Category Archives: Post Human

Non-profit Oregon horse ranch turns focus toward human help

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) Since 1998, the Butterfly Ranch in Silver Lake, Oregon, has served the communities of northern Lake County trying to save abused, abandoned and neglected animals with the hope of eventually finding them new homes.

Now, the 501c3 nonprofit hopes to turn its attention to rehabilitating humans in need through equine therapy.

A family operation, the 40-acre ranch tucked away northwest of the small rural community in Lake County is a small property with a big heart. It is overseen by Matt and Rachel Wilson with assistance by their daughters.

The Butterfly Ranch has been a new home for many abandoned or neglected animals, specializing in horses for treatment and on-site long-term care, with the hope of providing a second chance at a loving home.

Despite the ever-present demand for this service, the ranch operated at a loss, the majority of its roughly $42,000 estimated annual operating costs coming directly out of the family's private resources.

Throughout its operations, the Wilsons, who are also accomplished musicians and artists, have tried to expand its activities to garner a more rounded interest such as hosting clinics, youth camps and summer arts and music camps. The couple also comprise a popular acoustic folk duo, Wampus Cat, and tour extensively across the West Coast while also hosting an annual Lake County music festival fundraiser The Wildhorse Opry.

Their music act is a symbiotic relationship with the Butterfly Ranch's purpose, each concert an opportunity to educate and fund-raise for the ranch's life-saving operations.

The duo recently released a new music video for their single, "Bathsheba," filmed on location at the Butterfly Ranch, for an upcoming CD release this summer.

HORSE AND RIDER REHABILITATION

Now the Butterfly Ranch plans to take a new direction, modifying its focus as rehabilitation for people through animal-related activities.

Returning to its original mission statement, the ranch hopes to focus its efforts on working with families and individuals who have suffered trauma or are at-risk, pairing them with skill-building opportunities by working directly with horses.

Although neither are certified counselors, Rachel Wilson is working toward a masters in psychology.

Equine therapy has been used effectively in drug rehabilitation programs as a way to focus and recover from mental and physical trauma, a path the Wilsons hope to follow as well.

"We want to work with individuals who may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, have failing marriages or come from broken families and help them reconnect through working with horses," said Rachel Wilson.

"It would also be a skill-building setting, where people with community service requirements or at-risk teens and others who want to get back to nature, can work with wild horses outside of the typical aspects found at a general youth roping school or youth camp. It has great rehab potential, reconnecting and rejuvenating relationships where people depend on equine for therapy."

To achieve this goal, Wilson is preparing grant submissions totaling $2.7 million to construct indoor and outdoor riding facilities complete with barn and lodge to house a fully-operational equine therapy facility.

Wilson hopes that with grant support and sponsorships, the facility could be operational as early as next year. The lodge would also be available for weddings, business conferences, artisan getaways, clinics and other events.

MIXING THE OUTDOORS WITH THERAPY

The ranch hosts an annual summer teepee camp, dubbed Cow Camp Silver Lake, allowing camping grounds in Native American style teepees with therapy trail rides and basic amenities provided. The Wilsons plan to install a solar-powered shower and outdoor arena this year to add to the camping experience.

"We have tried to involve the community in so many different ways," said Wilson. "To be able to share horses, we offered up so many different things that our personal skills could provide. Now we're staying focused on what we love and what we feel we should be doing by providing therapy to people through horses."

Equine therapy has proven effective at various rehabilitation facilities across the country as an alternative to traditional medical detoxification practices. It is purely a mental and motor-skill practice requiring close concentration while establishing a relationship with an animal that cannot otherwise communicate. Rather than verbal skills the connection required with the animal is based on different skills not normally utilized in human relationships.

"There's something very calming about having a conversation with a silent partner, someone that does not verbalize," explained Wilson.

"Working with a horse requires disconnecting from verbal communication, it forces people to be silent and observe. It takes people out of the anxieties of the world and various PTSD triggers, removing the comfort zone and placing a person in new surroundings. It's not based on emotions, but drawing beyond normal behavior."

Wilson noted that the extensive mental focus and symbiotic partnership required to complete specific tasks with a therapeutic equine partner brings on a quietness to a near-meditative state, withdrawing a person from the stress of the normal world and focusing only on the animal. This results in a greater sense of success when tasks are achieved, having a tangible positive impact on human emotions and behavior.

