Sunday, June 10, 2018
Now is the time to form a third US political party
'Slap in the Face' to
Progressive Outsiders as DNC Adopts Rule Forcing Presidential Candidates to Be
Members of Democratic Party
"I'm just stunned that
the Democratic Party’s rules committee would want to try to make the Democratic
Party an exclusive club, for which we want to exclude voters and large segments
of the American electorate."
"The DNC has learned
nothing."
That was how the advocacy
group People for Bernie reacted to
reports late Friday that the rules and bylaws arm of the Democratic National
Committee has moved ahead with a new resolution that, according
to Yahoo News, would "force candidates in Democratic presidential
primaries to state that they are Democrats" and "to 'run and serve'
as a member" of the party.
While allies of Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.)—who ran as a Democrat in the 2016 presidential primary while
still identifying as an independent—said they don't expect the new rules to
hinder Sanders' chances of running for the Democratic nomination in 2020 if he
chooses to do so, many supporters of the Vermont senator characterized the rule
change as a completely unnecessary "slap
in the face" to progressive outsiders.
"We just came off a
devastating presidential loss in 2016. It would seem to me the actual impetus
would be to expand the Democratic Party. I just for the life of me don't see
any motivation for this beyond personal spite," Mark Longabaugh, a senior
adviser to Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, told Yahoo News. "I
scratch my head and ask why they would want to make the party more narrow and
more exclusive."
Other progressives echoed
Longabaugh's critique of the new rule on social media, with many noting that
such restrictions could demobilize large constituencies that are disaffected
with both major political parties.
Following his 2016
presidential campaign, Sanders—who is now far-and-away the most popular
politician in the country—repeatedly emphasized the importance of creating a
more inclusive party organized around the needs of the poor and working class,
not corporate donors.
"If the Democratic Party
is going to succeed... it's gonna have to open its door to independents,"
Sanders said in
an interview last April. "There are probably more independents in this
country than Democrats or Republicans. It's got to open its doors to working
people and to young people, create a grassroots party."
Speaking with Politico on
Friday, Longabaugh argued that
the DNC's new rule would do precisely the opposite, moving the party even
closer to becoming an "exclusive club."
"I really don't get the
motivation for the resolution at all," he said. "You know, Bernie
Sanders got 13 million votes in 2016. Thousands, if not millions, of those
votes were young people and independents he brought into the Democratic
Party."
The full DNC is expected
to hold a final vote on the new resolution in August.
Saturday, June 9, 2018
Hurricanes are slowing down, and that's bad news
June 8, 2018
University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Some hurricanes are moving
more slowly, spending increased time over land and leading to catastrophic
local rainfall and flooding, according to a new study.
Some hurricanes are moving
more slowly, spending increased time over land and leading to catastrophic
local rainfall and flooding, according to a new study published Wednesday (June
6) in the journal Nature.
While hurricanes batter
coastal regions with destructive wind speeds, study author James Kossin says
the speed at which hurricanes track along their paths -- their translational
speed -- can also play a role in the damage and devastation they cause. Their
movement influences how much rain falls in a given area.
This is especially true as
global temperatures increase.
"Just a 10 percent
slowdown in hurricane translational speed can double the increase in rainfall
totals caused by 1 degree Celsius of global warming," says Kossin, a
researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA)
Center for Weather and Climate. He is based at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.
The study compared 68 years
(1949-2016) of worldwide hurricane track and intensity data, known as
best-track data, from NOAA to identify changes in translational speeds. It
found that, worldwide, hurricane translational speeds have averaged a 10
percent slowdown in that time.
One recent storm highlights
the potential consequences of this slowing trend. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey
stalled over eastern Texas rather than dissipating over land, as hurricanes
tend to do. It drenched Houston and nearby areas with as much as 50 inches of
rain over several days, shattering historic records and leaving some areas
under several feet of water.
How much hurricanes have
slowed depends on where they occur, Kossin found. "There is regional
variation in the slowdown rates when looking at the 10 percent global average
across the same time frame," he says.
The most significant slowdown,
20 percent, occurred in the Western North Pacific Region, an area that includes
Southeast Asia. Nearby, in the Australian Region, Kossin identified a reduction
of 15 percent. In the North Atlantic Region, which includes the U.S., Kossin
found a 6 percent slowdown in the speeds at which hurricanes move.
When further isolating the
analysis to hurricane speeds over land, where their impact is greatest, Kossin
found that slowdown rates can be even greater. Hurricanes over land in the
North Atlantic have slowed by as much as 20 percent, and those in the Western
North Pacific as much as 30 percent.
