PUT PLASTIC BACK INTO THE ARCTIC OCEAN. YES! ABSOLUTELY!

ATTENTION WORLD GOVERNMENT LEADERS.

GLOBAL WARMING IS HAPPENING NOW AND PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD ARE TAKING ACTION. HERE ARE SOME MAGNIFICENT IDEAS IN FULL PROGRESS.

SOME OLD AND NEW IDEAS INCLUDE:

1. Helping those less privileged. The homeless are being provided with both shelters and social help but more is needed! Underground living spaces during the Winter months would help!

2. People around the world today are creating a social middle-of-the-road path in life with a gentle caring philosophy. An old but popular political ideal.

3. Studying the science of Physics and the underlying principles that form our Universe is in full bloom. The Covid 19 Pandemic helped to create a faster learning curve. Visit NASA.com.

4. Studying: Botany, Biology, and Medicine while completely understanding that our Homo Sapient specie is a territorial carnivore willing to slaughter and eat domesticated species such as Cows, Chickens and Pigs...is moving people toward Vegetarianism, a popular ideal today for maintaining good health. 

5. Studying the territorial imperative in order to understand why many animal species, including human, fight and are willing to kill for territory, is vitally important to avoid future wars!

6. Some excellent ideas include politely asking people who enjoy moving quickly from one territory into another, to stop pumping Carbon Monoxide into the air we all need to breath. Why not drive Electric cars or ride Bicycles or utilize (non-polluting) public transportation?

7. Some wonderful ideas include: creating or improving water filtration plants, creating Plastic and Metal recycling depots and planting millions of Trees and millions of vegetable and flower gardens every single year, everywhere, especially in drought and famine susceptible countries!

8. Assign students around the world to plant grass and trees and flowers and vegetable gardens in every school yard.  Before anything else,  students must learn to care for the environment.

9. With portable computers liberating office workers, it is now possible to transform almost empty business sky scrapers into partial Hydroponic Green Houses. Company employees can now enjoy spending a few hours a day caring for plants. Old office buildings can also be renovated and transformed into shelters for the homeless. Europe is ahead of North America in this regard.

10. Today, May 31, 2022, the attack on Ukraine is a sad example for the world! We must stop the race for money and power and territory. Dangerous sociopaths and psychopaths must be screened and prevented from entering world governments. All potential government leaders must pass a universally accepted United Nations sponsored full psychiatric examination. Failure to pass such an examination immediately excludes the candidate from working in government, any government!

11. For long distance travel there now exists Pony Express style Electric Busses that can simply be exchanged every five hundred miles. While one bus is being charged passengers can transfer and continue their journey in another fully charged bus. Small Electric busses are now in operation in cities around the world and of course, the Electric Trains continue to be popular. 

12. Electric trains already exist. The Japanese have fantastic high speed Maglev trains which North Americans should have adopted years ago. Electric cars are now on the market and momentum for these vehicles has picked up speed. We need charging stations on every telephone pole across North America to make sure nobody is forced to sit waiting in a dead-battery car. The poles could also be covered with flexible Solar panels wired to charge a large battery sitting under the pole. A CREDIT CARD CAN BE USED TO ACTIVATE A POLE CHARGING STATION IN THE SAME WAY THEY DO IN PARKING GARAGES.

13.  The same people who service and pump gas into our cars today, can continue to service cars as battery exchange specialists. We need cheaper assembly line Electric vehicles with removable battery packs.  Inexpensive cars that have quick slide-in-and out replaceable battery packs exactly like today's wonderful cordless drills.

14.  With human population density becoming a serious problem and global warming presently creating havoc around the world, the need to reduce our world population growth can be addressed with better sex education in the schools. Botany and Biology is best taught in early childhood along with reading and writing. Later, young adults must be reminded how the need for birth control is important. 

