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Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog 2012-09-10 17:20:00
Every single year, millions of young adults head off to colleges and universities all over America full of hopes and dreams. But what most of those fresh-faced youngsters do not realize is that by taking on student loan debt they are signing up for a life of debt slavery. Student loan debt has become a trillion dollar bubble which has shattered the financial lives of tens of millions of young college graduates. When you are just starting out and you are not making a lot of money, having to make payments on tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt can be absolutely crippling. The total amount of student loan debt in the United States has now surpassed the total amount of credit card debt, and student loan debt is much harder to get rid of. Many young people view college as a "five year party", but when the party is over millions of those young people basically end up as modern day serfs as they struggle to pay off all of the debt that they have accumulated during their party years. Bankruptcy laws have been changed to make it incredibly difficult to get rid of student loan debt, so once you have it you are basically faced with two choices: either you are going to pay it or you are going to die with it. But we don't warn kids about this before they go to school. We just endlessly preach to them that they need a college degree in order to get a "good job", and that after they graduate they will easily be able to pay off their student loans with the "good job" that they will certainly be able to find. Sadly, tens of millions of young Americans have left college in recent years only to find out that they were lied to all along. As I have written about previously, college has become a giant money making scam and the victims of the scam are our young people. Back in 1952, a full year of tuition at Harvard was only $600. Today, it is over $35,000. Why does college have to cost so much? At every turn our young people are being ripped off. For example, the cost of college textbooks has tripled over the past decade. Has it suddenly become a lot more expensive to print books? Of course not. The truth is that an entire industry saw an opportunity to gouge students and they went for it. The amount of money being spent on higher education in this country is absolutely outrageous. One father down in Texas says that he will end up spending about 1.5 million dollars on college expenses for his five daughters before it is all said and done. Unfortunately, most young adults in America don't have wealthy fathers so they have to take out large student loans to pay for their educations. Average student loan debt at graduation is estimated to be about $28,720 right now. That is a crazy figure and it has absolutely soared in recent years. In fact, student loan debt in America has grown by 511 percent since 1999. And student loan debt will follow you wherever you go. If you do not pay your loans when you graduate, you could send up having your wages, your tax refunds and even your Social Security benefits garnished. In addition, your account could be turned over to the debt collectors and they can be absolutely brutal. |
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Glen Greenwald
The Guardian 2012-09-09 15:41:00
Obama justice officials have all but granted asylum to Sánchez de Lozada - a puppet who payrolled key Democratic advisers In October 2003, the intensely pro-US president of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, sent his security forces to suppress growing popular protests against the government's energy and globalization policies. Using high-powered rifles and machine guns, his military forces killed 67 men, women and children, and injured 400 more, almost all of whom were poor and from the nation's indigenous Aymara communities. Dozens of protesters had been killed by government forces in the prior months when troops were sent to suppress them. The resulting outrage over what became known as "the Gas Wars" drove Sanchez de Lozada from office and then into exile in the United States, where he was welcomed by his close allies in the Bush administration. He has lived under a shield of asylum in the US ever since. |
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Tom Odula
As clashes between farmers and herders in southeast Kenya escalated
Monday with 38 people killed, including nine police officers, the Red
Cross suggested the military be deployed to the area.Associated Press 2012-09-10 14:47:00 The tit-for-tat cycle of killings may be related to a redrawing of political boundaries and next year's general elections, the U.N. Humanitarian coordinator for Kenya, Aeneas C. Chuma, said late last month, although on the surface it seems driven by competition for water, pasture and other resources. As the next year's general election in Marc
h approaches, political tensions and tribal animosities have increased due to competitions among potential candidates. In the latest bloodshed, armed farmers allegedly attacked a village of their semi-nomadic livestock-herding neighbors, the Red Cross said. Eight children were among those killed in the dawn attack in which over 300 people from the Pokomo tribe allegedly raided Kilelengwani village of the Orma tribe of herders, said Kenya Red Cross Secretary General Abbas Gullet. The raiders torched 167 houses. Gullet said the government should consider dispatching the military to the area to reinforce police patrols and impose a curfew in the area to prevent further escalation of the deadly counter-attacks. |
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Fars News Agency
A senior Syrian military source reported major rifts among armed groups
fighting President Bashar al-Assad government, adding that 85% of the
terrorists fighting in Syria are foreign nationals coming from other
Arab states.2012-09-10 07:18:00 "The Syrian Army is fighting groups 80% to 85% of which are formed of foreign nationals coming from different Arab countries," the source told al-Ajel news website on Monday. He revealed that al-Qaeda forces are also among the members of the armed groups fighting against the Syrian people. The military source also referred to the widening gaps among the members of these armed groups, and said some of them have defected from their relevant groups and formed new gangs. In relevant remarks yesterday, a French surgeon who treated terrorists in Aleppo said that half of the rebels in Syria are from foreign countries recruited by a number of foreign countries, and that most of his patients in Syria were wounded militants and not civilians. |
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NBC News
2012-09-10 10:00:00
Yemeni armed forces have killed Said al-Shehri, a man seen as the second-in-command of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a government website said on Monday. The Ministry of Defense website said Shehri was a Saudi national who was killed, along with six other militants, in an army operation in the Wadi valley in south-east Yemen. It gave no more details. The United States has used unmanned drones to target AQAP, which has planned attacks on international targets including airliners and is described by Washington as the most dangerous wing of al-Qaida. A Yemeni security source said Shehri was killed in an operation last Wednesday which was thought to have been carried out by a U.S. drone, rather than the Yemeni military. The source said another Saudi and an Iraqi national were among the others killed. | |
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Comment: "..AQAP, which has planned attacks on
international targets including airliners and is described by Washington
as the most dangerous wing of al-Qaida."
