New research shows molecular mechanism by which neuronal projections can regenerate after injury

On By A.P.In B-RAF kinase, Dr. Kevin O'Donovan, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Kebmodee, Neurology, Neuron, neuroplasticity, Neuroscience, neuroscientist, regenerative medicine, Science1 Comment

The mechanisms that drive axon regeneration after central nervous system (CNS) injury or disease are proposed to recapitulate, at least in part, the developmental axon growth pathways. This hypothesis is bolstered by a new study by O’Donovan et al. showing that activation of a B-RAF kinase signaling pathway is sufficient to promote robust axon growth not only during development but also after injury.

B-RAF was previously shown to be essential for developmental axon growth but it was not known if additional signaling pathways are required. In this study, the authors demonstrate that activation of B-RAF alone is sufficient to promote sensory axon growth during development. Using a conditional B-RAF gain-of-function mouse model, the authors elegantly prove that B-RAF has a cell-autonomous role in the developmental axon growth program. Notably, activated B-RAF promoted overgrowth of embryonic sensory axons projecting centrally in the spinal cord, suggesting that this pathway may normally be quiescent in central axons.

Could activated B-RAF also enhance axon regeneration in the adult central nervous system? The authors found that activated B-RAF not only enabled sensory axon growth into the spinal cord after spinal injury, but also promoted regrowth of axons projecting in the optic nerve. Regeneration in the injured CNS is prevented by both the poor intrinsic regrowth capacity of axons and by inhibitory factors in the tissue environment. Importantly, the B-RAF–activated signaling growth program was insensitive to this repulsive environment.

Interestingly, the authors find that B-RAF synergizes with the PI3-kinase–mTOR pathway, which also functions downstream of growth factors. This opens the possibility that combinatorial approaches that integrate these two pathways may heighten regenerative capacity.

This in vivo study significantly advances the understanding of the role of MAP kinases in axon growth and suggests that reactivation of the B-RAF pathway may be exploited to promote axon regeneration in the injured central nervous system. An exciting future avenue will be to determine the downstream mechanisms controlled by B-RAF.

O’Donovan, K.J., et al. 2014. J. Exp. Med. doi:10.1084/jem.20131780.

http://jem.rupress.org/content/211/5/746.1.long

New research shows that women who never sunbathe are twice as likely to die than those who do so regularly

On By A.P.In breast cancer, Cancer, death, diabetes, Kebmodee, Medicine, melanoma, multiple sclerosis, Prostate Cancer, rickets, Science, sunbathing, The Sun, tuberculosis, ultraviolet, ultraviolet light, UV, UV light, vitamin, Vitamin D, Yinka EboLeave a comment

Researchers at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, say guidelines that advise people to stay out of the sun unless wearing sunscreen may be harmful, particularly in northern countries which have long, cold winters.

Exposure to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight is often cited as a cause of skin melanoma (malignant tumour of melanocytes) and avoiding overexposure to the sun to prevent all types of skin cancer is recommended by health authorities.

But the new study, which followed nearly 30000 women over 20 years, suggests that women who stay out of the sun are at increased risk of melanomas and are twice as likely to die from any cause, including cancer.

It is thought that a lack of vitamin D may be to blame. Vitamin D is created in the body through exposure to sunshine and a deficiency is known to increase the risk of diabetes, TB, multiple sclerosis and rickets.

Previous studies showed that vitamin D can increase survival rates for women with breast cancer while deficiencies can signal prostate cancer in men.

The study looked at 29518 Swedish women who were recruited from 1990 to 1992 and asked to monitor their sunbathing habits.

After 20 years there had been 2545 deaths and it was found that women who never sunbathed were twice as likely to have died from any cause.

Women who sunbathed in the mild Swedish summer were also 10% less likely to die from skin cancer, although those who sunbathed abroad in sunnier countries were twice as likely to die from melanoma.

Yinka Ebo, senior health information officer at Cancer Research UK, said striking a balance was important.

