Possible terrorism connection decoded together with a reference to a type of lesser known ion channels formed by a fungal molecule

Because of messages I've been decoding in my chemistry book captions, I started learning recently about alamethicin (ALA), a voltage-gated, ion channel-forming peptide. First, to clarify what ion channels are: "Ion channels are protein assemblies that transport ions across cell membranes." (See "Multi-oligomeric states of alamethicin ion channel: Assemblies and conductance," 2023, https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(23)00304-1.)

Ion channels are located within the membrane of all excitable cells,[3] and of many intracellular organelles. They are often described as narrow, water-filled tunnels that allow only ions of a certain size and/or charge to pass through. This characteristic is called selective permeability. The archetypal channel pore is just one or two atoms wide at its narrowest point and is selective for specific species of ion, such as sodium or potassium. However, some channels may be permeable to the passage of more than one type of ion, typically sharing a common charge: positive (cations) or negative (anions). Ions often move through the segments of the channel pore in a single file nearly as quickly as the ions move through the free solution. In many ion channels, passage through the pore is governed by a "gate", which may be opened or closed in response to chemical or electrical signals, temperature, or mechanical force.

(Excerpt from 9/16/2024 Wikipedia article online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_channel)

And why should we care about ion channels? In this time of so many mental issues, especially in our teenagers and young adults, they are very important:

The cyclic activation of these channels influences neurotransmitter release, neuron excitability, gene transcription, and plasticity, providing distinct brain areas with unique physiological and pharmacological response. A growing body of data has implicated ion channels in the susceptibility or pathogenesis of psychiatric diseases. Indeed, population studies support the association of polymorphisms in calcium and potassium channels with the genetic risk for bipolar disorders (BPDs) or schizophrenia. Moreover, point mutations in calcium, sodium, and potassium channel genes have been identified in some childhood developmental disorders. Finally, antibodies against potassium channel complexes occur in a series of autoimmune psychiatric diseases.

("Major channels involved in neuropsychiatric disorders and therapeutic perspectives," 2013, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3646240/) 

Alamethicin is a protein from fungi that forms channels in the presence of electric field." (See https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(23)00304-1.) Alamethicin is a very small clump of a few amino acids that comes from fungi. It is abbreviated as "ALM." This is attention-grabbing to me because it means that it or similar compounds can be present in anything made with yeast. That means in bread, fermented food/drink, and anything flavored with yeast extract. 

Peptaibols, a family of nongenomically synthesized antimicrobial peptides extracted from fungi, mediate ion transport through permeabilization of membranes. Permeabilization mechanism via formation of ion channels was proposed for several of them, such as antiamoebin (1), trichotoxin (2), and alamethicin (ALM) (3). Peptaibols consist of 5–20 residues, most of them hydrophobic, that assemble into simple bundles of α helices surrounding a water-filled pore, which acts as a conduit for ions. Assembly usually takes place in the presence of an applied transmembrane voltage. In contrast to large, genomic ion channels, peptaibols are not endowed with complex features, such as selectivity filters, gating, or activating mechanisms. 

("Multi-oligomeric states of alamethicin ion channel: Assemblies and conductance," 2023, https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(23)00304-1.)

I think in a time when we have electronic devices constantly near and/or on our bodies, we should be paying close attention to anything that can affect ion channels in our neurons. Instead, I just recently discovered the existence of these nonselective ion channels that can be formed by millivolts of electric charge.

Last night I was quite concerned when I decoded a caption that had to be decoded in a tricky way. When I did what the picture--which showed ion channels in a neuron--indicated I should do to decode its caption, I got "ALMOUNLHNHEKPLJAJNHMO" as a result. The only word I could pull out of that is "ALM" (as in, giving alms to the poor). That left me with this string of letters: "OUNLHNHEKPLJAJNHMO" Doing doubles-cancellation on it, I got "UEKPANHM." That appears to be "UK-PanAm." Which, to anyone who has learned about the global war on terror, sets alarm bells going off. In 1988, a Pan Am airplane blew up mid-air, killing 259 people.

