Nikmati Arti Segala Rasa

Banyak orang mengatakan hidup susah itu menyakitkan.Ada yang mengatakan kesenangan yang terlalu lama akan membosankan.Namun, ada juga yang mengatakan hidup susah dan senang itu tidak ada bedanya.Lalu apakah kita harus percaya apa kata banyak orang?Sebenarnya percaya atau tidak, hidup ini indah jika kita tidak melupakan jalan hidup yang telah kita lalui.Dan percaya atau tidak, hidup jika dinikmati sepenuh hati pasti kita akan sadar bahwa itu merupakan sebuah rangkaian yang saling berhubungan yang akan membentuk sejarah.Jadi nikmati dan cari sebuah esensi dari pengalaman yang telah kita dapatkan.Entah itu sedih,bahagia,berkesan,terpuruk dan rasa yang lain.Gunakanlah waktu yang ada pada setiap kejadian untuk memperbanyak rasa syukur.Percaya atau tidak, sebenarnya tidak ada pengalaman yang tidak berharga.Tanpa kita sadar pengalaman akan membentuk sebuah referensi dan akan menunjukkan kepada kita pada puncak kesuksesan.

READ MORE - Nikmati Arti Segala Rasa

Drugs companies putting profit ahead of medical discoveries, warn scientists

Researchers say companies spend vastly more on marketing than on new treatments

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/, The multi-billion pound pharmaceutical industry has spent the last decade developing new drugs which have produced little benefit and caused considerable harm, experts say today.

The claim that there is an "innovation crisis" in pharmaceuticals because of the difficulty and expense of discovering new drugs is a myth fostered by an industry whose chief focus is on marketing, they add.
Counter to drug industry claims that the pipeline of new drugs is running dry, the number of new drugs being licensed each year has remained at between 15 and 25. But most involve minor tweaks to existing drugs, designed to grab a slice of an existing market rather than offering genuine therapeutic innovation.
Independent reviews suggest that 85 to 90 per cent provide little benefit over existing treatments with some, such as Vioxx the painkiller and Avandia, the diabetes drug, causing serious side effects which led to their withdrawal, the latter's in Europe.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, Professor Donald Light from the University of Medicine of New Jersey and Joel Lexchin from York University in Toronto say the situation has remained the same for 50 years. The incentives for drug development are wrong and have skewed the behaviour of the industry.
"This is the real innovation crisis: pharmaceutical research and development turns out mostly minor variations on existing drugs and most new drugs are not superior on clinical measures. [They] have also produced an epidemic of serious adverse reactions that have added to national healthcare costs," they say.
More is spent on marketing (25 per cent of revenues) than on discovering new molecules (1.3 per cent). Drug industry claims that the cost of bringing a new drug to market is £1bn and is unsustainable are exaggerated, they claim. Research and development costs did rise substantially between 1995 and 2010 by $34.2bn (£21.9bn), they concluded, but revenues increased six times faster – by $200.4bn.
Companies avoid mentioning this "extraordinary revenue return", they said, adding that up to 80 per cent of drug spending is used by the industry on promotion. The authors call for licensing authorities around the world to stop approving new drugs of little therapeutic value. They suggest large cash prizes should be awarded for genuinely new therapeutic agents in lieu of patent protection.
The European Medicines Agency, which licenses drugs in the UK and Europe, keeps certain data about their safety and efficacy secret. Yet 29 per cent of new biological agents approved by the EMA received safety warnings within the first 10 years.
In a second paper, researchers from the London School of Economics in the UK argue that drug manufacturers should be made to demonstrate that their products are superior to existing treatments before being granted a licence, rather than, as now, superior only to a placebo.
"Changing the nature of regulation could encourage manufacturers to concentrate on the development of new drugs in therapeutic areas with few alternatives," they say. "Supplementing regulation with scientific advice and guidance can steer manufacturer's interest and efforts into key research priorities."
Stephen Whitehead, chief executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said: "We strongly disagree with the claims made in these papers. Medical research has always rested on iterative and gradual innovation rather than breakthrough advances which are very rare. If it were not for the incremental improvements made in the treatment of HIV, the disease would still be terminal rather than a manageable condition."

 

READ MORE - Drugs companies putting profit ahead of medical discoveries, warn scientists

Useless Search for Evolution of the Human Brain by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

http://www.icr.org, Evolutionary scientists do not know how the human brain's ability to process language supposedly evolved from a non-speaking ancestor. Recent technological advances have enabled scientists to explore this subject in new ways, and one researcher's review reveals two flaws that underpin the whole research effort.

The review article, published in a special supplementary edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, summarized the history of discovery and implications of a special gene named FOXP2.¹ Researchers in 1990 found that specific mutations to FOXP2 caused a heritable speech defect in a family in England. The gene produces a protein that clamps onto DNA to help regulate expression of other genes.

Initially, evolutionists thought that a small change in this one gene might have produced dramatic changes in humanity's supposed ape-like ancestor's brain. For example, a 2002 report in Nature noted that the human-specific version of FOXP2 "may be pertinent with regard to the evolution of human language."²

Emery University's Todd Preuss wrote "As a gene associated with a human-specific trait [speech], FOXP2 would at first glance seem to be a dream come true for evolutionary geneticists."¹ Could this be a language gene that explains how a human brain could have evolved from a chimp brain?

No. The high hope once held for FOXP2 as a key to explain the evolution of speech in the brain was dashed on the rocks of real research. Analyses of FOXP2 gene activity showed that it was not only used in brain tissues that facilitate speech, but also in various tissues throughout the body with a variety of uses. And a broad array of animals including all mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and alligators share an almost identical gene—although none of those creatures talk like people.