“The reasons behind higher death rates in women with lower sun exposure are unexplained . overexposure to UV radiation from the sun or sunbeds is the main cause of skin cancer.”

http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2014/05/09/avoiding-sunshine-could-kill-you-study-finds

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

China Mulls Construction of a High Speed Train to the U.S.

On By A.P.In Alaska, Beijing Times, Bering Strait, Canada, China, Daniel Politi, Engineering, English Channel, Kebmodee, train, transportation1 Comment

by Daniel Politi

It sure sounds far-fetched but a story in the Beijing Times claims China is considering building a high-speed train that would connect China’s northeast with the United States. The project would cross Siberia and the Bering Strait to Alaska, and then go across Canada into the United States, according to the English-language report published in the state-run China Daily. To cross the Bering Strait into Alaska, the railway would need a 125-mile underwater tunnel, which implies it would be around four times the length of the tunnel that crosses the English Channel, notes a very skeptical Washington Post article on the report.

China Daily claims that the technology to construct such a long underwater tunnel already exists and will be used to build a tunnel to connect China’s Fujian province with Taiwan. “Right now we’re already in discussions. Russia has already been thinking about this for many years,” said a railway expert cited by the Beijing Times, according to the Independent’s report on the story. The train would reportedly travel at around 220mph, meaning the entire trip between the United States and China would take around two days.

What is being called the China-Russia-Canada-America line is one of four large-scale international high-speed rail projects the country wants to build, the Guardian writes, citing the Beijing Times:

The first is a line that would run from London via Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Kiev and Moscow, where it would split into two routes, one of which would run to China through Kazakhstan and the other through eastern Siberia. The second line would begin in the far-western Chinese city of Urumqi and then run through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey to Germany. The third would begin in the south-western city of Kunming and end in Singapore.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/05/10/china_mulls_construction_of_a_high_speed_train_to_the_u_s.html

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Using botox to treat depression

On By A.P.In botox, Charles Darwin, Darwin, Depression, dermatology, Eric Finzi, frown, Georgetown Medical School, Journal of Psychiatric Research, Medicine, Neuropsychiatric Disease, Neuropsychopharmacology, Neuroscience, neuroscientist, Norman Rosenthal, psychiatrist, Psychiatry, smile, wrinkleLeave a comment

Nearly 150 years ago, Charles Darwin recognized that facial expressions not only communicate the emotions we feel but intensify them, by sending cues back to the brain. In the ensuing decades, researchers proved again and again that we can influence the way we feel by the visage we project. Smiling can help us feel happier. Frowning can make us feel angrier.

But it was only in the past few years that a dermatologist from Chevy Chase, Md., noticed that some of the patients whose brows he temporarily paralyzed with Botox, to remove wrinkles, began to feel relief from depression. That physician, Eric Finzi, took his idea to psychiatrist, Norman Rosenthal, who teaches at Georgetown Medical School and had spent many years studying how light and odors, transmitted to the brain through the nerves that connect it with the eyes and nose, affect our moods.

Now there have been three small studies that show that Botox injections can help with depression. In the latest, published in the current issue of the Journal of Psychiatric Research, Finzi and Rosenthal showed that 17 of 33 patients experienced better than 50 percent reductions in their depression symptoms after a single Botox injection, and 27 percent of the group saw their depression go into remission. The study confirms a similar one reported in 2012 by German researchers Tillmann Kroger and Axel Wollmer, who spoke of their findings at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in New York this past weekend.

“There are several nerves, about 12 of them, that go straight into the brain through the skull,” Rosenthal told me Tuesday. “…We’re used to thinking of them in terms of their outbound messages or signals. We’re not used to thinking of them in terms of their inbound messages.”

The idea holds promise as a supplement or alternative to anti-depressants and psychotherapy for treating depression, according to Rosenthal. Minuscule amounts of Botox — which is made from the lethal botulinum toxin — are injected into the facial muscles and don’t even enter the bloodstream. The procedure has shown no side-effects.

If the whole idea seems almost too outlandish to believe — as it did for me — Rosenthal was quick to point out that he was laughed at 30 years ago, when he proposed the idea of “seasonal affective disorder” and the notion that exposing people to bright light in the depths of winter could help with that kind of depression. “Now, it’s ubiquitous,” he said. “Then, they thought it was ridiculous.”