Lots of evidence, wouldn't you say the evidence here is enough? The following will hopefully add some perspective:
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Bassem Mroue
Associated Press 2012-09-09 10:01:00
The death toll from a car bomb in Syria's largest city has risen to 30, state media said Monday, as the new international envoy to the country said the Syrian people are desperate to see peace and stability. The Sunday night blast ripped through the northern city of Aleppo, which has become one of the main battlegrounds of the country's civil war. Activists say at least 23,000 people have been killed since the conflict erupted in March 2011. On Monday, the new U.N.-Arab League envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, said he will travel to Syria this week to meet with regime officials as well as civil society. "I answer to no one except the Syrian people," Brahimi told reporters in Cairo, where he was meeting with Arab League officials and Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. "Syrians aspire to peace, stability and to realizing their goals of freedom and political progress." |
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RT
2012-09-09 00:00:00
Germany's equivalent of the FBI has put out a notice inquiring about highly-trained computer professionals who know how to exploit windows, speak different languages, and fight the bad guys. In short, Germany is developing its own spyware. Although the Bundeskriminalamt's (BKA) job offer is not overt, it is neither by any means secret. Germany is seeking to develop its own state brand of spyware in an effort to fight crime and curb terrorism. According to the advert, job applicants must "demonstrate a sound knowledge of C++...have a very good knowledge of low-level programming and the security mechanisms of Windows," and exhibit a "high degree of creativity." Also, if selected, the applicant will be "tenured", meaning that he or she can only be fired through a difficult mutual decision, essentially guaranteeing the applicant a long career with the agency. In keeping with Germany's equal opportunity laws, female candidates will "be strongly considered." |
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RT
2012-09-10 00:00:00
The leaders of the three parties in Greece's coalition government have failed to agree on a package of spending cuts worth 11.5 billion euro, which the Prime Minister says are crucial to restoring the country's financial credibility. On Sunday conservative Premier Antonis Samaras, socialist Evangelos Venizelos and Fotis Kouvelis of the Democratic Left, disagreed on cuts on pensions and wages and decided to meet again Wednesday. Venizaelos and Kouvelis asked international creditors to give them more time to implement austerity measures, AP says. "We haven't finished and there hasn't been a specific decision. One thing is certain, I'm pushing for the measures to be just and not uneven," Democratic Left's Kouvelis told reporters. "We cannot touch the disability benefits. We cannot make what we call horizontal cuts in pensions," Venizelos said. |
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Robert Bridge
RT 2012-09-06 00:00:00
As Iranians reel under the pressure of international sanctions, a Russian Deputy Foreign Minister said Washington's unilateral sanction regime against Iran is a violation of international law. Saying that Russia has found no evidence that Iran is intent on developing a weapon, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned the United States and Israel on the "disastrous" consequences of attacking Iran. "We warn those who are no strangers to military solutions...that this would be harmful, literally disastrous for regional stability," Ryabkov told reporters on Thursday. A military attack on Iran "would set off deep shocks in the security and economic spheres that would reverberate far beyond the boundaries of the Middle East region," he said. Saying there were no indications of a weapon component to Tehran's nuclear program, Ryabkov pushed for continuing monitoring by the UN nuclear agency was a strong guarantee. "As before, we see no signs that there is a military dimension to Iran's nuclear program. No signs," Ryabkov, the head of Russia's delegation on Iran, as saying. Meanwhile, as Iranians reel under the pressure of international sanctions, the Russian diplomat said Washington's unilateral sanction regime against Iran is a violation of international law. |
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Press TV
A series of car bombs in six mainly Shia districts around the Iraqi
capital Baghdad has killed at least 32 people and injured more than 100
others, police and hospital officials say. 2012-09-10 00:00:00
The late Sunday bombings were part of a wave of terrorist attacks that swept across Iraq since Saturday, leaving at least 88 people dead, and more than 400 injured, AFP reported. According to an interior ministry official and a medical source, a car bomb killed at least 13 people and injured about 32 in northern Baghdad, another in Shuala left five dead and 22 wounded , while a third in Urr killed four and wounded 13 and a fourth in Hurriyah killed three and injured at least 14 people. In the west of Baghdad, a car bomb killed seven people and wounded at least 21. Violence has increased in Iraq since December 2011, when an arrest warrant was issued for fugitive Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, who has been charged with running a death squad targeting Iraqi officials and Shia Muslims. |
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Miguel Llanos
NBC News 2012-09-09 15:15:00
