Eating nuts and peanuts associated with reduced overall, cardiovascular death

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, March 2, 2022

Eating nuts and peanuts was associated with a reduced risk of overall death and death from cardiovascular disease across different ethnic groups and among individuals with low socioeconomic status, which suggests that peanuts, because of their affordability, may be a cost-effective measure to improve cardiovascular health, according to an article published by JAMA Internal Medicine. The authors analyzed three large study groups involving 71,764 low-income black and white men and women living in the southeastern United States and 134,265 Chinese men and women living in Shanghai, China. Men in both the U.S. and Chinese study participant groups consumed more peanuts than women. In the U.S. group, about 50 percent of the nut/peanut consumption was peanuts and in the participant groups from China only peanut consumption was assessed.

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People with diabetes who eat less processed food at night may live longer

Study finds eating carbs earlier in the day is linked to better heart health

Harbin Medical University (China), March 15, 2022

The time of day that people with diabetes eat certain foods may be just as important to their well-being as portion size and calories, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. Mealtimes should be in line with the biological clock—a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep–wake cycle and repeats every 24 hours. Health outcomes for people with diabetes may be improved if certain foods are eaten at different times of the day.

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Researchers find out why yogurt lowers the risk of developing diabetes

Université of Laval (Quebec), March 15, 2022 

Scientists have known for some years that eating yogurt is associated with a reduced risk of diabetes, but the reasons behind this protective effect were unclear. A study published today in Nature Communications reveals that this protection could come partly from the gut microbiota as well as from specific metabolites produced by the lactic bacteria in yogurt. “These metabolites, called branched chain hydroxy acids (BCHA), result from the action of yogurt lactic bacteria on naturally occurring amino acids in milk. “ The researchers made this discovery when observing the effects of yogurt on mice fed a diet rich in sugars and fats. One of the groups was given the equivalent of two daily servings of yogurt. After the 12-week experiment, the researchers found better control of blood sugar, insulin resistance, and liver function in the yogurt fed group. They then analyzed all the metabolites present in their livers and observed changes in BCHA.

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Low blood folate may be linked to heightened dementia and death risks in older people

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, March 15, 2022

Low levels of folate (vitamin B9) in the blood may be linked to a heightened risk of dementia and death from any cause in older people, suggests research published online in the journal Evidence Based Mental Health. Levels should be routinely monitored and deficiencies corrected in older age, especially given that blood levels of folate tend to tail off with age, with up to 1 in 5 older adults estimated to be folate deficient, say the researchers. The evidence to date suggests that folate deficiency affects cognition and nerve signaling in the brain, making it a possible risk factor for subsequent dementia.

(OTHER NEWS)

Darktrace and Cybereason: The Intelligence Front Companies Seeking to Subjugate the World with the A.I. Singularity

Meet two power cybersecurity companies riddled with American, British, and Israeli intelligence agents who plan on using AI technology to target foreign populations as well as their own.

