Gold nanoparticles and tea compound treat prostate cancer with fewer side effects than chemotherapy

Currently, large doses of chemotherapy are required when treating certain forms of cancer, resulting in toxic side effects. The chemicals enter the body and work to destroy or shrink the tumor, but also harm vital organs and drastically affect bodily functions. Now, University of Missouri scientists have found a more efficient way of targeting prostate tumors by using gold nanoparticles and a compound found in tea leaves. This new treatment would require doses that are thousands of times smaller than chemotherapy and do not travel through the body inflicting damage to healthy areas. The study is being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"In our study, we found that a special compound in tea was attracted to tumor cells in the prostate," said Kattesh Katti, curators' professor of radiology and physics in the School of Medicine and the College of Arts and Science and senior research scientist at the MU Research Reactor. "When we combined the tea compound with radioactive gold nanoparticles, the tea compound helped 'deliver' the nanoparticles to the site of the tumors and the nanoparticles destroyed the tumor cells very efficiently."

Drs. Kattesh Katti and Cathy Cutler, and their colleagues, have found that gold nanoparticles, when combined with a compound found in tea, can fight aggressive forms of prostate cancer. Credit: University of Missouri

Currently, doctors treat prostate cancer by injecting hundreds of radioactive 'seeds' into the prostate. However, that treatment is not effective when treating an aggressive form of prostate cancer, said Cathy Cutler, research professor at the MU Research Reactor and co-author of the study. The size of the seeds and their inability to deliver effective doses hampers their ability to stop the aggressive form of prostate cancer.

In the study, the MU scientists created nanoparticles that are just the right size. Instead of hundreds of injections, the team only used one or two injections, and the nanoparticles were more likely to stay very close to the tumor sites.

Cutler and Katti have been working with colleagues Raghuraman Kannan, Anandhi Upendran, Charles Caldwell as well as others in the Department of Radiology and at the MU Research Reactor to develop and design the nanoparticles to the correct shape and size to treat prostate cancer. If the nanoparticles produced are too small, they can escape and spread; if they are made large enough, the nanoparticles will stay inside the tumor and treat it much more effectively than current methods.

"Current therapy for this disease is not effective in those patients who have aggressive prostate cancer tumors," Cutler said. "Most of the time, prostate cancers are slow-growing; the disease remains localized and it is easily managed. Aggressive forms of the disease spread to other parts of the body, and it is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in U.S. men. However, we believe the gold nanoparticles could shrink the tumors, both those that are slow-growing and aggressive, or eliminate them completely."

"This treatment is successful due to the inherent properties of radioactive gold nanoparticles," Kannan said. "First, the gold nanoparticles should be made to the correct size, and second, they have very favorable radiochemical properties, including a very short half-life."

With a half-life of only 2.7 days, the radioactivity from the gold nanoparticles is finished within three weeks.

"Because of their size and the compound found in tea, the nanoparticles remain at the tumor sites," Upendran said. "This helps the nanoparticles maintain a high level of effectiveness, resulting in significant tumor volume reduction within 28 days of treatment."

In the current study, the team tested the nanoparticles on mice. Prior to human trials, the scientists will study the treatment in dogs with prostate cancer. Prostate cancer in dogs is extremely close to the human form of the disease.

"When it comes to drug discovery, MU is fortunate because we have a combination of experts in cancer research, animal modeling, isotope production and nanomedicine, and state-of-the-art research infrastructure to take discoveries from 'the bench to the bedside' and never leave campus," Katti said. "For example, we developed the nanoparticles here at our research reactor, which is one of the few places in the world that produces therapeutic, clinical grade radioisotopes. We then tested the radioactive gold nanoparticles in small animals in collaboration with other radiology researchers using testing facilities located at the Harry S. Truman Veterans Hospital. Our next steps include partnering with the College of Veterinary Medicine to treat larger animals with the hopes of having human clinical trials, held on our campus, soon."

How Google is becoming an extension of your mind

It's time to think of Google as much more than just a search engine, and that should both excite and spook you.

Search remains critical to the company's financial and technological future, but Google also is using the search business' cash to transform itself into something much broader than just a place to point your browser when asking for directions on the Internet.

What it's now becoming is an extension of your mind, an omnipresent digital assistant that figures out what you need and supplies it before you even realize you need it.

Think of Google diagnosing your daughter's illness early based on where she's been, how alert she is, and her skin's temperature, then driving your car to school to bring her home while you're at work. Or Google translating an incomprehensible emergency announcement while you're riding a train in foreign country. Or Google steering your investment portfolio away from a Ponzi scheme.