Pan Am Flight 103 (PA103/PAA103) was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via a stopover in London and another in New York City. The transatlantic leg of the route was operated by Clipper Maid of the Seas, a Boeing 747 registered N739PA. Shortly after 19:00 on 21 December 1988, while the aircraft was in flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, it was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing. Large sections of the aircraft crashed in a residential street in Lockerbie, killing 11 residents. With a total of 270 fatalities, it is the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom.

(Excerpt from 9/16/2024 Wikipedia article online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103.)

The Lockerbie bombing is not only tragic, but it's not "in the past." One of the alleged bombers is set for trial next year in May 2025. Why would there be a reference to the Lockerbie bombing together with a reference to a little-known type of ion channel creator and neuron ion channels? Is there a terrorism connection? What official agency would I bring this to the attention of? The FBI?

An overlooked role of manganese (II) ions in blood clotting disorders

A couple days ago, I was doing some caption-decoding in my chemistry book, and I got a possible coded message that said, ""TEA-(read backwards, as was the pattern for possible messages in this particular caption)DRTZVWB." To me, this looked like "tea dirt 's VWB," so I looked up possible meanings for VWB. I got a hit that made sense in "Von Willebrand" (VWB) disease.

"Von Willebrand disease is a bleeding disorder caused by the qualitative or quantitative deficiency of the pro-von Willebrand factor. Affected people may complain of excessive bruising, prolonged bleeding from mucosal surfaces, and prolonged bleeding after minor trauma....The pro-von Willebrand factor propeptide then undergoes cleavage, and then both the propeptide and mature von Willebrand factor are secreted into the vessel lumen. It functions as a carrier for factor VIII to maintain its levels and help in platelet adhesion and binding to endothelial components after a vascular injury. Any qualitative or quantitative deficiency of pro-von Willebrand factor will lead to an increased bleeding tendency, and this syndrome is called Von Willebrand disease....Low von Willebrand factor is quite common in the general population, but not all patients have clinically significant bleeding issues. Therefore, a significant proportion of the patient population goes undiagnosed. 

"Von Willebrand Disease," Ayan Sabih; Hani M. Babiker, online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459222/.

In other words, Von Willebrand disease is where the blood doesn't coagulate, or clot, as well, and so there is excessive bleeding from nosebleeds, period bleeding, etc.

Why does this look like a coded message? Because compared to western Europe and the USA, Von Willebrand disease is relatively uncommon in China (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24968688/) and other southeast Asian countries that are also high tea (Camellia sinensis) consuming countries. But VWB disease prevalence is comparatively higher in Japan than in those other Asian countries (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hae.14804), and in Japan they tend to focus more on green tea varieties than on black tea. The two types of tea differ in that green tea is not allowed to darken from the activity of the enzyme polyphenol oxidase in the tea leaves while black tea is. (See https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/polyphenol-oxidase for information on this enzyme.) Tea leaves are a good source of manganese if the tea plants are grown in dirt that contains manganese:

Tea drinking is a major source of dietary Mn and intakes commonly exceed proposed adequate intake values of 1.8–2.3 mg Mn/day and, on occasion, exceed upper limits of 10–11 mg/day. Dietary Mn intake has little influence on markers of Mn status or expression of Mn-dependent enzymes. Fasting whole blood Mn levels and leucocyte expression of MnSOD could, together, be further investigated as markers of Mn status.

"Influence of tea drinking on manganese intake, manganese status and leucocyte expression of MnSOD and cytosolic aminopeptidase P", 2005, https://www.nature.com/articles/1602260

A result of oxidizing manganese-containing molecules should be manganese oxide, or MnO, if I understand the chemistry correctly. That means there are manganese (II) (i.e., Mn2+) ions. (See also "Biosynthesis and antibacterial activity of manganese oxide nanoparticles prepared by green tea extract," 2022, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215017X22000285 for an intentional use of green tea to get manganese oxide particles.)

Mn2+ ions are effective at promoting blood coagulation activity by the above-highlighted Factor VIII:

Factor VIII-light chain (FVIII-LC) and Factor VIII-heavy chain (FVIII-HC) were isolated separately from human plasma and were without coagulation activity. When FVIII-LC and FVIII-HC preparations were mixed, coagulation activity was generated in the presence of Mn2+, Ca2+, or Co2+. Mn2+ was most effective and with Ca2+ maximal activity was first obtained after 8 days. 

