Free Republic

A daily fiber supplement improved brain function in people over 60 in just 12 weeks. The study showed that this simple and cheap addition to diet can improve performance in memory tests associated with early signs of Alzheimer's disease. However, the prebiotic supplements inulin and FOS were found to have no effect on muscle strength over this period. As populations age globally, the prevalence of age-related conditions such as cognitive decline is on the rise. Researchers sought to understand how targeting the microbiota, the diverse community of microorganisms residing in our intestines, using two cheap, commercially available plant fiber supplements...

Dendritic cells play a key role in the mammalian immune system. These cells are present throughout the human body and are known to capture foreign bodies, or antigens, using extendable "arms" called dendrites. Once captured, dendritic cells present these substances to immune T cells, thereby initiating an immune response. Dendritic cells are responsive to their environment. For instance, dendritic cells in the intestine's mucosa (inner layer) capture harmful bacteria by extending their dendrites through the epithelium (outermost layer) and into the intestinal lumen (inner space). Researchers found short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) produced by intestinal bacteria are responsible for initiating the...

A team of neurobiologists has found that mice with lower levels of Fos (short and medium-chain sugar molecules that are indigestible in the body) in their brains tend to be more susceptible to depression related to stress than mice with higher levels of the chemical. In their study, the group stress-tested mice and then tested levels of Fos in their brains. Prior research has shown that people respond to stressful situations in different ways—some shrug them off while others tend to suffer longer-term repercussions. Such scenarios suggest that some forms of depression may have a genetic link. Prior research has...

As the person who posts the daily Live thread on COVIOD-19, I am often pointed at as a ring leader for the "hype" and "hysteria". I don't think its fair, but I get it. I want to make a couple of over arching statements based on my life experience working in hospitals, emergency management and along side municipal and federal emergency preparedness organizations and departments. My work experience in hospital emergency planning and working with local, state, and federal officials provides me with a perspective that is different than most. The planning for these is things is pretty unemotional and...

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that President Trump wanted to shut down immigration to the U.S. to make the country “pure” from immigrants. Hayes initially asserted those who support a border wall wanted an "ethnically pure America." Regarding the partial government shutdown, Hayes asked her if she thought “a bill can be made or do you think this is fundamentally existential and cannot be made.”

A week ago, Donald Trump stood before a massive crowd of some 30,000 people at a rally held in Mobile, Alabama. There he gave a rousing speech about taking on the political establishment, appealing to the frustration of those present that the political class in Washington, D.C., has failed them. When the rally ended, the loudspeakers in Ladd-Pebbles Stadium blared out “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister, to a standing ovation. Being from California, I watched this rally through the extensive coverage that it received on cable news. And it struck me that once upon a time, back...

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio warned in an op-ed on Thursday that there is “mounting evidence” Obamacare creates more problems than it solves and he called on lawmakers to stop the “disastrous” law from taking effect. “It is time to admit that Obamacare isn't going to work, decide not to waste a single cent more on it, and replace it with market-based reforms that will give people more health insurance choices and options,” Rubio penned on the Fox News website. “It's still not too late. This September may be our last best chance to do anything about this disastrous law.”...

The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has been summoned to the White House to explain biting and unflattering remarks he made to a freelance writer about President Barack Obama and others in the Obama administration. The face-to-face comes as pundits are already calling for McChrystal to resign for insubordination.

The highest tenured faculty member at Chicago Law spoke out on Barack Obama saying, “Professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings.” Doug Ross reported this and more: I spent some time with the highest tenured faculty member at Chicago Law a few months back, and he did not have many nice things to say about “Barry.” Obama applied for a position as an adjunct and wasn’t even considered. A few weeks later the law school got a phone call from the Board of Trustees telling them to find him an office, put...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House says President Barack Obama will join other Americans in getting health coverage through new purchasing marketplaces established by his health overhaul law. The so-called "exchanges" won't be up and running until 2014, so Obama's participation as president will depend on his getting re-elected in 2012. The White House announced Obama's planned participation in a statement Wednesday after Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa introduced an amendment that would have required Obama to go into the exchanges.

Business as usual in Washington: So much for "Hope and Change", just control and more debt. During the first presidential debate Senator John McCain and then Senator Barack Obama argued over the earmark issue, and Obama pledged, "Absolutely, we need earmark reform. And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely." Hold your applause please; I'm just getting started!

Obummer said this morning that his policies have saved or created 1 million jobs. NOTE: No one can verify this fuzzy math. Obummer's HOPE and CHANGE = VAGUENESS and AMBIGUITY at best which does not bode well for Americans. With rel unemployment at 10% (many contend it is much higher) and rising this guy is now suggesting a December Jobs summit at the Whitehouse so they can TAAAAALK about job creation some more. Pathetic, just PATHETIC!

Michelle Obama's Gripe: President's Tennis Game October 23, 2009 BURBANK, Calif. (AP) -- What's President Barack Obama's most annoying habit? It's not practicing his speeches for hours in front of the bathroom mirror or talking too much foreign policy at the dinner table? No -- first lady Michelle Obama said Friday it's his tennis game. When they play, the president usually wins. ''He beats me quite often,'' she said on NBC-TV's ''The Jay Leno Show,'' appearing via satellite hookup from the White House. ''That gets to be pretty annoying.'' The show was taped for airing later Friday evening. In a...

I wonder how many more are made up?

He preceded his broad-scale talk by meeting with about 40 Wakefield students in a school library, where at one point he advised them to "be careful what you post on Facebook. Whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life." "When I was your age," Obama said, "I was a little bit of a goof-off. My main goal was to get on the varsity basketball team and have fun."

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama is welcoming an improved national employment report, saying his administration has "rescued our economy from catastrophe."</p> <p>In an appearance on the White House Rose Garden, Obama applauded a Labor Department report earlier Friday saying that the jobless rate declined to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent a month earlier.</p>

Video of Obama honoring Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin on the 40th anniversary of man's first steps on the moon and how he remembered watching the splash down from Hawaii, but as one the the commentators stated how could that be when Barry Soetoro lived in Indonesia as a child from 1967 to 1971 and was enrolled in Muslim classes when Apollo 11 splashed down in in the Pacific on July 24, 1969?

Various multiethnic states (imperial Russia, the Habsburg Monarchy, pre-World War II Kingdom of Yugoslavia) have been labeled—often unfairly—as “prisons of nations.” That designation will apply more aptly to the European Union when the Lisbon Treaty, signed by all 27 EU heads of states or governments last December, takes effect next year. Under the “European Arrest Warrant,” which is to be implemented under the terms of the Treaty, every citizen or visitor of a member country the European Union will be liable to arrest and extradition at the behest of a judge in any other EU member-country, under one of 32...

Michael Savage said tonight on his radio program that the Jan. 31st elections in Iraq were merely a fraud and a prop. Of all people I thought Savage would welcome democracy in the Middle East. But he seems to think that the Iraqis will install an Islamic fundamentalist state. I'd like to get some thoughts on this.

LONDON, Sep 21 (IPS) - The first visit by an Amnesty International team to Darfur over the last several days showed that the U.S. human rights record has weakened its case to intervene in a human rights crisis elsewhere. ''It has made it much harder for the U.S. to take on its self-described role as human rights leader,'' executive director for Amnesty International U.S. Bill Schulz told IPS. Schulz, who returned from a visit to Darfur Tuesday as a member of an Amnesty team said the visit showed that ''the U.S. loses an effective voice as a moral force in...