More than 20 years after the last drill bit went into the Chukchi Sea floor off northern Alaska, a Shell drilling rig on Sunday began work that the company hopes will lead to a bonanza that adds to its bottom line and extends Alaska's oil economy. "Today marks the culmination of Shell's six-year effort to explore for potentially significant oil and gas reserves, which are believed to lie under Alaska's Outer Continental Shelf," Shell Alaska Vice President Pete Slaiby said in a statement. Welcomed by the Obama administration, the exploration in Alaska's Arctic waters has become a major battleground for environmental groups, which fear oil spills in the pristine area already threatened by warming temperatures and reduced sea ice. "The melting Arctic is a dire warning, not an invitation to make a quick buck," said Dan Howells, a campaign director for Greenpeace. Shell has paid the U.S. $2.8 billion for lease rights to areas in the Chukchi and neighboring Beaufort Sea, and the U.S. estimates those waters hold 26 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 130 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. | |
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Comment: So are they making an "effort to explore for
potentially significant oil and gas reserves," or drilling at a "known
petroleum reservoir?"
Inquiring minds want to know. Perhaps it's like this: There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. - there are things we do not know, we don't know." - Donald Rumsfeld |
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Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge 2012-09-08 16:49:00
There was a time when the NSA would not know the content of this sentence minutes (or depending on the speed of typing, hours) ahead of our general readership. Those days are now gone, primarily thanks to the Patriot Act, which however merely accelerated the inevitable Orwellian destination to which American society was otherwise headed and which made constant "supervision" and "vigilance" of every US citizen a necessity (for some eyewatering details read "We Are This Far From A Turnkey Totalitarian State" - Big Brother Goes Live September 2013). There was, however, one aspect of society over which the US government did not have Chinese-type "firewall" supreme authority: the Internet. Now, as a result of an Executive Order being quietly drafted, the president of this once great country, together with the Department of Homeland Security formed in response to the events of September 11, is about to grasp supreme control over this last bastion of New Normal expression and content dissemination, naturally under the guise of protecting the people. Because as Bloomberg reports, President Obama's administration is drafting an executive order that would create a program protecting vital computer networks from cyber attacks. The premise: the US government needs to defend the feeble and defenseless private sector from all enemies, foreign and domestic, because, it would appear, the private sector is incapable of defending itself. And Uncle Sam is more than happy to supervise and take charge of said "defense." "An executive order is one of a number of measures we're considering as we look to implement the president's direction to do absolutely everything we can to better protect our nation against today's cyberthreats," White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an e-mailed statement today. "We are not going to comment on ongoing internal deliberations." Also, did we mention that the US president's decision for the greater private good would be unilaterally imposed, without the benefit of a democratic vote: after all executive orders, of the type Obama has issued 134 so far, do just that: circumvent the popular vote. We did? Good. |
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Susanne Posel
Activist Post 2012-09-08 00:00:00
The battle over free speech on the Internet has been uphill for those who are victimized by the US government and professional trolls. The entertainment industry, namely the RIAA and MPAA have been at the frontlines, claiming copyright infringement as they have employed Internet providers as spies to look for potential violators. As cited by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, SOPA and PIPA came together to create the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) which "effectively creates a 'cybersecurity' exemption to all existing laws". This big brother legislation would have given the power to the corporations to allege copyright infringement which would empower them to spy on users online activity, personal data, ISPs, search engines, social networks, text messages, phone calls, emails and all other digital correspondence. CISPA inspired protests across the nation while over 3 million corporations in the domestic US supported the bill. Just last month, the Department of Homeland Security was central in the taking of domain names for websites without due process or explanation - simply using the blanket claim of copyright infringement. US Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano received correspondence from several members of the House of Representatives who were in protest of the domain name seizures, citing that the copyright claims were questionable and that the websites were clearly being censored for alternative reasons. The letter stated that: Our concern centers on your Department's methods, and the process given, when seizing the domain names of websites whose actions and content are presumed to be lawful, protected speech.Fraudulent claims of copyright infringement are rampant across the Internet. During the Hugo Awards, the Ustream video of the show was censored by a digital restriction management (DRM) robot that shut down the broadcast of the Hugo Awards due to "copyright infringement" of material displayed during the show. The DRM robot was "incorrectly programmed" to interpret the show as a violation of copyright and disrupted the broadcast. |