Google, in essence, becomes a part of you. Imagine Google playing a customized audio commentary based on what you look at while on a tourist trip and then sharing photo highlights with your friends as you go. Or Google taking over your car when it concludes based on your steering response time and blink rate that you're no longer fit to drive. Or your Google glasses automatically beaming audio and video to the police when you say a phrase that indicates you're being mugged.

Exciting? I think so. But it's also, potentially, a profoundly creepy change. For a Google-augmented life, you must grant the Googlebot unprecedented privileges to monitor your personal information and behavior. What medicine do you take? What ads did you just glance at while walking by the bus stop? What's your credit card number? And as Google works to integrate social data into its services, you'll have to decide how much you'll share with your contacts' Google accounts -- and the best way to ask them to share their data with your Google account.

Where your Google comfort zone ends It'll be foolhardy to be as cavalier with tomorrow's Google as you might be with it today. I think some of those sci-fi possibilities I just described could be real within three to five years, so now is a good time to start thinking about where your Google comfort zone ends.

Me? I'm immersed in Google services, but I worry that handy new features will arrive in a steady stream of minor changes that are all but imperceptible until one day I wake up and realize that Google has access to everything that makes me who I am.

Google Now says it needs access to my calendar? Sounds useful. My Android phone needs to turn on my phone's microphone so the Google Maps app can judge by ambient noise whether I'm indoors or outdoors? Well, that'll help me get through the airport faster. My glasses need to identify the faces of people in my company so Google can deduce who gets consigned to the Google Voice answering machine and who gets through to my phone even at 3 a.m.? Well, I sure don't want to have to set all that up manually.

Read more: CNET

The Face of Fracking Victims (Moving and Powerful Video)

Very often when we in the alternative media cover events, we speak in the abstract of the horrors against "humanity." It is more rare, however, that we are able to focus on individual human beings and their personal horrors from being subjected to the fallout of non-human institutions like banks, corporations and bureaucratic government institutions.

We are given insight into real human suffering when we hear the stories of those who wind up beaten and tortured at the hands of a police state war culture gone wild; those who fall victim to a Ponzi-scheme economy; those suffering with vaccine injuries, and other harsh realities. Perhaps worst of all are those who are deemed to be nothing more than a cost of doing business, as we saw with the BP Gulf Oil Disaster. It is then that health, wealth, and even hope fall prey simultaneously.

Fracking is one such environmental evil that is falling hard upon select communities in places across America. The following video is powerful in that it is not a technical overview of what fracking is, not an analysis of the damage it potentially causes, nor is it political. It is simply a few human stories of people who desperately want their voices heard, and are having it fall on deaf ears among those whose duty it is to protect them.

This film is shared courtesy of Nature Abounds' friend, Rich Waters, a local photographer and videographer who is documenting how fracking is changing the lives of his neighbors in Southwest Pennsylvania.

It is activism at its most poignant.

Jonah Falcon, Man With World's Largest Penis, Frisked By TSA At California Airport

Turns out it's legal to have a weapon of mass conception at the airport.

Jonah Falcon was stopped and frisked by the TSA at the San Francisco International Airport on July 9 because of a bulging package hidden in his pants. But the 41-year-old New Yorker wasn't packing a dirty bomb, drugs or a Costco-sized tube of toothpaste. The New Yorker has the world's largest recorded penis.

In an exclusive interview with The Huffington Post, Falcon described his hard times with security guards after his extra carry-on became suspect.

"I had my 'stuff' strapped to the left. I wasn't erect at the time," said Falcon, whose penis is 9 inches flaccid, 13.5 inches erect. "One of the guards asked if my pockets were empty and I said, 'Yes.'"

Falcon said he knew that his interview was about to get a lot more personal when he was led through one of the X-ray body scanners and passed a metal detector.

"Another guard stopped me and asked me if I had some sort of growth," Falcon said, laughing.

Indeed he did have a growth.

By the age of 18, Falcon knew he had something special when his manhood reached a whopping 12 inches. His family jewel was hailed as the world's largest on record after an HBO documentary featured him in 1999. The Guinness Book of World Records does not record such feats, but Falcon did show his standout feature to Huffington Post executive editor Buck Wolf.

Falcon has been contacted by porn companies (though he's never accepted) and has been featured on just about every talkshow in the country.

As he passed through airport security, Falcon said a younger security guard felt threatened by his "very noticeable" package -- and interpreted it as a biological threat.

"I said, 'It's my dick,'" Falcon said. "He gave me a pat down but made sure to go around [my penis] with his hands. They even put some powder on my pants, probably a test for explosives. I found it amusing."

The screener gave up the extensive search without so much as a blush or a smile. Falcon made his flight back to New York on time.

But he learned something that day. The hardened traveler has a new game plan for airport security.

