in the sample.

Dr Grigorieva, said: "The excitement around the findings of ferromagnetism in graphite, i.e. pure carbon, is due to the fact that magnetism is not normally found in organic matter. If we can learn to create and control magnetism in carbon-based materials, especially graphene, this will be an important development for sensors and spintronics."

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The paper can be downloaded from http://iopscience.iop.org/0295-5075/97/4/47001

Institute of Physics: http://www.iop.org

Thanks to Institute of Physics for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/117149/Researchers_shed_light_on_magnetic_mystery_of_graphite

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(AP)

Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system.
Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components.

Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called ?religious rights.?
When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to ?the reasonable? Muslim demands for their ?religious rights,? they also get the other components under the table. Here?s how it works (percentages source CIA: The World Fact Book (2007)).
As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:

United States ? Muslim 1.0%
Australia ? Muslim 1.5%
Canada ? Muslim 1.9%
China ? Muslim 1%-2%
Italy ? Muslim 1.5%
Norway ? Muslim 1.8%

At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:

Denmark ? Muslim 2%
Germany ? Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom ? Muslim 2.7%
Spain ? Muslim 4%
Thailand ? Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population.
They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves ? along with threats for failure to comply. ( United States ).

France ? Muslim 8%
Philippines ? Muslim 5%
Sweden ? Muslim 5%
Switzerland ? Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands ? Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad &Tobago ? Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.
When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions ( Paris ?car-burnings). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats ( Amsterdam ? Mohammed cartoons).

Guyana ? Muslim 10%
India ? Muslim 13.4%
Israel ? Muslim 16%
Kenya ? Muslim 10%
Russia ? Muslim 10-15%

After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:
Ethiopia ? Muslim 32.8%

At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:

Bosnia ? Muslim 40%
Chad ? Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon ? Muslim 59.7%

From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:

Albania ? Muslim 70%
Malaysia ? Muslim 60.4%
Qatar ? Muslim 77.5%
Sudan ? Muslim 70%

After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:

Bangladesh ? Muslim 83%
Egypt ? Muslim 90%
Gaza ? Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia ? Muslim 86.1%
Iran ? Muslim 98%
Iraq ? Muslim 97%
Jordan ? Muslim 92%
Morocco ? Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan ? Muslim 97%
Palestine ? Muslim 99%
Syria ? Muslim 90%
Tajikistan ? Muslim 90%
Turkey ? Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates ? Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of ?Dar-es-Salaam? ? the Islamic House of Peace ? there?s (supposed) to be peace because everybody is a Muslim: we know however that this isnt true is it...?

Afghanistan ? Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia ? Muslim 100%
Somalia ? Muslim 100%
Yemen ? Muslim 99.9%

Of course, that?s not the case. To satisfy their religiously ordained blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons...and they are coming to a neighborhood near you...so keep thinking they are not going to harm you and they "accept" you.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120126/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_apnewsalert

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