As recently as 2020 and 2021, I still found Christmas VIA packets at the several Starbucks near where I live after Christmas. Because it was post-Christmas, they were always on sale.
But these past few year, I couldn't find any Christmas VIA packets by mid-November. This year I entered a Starbucks on November 11 and was told the Christmas VIA was already sold out!
Were people buying them up in bulk?
Learn the shocking truth in the Weekly Universe!
=====================
A team of medical researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Ophthalmic Bioinformatics has found further evidence that regular consumption of melatonin reduces an older person's chances of developing age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a disease that often leads to blindness.
In their study, published in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology, the group researched case histories of 200,000 older patients looking for an association between regular consumption of melatonin and the development of AMD...
In recent years, research teams have been finding that people taking melatonin supplements may be less likely to develop the condition. In 2020, one team found that the higher levels of melatonin can prevent retinal damage due to AMD.The following year, another team found that patients with AMD tended to have lower-than-average amounts of melatonin in their blood and tears. In this new effort, the research team looked at the medical records of 200,000 older people covering the years 2008 to 2023 looking for an association.
They found that out of 121,523 patients aged 50 years or older who had no evidence of AMD, many were regular users of melatonin supplements. They also found that many patients who began taking melatonin supplements after developing AMD experienced slower degradation than patients who did not begin to take the supplements.
Read the entire article.
Medicalxpress reports [July 3, 2023]:
"International research led by QIMR Berghofer has found hundreds of new genes linked to a person's risk of developing glaucoma, including key genetic targets that could, for the first time, pave the way for treatments that prevent the retinal damage that causes blindness.
The findings, from the largest-ever global genetic study of the degenerative eye disease, have been published in Nature Genetics.
The research significantly advances our understanding of the genetics of glaucoma, building on a previous 2021 study to identify another 185 previously unknown genes linked to glaucoma risk, bringing the total number to 312 genes."
Read the rest of the article.
Could strawberries as a snack or in your cereal, salads or smoothie help protect your brain from Alzheimer's? Maybe so, according to a new study from researchers at RUSH.
RUSH researchers found that a bioactive compound found in strawberries called pelargonidin may be associated with fewer neurofibrillary tau tangles in the brain. Tau tangles are one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease, which is caused by abnormal changes with tau proteins that accumulate in the brain. The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease on July 19.
"We suspect the anti-inflammatory properties of pelargonidin may decrease overall neuroinflammation, which may reduce cytokine production," said Dr. Julie Schneider, author of the study. Schneider is associate professor and neuropathologist in the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
Cytokines are proteins produced by cells and can regulate various inflammatory responses. Inflammation in the brain has been linked to Alzheimer's pathology such as plaques and tangles. The data suggests that pelargonidin may protect the aging brain from developing Alzheimer's disease pathology.
Among berries, strawberries are the most abundant source of pelargonidin. ...
Read the entire article.
=================
New Discoveries on Shroud of Turin Directly Contradict 1988 Carbon Dating, Put It Roughly Around Judea Some 2,000 Years Ago
A new report finds the Shroud of Turin dates back to the era of the earthly ministry of Jesus, contradicting 1988 evidence that dated the cloth as being centuries newer.
A new scientific procedure says fabric in the shroud is about 2,000 years old, according to a Christian Broadcasting Network report last week.
The study also analyzed traces of pollen on the shroud.
“The pollen samples that were gathered they, a lot of them, are from plants that are native to not just the Middle East, but specifically the area around Judea, Palestine, and Syria and stay where it was in that time period,” said Brian Hyland, an exhibit curator at the Museum of the Bible, according to CBN. ...
British filmmaker David Rolfe said that in a new film, “Who Can He Be,” his team produced a 3D image from data that was pulled from the fabric.
“We can see what I believe to be the body of the crucified Jesus in front of us,” he said, according to CBN.
“The only way that the image could’ve got on to that cloth is a miraculous one. A miracle that emanated from the body with unbelievable amounts of energy but within an infinitesimally short space of time,” he said.
Read the entire article.
=============
 |
Induced
transparency: The precise control of the energy flow (indicated by
glowing particles in the fog) makes the artificial material become
entirely transparent for the optical signal. Credit: Andrea Steinfurth /
University of Rostock |
Sissy Gudat at Phys.org reports:
Space, the final frontier. The starship Enterprise pursues its mission to explore the galaxy, when all communication channels are suddenly cut off by an impenetrable nebula. In many episodes of the iconic TV series, the valiant crew must "tech the tech" and "science the science" within just 45 minutes of airtime in order to facilitate their escape from this or a similar predicament before the end credits roll.
Despite spending a significantly longer time in their laboratories, a team of scientists from the University of Rostock has succeeded in developing an entirely new approach for the design of artificial materials that can transmit light signals without any distortions by means of precisely tuned flows of energy. They have published their results in Science Advances.
"When light spreads in an inhomogeneous medium, it undergoes scattering. This effect quickly transforms a compact, directed beam into a diffuse glow, and is familiar to all of us from summer clouds and autumn fog alike," Professor Alexander Szameit of the Institute for Physics at the University of Rostock describes the starting point of his team's considerations. Notably, it is the microscopic density distribution of a material that dictates the specifics of scattering.
Szameit continues, "The fundamental idea of induced transparency is to take advantage of a much lesser-known optical property to clear a path for the beam, so to speak."
Read the entire article.
==================
I always suspected that Sanders was selected, possibly even by the Clintons themselves, to run as a foil against Hillary. She couldn’t go through the primaries completely unopposed. There would be no debates and no air time. But they needed someone so far left that it made even Hillary look more centrist. It just got out of hand that Sanders thought he had a serious run at the nomination.