15.  We absolutely have to stop building giant Condo developments with buildings that do not have Green spaces inside and out. Growing vegetables inside a Condo building, by mandating and equipping certain floors for that purpose, will help provide food and employment along with Green spaces for the people living in the buildings. Outside any and all Condo buildings, a tree and flower filled Park area must be provided. Today, without Green spaces and Parks, the over-crowded Condos-for-profit are quickly becoming dangerous slums. Building under ground is one solution to protect us all from global warming and possible catastrophic wars! It is possible to create round underground villages with apartments and boutiques and grocery stores all lit by fibre optic cables and warmed by the Earth. Today, thousands of people find shelter during the cold winter months, in the train tunnels running under the city of Montreal. The same can be said for many cities around the world. What is needed and what would be more humanitarian, is if the governments of the world provided small apartments to fit in with the boutiques and shops now lining the underground tunnels..

  I foresee a future where only Green Houses and Orchards and Gardens with Green Tree and flower parks are created above ground. Many of the  Green planet saving creations will replace the millions upon millions of polluting industrial buildings presently taking up precious land space. 

16. Put Plastic back into the Ocean!  Recycle Plastic into large and solid floating Life-Rafts and style them to look like large Ice Burgs. Distribute thousands of these floating platforms where they are needed most in Arctic water. They will help the Polar Bears and Walrus and Seals survive global warming and give these threatened species a place to sit and sleep and thrive when the Ice melts. These rafts will also hold cameras for people around the world to monitor the health of the animals using the rafts. Canadian Ice breaking ships will find another use as scientists aboard will periodically check up to see how the artificial rafts are holding up. The rafts must be created from strong recyclable plastic and they will mimic the real Ice Burgs now melting. They will be moved or removed when necessary. 

17. Today, millions of tons of plastic fill garbage dumps around the world. Why not recycle the plastic and create large survival boats for people flooded out of their homes by dangerous storms?

18.  One final thought! Magnificent ideas are happening today! Help them along! 

P.S. Attention world governments, it is highly recommended that before global warming creates a mass extinction, you act on one or more of the above ideas!   

Signed:  Nelson Joseph Raglione...

 Director: The World Friendly Peace and Ecology Movement. 

human4us2.blogspot.com

 

Is it the beginning of the end for Mr. Putin's hold on power?

 If his past behaviour is any indication, I surmise that Mr. Putin will respond to Mr. Prigojin's revolt by quietly sending KGB assassins to Belarus, where they will locate and murder the Wagner leader. 

 Unlike his past non-violent victims, however, Prigojin is not an easy target. He may find Putin first!                   

While waiting for Putin to make his move, it would be wise for Mr. Prigojin to remain deep under cover and even wiser if he located as many large business companies in Russia, as possible!  Prigojin could then politely ask the large company C.E.O's to switch loyalties. He could also do it directly by telephone or by computer messaging service but that might be dangerous!

  I am certain Putin's assassins will be monitoring the communications system. If Mr. Prigojin could quickly leave a few well armed Wagner Mercenaries temporarily in charge of a dozen or more large Russian business companies, that would in my humble opinion help to finance his presently underpaid private army. 

Author Unknown.

 

 

 

 

 

Prevention

Work upstream to prevent more youth from 

experiencing homelessness and sex 

trafficking.

Shelter & Emergency Services

Reimagine the shelter and emergency 

services to produce the best outcomes for 

youth.

Transition, Community Housing & 

Supports

Ensure young people remain stably housed 

and thrive with housing and supports.

WILL CRISPR FINALLY BE A CANCER KILLER?

“CRISPR is becoming a mainstream methodology used in many cancer biology studies because of the convenience of the technique,” said Jerry Li, M.D., Ph.D., of NCI’s Division of Cancer Biology.Now CRISPR is moving out of lab dishes and into trials of people with cancer. In a small study, for example, researchers tested a cancer treatment involving immune cells that were CRISPR-edited to better hunt down and attack cancer. 

Despite all the excitement, scientists have been proceeding cautiously, feeling out the tool’s strengths and pitfalls, setting best practices, and debating the social and ethical consequences of gene editing in humans. 

