Kim Jong-un ’s New Line and U.S. Negotiating Strategy
If President Trump wants to have a successful summit with Kim Jong-un then it ’s important to understand the domestic political incentives that will shape Kim’s approach to negotiations. On April 20th, Kim gave a major speech at a plenum meeting of the Workers ’ Party of Korea. Most U.S. media outlets focused on the announcement that the Northwould dismantle its nuclear testing facility andstop ballistic missile tests, but the speech also revealed important information about Kim ’s political incentives that received less attention.During a plenum meeting in March 2013, Kim announced the“byungjinline, ” which st...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 25, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Eric Gomez Source Type: blogs
A Goldilocks Strike against Assad has Few Benefits, Many Risks
Achemical weapons attack allegedly carried out by Syrian government forces against the rebel-controlled city of Douma has prompted the Trump administration toconsider military strikes against the Assad regime. The United States will likely follow through with military retaliation givenlast year ’s U.S. missile strike against a Syrian air base following a similarly large chemical weapons attack. Since the last U.S. attack clearly failed to deter Syria from using chemical weapons, the Trump administrationfaces pressure to inflict greater pain on the Assad regime this time around. However, a stronger U.S. military response ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 11, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Eric Gomez Source Type: blogs
An Interview with Vitalik Buterin, Patron of SENS Rejuvenation Research
Vitalik Buterin is the originator of Ethereum, but also a strong supporter of research and development aimed at bringing aging under medical control. He recently stepped up to make a $2.4 million donation to the SENS Research Foundation to support the scientific programs there, and thus help to hasten the advent of the first generation of working rejuvenation therapies. This is very welcome support at a critical juncture in the development of means of human rejuvenation, biotechnologies that will be based on periodic repair of the forms of cell and tissue damage that cause aging. The Life Extension Advocacy Foundation volu...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 21, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 5th 2018
In this study, we tested the hypothesis that Gbp1 plays a role in regulating immunometabolism and senescence of macrophages. We found that Gbp1 was mainly expressed in macrophages, but not adipocytes in response to IFNγ/LPS stimulation; Gbp1 expression was significantly decreased in inguinal white adipose tissue (iWAT) of high-fat diet (HFD)-fed and aged mice. We also observed that downregulation of Gbp1 in macrophages resulted in M1 polarization and impairment of mitochondrial respiratory function possibly via disrupting mitophagy activity. Moreover, macrophages with downregulated Gbp1 displayed dampened glycolysis and e...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 4, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
The Sizable First Volume of the 2017 Longevity Industry Landscape Overview
Over on the other side of our still quite modestly sized longevity science community you will find the network that includes Deep Knowledge Ventures, the Biogerontology Research Foundation, and the Aging Analytics Agency, source of the report I'll point out today. "Other side" is a relative term; it isn't far, and you'll recognize many of the names as also being involved in the US research and advocacy ventures more often mentioned here. Portions of our community have long pursued an interest in mapping the initiatives, people, and funding involved in aging research; see the International Aging Research Portfolio, for exam...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 3, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
It's Time to Put the Farm Bill Out to Pasture
Some Americans may be surprised to learn that agriculture in their country is in large part based on a five-year plan. Most commonly referred to as the farm bill, it is up for renewal this year and —just like in years past—is likely to produce a legislative morass in which the primary beneficiaries are lobbyists and the business interests they serve. The following excerpt from arecent article inThe New Yorker helps to illustrate the madness:When milk prices bottomed out in the summer of 2016, Robin and David Fitch didn ’t know how they could continue. Their four-hundred-and-seventy-acre dairy farm, in West Winfield, ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 1, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Colin Grabow Source Type: blogs
All I Want for Christmas Is a New North Korea Strategy
America ’s North Korea strategy is failing.The Trump administration ’s “maximum pressure” approach of increasingly rigid economic sanctions and military posturing has not slowed down North Korea’s missile and nuclear testing schedule. Since Trump took office in January 2017, Pyongyang has successfully testedtwodifferent types of intercontinental ballistic missiles, anew intermediate-range ballistic missile, asolid-fuel missile based off a submarine-launched design, and itsmost powerful nuclear device. The Trump administration hasconsistently opted to increase pressure on North Korea in response to these developme...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 18, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Eric Gomez Source Type: blogs
Economists Oppose a Strict Balanced Budget Rule. Could the US Adopt a Sophisticated One?