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Ellen Brown
Web of Debt 2007-07-03 18:40:00
It has been called "the most astounding piece of sleight of hand ever invented." The creation of money has been privatized, usurped from Congress by a private banking cartel. Most people think money is issued by fiat by the government, but that is not the case. Except for coins, which compose only about one one-thousandth of the total U.S. money supply, all of our money is now created by banks. Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) are issued by the Federal Reserve, a private banking corporation, and lent to the government.1 Moreover, Federal Reserve Notes and coins together compose less than 3 percent of the money supply. The other 97 percent is created by commercial banks as loans.2 Don't believe banks create the money they lend? Neither did the jury in a landmark Minnesota case, until they heard the evidence. First National Bank of Montgomery vs. Daly (1969) was a courtroom drama worthy of a movie script.3 Defendant Jerome Daly opposed the bank's foreclosure on his $14,000 home mortgage loan on the ground that there was no consideration for the loan. "Consideration" ("the thing exchanged") is an essential element of a contract. Daly, an attorney representing himself, argued that the bank had put up no real money for his loan. The courtroom proceedings were recorded by Associate Justice Bill Drexler, whose chief role, he said, was to keep order in a highly charged courtroom where the attorneys were threatening a fist fight. Drexler hadn't given much credence to the theory of the defense, until Mr. Morgan, the bank's president, took the stand. To everyone's surprise, Morgan admitted that the bank routinely created money "out of thin air" for its loans, and that this was standard banking practice. "It sounds like fraud to me," intoned Presiding Justice Martin Mahoney amid nods from the jurors. In his court memorandum, Justice Mahoney stated: |
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publicbanking
What is the origin of money? This video, written by Ellen Brown and
narrated/produced by Bob Bows, is a exploration of money as credit, how
history shows us we've moved from money as a unit of account to money as
a unit of value.YouTube 2012-09-09 15:16:00
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Harriet Sherwood
The Guardian 2012-09-03 15:21:00
Mohamed Abu Nada wanted to draw attention to his family's poverty in Gaza, said his father A Gaza man has died after setting himself alight, apparently in protest over his family's dire living conditions. Mohamed Abu Nada, 20, died on Sunday from injuries sustained a few days earlier when he poured petrol over his body at the morgue of Gaza City's Shifa hospital and set himself alight. His father told reporters in Gaza that his son wanted to draw attention to the family's poverty. "I asked my son to go and look for a job, because I don't have a job and we don't have any source for living," said Abu Mohamed Abu Nada. Father and son reportedly argued before the incident. The family live in al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. Two-thirds of Gazan families became refugees in 1948 and they are generally among the poorest in Gaza. "This case illustrates so tragically the wider sense of desperation which the blockade has engendered," said Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa. "The humanitarian situation in Gaza is becoming increasingly dire, with the prospects of a prosperous and dignified life dwindling with every day." |
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Ruth Pollard
The Sydney Morning Herald 2012-09-10 15:10:00
Cities across the West Bank are in the grip of mass protests as taxi drivers, teachers, shopkeepers and other Palestinian workers joined a strike to protest against fuel price rises and the ongoing financial crisis that is crippling the Palestinian Authority. Threats of cuts to the electricity supply to large areas of the West Bank over at least $US125 million ($120 million) in unpaid bills are contributing to rising tensions, with protesters from Nablus to Ramallah and Bethlehem to Hebron calling on the Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, to resign over the government's economic failings. The Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, backed his embattled Prime Minister on Saturday and blamed Israel for restrictions that he said hampered an effective response. Mr Abbas said that he bore ultimate responsibility for government policies and that he had asked Mr Fayyad and the cabinet to meet with representatives of the public to examine ways to lower the cost of living. Speaking at a news conference called at his headquarters, Mr Abbas said the Palestinian Authority was facing a cash crisis because of a shortfall in donor contributions, particularly from Arab states, and he warned that civil-service employees would not receive full salaries this month. |
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Spooky
It's official, this real-life anime trend has gotten completely out of
hand. Hardly a day goes by that I don't stumble upon some photos of
girls going to any lengths in order to look like real live anime characters.