While there, Eckert was subjected to repeated and humiliating forced medical procedures. A review of Eckert's medical records, which he released to KOB, and details in the lawsuit show the following happened:
1. Eckert's abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.
2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
4. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
5. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a second time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
6. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert's anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were found.
Throughout this ordeal, Eckert protested and never gave doctors at the Gila Regional Medical Center consent to perform any of these medical procedures.
Alien abductions, silent spacecrafts, and magical
extraterrestrial technology all come together through eyewitness accounts in UFOs Above Pennsylvania.
Thomas Edison's discovery of the light bulb set the night ablaze! People began to work and play long after sunset!But it now looks as if Edison's blessing came with a deadly curse! The human species evolved to go to sleep at night -- and not doing so has deadly health consequences!
According to William Weir, reporting for the Hartford Courant (June 20, 2012):
The American Medical Association Wednesday adopted recommendations based on a report co-authored by a University of Connecticut researcher asserting that certain types of nighttime lighting can adversely affect health and may be linked to breast cancer and other medical conditions.
The AMA's house of delegates voted to adopt policies based on the report "Light Pollution: Adverse Health Effects of Nighttime Lighting," co-authored by Richard Stevens, an epidemiologist at the University of Connecticut Health Center. He was one of four writers.
With the AMA accepting the report, Stevens said, funding should become more readily available for further research.
"There is no question that lighting suppresses circadian rhythms," he said, adding that the next step will be to determine how much it affects specific medical conditions.
Dr. Steven Lockley, a professor of medicine at Harvard University and one of the report's four authors, said the AMA's policies will help educate the public about artificial light, particularly regarding the risks of working night shifts. Studies consistently have shown that shift workers are at a higher risk for breast cancer, heart disease and other health problems.
Read the rest of Weir's frightening report!
========================
Big Brother is watching wherever you drive -- using a vast computerized network that tracks license plates on streets and highways!That's the shocking news according to Jon Campbell, who writes in the L.A. Weekly (June 21, 2012):
Using a vast and automatic electronic tracking system that is all but unknown to the California public, on the day of Robles' murder, police in Los Angeles County cities had made a detailed record of the alleged getaway vehicle's movements.
The information came complete with GPS coordinates — even photographs.
In a situation evoking the hit movie Minority Report, the suspects were being watched even before they were considered suspects.
L.A. Weekly has learned that more than two dozen law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles County are using hundreds of these "automatic license plate recognition" devices (LPRs) — units about the size of a paperback book, usually mounted atop police cruisers — to devour data on every car that catches their electronic eye.
The L.A. County Sheriff's Department and the Los Angeles Police Department are two of the biggest gatherers of automatic license plate recognition information. Local police agencies have logged more than 160 million data points — a massive database of the movements of millions of drivers in Southern California.
Each data point represents a car and its exact whereabouts at a given time. Police have already conducted, on average, some 22 scans for every one of the 7,014,131 vehicles registered in L.A. County. Because it's random, some cars are scanned numerous times, others never.
Read the rest of Campbell's startling report!
============================
The Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act (S.3187) is a bill that is considered "must-pass" legislation and without notice, Senators Dick Durbin and Richard Blumenthal offered their anti-supplement amendment (No. 2127) to the bill. Their amendment creates duplicative, unnecessary, and unexpected new regulations while upending current law and the regulatory process.
As you know, Sen. Durbin has engaged in this sort of dirty-trick legislative process before in an attempt to regulate away your supplements. The amendment will:
Circumvent the FDA's New Dietary Ingredient Industry Guidance. FDA and the dietary supplement industry are currently engaged in conversations regarding implementing a new dietary ingredient notification process. The Durbin amendment creates an entirely new law that would require new FDA regulations, likely erasing nearly two decades of DSHEA's positive influence in favor of Durbin's knee-jerk approach to governing.
Require that a "facility engaged in the manufacturing processing, packing, or holding" of dietary supplements to register with the FDA. Title III of the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 already requires supplement facility registration! Extra regulation drives up costs of supplements.
Hurt businesses and the economy with burdensome and unexpected new regulations. Supplement manufacturers have thirty days to register their products after marketing or face charges of misbranding. Given that there are thousands of products currently in the market, these regulations will force significant numbers of products off the market as industry adjusts to the new regulations, costing the industry significant revenue, and causing the loss of American jobs. Most importantly, this amendment would drastically limit you access to supplements as companies would likely remove their products from store shelves in order to meet Durbin's thirty-day deadline.
Contact your senators IMMEDIATELY and tell them to OPPOSE the Durbin and Blumenthal amendment no. 2127 to the FDA Safety and Innovation Act (S.3187).
TO FIGHT BACK ...
CLICK HERE!
==============================
Now government watchdogs are catching up with what Universe readers knew all along -- Skechers Shape-Ups suck! According to a May 16, 2012 AP report:
The government wants you to know that simply sporting a pair of Skechers' (SKX) fitness shoes is not going to get you Kim Kardashian's curves or Brooke Burke's toned tush.
Skechers USA Inc. will pay $40 million to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission that the footwear company made unfounded claims that its Shape-ups shoes would help people lose weight and strengthen their butt, leg and stomach muscles. Kardashian, Burke and other celebrities endorsed the shoes in Skechers ads.
The settlement, announced Wednesday, also involves the company's Resistance Runner, Toners, and Tone-ups shoes. Skechers made deceptive claims about those shoes, too, says the agency.
Consumers who bought the shoes will be eligible for refunds.
Read the rest of the AP report.
==========================