This represents an overlooked flaw in the evolutionary research approach. Because FOXP2 turned out to be involved in many traits, its evolution by natural selection is highly improbable. Supposedly, nature "sees" and "selects" an individual with a certain trait. How, then, could a single natural environment select multiple traits at once?³

Regardless, Preuss continued to assert that natural selection, not God, designed organisms. He wrote of "whole-genome screens to identify genes that underwent human-specific sequence changes as a result of selection."¹ Scientists can indirectly detect if selection did not cause a gene. But if they weren't present in the past to observe any changes, how can any researcher know that human-specific genes were the result of selection or even that they were the result of any kind of changes? More likely, the DNA differences existed from the beginning.

Preuss wrote, "In neither case, however, do we have a direct connection between language and the specific FOXP2 substitutions [mutations] that took place in human evolution."¹ In other words, the gene does not directly connect to a trait that nature could select. So how could nature select the human-specific version of FOXP2 during "human evolution"?

The second flaw is the author's reliance on a logical fallacy to support the concept of human evolution. It begs the question, which occurs "when a person merely assumes what he or she is attempting to prove."⁴ Thus, the 2002 Nature report begged the question of evolution in their statement, "Our method suggests that the fixation occurred during the last 200,000 years of human history."² But the "method" the researchers used was force-fitting the FOXP2 sequence data into a diagram that assumes evolution.

Preuss and others did not mention—let alone test—the possibility that FOXP2 was purposely placed to serve multiple functions throughout many body tissues in many creatures. Creation science, however, does not suffer from either of the two flaws that characterized the FOXP2 investigation.

References

1. Preuss, T. 2012. Human brain evolution: From gene discovery to phenotype discovery. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 (Supplement 1): 10709-10716.
2. Enard, W. et al. 2002. Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language. Nature. 418 (6900): 869-872.
3. Guliuzza, R. 2010. Natural Selection Is Not 'Nature's Design Process.' Acts & Facts. 39 (4): 10-11.
4. Lisle, J. Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy of Begging the Question. Posted on answersingenesis.org August 17, 2009, accessed June 28, 2012.

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

READ MORE - Useless Search for Evolution of the Human Brain by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Scientists create flexible battery that can be folded

http://www.indianexpress.com, You may soon be able to fold your mobile handset in half or keep it rolled up in your pocket, as scientists have now invented a battery that can be folded.

Scientists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have developed a flexible battery that can be bent and twisted giving the possibility that phones of the future could be flexible and hold more capacity, the Daily Mail reported.

The batteries that power devices have not increased much in capacity through the years, and they are also inflexible in shape meaning so many phones keep the same basic rectangle shape.

The team, led by Professor Keon Jae Lee has developed what they call the 'high-performance flexible all-solid-state battery', which is stable enough to power our phones while still remaining stable.

This opens up the possibility that phones and other devices such as tablets or e-book readers could be folded in half or rolled up for easy storage in your pocket.

"The technological advance of thin and light flexible display has encouraged the development of flexible batteries with a high power density and thermal stability," the KAIST team said.

"Although rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have been regarded as a strong candidate for a high-performance flexible energy source, compliant electrodes for bendable LIBs are restricted to only a few materials, such as organic materials or micro-structured inorganic materials mixed with polymer binders," the researchers were quoted as saying by the paper.

However, until now, the performance of LIBs has not been sufficient either, thereby difficult to apply to flexible consumer electronics including rollable displays.

READ MORE - Scientists create flexible battery that can be folded

Wow, Batan Bisa Produksi Padi Berkualitas

INILAH.COM, Bandung - Badan Tenaga Nuklir Nasional (Batan) merupakan Lembaga pemerintahan non departemen yang menangani masalah nuklir di Indonesia telah lama menghasilkan produksi padi yang berkualitas. Namun potensi yang dimikinya masih belum banyak diketahui oleh masyarakat di Indonesia.

“Hal tersebut terlihat saat saya mengundang para bupati dan pejabat-pejabat daerah lainnya, ternyata banyak yang tidak tahu keberdaan Batan. Padahal Batan mampu mengahasilakan padi yang berkualitas dan bisa menghasilkan 8-9 ton dan berumur lama. Sedangkan biasanya produksi padi itu hanya mampu 4-5 ton dan umurnya pendek serta sering terkena hama,” kata Menristek Gusti Muhammad Hatta saat ditemui wartawan di Hotel Gran Royal Panghegar, Bandung, Selasa (7/8).

Menristek mengatakan, pada awalnya orang banyak yang tidak tahu. Tapi setelah para pejabat dikumpulkan mereka langsung pada bergerak dalam hal bekerjasama.

“Makanya saya sekarang rajin mengundang bupati dan pejabat lainnya dari beberapa provinsi ditambah dengan kepala-kepala Lembaga Penjaminan Mutu Pendidikan (LPMP) untuk membawanya kedaerah-daerah dalam rangka memperkenalkan teknologi produksi Indonesia,” ujarnya.

Tidak hanya itu, lanjutnya, Batan juga bergerak dalam bidang pakan ternak dan kesehatan. “Tapi sekali lagi masih banyak yang tidak tahu, maka dari itu dengan hadirnya moment Harteksnas semua masyarakat terutama para pejabat pemerintahan daerah dapat mengetahui serta memanfaatkannya,” tandasnya.[ang]

READ MORE - Wow, Batan Bisa Produksi Padi Berkualitas