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https://www.reuters.com/science/israeli-scientists-create-model-human-embryo-without-eggs-or-sperm-2023-09-07/ Reuters September 8, 20237:46 AM GMT+8Updated 11 hours ago REHOVOT, Israel, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Scientists in Israel have created a model of a human embryo from stem cells in the laboratory, without using sperm, eggs or a womb, offering a unique glimpse into the early stages of embryonic development. The model resembles an embryo at day 14, when it acquires internal structures but before it lays down the foundations for body organs, according to the team at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science. The scientists' work was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday after a pre-print came out in June, during the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR)'s annual meeting in Boston. The Israeli team emphasised that they were a long way from being able to create an embryo from scratch. "The question is, when does an embryo model become considered an embryo? When that happens, we know the regulations. At the moment we are really, really far off from that point," said team leader Jacob Hanna. However, they said the work could open the door to new ways to test the effect of drugs on pregnancies, better understand miscarriages and genetic diseases, and perhaps even to grow transplant tissues and organs. "They are not identical. There are differences from human embryos, but still, this is the first time, if you open an atlas or a textbook, you can say - yeah I can really see the similarity between them," said Hanna. He said his team took stem cells derived from adult human skin cells, as well as others cultured in the lab, then reverted the cells to an early state with the potential to develop into different cell types. They then manipulated them to form the basis of something structurally resembling an embryo. It is not an actual or synthetic embryo - a term criticised by the ISSCR and other scientists - rather a model showing how one works. "In about 1 percent of the aggregates we can see that the cells start differentiating correctly, migrating and sorting themselves into the correct structure, and the farthest we could get is day 14 in human embryo development," he said. Their next goal, Hanna said, is to advance to day 21 and also reach a threshold of a 50% success rate. Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz, a professor of development and stem cells at the University of Cambridge, said the study joins six other similar human embryo-like models published from teams around the world this year, including from her lab. "None of these models fully recapitulate natural human development but each adds to ways in which many aspects of human development can now be studied experimentally," she said. The study raises some ethical questions over the possibility of potential future manipulation in human embryo development, Hanna and others noted. He drew a comparison to nuclear physics, however, arguing that you should not stop all research in that field because somebody might choose to make a nuclear bomb. It is important to engage and fully inform the public, he said, with "nothing done in the shadows". Reporting by Rami Amichay and Ari Rabinovitch; editing by Mark Heinrich

NTU scientists devise cost-effective way to combine prawn shells & fruit source: https://mothership.sg/2020/06/ntu-prawn-shell-fruit-waste-packaging/ Scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have devised a way to create biodegradable food packaging using a completely organic process and materials. Organic process with minimal ingredients This method involves the combination of two unlikely but common sources of waste—prawn shells and fruit peels. Professor William Chen, director of NTU's Food Science and Technology programme and his team discovered that sugar in the fruit waste helps kickstart the fermentation process. Chen and his team tested 10 different types of fruit waste including white and red grape skin, mango peels and apple cores. They found that grape skin was the most effective in the fermentation process. This process breaks down the prawn shells into chitin, an organic biopolymer. Chitin is a compound abundant in nature, and is a component in the shells of crustaceans and insects. However, it is not commonly used in food packaging as it is not soluble in water, Chen told Mothership. Nevertheless, chitin can be converted into its derivative, chitosan, through further stages of fermentation. Unlike chitin, chitosan is anti-microbial and more water soluble, and can thus be used to make biodegradable food-grade packaging, replacing the ubiquitous and notoriously unsustainable plastic packaging. This entire fermentation process takes five days, and the result is a thin, translucent layer of packaging made from prawn shells and fruit peels. A more sustainable and cost efficient process Although it is uncertain how much food waste is required to produce one layer of food packaging, Chen's innovative method could potentially be scaled up to industry level and commercialised, which could reduce Singapore's massive production of food waste and green the supply chain as well. Food waste is one of the biggest food streams in the country, with 744 million kg of food waste generated in 2019. And despite the increasing awareness of food waste after the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources' campaigning efforts during the Year Towards Zero Waste in 2019, only 18 per cent of this amount was recycled. Not only could Chen's method help fight food waste, it is a more sustainable approach of extracting chitin from marine waste like prawn shells. Current approaches that chemically extract chitin—which is also used in food processing as food thickeners and in cosmetics and skincare products—are costly and consume large amounts of energy. Additionally, the chemical process involves strong acidic and alkaline solutions, to remove the minerals and proteins from prawn shells, Chen said. This produces environmentally unfriendly by-products like chemical waste. Chen's method is thus a more sustainable alternative, and as it only requires three things—prawn shells, fruit waste and water—is much more cost effective as well. Six to eight million tons of crustacean waste are generated annually around the world, with 45 to 60 per cent of shrimp shells discarded as by-products during the extraction process. And with demand for seafood growing in Singapore and around the world, Chen's method could prove the next big solution for food and marine waste.