Kossin attributes this, in
part, to the effects of climate change, amplified by human activity. Hurricanes
move from place to place based on the strength of environmental steering winds
that push them along. But as the Earth's atmosphere warms, these winds may
weaken, particularly in places like the tropics, where hurricanes frequently
occur, leading to slower-moving storms.
Additionally, a warmer
atmosphere can hold more water vapor, potentially increasing the amount of rain
a hurricane can deliver to an area.
The study complements others
that demonstrate climate change is affecting hurricane behavior.
For instance, in 2014, Kossin
showed that hurricanes are reaching their maximum intensities further from the
tropics, shifting toward the poles in both the Northern and Southern
Hemispheres. These shifts can deliver hurricanes to areas -- including some
heavily populated coastal regions -- that have not historically dealt with direct
hits from storms and the devastating losses of life and property that can
result.
Another study, published in
April by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, used a
modeling approach to look at what would happen to hurricanes under future
climate projections. Using real hurricane data from 2000-2013, the researchers
found future hurricanes will experience a 9 percent slowdown, higher wind
speeds, and produce 24 percent more rainfall.
"The rainfalls associated
with the 'stall' of 2017's Hurricane Harvey in the Houston, Texas, area
provided a dramatic example of the relationship between regional rainfall
amounts and hurricane translation speeds," says Kossin. "In addition
to other factors affecting hurricanes, like intensification and poleward
migration, these slowdowns are likely to make future storms more dangerous and
costly."
Researchers Reverse Cognitive Impairments in Mice With Dementia
Fri, 06/08/2018 - 2:52pm
by Temple University Health
System
Reversing memory deficits and
impairments in spatial learning is a major goal in the field of dementia
research. A lack of knowledge about cellular pathways critical to the
development of dementia, however, has stood in the way of significant clinical
advance. But now, researchers at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple
University (LKSOM) are breaking through that barrier. They show, for the first
time in an animal model, that tau pathology - the second-most important lesion
in the brain in patients with Alzheimer's disease - can be reversed by a drug.
"We show that we can
intervene after disease is established and pharmacologically rescue mice that
have tau-induced memory deficits," explained senior investigator Domenico
Praticò, MD, Scott Richards North Star Foundation Chair for Alzheimer's
Research, Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Microbiology, and
Director of the Alzheimer's Center at Temple at LKSOM. The study, published
online in the journal Molecular Neurobiology, raises new hope for human
patients affected by dementia.
The researchers landed on
their breakthrough after discovering that inflammatory molecules known as
leukotrienes are deregulated in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. In
experiments in animals, they found that the leukotriene pathway plays an
especially important role in the later stages of disease.
"At the onset of
dementia, leukotrienes attempt to protect nerve cells, but over the long term,
they cause damage," Dr. Praticò said. "Having discovered this, we
wanted to know whether blocking leukotrienes could reverse the damage,
whether we could do something to fix memory and learning impairments in mice
having already abundant tau pathology."
To recapitulate the clinical
situation of dementia in humans, in which patients are already symptomatic by
the time they are diagnosed, Dr. Praticò and colleagues used specially
engineered tau transgenic mice, which develop tau pathology - characterized by
neurofibrillary tangles, disrupted synapses (the junctions between neurons that
allow them to communicate with one another), and declines in memory and
learning ability - as they age. When the animals were 12 months old, the
equivalent of age 60 in humans, they were treated with zileuton, a drug that
inhibits leukotriene formation by blocking the 5-lipoxygenase enzyme.
After 16 weeks of treatment,
animals were administered maze tests to assess their working memory and their
spatial learning memory. Compared with untreated animals, tau mice that had
received zileuton performed significantly better on the tests. Their superior
performance suggested a successful reversal of memory deficiency.
To determine why this
happened, the researchers first analyzed leukotriene levels. They found that
treated tau mice experienced a 90-percent reduction in leukotrienes compared
with untreated mice. In addition, levels of phosphorylated and insoluble tau,
the form of the protein that is known to directly damage synapses, were 50
percent lower in treated animals. Microscopic examination revealed vast
differences in synaptic integrity between the groups of mice. Whereas untreated
animals had severe synaptic deterioration, the synapses of treated tau animals
were indistinguishable from those of ordinary mice without the disease.
"Inflammation was
completely gone from tau mice treated with the drug," Dr. Praticò said.
"The therapy shut down inflammatory processes in the brain, allowing the
tau damage to be reversed."
The study is especially
exciting because zileuton is already approved by the Food and Drug
Administration for the treatment of asthma. "Leukotrienes are in the lungs
and the brain, but we now know that in addition to their functional role in
asthma, they also have a functional role in dementia," Dr. Praticò
explained.
"This is an old drug for
a new disease," he added. "The research could soon be translated to
the clinic, to human patients with Alzheimer's disease."
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