How Does CRISPR Work?

Like many other advances in science and medicine, CRISPR was inspired by nature. In this case, the idea was borrowed from a simple defense mechanism found in some microbes, such as bacteria. 

To protect themselves against invaders like viruses, these microbes capture snippets of the intruder’s DNA and store them away as segments called CRISPRs, or clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic repeats. If the same germ tries to attack again, those DNA segments (turned into short pieces of RNA) help an enzyme called Cas find and slice up the invader’s DNA. 

After this defense system was discovered, scientists realized that it had the makings of a versatile gene-editing tool. Within a handful of years, multiple groups had successfully adapted the system to edit virtually any section of DNA, first in the cells of other microbes, and then eventually in human cells."

Other clinical studies of CRISPR-made cancer treatments are already underway. A few trials are testing CRISPR-engineered CAR T-cell therapies, another type of immunotherapy. For example, one company is testing CRISPR-engineered CAR T cells in people with B cell cancers and people with multiple myeloma.

There are still a lot of questions about all the ways that CRISPR might be put to use in cancer research and treatment. But one thing is for certain: The field is moving incredibly fast and new applications of the technology are constantly popping up. 

“People are still improving CRISPR methods,” Dr. Li said. “It’s quite an active area of research and development. I’m sure that CRISPR will have even broader applications in the future.”

From the National Cancer Institute. N.C.I.

How CRISPR Is Changing Cancer Research and 

Treatment

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July 27, 2020, by NCI Staff

Ever since scientists realized that changes in DNA cause cancer, they have been searching for an easy way to correct those changes by manipulating DNA. Although several methods of gene editing have been developed over the years, none has really fit the bill for a quick, easy, and cheap technology.

But a game-changer occurred in 2013, when several researchers showed that a gene-editing tool called CRISPR could alter the DNA of human cells like a very precise and easy-to-use pair of scissors. 

The new tool has taken the research world by storm, markedly shifting the line between possible and impossible. As soon as CRISPR made its way onto the shelves and freezers of labs around the world, cancer researchers jumped at the chance to use it.

“CRISPR is becoming a mainstream methodology used in many cancer biology studies because of the convenience of the technique,” said Jerry Li, M.D., Ph.D., of NCI’s Division of Cancer Biology.

Now CRISPR is moving out of lab dishes and into trials of people with cancer. In a small study, for example, researchers tested a cancer treatment involving immune cells that were CRISPR-edited to better hunt down and attack cancer. 

Despite all the excitement, scientists have been proceeding cautiously, feeling out the tool’s strengths and pitfalls, setting best practices, and debating the social and ethical consequences of gene editing in humans. 

How Does CRISPR Work?

Like many other advances in science and medicine, CRISPR was inspired by nature. In this case, the idea was borrowed from a simple defense mechanism found in some microbes, such as bacteria. 

To protect themselves against invaders like viruses, these microbes capture snippets of the intruder’s DNA and store them away as segments called CRISPRs, or clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic repeats. If the same germ tries to attack again, those DNA segments (turned into short pieces of RNA) help an enzyme called Cas find and slice up the invader’s DNA. 

After this defense system was discovered, scientists realized that it had the makings of a versatile gene-editing tool. Within a handful of years, multiple groups had successfully adapted the system to edit virtually any section of DNA, first in the cells of other microbes, and then eventually in human cells.

ENLARGE

CRISPR consists of a guide RNA (RNA-targeting device, purple) and the Cas enzyme (blue). When the guide RNA matches up with the target DNA (orange), Cas cuts the DNA. A new segment of DNA (green) can then be added.

Credit: National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institutes of Health

In the laboratory, the CRISPR tool consists of two main actors: a guide RNA and a DNA-cutting enzyme, most commonly one called Cas9. Scientists design the guide RNA to mirror the DNA of the gene to be edited (called the target). The guide RNA partners with Cas and—true to its name—leads Cas to the target. When the guide RNA matches up with the target gene's DNA, Cas cuts the DNA. 