Duke-NUS scientist accused of spying for Russians in the US Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/hector-alejandro-cabrera-fuentes-spying-russia.html NEW YORK — United States federal officials have arrested a researcher from Duke-National University of Singapore for allegedly acting on behalf of a Russian agent who recruited him to collect information about the US government and met repeatedly with him in Moscow. Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, a Mexican citizen, and his wife were about to board a plane back to their native Mexico from Miami on Sunday, when a customs official asked to inspect their phones. The official looked in a file of recently deleted images on the phone of Fuentes’s wife and found a close-up photograph of a license plate. The plate belonged to the vehicle of a US government source, federal prosecutors said in a statement. Fuentes admitted to the US Customs and Border Protection that he had told his wife, who was not named in the statement, to take the picture. It turned out, federal prosecutors said, that Fuentes was acting on behalf of a Russian government official who had recruited him in 2019 to rent property in Miami-Dade County and gather information. “The Russian official told Fuentes not to rent the apartment in Fuentes’s own name and not to tell his family about their meetings,” according to a statement from the Department of Justice. Hector Fuentes met with the Russian official twice in Moscow, it said. During the second meeting this month, the official gave Fuentes a physical description of a US government source’s vehicle. The Russian official “told Fuentes to locate the car, obtain the source’s vehicle license plate number, and note the physical location of the source’s vehicle,” according to the statement. The two were supposed to meet again around April or May so that Fuentes could give him the information, officials said in the statement. Federal officials said Fuentes and his wife rented a car, and Friday they followed the US source home. A security guard on the premises became suspicious of the couple because the rental car had tailgated another vehicle to get inside the building complex. As the guard approached Fuentes, his wife got out of the car and snapped a photo of the government source’s vehicle, federal officials said. The guard asked the couple what they were doing there, and Fuentes said they were visiting someone at the building. “Security did not recognize the person as living there and told Fuentes to leave the premises,” federal officials said. When Fuentes was questioned about the photo two days later at the airport, he admitted he had been directed by a Russian government official to conduct the operation, the officials said. Fuentes has been charged with acting on behalf of a foreign agent without notifying the attorney general. He has also been charged with conspiracy to act on behalf of a foreign agent. At a hearing in Miami federal court Tuesday, Fuentes said he had a variety of jobs, including one as a researcher at Duke-NUS, where he earned US$7,500 a month, according to The Miami Herald. Fuentes also told a magistrate judge he earned US$5,000 a month from an Israeli company based in Germany and had about US$100,000 in bank accounts in Mexico, Singapore and the United States, according to the newspaper. Fuentes is listed on the Duke-NUS website as one of the lead researchers of a 2016 study on cardiovascular disease. In 2015, he gave a presentation at a conference hosted by the European Society of Cardiology in London. In his bio, Fuentes was described as a graduate of Kazan University in Russia, where he obtained a degree in molecular biology and microbiology. He will be arraigned March 3 in Miami federal court, federal officials said. Ms Dharshini Subbiah, a senior communications specialist at Duke-NUS, told Duke-NUS campus newspaper The Chronicle: “All of his appointments have been suspended, and pending the ongoing investigations in the US we are unable to comment further." In response to TODAY's queries, a Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) spokesperson said: "MHA will not be commenting on this case." THE NEW YORK TIMES

http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/08/senior-government-scientist-breaks-13-years-silence-on-cdcs-vaccine-autism-fraud.html

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http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/...111-321218.html Nuclear scientist killed in Tehran car blast: media Ahmadi Roshan was killed and the two wounded passengers were taken to hospital, Bratloo said. -AFP Wed, Jan 11, 2012 AFP TEHRAN - An Iranian nuclear scientist was killed and two people injured when a magnetic bomb attached to a car by a duo on a motorbike exploded outside a Tehran university on Wednesday, Iranian news agencies said. The person killed was identified by several media as Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a scientist who worked on separating gases at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, according to the website of a different university from which he graduated around a decade ago. "This morning a motorbiker attached a bomb to a Peugeot 405, which exploded," the deputy governor of Tehran province, Safar Ali Bratloo, was quoted as saying by the ILNA news agency. The explosion occurred outside the east Tehran campus of Allameh Tabatai University, at its social sciences faculty. Ahmadi Roshan was killed and the two wounded passengers were taken to hospital, Bratloo said. Sharif University, Tehran's elite technical university where the slain scientist had studied, said Ahmadi Roshan was specialised in making polymeric membranes used to separate gas. Iran uses gas separation to enrich uranium. Three other Iranian scientists were killed in 2010 and 2011 when their cars blew up in similar circumstances. At least two of the scientists had also been working on nuclear activities. One of the attacks occurred exactly two years ago, on January 11, 2010, killing scientist Masoud Ali Mohammdi. The current head of Iran's atomic organisation, Fereydoun Abbasi, escaped another such attempt in November 2010, getting out of his car with his wife just before the attached bomb exploded. Those attacks were viewed by Iranian officials as assassination operations carried out by Israel's Mossad intelligence service, possibly with help from US counterparts. The latest blast comes amid extremely high international tensions over Iran's nuclear programme, which the West and Israel believe conceals research to develop an atomic bomb. Israel has threatened to launch air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. The United States has said "all options are on the table" in terms of dealing with Iran - including military action. Tehran, which has repeatedly denied that its nuclear programme is for anything other than peaceful purposes, has threatened to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Gulf if it is attacked. Twenty per cent of the world's oil flows through that strait. Wednesday's car explosion followed confirmation on Monday by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran had started uranium enrichment at a fortified underground bunker southwest of Tehran, in Fordo. The United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy have viewed that development with alarm, saying it was a violation of UN Security Council resolutions on Iran.

Their common background, not trained at all in the field of invention. No ivy league trained. No university degree. No 1 - Zapping cancer cells at 13.56 MHz featured on CBS News John Kanzius, K3TUP, of Erie Pennsylvania, has been working on an RF-based treatment for cancer that is currently undergoing testing. According to ARRL Media and Public Relations Manager Allen Pitts, W1AGP, Kanzius is scheduled to be on the CBS news show "60 Minutes" on Sunday, April 13 John gave as many plugs to his ham radio background as he could in being the foundations of hands-on learning that led to his research and invention," Pitts said. Kanzius, a very active Amateur Radio operator, aided in the creation of the upcoming ARRL Technology and Amateur Radio public relations campaign. Read more about Kanzius and his ground-breaking idea to kill cancer cells with radio waves in the February 2008 issue of QST. Watch the CBS News '60 Minutes' video below. http://www.cbs.com/thunder/player/thunder....NjqwrVHMHdkv3_X