"I'm just gonna wear bike shorts from now on," Falcon said. "That way, they'll know. You'd think the San Francisco TSA would have had experience with hung guys before, but I guess not."

TSA officials at the San Francisco International Airport did not return calls for comment.

Facebook Banking on a Cashless Society

As if the current methods of evaporating privacy and pushing a world toward the Cashless Society were not moving fast enough, Facebook is now developing and beta testing an app that would allow users to “pay their utility bills, balance their checkbooks, and transfer money at the same time they upload vacation photos to the site for friends to see.”

Essentially, the new application which is currently in beta phase with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, allows for interactions regarding banking and financial services over alleged secure and private connections.

A similar, albeit attenuated program, is already in existence in India which was created by ICICI Bank in conjunction with Facebook that allows users, “through a secure SSL connection,” to “view account details and mini statements as well as apply for debit cards and request chequebooks.”

See the ICICI Bank Facebook App Demo Video here.

Indeed, KeyPoint Credit Union also has its own Facebook app that allows for many of the same features including the user’s ability to access all of their KeyPoint accounts via the app.

Facebook is obviously known for many things – but none of them are its respect for privacy. In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been very open about his disdain for even the concept of privacy, stating openly that he simply doesn’t believe in it.

Still, both Facebook and the participants in this emerging app are assuring future customers that there is no need for concern regarding leakage of personal data. Commonwealth Bank, for instance, holds that it will not launch the program without a 100% guarantee of security.

With this in mind and, given the track record as well as the open declarations of disregard for privacy by Facebook and its directors, would anyone in their right minds trust their online banking and financial information to the social networking giant?

Unfortunately, the answer is likely to be a resounding “Yes.”

Regardless of the stampede toward yet another privacy-destroying program, Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks accurately summed up some of the concerns regarding online banking privacy and the new Facebook app during a recent TYT broadcast. She said;

And I’ll tell you what my conspiracy theory is. Facebook makes money by selling ads. And the way that they sell ads is by telling the advertisers what their users are spending their money on. If they have the ability to see what you’re spending your money on via BillPay, on their website, then they’re going to sell that information to a third party. And then they’re going to be like ‘What? What privacy? What are you talking about?’

Kasparian should give herself more credit. Her deductions are merely logic based on previous experiences and the historical behavior of Facebook – not conspiracy theories.

In keeping with the concerns regarding privacy, however, it is clear that these ridiculous apps will no doubt be able to be accessed via smartphones in addition to personal computers and will therefore be subject to even more hacking possibilities.

Indeed, the increasing number of “apps” and remote-smartphone related programs dealing with personal financial, banking, and payment information will undoubtedly produce an increase in the number of hacking and identity theft incidents. Thus, the public that was so easily enticed to use these programs under the guise of convenience will be calling for an increased level of security to reduce the ability of hackers to access the data they freely offered online once their poorly thought-out decisions come back to bite them.

Enter biometrics – the only sure way to protect against theft and hacking.

Unfortunately, however, such concerns as those expressed by Kasparian are almost guaranteed to go unheeded. If they are even addressed by Facebook or the respective participating banking institutions, it will only be discussed as a public relations move designed to placate those on the fence and the holdouts who will themselves be caught up in the dragnet in a matter of just a few years.

In the end, the new Facebook banking app is just one more step toward the ultimate goal of the Cashless Society and the requirement that even the most personal individual information such as iris scans, fingerprints, vein scans, facial photographs, and even DNA swabs be surrendered for the purpose of data security.

As I have stated on many occasions, these types of programs are always introduced under the guise of convenience. Then, as more and more people take the bait, the older methods of payment are seen as cumbersome and, eventually, are phased out completely. Mandates then replace what was once a personal choice.

Yet, what is so ironic about the Facebook banking app is that, while the program is touted as providing so much more convenience, even when putting privacy and Cashless Society issues aside and, with the program running at its optimum, the app really isn’t that much more convenient.

As one commenter on the TYT video quoted above wrote, “You can already do online banking at the same time as Facebook. It’s called opening a second tab you morons.”

‘Extremism to grow in Spain, Italy, France as banksters & police confront protests’

A slew of new cuts have led to a fresh eruption of public anger and protest in Spain. But rallies quickly turned violent – when police charged and beat demonstrators while firing rubber bullets. More than 70 people were injured in the clashes. The austerity cuts driving the trouble include tax hikes, and the promise of painful pension changes. But the protesters say they’re being made to pay for the mistakes of politicians and bankers. The measures were demanded by Spain’s EU creditors – who’ve pledged Madrid a vital bailout for crippled Spanish banks.

'Monsanto Protection Act' to grant biotech industry total immunity over GM crops?