"Generation of active coagulation factor VIII from isolated subunits," 1988, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3121624/, full .pdf online at https://www.jbc.org/article/S0021-9258(19)57273-8/pdf.

Thus "tea-dirt's-VWB" appears to be an encoded message saying that the manganese (II)--as Mn2+ ions-- in oxidized tea leaves can help blood clot quickly.* That is useful information. In bandages, we might want to put some Mn2+ ions on the cloth/paper sections that touch wounds in order to help encourage blood coagulation. On the other hand, to combat excessive internal blood clotting, we also might want to avoid ingesting or inhaling a lot of Mn2+ ions if we are worried about clotting ailments such as deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolisms.

* Today I decoded another message that also points to this helpfulness of manganese ions in blood clotting. It was KLUHAHOUWNMHAUW". Taking out the two words "KLUH" ("clue") and "HAU" ("haw"), I'm left with AHOUWNMW. Applying doubles-cancellation, I get AHOUNM. Applying the OL ring cipher, the last part becomes either AHFMN or ZSUNM. I think that "clue" is to indicate that a clue is hidden in this string of letters, and the "haw" references Chinese hawthorn, used in traditional medicine there. AHFMN looks like "anti-hemophilic factor" (AHF) and manganese (MN). ZSUNM looks like a reference to the sun and the letter M, which are two common motifs in encoded messages. As in a previous post, I admit the possibility that I might be reading too much into a string of letters, but it does start off with "KLUH" and the science behind using manganese for blood clotting is established by the 1988 "Generation of active coagulation factor VIII from isolated subunits" research article.

That uncomfortable moment when you realize that you bought something that might be causing big problems for bees

I was looking at bee collapse stories and statistics today. There are a lot of bees in the USA these days, but that is thanks to the energetic efforts of so many people to raise bees and keep pollination happening. Colony collapse hasn't gone away as a problem. Around half of hives don't make it according to a Washington Post article from earlier this year:

So the situation on the ground seems to confirm the census: We probably do have a record number of honeybees....Sadly, however, this does not mean we’ve defeated colony collapse. One major citizen-science project found that beekeepers lost almost half of their colonies in the year ending in April 2023, the second-highest loss rate on record.

"Wait, does America suddenly have a record number of bees?" by Andrew Van Dam, online at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/wait-does-america-suddenly-have-a-record-number-of-bees/ar-BB1kK5Rm

So why do so many hives fail? You have probably seen headlines in the past two decades about colony collapse disorder. "Colony Collapse Disorder is the phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen, plenty of food and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining immature bees and the queen." (https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-collapse-disorder)  

A molecule called "juvenile hormone" in honey bees is important to helping them stick around the hive. Removal of the glands that produce juvenile hormone makes it so the bees disappear around the time that they take their first "orientation flight." (see https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/206/13/2287/13497/Juvenile-hormone-and-division-of-labor-in-honey)

Juvenile hormone in insects is of crucial importance for mitochondrial protein synthesis and a necessary later increase in activity of an enzyme called "cytochrome oxidase" (also known as COX, Complex IV, and cytochrome c oxidase). (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0020179088900960)

Evidence suggests that flight metabolism and dispersal potential are tightly linked to COX function. For example, long-distance migratory butterfly species have higher COX content and activity than short-distance fliers. In this regard, the migratory butterfly Vanessa atalanta flight muscle mitochondrial area and cristae density were higher compared to the short-range butterfly Melitaea cinxia. Remarkably, the relationship between dispersal potential and COX activity can also be observed within the same flying insect species. Recently established populations of M. cinxia butterflies have higher dispersal potential than old ones, a phenotype that is mirrored in COX activity. This strongly indicates that COX represents a key metabolic mechanism for dispersal potential in flying insects.

"Cytochrome c Oxidase at Full Thrust: Regulation and Biological Consequences to Flying Insects," 2021, online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7931083/.