What happens next depends on the type of CRISPR tool that’s being used. In some cases, the target gene's DNA is scrambled while it's repaired, and the gene is inactivated. With other versions of CRISPR, scientists can manipulate genes in more precise ways such as adding a new segment of DNA or editing single DNA letters. 

Scientists have also used CRISPR to detect specific targets, such as DNA from cancer-causing viruses and RNA from cancer cells. Most recently, CRISPR has been put to use as an experimental test to detect the novel coronavirus.

Why Is CRISPR a Big Deal?

Scientists consider CRISPR to be a game-changer for a number of reasons. Perhaps the biggest is that CRISPR is easy to use, especially compared with older gene-editing tools. 

“Before, only a handful of labs in the world could make the proper tools [for gene editing]. Now, even a high school student can make a change in a complex genome” using CRISPR, said Alejandro Chavez, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor at Columbia University who has developed several novel CRISPR tools.

CRISPR is also completely customizable. It can edit virtually any segment of DNA within the 3 billion letters of the human genome, and it’s more precise than other DNA-editing tools. 

And gene editing with CRISPR is a lot faster. With older methods, “it usually [took] a year or two to generate a genetically engineered mouse model, if you’re lucky,” said Dr. Li. But now with CRISPR, a scientist can create a complex mouse model within a few months, he said. 

Another plus is that CRISPR can be easily scaled up. Researchers can use hundreds of guide RNAs to manipulate and evaluate hundreds or thousands of genes at a time. Cancer researchers often use this type of experiment to pick out genes that might make good drug targets. 

And as an added bonus, “it’s certainly cheaper than previous methods,” Dr. Chavez noted.

What Are CRISPR’s Limitations?

With all of its advantages over other gene-editing tools, CRISPR has become a go-to for scientists studying cancer. There’s also hope that it will have a place in treating cancer, too. But CRISPR isn’t perfect, and its downsides have made many scientists cautious about its use in people.

A major pitfall is that CRISPR sometimes cuts DNA outside of the target gene—what’s known as “off-target” editing. Scientists are worried that such unintended edits could be harmful and could even turn cells cancerous, as occurred in a 2002 study of a gene therapy. 

“If [CRISPR] starts breaking random parts of the genome, the cell can start stitching things together in really weird ways, and there’s some concern about that becoming cancer,” Dr. Chavez explained. But by tweaking the structures of Cas and the guide RNA, scientists have improved CRISPR’s ability to cut only the intended target, he added. 

Another potential roadblock is getting CRISPR components into cells. The most common way to do this is to co-opt a virus to do the job. Instead of ferrying genes that cause disease, the virus is modified to carry genes for the guide RNA and Cas. 

Slipping CRISPR into lab-grown cells is one thing; but getting it into cells in a person's body is another story. Some viruses used to carry CRISPR can infect multiple types of cells, so, for instance, they may end up editing muscle cells when the goal was to edit liver cells. 

Researchers are exploring different ways to fine-tune the delivery of CRISPR to specific organs or cells in the human body. Some are testing viruses that infect only one organ, like the liver or brain. Others have created tiny structures called nanocapsules that are designed to deliver CRISPR components to specific cells.

Because CRISPR is just beginning to be tested in humans, there are also concerns about how the body—in particular, the immune system—will react to viruses carrying CRISPR or to the CRISPR components themselves. 

Some wonder whether the immune system could attack Cas (a bacterial enzyme that is foreign to human bodies) and destroy CRISPR-edited cells. Twenty years ago, a patient died after his immune system launched a massive attack against the viruses carrying a gene therapy he had received. However, newer CRISPR-based approaches rely on viruses that appear to be safer than those used for older gene therapies.

Another major concern is that editing cells inside the body could accidentally make changes to sperm or egg cells that can be passed on to future generations. But for almost all ongoing human studies involving CRISPR, patients’ cells are removed and edited outside of their bodies. This “ex vivo” approach is considered safer because it is more controlled than trying to edit cells inside the body, Dr. Chavez said.