The treatment isn’t perfect. Botox is expensive, at about $400 per dose, wears off in about three months and isn’t covered by insurance. And as the studies showed, it doesn’t work for everyone.

But the botulinum toxin already is used to treat a wide variety of medical conditions. Perhaps depression is next.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/05/07/using-botox-to-treat-depression-seriously/

LA Sheriff Secretly Recorded All of Compton From Above

On By A.P.In Big Brother, California, Compton, Crime, Doug Iketani, Human Behavior, Kebmodee, Los Angeles, Persistent Surveillance Systems, Ross McNutt, spy, surveillance, The Future2 Comments

In 2012, a private company working with the LA County Sheriff’s Department flew a civilian plane rigged with multiple high-powered video cameras over the city of Compton, recording “video of everything that happened inside that 10-square-mile municipality,” all without telling residents, according to The Atlantic. Expanding on a previous piece by the Center for Investigative Reporting, The Atlantic says that the project was a test-run of sorts by the company, Persistent Surveillance Systems, eager to show off its tech to the country’s largest sheriff’s department. (Neither article says how long the plane was in the air or exactly how many times it flew and recorded, but the head of the company himself brags that “We literally watched all of Compton during the time that we were flying, so we could zoom in anywhere within the city of Compton and follow cars and see people.”)

They didn’t tell Compton because Compton might not have liked it.

Ohio-based PSS sells surveillance equipment (known as wide area surveillance) that uses cameras mounted on the underside of planes to record video, allowing police to pause, rewind, and zoom in on footage that’s been recorded in real-time, like a much creepier DVR. The Sheriffs were “persuaded” by Ross McNutt (the Air Force veteran who owns PSS) to let him fly a plane outfitted with cameras over Compton in response to a chain of horrible crimes terrorizing the city’s residents: a string of necklace-jackings. The plan was to have McNutt’s aircraft hover over areas where reported thefts had taken place, and to look for anything that might help investigators.

“Our whole system costs less than the price of a single police helicopter and costs less for an hour to operate than a police helicopter. But at the same time, it watches 10,000 times the area that a police helicopter could watch,” McNutt told CIR. While the tech sounds futuristic (in a dystopian way), it is thankfully still limited: the cameras are not powerful enough yet to recognize faces. (Nowhere near as fancy/invasive as the license-plate recognition software that the LAPD uses.) McNutt himself predicts that technology will advance within the next few years, so don’t even sweat it.

At no point was any of this revealed to the residents of Compton because the cops knew they wouldn’t much care for having their entire city recorded. “A lot of people do have a problem with the eye in the sky, the Big Brother, so in order to mitigate any of those kinds of complaints, we basically kept it pretty hush-hush,” says LA County Sheriff Sgt. Doug Iketani, the project’s supervisor.

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2014/04/la_sheriff_secretly_recorded_all_of_compton_from_above.php

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Rare Diamond Reveals Earth’s Interior is All Wet

On By A.P.In Canada, diamond, Earth, Germany, Graham Pearson, Hans Keppler, kimberlite, LiveScience, mantle, Nature, olivine, ringwoodite, University of Alberta, University of Bayreuth, waterLeave a comment

A battered diamond that survived a trip from “hell” confirms a long-held theory: Earth’s mantle holds an ocean’s worth of water.

“It’s actually the confirmation that there is a very, very large amount of water that’s trapped in a really distinct layer in the deep Earth,” said Graham Pearson, lead study author and a geochemist at the University of Alberta in Canada. The findings were recently published in the journal Nature.

The worthless-looking diamond encloses a tiny piece of an olivine mineral called ringwoodite, and it’s the first time the mineral has been found on Earth’s surface in anything other than meteorites or laboratories. Ringwoodite only forms under extreme pressure, such as the crushing load about 320 miles (515 kilometers) deep in the mantle.