One disruptor of cytochrome oxidase is bifenthrin, a common pesticide. "Bifenthrin (BF), a synthetic pyrethroid is used worldwide for both agricultural and non-agricultural purposes due to its high insecticidal activity and low toxicity in mammals." (See "Bifenthrin disrupts cytochrome c oxidase activity and reduces mitochondrial DNA copy number through oxidative damage in pool barb (Puntius sophore)," 2023, online at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653523011153)

I don't think of myself a pesticide user. Sure, I kill wasps and spiders sometimes, as needed, but the real problem is all those big agricultural farms using all the dangerous pesticides, right? It turns out bifenthrin is the active ingredient in Scotts Turf Builder, which I think I used on my lawn recently. Am I helping cause bee colony collapse? Surely we can find pesticides for our yards that don't keep bees from flying back to their hives?

Question about an older drug that is no longer marketed in the USA and which might help combat aging-related inflammation

 As we age, a lot of inflammation-related ailments start to occur. A promising pathway to target to combat aging-related ills is inhibition of IKKβ activity. 

Constitutive NF-κB activation is associated with cellular senescence and stem cell dysfunction and rare variants in NF-κB family members are enriched in centenarians. We recently identified a novel small molecule (SR12343) that inhibits IKK/NF-κB activation by disrupting the association between IKKβ and NEMO....Taken together, these results demonstrate that IKK/NF-κB signaling pathway represents a promising target for reducing markers of cellular senescence, extending healthspan and treating age-related diseases."

"Novel small molecule inhibition of IKK/NF-κB activation reduces markers of senescence and improves healthspan in mouse models of aging," 2021, online at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acel.13486.

Also see "Inhibition of IKKβ/NF-κB signaling facilitates tendinopathy healing by rejuvenating inflamm-aging induced tendon-derived stem/progenitor cell senescence," 2022, online at https://www.cell.com/molecular-therapy-family/nucleic-acids/fulltext/S2162-2531(21)00329-2

One inhibitor of  IKKβ that has been recently shown to be anti-inflammation is thioridazine, which used to be marketed in the USA for schizophrenia. 

"Nuclear factor-kB (NF-kB) is a crucial transcription factor in the signal transduction cascade of the inflammatory signaling. Activation of NF-κB depends on the phosphorylation of IκBα by IκB kinase (IKKβ) followed by subsequent ubiquitination and degradation....A computer-aided drug identification protocol was followed to identify novel IKKβ inhibitors from a database of over 1500 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drugs. The best scoring compounds were compared with the already known high-potency IKKβ inhibitors for their ability to bind and inhibit IKKβ by evaluating their docking energy. Finally, Thioridazinehydrochloride (TDZ), a potent antipsychotic drug against [s]chizophrenia was selected and its efficiency in inhibiting IκBα protein degradation and NF-κB activation was experimentally validated. Our study has demonstrated that TDZ blocks IκBα protein degradation and subsequent NF-κB activation to inhibit inflammation. Thus, it is a potential repurposed drug against inflammation."

"Repurposing Thioridazine (TDZ) as an anti-inflammatory agent," 2018, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30763-5.

Since thioridazine used to be marketed in the USA, perhaps there is some data in this country or in a neighboring country that could be analyzed to see if the diseases that fall under the category of "inflamm-aging" (see "Inflammation and aging: signaling pathways and intervention therapies, 2023, online at  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-023-01502-8) were less common in people who were taking thioridazine. There must be some long-range studies that tracked medications and health outcomes during the years that thioridazine was being used the most--perhaps the Framingham Heart Study in the USA or the SEDAP (Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population) in Canada.

Example of a decoding exercise that yielded a reference to Masonic handshakes and a possible botanical secret

On August 21, 2024, I posted a blog post about decoding chapter headings and photo/figure captions from books (especially textbooks). It is at https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2024/08/decoding-copybook-headings.html. 

Tonight, I decoded a very long photo caption (one for Ernest Rutherford in a chemistry textbook) that appears to have a Book of Mormon tie-in. The surrounding text pointed to the 25-letter French alphabet (leave out "w" as it was not in use in French centuries ago) as the one to use instead of the Hawaiian alphabet I discussed in my August 21 blog post. After counting letters in word pairs, dividing by 25, and adding the quotients to the remainders, as outlined in that same blog post, I got the following line of letters after shifting two letters ahead:

YIYTXOLDLEKSAKNAVKALSUIXVLTOKENVAOPTLNJBAUZUTOJBMLEAJE

The underlined words stood out to me:

YIYTXOLDLEKSAKNAVKALSUIXVLTOKENVAOPTLNJBAUZUTOJBMLEAJE

Y-it-X-old law-AK-knuckles-UIXVL-token-VA-opt-LNJ-boss-UTOJBM-liege

which separates to give: "it old law knuckles token opt boss liege" and YXAKUIXVLVALNJUTOJBM.