However, one ongoing study is testing CRISPR gene editing directly in the eyes of people with a genetic disease that causes blindness, called Leber congenital amaurosis.

The First Clinical Trial of CRISPR for Cancer

The first trial in the United States to test a CRISPR-made cancer therapy was launched in 2019 at the University of Pennsylvania. The study, funded in part by NCI, is testing a type of immunotherapy in which patients’ own immune cells are genetically modified to better “see” and kill their cancer. 

The therapy involves making four genetic modifications to T cells, immune cells that can kill cancer. First, the addition of a synthetic gene gives the T cells a claw-like protein (called a receptor) that “sees” NY-ESO-1, a molecule on some cancer cells.

Then CRISPR is used to remove three genes: two that can interfere with the NY-ESO-1 receptor and another that limits the cells’ cancer-killing abilities. The finished product, dubbed NYCE T cells, were grown in large numbers and then infused into patients. 

ENLARGE

The first trial of CRISPR for patients with cancer tested T cells that were modified to better "see" and kill cancer. CRISPR was used to remove three genes: two that can interfere with the NY-ESO-1 receptor and another that limits the cells’ cancer-killing abilities. 

Credit: National Cancer Institute

“We had done a prior study of NY-ESO-1–directed T cells and saw some evidence of improved response and low toxicity,” said the trial’s leader, Edward Stadtmauer, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania. He and his colleagues wanted to see if removing the three genes with CRISPR would make the T cells work even better, he said. 

The goal of this study was to first find out if the CRISPR-made treatment was safe. It was tested in two patients with advanced multiple myeloma and one with metastatic sarcoma. All three had tumors that contained NY-ESO-1, the target of the T-cell therapy. 

Initial findings suggest that the treatment is safe. Some side effects did occur, but they were likely caused by the chemotherapy patients received before the infusion of NYCE cells, the researchers reported. There was no evidence of an immune reaction to the CRISPR-edited cells. 

Only about 10% of the T cells used for the therapy had all four of the desired genetic edits. And off-target edits were found in the modified cells of all three patients. However, none of the cells with off-target edits grew in a way that suggested they had become cancer, Dr. Stadtmauer noted.

The treatment had a small effect on the patients’ cancers. The tumors of two patients (one with multiple myeloma and one with sarcoma) stopped growing for a while but resumed growing later. The treatment didn't work at all for the third patient. 

It's exciting that the treatment initially worked for the sarcoma patient because “solid tumors have been a much more difficult nut to crack with cellular therapy," Dr. Stadtmauer said. "Perhaps [CRISPR] techniques will enhance our ability to treat solid tumors with cell therapies.”

Although the trial shows that CRISPR-edited cell therapy is possible, the long-term effects still need to be monitored, Dr. Stadtmauer continued. The NYCE cells are “safe for as long as we’ve been watching [the study participants]. Our plan is to keep monitoring them for years, if not decades,” he said. 

More Studies of CRISPR Treatments to Come 

While the study of NYCE T cells marked the first trial of a CRISPR-based cancer treatment, there are likely more to come. 

“This [trial] was really a proof-of-principle, feasibility, and safety thing that now opens up the whole world of CRISPR editing and other techniques of [gene] editing to hopefully make the next generation of therapies,” Dr. Stadtmauer said. 

Other clinical studies of CRISPR-made cancer treatments are already underway. A few trials are testing CRISPR-engineered CAR T-cell therapies, another type of immunotherapy. For example, one company is testing CRISPR-engineered CAR T cells in people with B cell cancers and people with multiple myeloma.

There are still a lot of questions about all the ways that CRISPR might be put to use in cancer research and treatment. But one thing is for certain: The field is moving incredibly fast and new applications of the technology are constantly popping up. 

“People are still improving CRISPR methods,” Dr. Li said. “It’s quite an active area of research and development. I’m sure that CRISPR will have even broader applications in the future.”

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