SILENT COMMUNICATION

"Inevitably the animal connects with the person, and they gain a silent confidant that they can grow very attached to, building a trust that may otherwise be broken which has led to that individual's PTSD, pain and inability to communicate," said Wilson.

"That person can now find new ways to trust by connecting with an animal, and a horse will do that every time. They want to have the motivation to accomplish another task, whereas before depression or anger may be so deep that there is a blockage in performing any task. "

Wilson reiterated that they are very careful to match a person with the right horse to create what she calls a very real and spiritual connection between human and animal.

"There is a great power in horses, people gain self-esteem and their emotional core begins to reconstruct with that cornerstone of trust," added Wilson.

"People who have been abused start seeing their ability to assert themselves in a positive healthy way when they have to be a leader. It makes for positive giving and desire to achieve a goal. We can really see in abused neglected and broken souls, especially women and children; give them a horse and they start to soften and self-esteem grows and suddenly they're able to communicate without aggression or fear."

While the Butterfly Ranch's transition to its new direction doesn't mean a complete shutdown of its animal rescue and rehab operations, that will be curtailed going forward somewhat to the extent that current facilities allow.

While grants and sponsors are being pursued, Matt and Rachel intend to focus on music touring more extensively in the near future as a fundraising and education effort toward the re-purposed concept for the nonprofit ranch.

___

Information from: Herald and News, http://www.heraldandnews.com

Continued here:
Non-profit Oregon horse ranch turns focus toward human help - CT Post

Smithfield Foods, the worlds largest pork producer, has established a separate bioscience unit to expand its role in supplying pig parts for medical uses, with the ultimate goal of selling pig organs for transplantation into humans.

Routine pig-human organ transplants are years away, but recent scientific advances are breaking down barriers that frustrated prior attempts to use pigs as a ready supply of replacement parts for sick or injured people, making it an attractive new market.

Our bread and butter has always been the bacon, sausage, fresh pork - very much a food-focused operation, Courtney Stanton, vice president of Smithfields new bioscience unit, told Reuters in an exclusive interview.

We want to signal to the medical device and science communities that this is an area were focused on - that were not strictly packers, she said.

Smithfield, the $14 billion subsidiary of Chinas WH Group (0288.HK), in its first move has joined a public-private tissue engineering consortium funded by an $80 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense. Smithfield is the only pork producer, joining health-care companies including Abbott Laboratories (ABT.N), Medtronic (MDT.N) and United Therapeutics Corp (UTHR.O).

Transplants are used for people diagnosed with organ failure and who have no other treatment options. Transplants from animals could help close a critical gap to help those in need. The United Network for Organ Sharing estimates that, on average, 22 people die each day while waiting for a transplant.

Smithfield already harvests materials for medical use from the 16 million hogs it slaughters each year. The company owns more than 51 percent of its farms and hopes to sell directly to researchers and health-care companies, which now typically buy from third parties.

Stanton said the U.S. market for pork byproducts used for medical, pet food and non-food purposes stands at more than $100 billion, and that excludes any potential market for animal-to-human transplants, known as xenotransplants.

Smithfield has deals in the works to supply pig organs to two entities, though Stanton would not disclose the names.

Its just a huge potential space, and to be at the leading edge and focused on building those relationships is critical, she said.

Pigs have long been a tantalizing source of transplants because their organs are so similar to humans. A hog heart at the time of slaughter, for example, is about the size of an adult human heart.

Other organs from pigs being researched for transplantation into humans include kidney, liver and lungs.

Prior efforts at pig-to-human transplants have failed because of genetic differences that caused organ rejection or viruses that posed an infection risk. Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG (NOVN.S) folded its $1 billion xenotransplantation effort in 2001 because of safety concerns about pig viruses that could be passed to humans.

George Church, a Harvard Medical School genetics professor and researcher, tackled that problem two years ago, using a new gene-editing tool known as CRISPR to trim away potentially harmful virus genes that have impeded the use of pig organs for transplants in humans.

Church has since formed a company named eGenesis Bio to develop humanized pigs that do not provoke a rejection response or transfer viruses to people. The company last month raised $38 million in venture funding.