Most of Earth’s volume is mantle, the hot rock layer between the crust and the core. Too deep to drill, the mantle’s composition is a mystery leavened by two clues: meteorites, and hunks of rock heaved up by volcanoes. First, scientists think the composition of the Earth’s mantle is similar to that of meteorites called chondrites, which are chiefly made of olivine. Second, lava belched by volcanoes sometimes taps the mantle, bringing up chunks of odd minerals that hint at the intense heat and pressure olivine endures in the bowels of the Earth.

In recent decades, researchers have also recreated mantle settings in laboratories, zapping olivine with lasers, shooting minerals with massive guns and squeezing rocks between diamond anvils to mimic the Earth’s interior.

These laboratory studies suggest that olivine morphs into a variety of forms corresponding to the depth at which it is found. The new forms of crystal accommodate the increasing pressures. Changes in the speed of earthquake waves also support this model. Seismic waves suddenly speed up or slow down at certain depths in the mantle. Researcher think these speed zones arise from olivine’s changing configurations. For example, 323 to 410 miles (520 to 660 km) deep, between two sharp speed breaks, olivine is thought to become ringwoodite. But until now, no one had direct evidence that olivine was actually ringwoodite at this depth.

“Most people (including me) never expected to see such a sample. Samples from the transition zone and lower mantle are exceedingly rare and are only found in a few, unusual diamonds,” Hans Keppler, a geochemist at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, wrote in a commentary also published in Nature.

The diamond from Brazil confirms that the models are correct: Olivine is ringwoodite at this depth, a layer called the mantle transition zone. And it resolves a long-running debate about water in the mantle transition zone. The ringwoodite is 1.5 percent water, present not as a liquid but as hydroxide ions (oxygen and hydrogen atoms bound together). The results suggest there could be a vast store of water in the mantle transition zone, which stretches from 254 to 410 miles (410 to 660 km) deep.

“It translates into a very, very large mass of water, approaching the sort of mass of water that’s present in all the world’s ocean,” Pearson told Live Science’s Our Amazing Planet.

Plate tectonics recycles Earth’s crust by pushing and pulling slabs of oceanic crust into subduction zones, where it sinks into the mantle. This crust, soaked by the ocean, ferries water into the mantle. Many of these slabs end up stuck in the mantle transition zone. “We think that a significant portion of the water in the mantle transition zone is from the emplacement of these slabs,” Pearson said. “The transition zone seems to be a graveyard of subducted slabs.”

Keppler noted that it’s possible the volcanic eruption that brought the deep diamond to Earth’s surface may have sampled an unusually water-rich part of the mantle, and that not all of the transition-zone layer may be as wet as indicated by the ringwoodite.

“If the source of the magma is an unusual mantle reservoir, there is the possibility that, at other places in the transition zone, ringwoodite contains less water than the sample found by Pearson and colleagues,” Keppler wrote. “However, in light of this sample, models with anhydrous, or water-poor, transition zones seem rather unlikely.”

A violent volcanic eruption called a kimberlite quickly carried this particular diamond from deep in the mantle. “The eruption of a kimberlite is analogous to dropping a Mentos mint into a bottle of soda,” Pearson said. “It’s a very energetic, gas-charged reaction that blasts its way to Earth’s surface.”

The tiny, green crystal, scarred from its 325-mile (525 km) trip to the surface, was bought from diamond miners in Juína, Brazil. The mine’s ultradeep diamonds are misshapen and beaten up by their long journey. “They literally look like they’ve been to hell and back,” Pearson said. The diamonds are usually discarded because they carry no commercial value, he said, but for geoscientists, the gems provide a rare peek into Earth’s innards.

The ringwoodite discovery was accidental, as Pearson and his co-authors were actually searching for a means of dating the diamonds. The researchers think careful sample preparation is the key to finding more ringwoodite, because heating ultradeep diamonds, as happens when scientists polish crystals for analysis, causes the olivine to change shape.