Today's example, Anastasiya Shpagina, an Ukrainian girl who has even
taken a Japanese name - Fukkacumi. Not the most inspired choice, I
must say...Oddity Central 2012-09-10 14:22:00
Just last Friday I wrote an article about a rather creepy-looking Chinese model called Tina Leopard, who had the pointiest chin I'd ever seen and had risen to Internet fame thanks to her anime-like appearance. I had discovered there was actually a trend sweeping China, with thousands of Chinese teens posting photos of themselves with anime-style makeup and hairstyles, but apparently it's not just China that's affected by this bizarre fashion. Venus Angelic, a young Londoner who made headlines in international media for her YouTube videos where she talks and makes herself look like a living Japanese doll, and Dakota Rose(aka Kotakoti) from America, were also praised for their genuine anime looks, and now the trend has apparently hit Eastern Europe as well. After Valeria Lukyanova sparked controversy in Ukrainian and Russian media with her doll-like features a few months back, it's Anastasiya Shpagina's turn to baffle us with her realistic anime-like looks. Coincidentally, she's from the same town as Valeria, Odessa. 19-year-old Anastasiya (Nastya) Shpagina has been called "the new Barbie" by national news outlets, but she later revealed she's striving to become a real-life Japanese anime character, not a doll. She even posted "I am not like a doll, a doll is like me ..." as the tagline on her VKontakte profile page. Apparently, Nastya has been passionate about makeup even as a young child, always experimenting with it in the mirror. Over time she also developed a thing for Japanese cartoons and it was only a matter of time before she started using her make-up artist skills to transform herself into a real-life anime girl. But just putting on makeup wasn't enough to attain that coveted look, so she decided to lose weight in order to seem more genuine. At 1.58-meters-tall, Anastasiya weighs just 39 kilos and is trying to lose one more in order to look just right. She has even taken the name Fukkacumi,to sound more Japanese. |
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RIA Novosti
2012-09-10 13:28:00
A U.S. woman who sent her adopted son back to Moscow lost on Monday a lawsuit she filed against Russian children's rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov. A Moscow court ordered Torry Hansen to pay 50,000 rubles ($1,500) in legal costs. Hansen had sued Astakhov over a website post in which he called her the "adoptive mother" of Artyom Savelyev. Hansen insisted she was a "former adoptive mother." The woman has also lost her lawsuit against Russian government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Hansen was living in Tennessee in April 2010 when she put Savelyev, then aged seven, unaccompanied on a flight to his native Russia, with a note saying she did not want him as he was "psychotic." She had adopted the boy from a Russian orphanage in 2009. He currently lives in a group home in Moscow. |
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Press Association
2012-09-10 12:22:00
Police have recovered a severed head from a canal where the decapitated remains of a former EastEnders actress were found. Scotland Yard said the discovery was made by a member of the public in Regent's Canal in Hackney, east London. It comes more than six months after the headless and limbless body of actress Gemma McCluskie, 29, were discovered in the same stretch of water. Miss McCluskie, who played Kerry Skinner in the BBC soap in 2001, had been missing for a week after attending the £650 million opening of the new Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London. She was last seen returning to the home in Pelter Street, Hackney, that she shared with her brother Tony McCluskie. |
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RT
2012-09-09 00:00:00
British undercover detectives in Birmingham have found cigarettes containing human excrement, asbestos, mold and dead flies, as counterfeit cigs flood into the UK at huge risk to public health. Private eyes working for the tobacco industry have spent weeks rummaging through litter bins and scouring pavements for cigarette butts to access the scale of the black market in England's midlands region, according to the Birmingham newspaper the Sunday Mercury. Operation EDPC - which stands for Empty Discarded Pack Collection - was funded by Swiss-based brand protection company MS Intelligence - found that 31% of cigarettes were either bogus or bought abroad. Investigators were shocked by the sheer volume of the trade, which has more than doubled in the last 12 months. A similar study last year found only 14% of packets were fakes or had been smuggled into the country. The trade in counterfeit cigs is big business. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) estimate that non UK duty-paid cigarettes cost the tax payer up to £3.6 billion during the financial year 2009-2010. Most of the brands originated in the Far East, particularly from China, which has had a problem with counterfeits for a number of years. |
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News Day
2012-09-07 05:42:00
A Northern California mixed-martial artist accused of ripping out his friend's heart and removing his tongue while the two were on hallucinogenic drugs has pleaded guilty to murder and mayhem charges. Jarrod Wyatt of Crescent City agreed to a plea deal in which he will serve 50 years to life in prison, Del Norte County prosecutors said. His official sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 4. Wyatt pleaded guilty to first-degree murder involving mayhem in the March 21, 2010, death of his sparring partner, 21-year-old Taylor Powell, prosecutors said. "The earliest he'll be able to see a parole board is 2062," District Attorney Jon Alexander said. "We saved Taylor's family the agony from reliving the incident at the trial." Wyatt's attorney, James Fallman, said his 29-year-old client didn't want to testify at trial and he didn't want his family to testify. "We looked for an agreement that would at least give him the opportunity to be paroled someday," Fallman said. "As bad as 50 years to life sounds, it's better than life without the possibility of parole." |