Eventually, Church said, the process could enable researchers to harvest a dozen different organs and tissues from a single pig.

Church estimates the first transplants involving humanized pig organs could occur in a clinical trial later this year, but these would only be used on people too sick to receive human organs.

Genome pioneer Craig J. Venters Synthetic Genomics Inc has been working for two years with United Therapeutics on editing the pig genome and mixing in human cells to overcome the complex issues involved in immune rejection. Its not like changing a couple genes and youve got it solved, Venter said.

Stanton would not rule out breeding genetically modified animals, but said Smithfields first ventures will likely involve whole pig organs that go through decellularization - a process in which existing cells are washed away and replaced with human cells.

Miromatrix Medical Inc, of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, for example, is using whole pig livers to make a surgical mesh used in hernia repair and breast reconstruction, and it is working toward developing replacement livers, hearts and kidneys.

Church welcomes the involvement of a big pork producer. Even though weve got companies like eGenesis that would make the first pigs, you still need someone who will breed them and do it to scale, he said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen and Michael Hirtzer; Editing by Leslie Adler)

View original post here:
Smithfield Makes Move On Market For Pig-Human Transplants - Huffington Post

It sounds like something Dr. Evil from Austin Powers might have come up with. But unlike sharks with laser beams attached to their heads, mindcontrolled turtles are now a reality. Thats right, researchers in Korea have figured out a way to control how turtles move with human thought. The new technology uses the turtles natural flight or fight response to tell it which direction to swim.

The system, created by researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), combines two technologies opposite to one another: braintocomputer interfaces (BCIs), which allow humans to control machines via thought and computertobrain interfaces (CBIs), which make it possible to transmit data from a computer to the brain.

The system works like this: a camera is attached to a turtles shell providing a live feed to a human. When the human operator thinks of a direction to move in left, right, or to stay put the thought is received by a computer the human wears, which recognizes the directions as electroencephalography (EEG) signals. The wearable computer then transmits the command over WiFi to a receiver, also mounted atop the turtles shell.

This receiver activates a small blind attached to the front of the shell. This blind can move from left to right. Whichever direction the human decides for the turtle to swim, the blind will move to the opposite side. For instance, when the human thinks left, the blind will move to the right. The turtles instinct kicks in, telling it to swim to the left to get around the perceived obstacle.

The new technology was put to the test with three obstacle courses, one indoors and two outdoors. The deckedout turtle navigated all three successfully, moving over grass and gravel while dodging trees, with his human controller sitting three miles away.

Turtles were chosen for the experiment in part due to their high cognitive ability but mostly because they display very strong instinctual escape behavior. They predictably avoid obstacles and naturally gravitate towards light, which to them represents open space.

Though the experiment was eventually successful, the team did experience some speed bumps along the way.

Because this study was a new concept experiment that conveyed human thoughts to animals, there was a lot of trial and error, study coauthor Daegun Kim told Foxnews.com.

One hurdle was making sure they didnt break any animal protection ordinances, which are very strict. The last thing they wanted was a shellacking from angry animal rights activists.

It is very important to conduct animal experiments in accordance with ethical regulations, Kim said. We designed and conducted experiments in accordance with the KAIST Animal Experimental Ethics Code.

So whats next for the technology? There are many possibilities, including applications to military recon and surveillance.

I believe that these animal avatar technologies will be developed in the future for entertainment, military, and industrial purposes, Kim said, and I think there is a possibility that it can be applied to humans.

Read the rest here:
Humans can now control turtles with their minds - New York Post

Aris Folley, AOL.com

Apr 12th 2017 6:23PM

Police arrested a man in Florida for allegedly trying to buy "human skin" on Facebook for $400.

A woman reported the troubling ad to a Martin County sheriff's investigator after coming across the post on "Jensen Beach Garage Sale" -- a public page that serves as a "community yard sale" for locals in the area.

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According to the police report, deputies went to the man's home "in reference to someone trying to buy human skin," in a post that has since reportedly been deleted.

Deputies discovered the man's identity before the ad was redacted, however, and were able to run his address.