“We think it’s possible ringwoodite may have been found by other researchers before, but the way they prepared their samples caused it to change back to a lower-pressure form,” Pearson said.

http://www.livescience.com/44057-diamond-inclusions-mantle-water-earth.html

Brain Injury Turns Man Into Math Genius

On By A.P.In acquired savant syndrome, Berit Brogaard, brain, Jason Padgett, LiveScience, Medicine, Neurocase, Neuroscience, Struck by Genius, synesthesia, traumatic brain injury1 Comment

In 2002, two men savagely attacked Jason Padgett outside a karaoke bar, leaving him with a severe concussion and post-traumatic stress disorder. But the incident also turned Padgett into a mathematical genius who sees the world through the lens of geometry.

Padgett, a furniture salesman from Tacoma, Wash., who had very little interest in academics, developed the ability to visualize complex mathematical objects and physics concepts intuitively. The injury, while devastating, seems to have unlocked part of his brain that makes everything in his world appear to have a mathematical structure.

“I see shapes and angles everywhere in real life” — from the geometry of a rainbow, to the fractals in water spiraling down a drain, Padgett told Live Science. “It’s just really beautiful.”

Padgett, who just published a memoir with Maureen Seaberg called “Struck by Genius” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), is one of a rare set of individuals with acquired savant syndrome, in which a normal person develops prodigious abilities after a severe injury or disease. Other people have developed remarkable musical or artistic abilities, but few people have acquired mathematical faculties like Padgett’s.

Now, researchers have figured out which parts of the man’s brain were rejiggered to allow for such savant skills, and the findings suggest such skills may lie dormant in all human brains.

Before the injury, Padgett was a self-described jock and partyer. He hadn’t progressed beyond than pre-algebra in his math studies. “I cheated on everything, and I never cracked a book,” he said.

But all that would change the night of his attack. Padgett recalls being knocked out for a split second and seeing a bright flash of light. Two guys started beating him, kicking him in the head as he tried to fight back. Later that night, doctors diagnosed Padgett with a severe concussion and a bleeding kidney, and sent him home with pain medications, he said.

Soon after the attack, Padgett suffered from PTSD and debilitating social anxiety. But at the same time, he noticed that everything looked different. He describes his vision as “discrete picture frames with a line connecting them, but still at real speed.” If you think of vision as the brain taking pictures all the time and smoothing them into a video, it’s as though Padgett sees the frames without the smoothing. In addition, “everything has a pixilated look,” he said.

With Padgett’s new vision came an astounding mathematical drawing ability. He started sketching circles made of overlapping triangles, which helped him understand the concept of pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. There’s no such thing as a perfect circle, he said, which he knows because he can always see the edges of a polygon that approximates the circle.

Padgett dislikes the concept of infinity, because he sees every shape as a finite construction of smaller and smaller units that approach what physicists refer to as the Planck length, thought to be the shortest measurable length.

After his injury, Padgett was drawing complex geometric shapes, but he didn’t have the formal training to understand the equations they represented. One day, a physicist spotted him making these drawings in a mall, and urged him to pursue mathematical training. Now Padgett is a sophomore in college and an aspiring number theorist.

Padgett’s remarkable abilities garnered the interest of neuroscientists who wanted to understand how he developed them.

Berit Brogaard, a philosophy professor now at the University of Miami, in Coral Gables, Fla., and her colleagues scanned Padgett’s brain with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to understand how he acquired his savant skills and the synesthesia that allows him to perceive mathematical formulas as geometric figures. (Synesthesia is a phenomenon in which one sense bleeds into another.)

“Acquired savant syndrome is very rare,” Brogaard said, adding that only 15 to 25 cases have ever been described in medical studies.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging measures changes in blood flow and oxygen use throughout the brain. During scans of Padgett, the researchers showed the man real and nonsense mathematical formulas meant to conjure images in his mind.

The resulting scans showed significant activity in the left hemisphere of Padgett’s brain, where mathematical skills have been shown to reside. His brain lit up most strongly in the left parietal cortex, an area behind the crown of the head that is known to integrate information from different senses. There was also some activation in parts of his temporal lobe (involved in visual memory, sensory processing and emotion) and frontal lobe (involved in executive function, planning and attention).