BY JOHNNY VEDMORE UNLIMITED HANGOUT NOVEMBER 3, 2020

We have all been dreaming, a dream where you can float or glide across your dreamscape effortlessly. This leads to the feeling of trepidation, as though you have the ability to let go, and if you do let go, you’ll either soar or fall. We’re now at a point in history where either the coming events will be studied for thousands of years, or it will be remembered as the point where we lost our humanity completely. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) technology has entered a new phase over the past several years, where instead of the A.I. algorithms learning from humans, they are now teaching themselves, changing their own algorithms as they learn. We are on the cusp of letting go of control entirely, so early on, because of a few small companies who have quietly been given free reign under the guise of “protecting” our digital lives, all within a tech sector that is moving so fast that we can no longer see what’s just around the bend. The entire free thinking population of Earth would love a little more time to discuss such epochal change. However, the technocrats and scientists, supported by venture capitalists, are already putting into action the future before the masses have a chance to even consider discussing its consequences. With very little legislation governing A.I. technologies on the books, our governments are eager to get every tech pioneer inventing whilst there is no accountability for any resulting harm. We’re not talking major societal disruption, we’re talking about a potential extinction level event of our own creation. Where we should be taking cautious baby steps, instead we’re expecting to fly just by letting go. We are about to experience a monumental change in technology, starting with “next-generation” cybersecurity that will then move quickly into the unknown. Unsupervised A.I., now running on critical networks throughout the world as a “cybersecurity” product, is evolving its own algorithm without the need for humans to be involved. Meanwhile, the wealthy patrons funding this cutting edge future tech are out in force, working to propel our societies into this new, unexplored and dystopian technological frontier. But who are the companies that these eager wealthy venture capitalists are funding to create an autonomous, A.I.-powered cyber defence system like never before? Are they even companies at all when we consider their deep and direct ties to intelligence agencies? Should these firms instead be reclassified as simply extensions of state intelligence apparatus acting without the restrictions of public accountability? Each of these companies have been built by teams of former intelligence operatives, some of who have sat in the highest echelons of the intelligence apparati of their respective countries. MI5 and C.I.A. both carry considerable weight in these sinister sounding enterprises, but it is Israel’s Unit 8200 that are the main group capitalising on this advance into the world-altering realm of unsupervised Artificial Intelligence algorithms. Yet, these very companies appear to be selling a defence against a potential apocalypse that they themselves may be responsible for. They have the solutions to everyone’s cyber-woes, or at least that’s the image they wish to portray. Let me introduce you to the most dangerous intelligence operations masquerading as cybersecurity companies on planet Earth. Darktrace – The Unsupervised Machine Learning A.I. Cybersecurity Solution The members of Darktrace are open about their aims. They talk about publicly held dataas though they already have the rights to sell it to anyone around the world. Data is the fuel of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Darktrace has made almost $2 billion in the data business during its relatively short history, reaching Unicorn status with great ease. When Darktrace first launched its website in 2013, its description of the company’s vision was entitled, “The New Normal: Learn Human and Machine Behavior to Reduce Cyber Security Risks.” Back then we were less familiar with the term “the new normal,” but now it surrounds us. Darktrace is already active within the NHS, the U.K. power grid, and many other major parts of Britain’s critical infrastructure and they are rapidly expanding around the globe. Dave Palmer was an MI5 anti-terror agent working on the 2012 London Olympics when he and some of his colleagues first bashed out the initial idea for what would become Darktrace. They wanted to create an A.I. cybersecurity system that was based on the human immune system, a system that differed from the traditional, reactive antivirus software approach. This system would look for abnormalities in a computer network’s processes to target a wider range of more sophisticated cyber issues. In a TechCrunch talk in 2016, the freshly installed co-CEO of Darktrace, Poppy Gustafsson, is caught misleading the audience about the company’s origins. She uses the TechCrunch stage to claim that the “spark” for the creation of Darktrace originally came from the mathematicians at Cambridge and downplayed the involvement of intelligence agencies like MI5, GCHQ, and the C.I.A. The TechCrunch moderator, Natasha Lomas, displayed some fine journalistic integrity on this occasion and asked for clarification. “So did the maths research come first and then you got together with the spies. Which way round was it?” asked the intrepid Lomas. Gustafsson squirms a little before saying, “it was exactly that. First the machine learning that was talking about how to critique a computer to help it understand itself. And then it was the, um, experts from the government intelligence agencies who thought ‘ooh, this could be applied to the problem of cybersecurity.’” But that statement was an outright lie and Gustafsson isn’t the most skilled deceiver. Gustafsson, who was initially CFO and COO for the fledgling Darktrace, runs the company alongside the other co-CEO Nicole Eagen, an alumnus of Oracle, a major tech company that also has its origins in intelligence. Both parts of Darktrace’s female power duo were brought over from Invoke Capital by Darktrace’s initial angel investor and advisory boardmember, UK billionaire Dr. Mike Lynch OBE. Describing himself as the “UKs answer to Bill Gates“, Dr. Mike Lynch is lauded as one of the most influential investors in the tech sector. His previous successful endeavours had been with Autonomy, a tech firm that has Lynch caught up in a legal wrangle with HP over the fraudulent inflation of its valuation, and Blinkx, a video search company where Lynch was later forced to step down from the board. Yet, Darktrace is not just one man working alone. The company boasts that over 4000 organisations worldwide now rely on Darktrace’s A.I. technologies. With headquarters in San Francisco, US, and Cambridge, UK, Darktrace has over 1300 employees spread across 44 countries and their numbers are rising. And although the connections to the state intelligence agencies are clear and obvious, Darktrace is officially a completely private enterprise with big investors including KKR, Summit Partners, Vitruvian Partners, Samsung Ventures, TenEleven Ventures, Hoxton Ventures, Talis Capital, Invoke Capital and Insight Venture Partners. Sitting alongside the controversial Dr. Mike Lynch OBE on the advisory board