SEE ALSO: Teen girl survives attack from raging shark by sucker punching it in the face

The police report cites Florida Statute 873.01, which bans the purchasing and selling human tissue and organs.

If prosecutors find the man in violation, he could face a felony charge, TCPalm reported.

It remains unclear what the alleged buyer planned to do with the skin.

Originally posted here:
Police: Man tried to buy human skin on Facebook - AOL

Every two seconds someone in the United States needs blood. In the U.S. alone, 41,000 donated pints are needed every day and although an estimated 38 percent of the population is eligible to donate blood, less than 10 percent of that eligible population actually do each year.

Thats why we need synthetic blood. There have been decades of failure in making a usable blood substitute but now, scientists from the universities of Bristol, Cambridge, and Oxford have isolated and manipulated stem cells in labs to produce red blood cells.

Their goal is to make red cells for patients with complex blood types because it can be hard for them to find donors. In the future, lab-grown blood could revolutionize medical care by providing a far reaching solution to keeping people in need supplied with blood regardless of type or donor.

While they're about to go through human trials, there is still a long road ahead for a full-scale rollout of synthetic blood. However, these developments could possibly change the future of mankind itself. This could be the holy grail of science.

kasto80 via Getty Images

See more here:
Synthetic Blood Is About To Go Through Human Trials - Huffington Post

As I sat behind my son, watching him take in and rejoice the awe-inspiring ocean, I couldn't shake my overwhelming worry for his future and for its future.

It used to be that the oceans were the last untouched and wild places on the planet. There were minimal signs of man's influence until the last century.

For hundreds of thousands, even millions of years, oceanic species flourished in a beautiful equilibrium that can only come from simultaneous co-existence and evolution.

Coral reefs housed and supported hundreds of species, and the oceans could rejuvenate themselves when small-scale catastrophes occurred.

Today, more than 90% of large-fish species, including sharks have been culled, killed, or removed from the oceans. Our appetite for fish, sharks, and other marine life is decimating them.

We are systematically destroying millenia-old coral reefs and other habitats through climate change (oceanic warming), acidification (from carbon), and bottom-trawling fishing gear.

Small island nations are being forced to emigrate as ice melts in the Arctic and Antarctic, raising sea levels to unprecedented new highs.

Every year we increase the rate in which we are adding plastic and other deleterious chemical residues into the ocean, choking it. We watch as animals starve to death as plastic fills their stomachs, or drown to death as they get caught in nets, long-lines, and other fishing gear.

We know that if left alone, the ocean can and will repair itself.

However, year after year after year of warmer waters, chemical insults, and overfishing and exploitation of oceanic species are making this recovery increasingly difficult if not impossible.

Humans embarked on an unknown experiment. Our agricultural runoff, oil rigs, plastic, fish-glut, and noises are killing the ocean.

My son asks me "Mama, the ocean is big?" I respond, "yes, the ocean is very big." He says, "There is a lot of water?" I say, "yes, there is so much water, you just can't see it all"

And, silently in my mind I add, "or the destruction we [humans] created."

Original post:
Oceans: A Human Casualty - Huffington Post

Warning: The article linked to in this post includes strong language.

A powerful blog post has gone viral since it was posted last week.

Heather Kirn Lanier writes that when she was expecting, she tried to make a SuperBaby. She detailed the extreme things she did in an effort to create the perfect child, ranging from giving up wheat and getting rid of her microwave to keeping her cellphone an arms length away from her belly. She opted for a natural birth and discussed with doctors her desire to avoid cutting the cord prematurely to make sure that her baby got all of the vital nutrients.

However, her baby was born with Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome, a diagnosis that carried with it a 34 percent mortality rate in the first two years of life as well as intellectual disabilities and serious physical limitations, including the possibility of never walking and seizures.

Lanier explains that she learned the same lesson Jesus taught his disciples when asked if it was the blind man who sinned or his parents. She learned that there is no blame to be placed but rather, this suffering is a crucial part of the human experience.

Perhaps the point of life was not to achieve some kind of perfection. Perhaps illness was an integral part of lifes dance, she writes. Perhaps fragility was built into our very design. Perhaps fragility was also strength.

Lanier breaks down the error in seeking to create SuperBabies" and imagines what "SuperPeople" would be like.