But the fMRI only showed what areas were active in Padgett’s brain. In order to show these particular areas were causing the man’s synesthesia, Brogaard’s team used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which involves zapping the brain with a magnetic pulse that activates or inhibits a specific region. When they zapped the parts of Padgett’s parietal cortex that had shown the greatest activity in the fMRI scans, it made his synesthesia fade or disappear, according to a study published in August 2013 in the journal Neurocase.

Brogaard showed, in another study, that when neurons die, they release brain-signaling chemicals that can increase brain activity in surrounding areas. The increased activity usually fades over time, but sometimes it results in structural changes that can cause brain-activity modifications to persist, Brogaard told Live Science.

Scientists don’t know whether the changes in Padgett’s brain are permanent, but if he had structural changes, it’s more likely his abilities are here to stay, Brogaard said.

So do abilities like Padgett’s lie dormant in everyone, waiting to be uncovered? Or was there something unique about Padgett’s brain to begin with?

Most likely, there is something dormant in everyone that Padgett tapped into, Brogaard said. “It would be quite a coincidence if he were to have that particular special brain and then have an injury,” she said. “And he’s not the only [acquired savant].”

In addition to head injuries, mental disease has also been known to reveal latent abilities. And Brogaard and others have done studies that suggest zapping the brains of normal people using TMS can temporarily bring out unusual mathematical and artistic skills.

Yet Padgett wouldn’t change his new abilities if he could. “It’s so good, I can’t even describe it,” he said.

It’s always possible that having savant skills may come with trade-offs. In Padgett’s case, he developed fairly severe post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and he still finds it difficult to appear in public.

http://news.discovery.com/human/life/brain-injury-turns-man-into-math-genius-1405061.htm

Suspended lawyer’s application to marry porn-filled MacBook overturned

On By A.P.In Chris Sevier, Pornography, Robert Hale, Stupidity1 Comment

A suspended US lawyer has had his bid to marry his porn-filled laptop overturned by a judge.

Chris Sevier, who has been suspended from practising law on disability/mental health grounds, claimed he fell in love with his Apple MacBook and “preferred having sex with it over all other persons or things”.

“Over time, I began preferring sex with my computer over sex with real women,” Mr Sevier explained in a court filing. “Naturally, I ‘fell in love’ with my computer and preferred having sex with it over all other persons or things, as a result of classic conditioning upon orgasm.”

Mr Savier claims if gay couples “have the right to marry their object of sexual desire, even if they lack corresponding sexual parts, then I should have the right to marry my preferred sexual object.”

Jude Robert Hale overturned Mr Savier’s motion, suggesting the movement was “satirical”. “Or perhaps it is only removed from reality,” he added. “Either way, the motion has no place in this lawsuit.”

Last year Mr Sevier attempted to sue Apple after the mistyping of ‘Facebook’ led him to pornographic images while using the Safari browser.

He said the images “poisoned his life”, with his escalating addiction leading to the breakdown of his marriage and causing him “to experience emotional distress to the point of hospitalisation.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10811287/Suspended-lawyers-application-to-marry-porn-filled-MacBook-overturned.html

End The War On Drugs, Say Nobel Prize-Winning Economists

On By A.P.In Addiction, amphetamine, benzodiazepine, buprenorphine, cannabis, cocaine, Crime, Dr. Lutter, drug abuse, drug policy, Drugs, hallucinogen, heroin, LSD, marijuana, MDMA (Ecstasy), methadone, Methamphetamine, opiates, Oxycodone, Politics, Psilocybin, war on drugsLeave a comment

war_on_drugs_thumb

The decades-long global war on drugs has failed and it’s time to shift the focus from mass incarceration to public health and human rights, according to a new report endorsed by five Nobel Prize-winning economists.

The report, titled “Ending the Drug Wars” and put together by the London School of Economics’ IDEAS center, looks at the high costs and unintended consequences of drug prohibitions on public health and safety, national security and law enforcement.

“The pursuit of a militarized and enforcement-led global ‘war on drugs’ strategy has produced enormous negative outcomes and collateral damage,” says the 82-page report. “These include mass incarceration in the US, highly repressive policies in Asia, vast corruption and political destabilization in Afghanistan and West Africa, immense violence in Latin America, an HIV epidemic in Russia, an acute global shortage of pain medication and the propagation of systematic human rights abuses around the world.”