for Darktrace are some seriously influential people deeply connected to US and UK intelligence agencies. If you were to walk into the advisory boardroom at Darktrace, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were actually attending a U.K. Home Office meeting from the past. The former Home Secretary under Prime Minister Theresa May, Amber Rudd, became part of Darktrace after her time in government ended in 2019. She is also on the advisory team of Teneo, a consulting firm co-founded and led by Doug Band, the former advisor to Bill Clinton and close friend of the infamous Jeffrey Epstein. As always, when investigating the murky world of intelligence, many connections to Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell are revealed. With that being said, yet another member of Darktrace’s advisory board also has Epstein/Maxwell links. The C.I.A. stalwart, Alan Wade, is one of the most interesting members of the Darktrace advisory team. He was announced as joining their growing advisory board on 10 May 2016 and had been the former Chief Information Officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. His thirty- five year career at the top echelons of the C.I.A. ended in 2006 and afterwards he would dedicate his time to assisting companies with C.I.A. links from the private sector. While he had been at one of the top posts in the entire U.S. intelligence community, Wade co-founded Chiliad alongside Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister, Christine Maxwell. As Unlimited Hangout reported earlier this year, Christine Maxwell was personally involved in leading the opeartions of the front company used by Robert Maxwell to market the PROMIS software, which had a backdoor for Israeli intelligence, to both the U.S.’ public and private sectors. Given this history, it is certainly telling that Wade would choose to co-found a major software company with Christine Maxwell of all people. Cybereason – From Offensive, State-Sponsored Hackers to A.I. Cybersecurity As we have experienced at other memorable moments in history, coincidental simulations prior or during any intelligence agency led manipulated event are commonplace. On this occasion, a company named Cybereason is here to provide us with a short glimpse of our pending fearful futures. In multiple simulations Cybereason has run over the last few years, they have been gaming out how potential cyberattacks could cause unthinkable disaster for the U.S. 2020 election. Cybereason’s CEO and co-founder is an enigmatic former Israeli Intelligence agent Lior Div-Cohen, often simply referred to as Lior Div. Div, an IDF Medal of Honor recipient and former Israeli Unit 8200 member, co-founded Cybereason in 2012 alongside Yossi Naar and Yonatan Striem-Amit, who are also fellow veterans of Israel’s military cybersecurity corps. A scholar from the Academic College of Tel-Aviv, Lior Div afterwards worked as a software engineer for Xacct a network service provider followed by the notorious firm Amdocs, which was accused of eavesdropping on American government officials on behalf of Israel. In between Amdocs and Cybereason, Lior Div was the CEO and co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity firm AlfaTech which is described in its national media as“a cybersecurity services company for Israeli government agencies.” Some of the simulations that Cybereason have hosted over the past two years lead us to election day. In a video entitled: 2018 -10 Hacking the Vote from a scenario and simulation which was actually entitled Blackout; Protect the Vote, the simulation examines which parts of an election day processes were vulnerable to hackers. They make clear from the start it won’t be all about voting machines themselves. Operation Blackout Nolandia, the fictional city which was ground zero during Operation Blackout, was based on an average American city nestled within a crucial swing state on election day. Here in Nolandia, three teams of cyber-fighters would battle with each other over control of the city. These would be the three teams each with succinct roles in the polling day pretence, as told to us by Cybereason’s Ross Rustici and Sam Curry: Red Team AKA Broken Eagle Task Force: The basic aim of the Broken Eagle’s Task Force was to disrupt the election processes in real time. The Red’s approach evolved throughout the simulation from causing as much harm as they could into making the result of the election as in doubt and politically biased as possible. They attempted to control the narrative that the system was broken and that the elections could not be trusted. Blue Team AKA Nolandia Event Task Force: The Blue’s were fundamentally reactive during the simulation and were constantly on the backfoot. The Blue’s, responding to a reported gas leak at a Nolandia polling station early in the scenario, contacted the Secretary of State’s office to ask whether they needed to close the polling station. Luckily, the real State Department had two advisors sitting in on the simulation who were able to offer alternative contingency plans that existed in real world America. By the end of the simulation, the Blue’s were all aware that they had largely failed the exercise. White Team AKA White Control Team: This team acted as support to give advice or permission to either team, in a role very much like the Dungeon Master in a D&D game. The White’s main task was to balance the realism of the scenario and create problems for either team that they’d experience in the real world. In November 2019, Cybereason re-ran their election day attack simulation at an event in Washington D.C. and have run multiple simulations over the last year. The last imagined American city was called Adversaria. As the election day creeps ever closer, Cybereason have been releasing it’s more well produced promo videos online. If you’re paying very close attention then you will have noticed that Cybereason have spent all of October 2020 marketing heavily as their big day approaches. Representatives of Cybereason are being quoted in every mainstream scare story out there. Vice News released an article on 7 October entitled: “Hospitals Have Become ‘Prime Targets’ for Crippling Ransomware Attacks,” where they quote Israel Barak, Cybereason’s Chief Information Security Officer, the article states that Barak is “a cyber warfare expert at Cybereason, spent nine years in the Israel Defence Forces specialising in cyber defence systems.” And when Computer Weekly’s Adam Scroxton, on 20 October, was reporting on the conviction of the six supposed Russian hackers in the famous NotPetya attack, Cybereason rolled out their CSO, Sam Curry, to give a statement. In a Wired article on 22 October titled: 12 Cyber Threats That Could Wreak Havoc on the Election, Wired explains: “The security firm Cybereason last year ran a series of tabletop exercises specifically looking at how real-world attacks might impact Election Day. One exercise focused on a hacktivist group—known in the exercise as “Kill Organized Systems (K-OS),” pun intended—that disrupted traffic lights and brought the election to a standstill by paralyzing the city’s transportation system.” The media appearances for Cybereason have never come so thick and fast as they have this past October. One could even assume that these appearances are a media campaign leading up towards a big event.