And on their holidays, they would gather around fires propping their lean, tall, muscular bodies onto core-boosting exercise balls and tell stories of the generations past, when people were not Super but Regular, Lanier wrote of the fictional species. In those bygone days, RegularPeople had autoimmune disorders and chronic pain. They had broken hearts and failed dreams. They had something the SuperPeople only know through history books: suffering.

Suffering will not be easy, and it will not be comfortable, but it will be, and you will become, Lanier explains in conclusion.

Read the entire article here.

See original here:
Viral blog post outlines the human need for suffering - Deseret News

UNDERRATED

The Great British Baking Show: Listen: Modern life is difficult, the news is a burning roller-coaster of oncoming crises and the bulk of Peak TV trawls through some the worst in human behavior. Thankfully, peace is only a click away with the ability to binge three seasons of this hit British series now available on Netflix. In addition to daydream-worthy views of all manner of pastries and breads, the series has a disarming sweetness (sorry) amid the fragile confidence of its amateur bakers, dryly funny comments by co-host Sue Perkins and an earnest streak so wide each losing contestant is sent off with a group hug. Think of it as Xanax in visual form.

Mansuns Attack of the Grey Lantern: Since well soon be inundated with 50th anniversary tributes to a raft of psychedelic-era albums (look for a special section on Sgt. Peppers in this space in the months ahead just kidding, maybe), let us celebrate this overlooked oddball of a latter-day psych-pop from 20 years back. Layered with strings, sticky melodies and the occasional dance beat in wryly surreal song cycle with titles such as Egg Shaped Fred and Dark Mavis, this album has more in common with Radioheads sound of the time than the Britpop of Oasis and Blur, and the level of audacity and invention here is every bit as strong.

OVERRATED

Scarlett Johanssons range: Whatever you may think of the ill-advised and curiously cast attempt to bring the animation classic Ghost in the Shell to the screen, there seems to be a pattern emerging in Johanssons ventures outside the Marvel Universe. Undeniably one of the most bankable stars onscreen these days, Johansson seems to leave the biggest impression of late in films Her, Lucy and above all Under the Skin where pesky human emotions arent required. While theres a mile-long line of Hollywood heroes who have never let that stop them, is it too early to consider her for a Terminator reboot?

The arrival of Classic West (and East): Proving millennials arent the only generation that can be fleeced by concert organizers, this bicoastal festival coming to Dodger Stadium is loaded with 70s album rock warhorses (Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan) and wedding reception staples (Journey, Earth, Wind and Fire). Looking to the absurdly successful classic-rock-a-palooza Desert Trip and the Grateful Deads Fare Thee Well as a model, the show is far from cheap with more than $150 required just to start the conversation, but you cant knock the business sense behind producing needless festivals for a demographic that actually has money.

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour

chris.barton@latimes.com

Follow me over here @chrisbarton.

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Overrated/Underrated: Scarlett Johansson, post-human action hero, and breathe easy for 'The Great British Baking Show' - Los Angeles Times

Female victim from Dominican Republic

The Human Trafficking Task Force, comprised of the Delaware State Police, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations and theDelaware Department of Justice have arrested a Georgetown man in connection with human trafficking.

OnThursday, April 6, 55-year-oldJorge Arcinieja was arrested after alengthy investigation into an alleged prostitution operation being conducted out of a mobile home located at 36 Garden Circle in the County Seat Mobile Home Park. Detectives were able to obtain a search warrant on the residence after observing numerous vehiclesandmenfrequenting the home for short periods of time before leaving. When detectives and investigators entered the house, Arcinieja attempted to flee out the rear doorbut was taken into custody without further incident.

A 25-year-old female, who was determined to be from the Dominican Republic, was located in a bedroom, along with various items used in the commercial sex trade. An investigation determined that the female victim was transported to the Garden Circle location from outside of Delaware andwas confined to a bedroom where she was forced to perform illicit acts with men visiting the home. Temporary lodging was established for her by the Delaware State Police Victim Services Unit. To protect the integrity of the investigation,information regarding the circumstances surrounding how she became involved in the operation is being withheld.

Arciniejawas charged with human trafficking - sexual servitude, trafficking an individual and second-degree conspiracy. He was committed to Sussex Correctional Institution on $250,000 cash bond.