The report urges the world’s governments to reframe their drug policies around treatment and harm reduction rather than prosecution and prison.

It is also aimed at the United Nations General Assembly, which is preparing to convene a special session on drug policy in 2016. The hope is to push the U.N. to encourage countries to develop their own policies, because the report declares the current one-size-fits-all approach has not proved to be effective.

“The UN must recognize its role is to assist states as they pursue best-practice policies based on scientific evidence, not undermine or counteract them,” said Danny Quah, a professor of economics at LSE and a contributor to the report. “If this alignment occurs, a new and effective international regime can emerge that effectively tackles the global drug problem.”

In addition to contributions from Quah and a dozen other foreign and drug policy experts, the report has been endorsed by five past winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics: Kenneth Arrow (1972), Sir Christopher Pissarides (2010), Thomas Schelling (2005), Vernon Smith (2002) and Oliver Williamson (2009). Also signing on to the report’s foreword are a number of current and former international leaders, including George Shultz, secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan; Nick Clegg, British deputy prime minister; and Javier Solana, the former EU high representative for common foreign and security policy.

Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina, who has announced that his government may present a plan to legalize production of marijuana and opium poppies by the end of 2014, has also publicly backed the report. Molina plans to discuss the report at the U.N.

A recent Pew survey suggests that Americans may be ready to refocus the U.S. end of the drug war, with 67 percent favoring policies that would provide drug treatment.

“The drug war’s failure has been recognized by public health professionals, security experts, human rights authorities and now some of the world’s most respected economists,” said John Collins, the International Drug Policy Project coordinator at LSE IDEAS. “Leaders need to recognize that toeing the line on current drug control strategies comes with extraordinary human and financial costs to their citizens and economies.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/end-drug-war_n_5275078.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

Thanks to Dr. Lutter for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Satanic group reveals crowdfunded monument for Oklahoma State Capitol

On By A.P.In Baphomet, Christianity, Dante D'Orazio, Dr. Lutter, Indiegogo, Lucian Greaves, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State Capitol, Politics, Religion, satan, Satanism, ten commandments, The Satanic TempleLeave a comment

By Dante D’Orazio

A Satanist statue cast in bronze is just months away from completion, and activists hope that it will find a home on the lawn of the Oklahoma State Capitol. Ultimately, the statue — which features the seven-foot tall, horned figure of Baphomet fawned upon by two exultant children — is intended to stand directly next to a highly controversial monument of the ten commandments that was donated by a state legislator in 2012 and subsequently placed on the grounds of the Capitol.

The Baphomet figure, complete with a goat head, angel wings, and a beard, comes from a recently-formed New York group identifying as The Satanic Temple, which raised over $28,000 on Indiegogo earlier this year to commission a sculptor and create the piece. Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucian Greaves tells ABC News that the statue is a symbol to “celebrate our progress as a pluralistic nation founded on secular law.”

We’re just now getting our first look at the what the statue will look like, thanks to images of the mold released by The Satanic Temple this week. Unfortunately for the group’s activist aims, there hasn’t been much progress on securing a spot for the statue at the Capitol in Oklahoma, one of the most Christian states in the US. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is currently challenging the ten commandments statue in court on grounds that it violates the Constitution’s “establishment clause” against a national religion, and Oklahoma has prohibited applications for additional statues pending the completion of that case.

Greaves has made it clear that the group would no longer petition to have the statue installed should the ten commandments monument be removed, but he isn’t concerned about finding somewhere else to place the statue should they fail to get permission in Oklahoma. “There are no shortage of public locations across the US where religious monuments await a contrasting voice,” he tells Vice, which first published photos of the statue. And they’re prepared should demonstrators destroy the statue: they’re holding onto the cast and plan to take out an insurance policy on the statue.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/3/5678782/satanic-group-reveals-crowdfunded-monument-for-oklahoma-state-capitol

Thanks to Dr. Lutter for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.