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Ildefonso Ortiz
The Monitor 2012-09-09 00:00:00
Texas, McAllen - A Mission man says in a lawsuit that police officers entered his property and assaulted him, but city officials maintain his claims are baseless. John Kenneth Snider claims that on Dec. 19, "four or five police officers from the Mission Police Department made a warrantless and unauthorized entry" into his home, according to a lawsuit he filed in July against Mission city officials. Snider claims once inside his home, police officers "immediately began to assault, beat and strike" him. Attempts to reach Snider and his lawyer, Rodney Sipes of Edinburg, were unsuccessful last week. Snider was indicted in February on one count of assault on a public servant. He was later convicted of the charge in the 139th state District Court, where he was sentenced to two years of probation. Whether the charge and conviction stem from the same incident is not clear in court papers and could not be confirmed last week. The lawsuit names Mission police Chief Martin Garza as the man responsible for the actions of "unnamed officers" and asks for unspecified damages. Garza told The Monitor he was not at Snider's house during the alleged incident, but he is familiar with the lawsuit and stands by his officers. "I believe our officers acted within reason and within department policy," Garza said. "I have no reason to doubt the integrity of my officers." |
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James B. Kelleher
Reuters 2012-09-10 00:00:00
Chicago public school teachers will strike for the first time in a quarter century on Monday after they failed to reach agreement with the nation's third-largest school district over education reforms sought by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The historic confrontation between Emanuel - Barack Obama's former top White House aide - and organized labor could have implications for education reform nationwide and for the president's re-election campaign.
"We have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike," Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis told a press conference on Sunday night. "In the morning, no CTU members will be inside our schools." About 29,000 teachers and support staff in Obama's home city will not report for work on Monday morning, affecting some 350,000 students. Lewis was interrupted by applause from about 100 union supporters as she spoke, some wearing red in support of the union and carrying signs "On Strike" even before she had finished speaking. Leigh Nevels, an occupational therapist who works at several schools in the city, said she came out to support Lewis and other union leaders. "The teachers work really hard and they deserve every penny that they get, and then some," Nevels said. "Rahm (Emanuel) just pulled the rug out from under us." The union wants Chicago to drastically reduce class sizes and increase funding for education. It is suspicious of efforts to erode traditional job protections such as tenure, teacher autonomy and seniority. |
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Michelle Dupler
Tri-City Herald 2012-09-09 01:55:00
No one in emergency preparedness circles really believes the dead will rise and come looking for living people to devour -- that weird face-eating incident in Florida aside. But they do see zombies -- the moaning, flesh-eating stars of a plethora of horror novels, comics and movies -- as a brain-grabbing way to get people to think about preparing for large-scale disasters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency became the latest federal government agency to shamble onto the zombie bandwagon, following in the footsteps of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency that captured the hearts of internet geeks everywhere when it unveiled its "Zombie Apocalypse" preparedness page and social media campaign last year. "We need something that gets their attention, so I applaud that," said Richland Fire Chief Grant Baynes, who is involved in local disaster planning. Baynes likened getting the public engaged in emergency planning to "trying to sell an umbrella on a sunny day." In a place that's relatively disaster-free -- the Tri-Cities doesn't get catastrophic hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes or floods as other parts of the United States -- residents can become complacent and forget that a flu pandemic or some other disaster might be around the corner. Baynes said it's good that people feel safe, but he'd also like them to be mindful that life is unpredictable. "Preparedness isn't just a technical thing," he said. "It's mental. It's an attitude. It's that same attitude that says, 'I know there is that potential, so I'll buy this umbrella now while I have the opportunity.' " |
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The Economic Collapse
2012-09-07 00:00:00