The first phrase appears to be a reference to Masonic handshakes and the like.

The second part, when interpreted with the X-reversals and the "ol" ring cipher I mentioned in my blog post of July 30, 2024 (https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2024/07/some-ways-literate-people-covertly.html), looks as follows:

YXAKUIXVLVALNJUTOJBM

YX-IUKA-VLVALNJUTOJBM (do one X-reversal)

Y-IUKA-VLVALNJUTOJBM (do a second X-reversal)

YIUKAVLVALNJUTOJBM (find the O's and L's to prepare to apply the "ol" ring cipher to some segments)

YIUKAV-EZ-NJUT-QYN

This to me looks like "yucca is N jute kin." Yucca (which is not cassava/manioc) species are New World plants with fibers used for textiles; jute species are old world plants with fibers used for textiles. The primary jute species used for fibers is "Jute mallow or Jew's mallow or Nalita jute (Corchorus olitorius)," per Wikipedia. When I look at photos of their seeds and seed cases, I can see how jute and yucca could indeed be kin, or related. Per their botanical classifications, yucca and jute don't appear to be related, but those classifications are subject to change and sometimes seem unreliable.

The Book of Mormon repeatedly talks about people in America making and wearing "fine-twined linen":

silks … and fine-twined linen, 1 Ne. 13:7 (Alma 1:29; 4:6; Ether 10:24).

women … did make all manner of cloth, of fine-twined linen, Hel. 6:13.

See Scriptures|Study Helps|Topical Guide at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/tg/linen?lang=eng. Some have thought it meant flax, but that was apparently not a pre-Columbian crop. Looking at the distribution of jute species in the area of the Arabian peninsula, I think it makes more sense for the migrants in the Book of Mormon to have taken the seeds of a lesser-known jute species over to the Americas and used its descendants to make clothes. By selective breeding, they could have easily ended up with a plant that resembled some of the modern yucca species.

Three paths for technology to take as it seeks to obtain information about us

As I've thought about the possible uses of cell phones and similar technology to affect us and our children for good or ill, I've looked into different ways that the programs they run can become aware of what interests us and how we think or feel about something specific. There are at least three avenues that I can see:

• Speech recognition of what we say aloud--this can occur via 
• built-in microphones (obviously microphones are standard on cellphones so that we can use them as telephones),
• accelerometer-sensed vibration analysis (see how in this article: https://csl.illinois.edu/news-and-media/42303), and
• optical sensor-captured air vibration analysis (here's one way: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Guided-spatio-temporal-Filtering-for-Extracting-Tanigawa-Yatabe/dffdd0a4103ccba483aa8fa6a830d250dbad50be).

• Brain electromagnetic wave pattern recognition--our neural network extends from our brain throughout our body and into the skin, and our neurons send signals to each other using a combination of chemistry and electromagnetism. The anomalous Nernst effect, which involves using magnetism and heat to generate an electrical current, points to an ability to have tech device interaction with our neurons due to the magnetic fields in and around human beings (The article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41427-019-0116-z discusses how to induce a larger voltage than was previously thought possible for a given magnetization). Such currents could be used to sense and possibly interact with our neural network signals.

• Long-distance brain electromagnetic wave pattern recognition using quantum particles--the weak force appears to serve as a bridge between "quantum entanglement" (the so-called "spooky action at a distance" that has been experimentally proven to happen: https://scitechdaily.com/first-experimental-proof-that-quantum-entanglement-is-real/, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26234921-800-how-quantum-entanglement-really-works-and-why-we-accept-its-weirdness, and https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.107.076016) and the electromagnetic activity in our brains (see this summary of the electroweak interaction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak_interaction). While I don't know how one would actually establish the requisite quantum entanglement between our neurons and a sensor located in a distant location, once it is in place, the entanglement should enable what we consider "mind reading."