Investigators are attempting to identify additional individuals involved in the operation. Anyone who may have information regarding this investigation isasked to contact Detective J. Rowley at302-752-3801. Information may also be provided by callingDelaware Crime Stoppersat 1-800-TIP-3333, via the internet atwww.delaware.crimestoppersweb.com, or by sending an anonymous tip by text to 274637 (CRIMES) using the keyword DSP.

If you or someone you know is a victim or witness of a crime or have lost a loved one to a sudden death and are in need of assistance, the Delaware State Police Victim Services Unit/Delaware Victim Center is available to offer you support and resources 24 hours a day through a toll-free hotline1-800 VICTIM-1(1-800 842-8461). You may also email the unit Director atdebra.reed@state.de.us.

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Human trafficking arrest made in Georgetown - Dover Post

Scientists know that our ancient human cousins ate one another, at least on occasion. At a handful of European sites scattered across some 250,000 years, researchers have dug up hominin bones that bear telltale markings: blade scratches, teeth marks, burns.

What they can't be sure of is why. Modern humans have long practiced cannibalism for avarietyof ritual reasons to frighten enemies, cure illness, honor the dead but anthropologists have no evidence that Neanderthals or other hominin specieshad a cultural motivation for consuming their kin.So, for the most part, researchers assumed ancient cannibalism was nutritional, or purely for the purpose of survival.

Which got University of Brighton archaeologist James Cole wondering: If hominins ate each other for nutrition, then how nutritious were they?

For a paper published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, Cole calculated the number of caloriesthat could be gotten from one adult human male. Compared to other creatures our ancient cousins ate mammoths, steppe bison, deer it turned out that hominins were a pretty low-calorie snack.A 150-pound person provides about32,376 calories, enough for a troop of 25 adult Neanderthals for about a third of a day. A mammoth, on the other hand, could feed the group for a month.

[Could cannibalism be 'perfectly natural? This scientist thinks so.]

Doing research into the subject, I found that no one had ever defined a calorie value for the human body, and if they did, they were kind of throwaway numbers with no indication of how they arrived there, Cole said.

Cole's calculations, on the other hand, are unnervingly specific. His paper contains a chart listing the estimated weight and calorie value for every component of the human body. Head and torso: 5,418.67 calories. Upper arms: 7,4571.16 calories. Thighs: 13,354.88 calories. Skin: 10,278 calories. Teeth: 36 calories.

When you stack up muscle values in terms of weigh, we actually fall right where we should rightbetween saiga and roe deer, which are animals roughly about our same size, Cole said, impressively matter-of-fact for someone essentially writing anFDA nutritional facts label for members of hisown species.

Neanderthals and other ancient hominin species, he noted, were far bulkierthan modern humans, with big muscles and sturdy builds. They might have been a bit more filling than a Homo sapiens meal, but not by much.

It's interesting because if youre labeling these acts as nutritional cannibalism and you compare how nutritional we are compared to game, we actually arent a very good return, Cole said.

Of course, the Neanderthals weren't calorie counters. But they would have been able to tell that a person didn't provide as much sustenance as a boar or a horse. And unlike a boar or a horse, a hominin would be exactly as cunning and skillful as the person who'd like to eathim meaning he's much more difficult to kill.

To Cole, this suggests that ancient hominins could have had ritual motivations for consuming members of their own species, just as modern humans did. This shouldn't be surprising he said Neanderthals are already known to have made art, worn jewelry, and developed sophisticated communication.

Clearly these are complex and diverse human species and their attitude to cannibalism I would suggest is going to be as complex and diverse as our own, he said.

Paola Villa, a Neanderthal expert and researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said that Cole's calculations offer some interesting information, but should not change our understanding of ancient hominin cannibalism. A person may not have offered the same caloric return as a deer, she said, but hominins weren't hunting each other the way they hunted deer anyway.

There never was a suggestion that humans were hunted as food animals, she wrote in an email. Eaten as food, yes, but the cause has always been described as either aggressive cannibalism (well-documented in mammals including primates) or starvation or as a ceremonial mortuary practice.

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Another problem with cannibalism: Humans actually aren't very filling - Washington Post