While millions of Americans were busy celebrating freedom from tyranny during the recent Independence Day festivities, Monsanto was actively trying to thwart that freedom with new attacks on health freedom. It turns out that the most evil corporation in the world has quietly attached riders to both the 2012 Farm Bill and the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that would essentially force the federal government to approve GMOs at the request of biotechnology companies, and prohibit all safety reviews of GMOs from having any real impact on the GMO approval process.

The Alliance for Natural Health - USA (ANH-USA), the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), and several other health freedom advocacy groups have been actively drawing attention to these stealth attacks in recent days, and urging Americans to rise up and oppose them now before it is too late. If we fail to act now as a single, unified community devoted to health freedom, in other words, America's agricultural future could literally end up being controlled entirely by the biotech industry, which will have full immunity from the law.

You can fight back now against these threats to food freedom by visiting: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_25711.cfm

Full exemption from the law for the biotech industry Authored by Congressmen and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Related Agencies Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill rider, known as the "farmer assurance provision" (Section 733), specifically outlines that the Secretary of Agriculture will be required, upon request, to "immediately" grant temporary approval or deregulation of a GM crop, even if that crop's safety is in question or under review.

In other words, if the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is strong-armed into approving a new GM crop that is later legally challenged in court (which is basically what happened for GM sugar beets and GM alfalfa), the Secretary of Agriculture, under the provisions of the Kingston rider, will be required to approve the cultivation and sale of that crop anyway, even if a higher court has already ordered a moratorium on that crop.

"A so-called 'Monsanto rider,' quietly slipped into the multi-billion dollar FY 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, would require -- not just allow, but require -- the Secretary of Agriculture to grant a temporary permit for the planting or cultivation of a genetically engineered crop, even if a federal court has ordered the planting be halted until an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is completed," wrote Alexis Baden-Mayer and Ronnie Cummins in a recent piece for AlterNet.

"All the farmer or the biotech producer has to do is ask, and the questionable crops could be released into the environment where they could potentially contaminate conventional or organic crops and, ultimately, the nation's food supply."

You can read the rider for yourself, which begins on page 86, Sec. 733 of the following document: http://appropriations.house.gov

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Or.) introduces amendment to kill 'Monsanto Protection Act' According to the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations website, the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, with the Kingston rider, was already approved by the committee on June 19. (http://appropriations.house.gov) But it will move next to the House floor, where debate and further amendment proposals will take place -- this means there is still time to fight it.

One amendment being proposed by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Or.) seeks to altogether eliminate the Kingston rider, which has now been dubbed by the health freedom community as the Monsanto Protection Act, from the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill. You can urge your Congressmen to support Rep. DeFazio's amendment to kill the Monsanto Protection Act by emailing (http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_25711.cfm) or calling (http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_25778.cfm) them.

Committee Farm Bill riders would destroy safeguards that protect farmers, environment from untested GMOs Another serious food freedom threat exists in the House Agriculture Committee's discussion draft of the contentious 2012 Farm Bill, where Monsanto et al. have inserted key language, via corrupt legislators of course, that will dismantle existing federal law as it pertains to regulating GM crops, and replace it with a free-for-all system where biotech giants are basically free to grow and market whatever GMOs they please without resistance or legal challenge.

"Deliberately buried in the House Agriculture Committee's voluminous discussion draft of the 2012 Farm Bill, these significant changes to the Plant Protection Act (PPA) -- one of the few statutes that regulate GE crops -- will counter the gains that have been made to protect our food supply and the farmers who grow it," writes Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety (CFS), one of the key groups fighting back against this Monsanto sneak attack.

"The provisions (Sections 10011, 10013 and 10014) would force the rushed commercialization of GE crops, create a backdoor approval for Dow's 'Agent Orange' corn and eliminate any meaningful review of the impacts of these novel crops" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com).

These provisions would explicitly outlaw any review of the environmental or human impacts of GM crops under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), or any other environmental laws as well. Only the USDA would be allowed to review the safety of GM crops, and this review process would be so severely neutered that the USDA would essentially operate as a formal "rubber stamp" for approving the biotech industry's offerings.

Both sets of riders threaten to eliminate every remaining semblance of regulatory power that "We the People" have over our own food system. If passed, these riders will abolish virtually all remaining protections over the American food supply, and allow Monsanto and the rest of Big Ag to completely control what is grown, and how it is grown.

There is still time to fight back against these heinous threats to food freedom, but swift action is necessary to stop Congress from hammering the last few nails into the coffin of American food freedom.

Be sure to contact your Congressmen right now and demand their support for Rep. Peter DeFazio's amendment to eliminate the Monsanto rider from the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, as well as their opposition to Sections 10011, 10013 and 10014 of the 2012 Farm Bill: (http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_25711.cfm)

Source: Natural News