Are you better off today than you were four years ago? This is a question that comes up nearly every election. This year the Romney campaign has even created a Twitter hashtag for it: #AreYouBetterOff. The Democrats are making lots of speeches claiming that we are better off, and the Republicans are making lots of speeches claiming that we are not. So are most Americans actually better off than they were four years ago? Of course not. One recent poll found that only 20 percent of Americans believe that they are better off financially than they were four years ago. But the same thing was true four years ago as well. Our economy has been in decline and the middle class has been shrinking for a very long time. The Democrats want to put all of the blame on the Republicans for this, and the Republicans want to put all of the blame on the Democrats for this. A recent CNN headline defiantly declared the following: "Decline of middle class not Obama's fault", and this is the kind of thing we are going to hear day after day until the election in November. But obviously something has gone fundamentally wrong with our economy. So who should we blame? Sadly, you hear very little on the mainstream news networks or the talk radio shows about the institution that has the most power over our economy. The Federal Reserve has far more power over our financial system than anyone else does, but the media and both political parties tell us that the Federal Reserve is "above politics" and that their "independence" must never be questioned. But the truth is that the debt-based financial system that the Federal Reserve is at the core of is absolutely central to our economic problems. If you do not understand this, please see this article: "10 Things That Every American Should Know About The Federal Reserve". |
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John O'Brien
The FBI has evidence that for the past 15 years someone in Syracuse has
been panicking office workers with powder-filled letters threatening an
anthrax attack.The Post-Standard 2012-09-09 11:56:00
The pattern is the same: A letter arrives with a mound of white powder inside. The writer claims it's anthrax. It terrorizes the poor soul who opens the letter and has to wait as long as 36 hours to find out it was only baby powder. Then the terrorist disappears for months, even years. For 15 years, through 21 scares in Syracuse and throughout the East, the FBI has tried to solve the mystery. Now the FBI wants help. The agency is sharing details about the chain of terror. It says the letters contained white powder with threats that it was lethal anthrax spores. But in each case, it turned out to be baby powder, detergent or other nonhazardous materials. The letters also carry clues about the sender, including his penchant for the writings of a long-dead science fiction writer. The FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service are offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to the conviction of whoever sent the powder in 21 threatening letters from Syracuse since 1997. |
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Michael Allen
Opposing Views 2012-09-05 00:00:00
Gina Rinehart, the world's wealthiest woman, claims that iron-ore mining in Australia may have to abandoned if wages are not cut. Rinehart then proudly added that African miners are "willing to work for less than $2 per day," reports the BBC (video below). In a video recently posted on the Sydney Mining Club website, Rinehart, who is worth $18[B], said Australia should emulate Africa, reports RawStory.com. |
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Flying le coop: France's Richest Man Seeks Belgian Citizenship, Denies its an Attempt to Dodge Taxes
RT America
2012-09-08 00:00:00
Bernard Arnault, France's richest man with a net worth estimated at US$41 billion, has applied for Belgian citizenship - citing personal and business reasons and maintains this has nothing to do with François Hollande's 75 per cent tax hike on the super-r[ich]. As the Belgian authorities evaluate Arnault's request to determine whether or not he has demonstrable "real ties" to Belgium, it stands to reason that Arnault would wish to seek shelter under Belgium's 50 per cent tax rate. Arnault insisted on Saturday that he was not becoming Belgian to dodge tax. |
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RT America
2012-09-09 00:00:00
Most US college students hope to land a good job with a high salary after graduation. But for some the reality is very different. Many find themselves faced with insurmountable debt - and a loan industry that's happy to cash in on their misfortune. As the number of people taking out government-backed student loans has soared, so has the number of borrowers who have fallen behind in making payments. Around 5.9 million people nationwide have fallen at least 12 months behind in their payments. This number has grown by a third in the last five years, according to a State Higher Education Finance survey. Many who can't repay their loans feel they have no choice but to default. It's a decision that can be disastrous - ruining a borrower's credit and increasing the amount they owe. It can also result in penalties of up to 25 per cent of the balance. | |
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Comment: The student loan racket is destroying the future for many young people and often forces them to take desperate measures:
Prostitution Attractive Option for Med Students with Debt "I Cannot Eat Your Prayers": How Student Debt Changed One Woman's Mind on "Christian Charity" America's Student Loan Racket US: Students Protest Debt While These Companies Rake in Money |
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| Secret History |
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LiveScience
2012-09-10 11:11:00
A rare scarab amulet newly unearthed in Tel Aviv reveals the ancient Egyptian presence in this modern Israeli city. Archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, have long uncovered evidence of Egyptian influence. Now, researchers have learned that a gateway belonging to an Egyptian fortification in Jaffa was destroyed and rebuilt at least four times. They have also found the scarab, which bears the cartouche of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III, who ruled from 1390 to 1353 B.C. Scarabs were common charms in ancient Egypt, representing the journey of the sun across the sky and the cycle of life. Jaffa was the site of major trading activity since the second millennium B.C. Excavations in the 1950s uncovered the Egyptian fortification, which dates back to the dynasty of Ramses II between 1279 and 1213 B.C. Mud brick architecture and household pottery also point to Egyptian influence, according to researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany and the University of California, Los Angeles, who have been conducting new explorations at the site. Jaffa has long been a crossroads for international influence. The city is also the site of a rare marble slab from the era of the Crusades. The slab, which dates back 800 years, bears an inscription in unusual Arabic script referring to Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Frederick II led the Sixth Crusade in 1228 in an effort to conquer the Holy Land, and managed to gain the territory through diplomacy instead of violence. |