TheIGM Economic Experts Panel overwhelmingly opposes a constitutional strict balanced budget amendment.Weighted by the confidence of their answers, 99 percent of responders disagree or strongly disagree that a requirement the federal government balance the books would reduce output volatility; whilst 53 percent disagree with the view that it would lower federal borrowing costs. This is timely. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has tasked Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) as part of a22-person strong task force to consider alternative fiscal rules to the debt ceiling to help constrain the growth of US federal government debt. The tas...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 13, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Ryan Bourne Source Type: blogs
Why Hospitals Are Losing Serious Money And What That Means For Your Future
This article examines the economic struggles of inpatient facilities, the even harsher realities in front of them, and why hospitals are likely to aggravate, not address, healthcare’s rising cost issues.
According to the Harvard Business Review, several big-name hospitals reported significant declines and, in some cases, net losses to their FY 2016 operating margins. Among them, Partners HealthCare, New England’s largest hospital network, lost $108 million; the Cleveland Clinic witnessed a 71% decline in operating income; and MD Anderson, the nation’s largest cancer center, dropped $266 million.
How did some of the b...
Source: The Health Care Blog - November 12, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, October 9th 2017
In this study, we investigated the Hippo pathway, which is known from my lab's previous studies to prevent adult heart muscle cell proliferation and regeneration. When patients are in heart failure there is an increase in the activity of the Hippo pathway. This led us to think that if we could turn Hippo off, then we might be able to induce improvement in heart function."
"We designed a mouse model to mimic the human condition of advanced heart failure. Once we reproduced a severe stage of injury in the mouse heart, we inhibited the Hippo pathway. After six weeks we observed that the injured hearts had recovered the...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 8, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
How the Government is Failing Health Tech Startups and What to Do About It
By SUHAS GONDI
As the Senate debated the fate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in Washington this past summer, healthcare was front and center in newspapers and conversations around the country. While insurance coverage and the affordability of care certainly warrant the level of nationwide attention they received, they comprise only one dimension of the systemic deficits in US healthcare: access to care. Meanwhile, the pressing need to reform our broken delivery and payment structures and address the more than $1 trillion of waste in our system was being overlooked by lawmakers in DC.
Luckily, on the other side of the co...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 24, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Tech Source Type: blogs
D.C. Metro: Silver Line Slump
For years, Randal O ’Toolehas warned governments that urban rail systems usually make no economic or practical sense. They are more expensive and less flexible than bus systems. But cities keep making wildly optimistic assumptions about rail costs and ridership, and new lines keep getting built. It is a triumph of politics over experience.The other day, theWashington Postreported ridership data on phase 1 of D.C. Metro ’s Silver Line:But of the five stations that opened in July 2014, only the end-of-line Wiehle-Reston station has come close to projected ridership. At three stops in Tysons — McLean, Greensboro and S...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 3, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Chris Edwards Source Type: blogs
Our Unhinged Fed
If you haven ’t seen much of me on these pages lately, that’s because I’ve spent most of the last few weeks feeding and grooming my favorite hobby horse: that’s right, the Fed’s policy of encouraging banks to hoard reserves by paying above-market rates on their Fed reserve balances.Well, last Thursday morning I rode the old gal to Capitol Hill, where I put her through the paces before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade, at its hearing on“Monetary Policy v. Fiscal Policy: Risks to Price Stability and the Economy.” Mickey Levy of Berenberg Capital Markets, Eric Leeper of Indi...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 25, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
The Geroscience Perspective
The authors of this article express a representative version of the geroscience perspective on aging research and its application in medicine. It is similar to that of the Longevity Dividend initiative of the past decade, which is to say that if a large amount of time and funding is invested, perhaps calorie restriction mimetic and similar marginally effective drugs can be brought to the clinic in order to modestly slow the progression of aging and add a few years of healthy life expectancy sometime prior to 2030. I believe I'm not the only one to be entirely underwhelmed by this strategy. This is not the future of aging r...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 25, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