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Owen Jarus
LiveScience 2012-09-10 06:33:00
On Jan. 30, 1540, in Mexico City, at a time when Spain was carving out an empire in the New World, an epic trial got under way. An ordained Catholic priest named Pedro Ruiz Calderón was being prosecuted for practicing black magic. The priest actually bragged about the powers he had acquired according to records a researcher is working on publishing. He claimed to be able to teleport between continents, make himself invisible, make women fall in love with him, predict the future, turn metals into gold, summon and exorcise demons and, most importantly, discover buried treasure. "He really typifies all of the major types of learned magic, from summoning and conjuring demons, to exorcising demons to the powers of cloaking himself, making himself invisible," said John Chuchiak IV, a professor at Missouri State University who translates and publishes documents recording the opening of the trial in his new book The Inquisition in New Spain 1536-1820 (John Hopkins University Press, 2012). [See Photos of the Trial Records] "He could hypnotize people, too; it's one of the earliest, I think, descriptions of hypnotism, mesmerizing people." At the start of the trial, Calderón was denounced in a speech by Miguel López de Legazpi, the Secretary of the Holy Office, who would later become a conquistador in the Philippines. In translation, the trial records state that "many persons have made it known before him [Legazpi] that the said Calderón knows of the Black Arts and that he learned them from others." The records go on to claim that Calderón is able to make himself invisible and can travel across great distances in a short amount of time. "It's just fascinating. The story just goes on and on," Chuchiak told LiveScience of the more than 100 pages of trial records. The prosecutor Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the Franciscan archbishop of Mexico and apostolic inquisitor of New Spain, was known for his extreme punishments. "Other people he had their tongue split for very minor blasphemy," said Chuchiak. In the end, for reasons unknown, the bishop gave Calderón only a minor punishment - exile back to Spain and a prohibition from giving Catholic services for two years; Zumárraga may have wanted to get rid of him without publicly executing a priest. What happens to Calderón after he is exiled is not known. |
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Tom de Castella
BBC Magazine 2012-09-10 13:00:00
Fans have rallied to buy the lab of inventor and electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla to turn it into a museum. But why do so few people appreciate the importance of Tesla's work? Lots of people don't know who Nikola Tesla was. He's less famous than Einstein. He's less famous than Leonardo. He's arguably less famous than Stephen Hawking. Most gallingly for his fans, he's considerably less famous than his arch-rival Thomas Edison. But his work helped deliver the power for the device on which you are reading this. His invention of the induction motor that would work with alternating current (AC) was a milestone in modern electrical systems. Mark Twain, whom he later befriended, described his invention as "the most valuable patent since the telephone". |
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| Science & Technology |
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Jason Mick
Big Brother gets a boost from bleeding edge technologyDailyTech 2012-09-10 16:10:00 President Barack Obama wants to trim defense spending. Former Mass. Governor and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney wants to bump the defense budget. But one thing both agree on funding is funding the U.S. National Intelligence Agency's (NIA) ambitious facial recognition bid, which along with other advanced identification efforts, currently has been earmarked $1B USD in Congressional funding. I. Facial Recognition is Now Much of the funding goes to researchers working at Pittsburgh, Penn.'s Carnegie Mellon University. By 2010, CMU reported [PDF] to Congress that it could pick out a person's face out of a database of 1.6m mug shots approximately 92 percent of the time. While that high success rate did require the target be looking at the camera, Marios Savvide's lab is working to improve the algorithms so they can recognize faces at other angles too -- even if the person is looking away. Using a 3D model of the face, the CMU algorithms render expected images from various angles for comparison. Currently, the biggest challenge is lighting. Results can be improved by augmenting the visible light data with infrared camera images -- but infrared cameras are expensive, and are relatively rare at public locations. |
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Comment: Those who would give up essential liberty to
purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -
Ben Franklin
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Ernesto Guido, Kris Rochowicz, Nick Howes & Giovanni Sostero
M.P.E.C. 2012-Q25, issued on 2012 Aug. 20, reports the discovery of the asteroid 2012 QC8 (discovery magnitude 17.1) by Siding Spring Survey on images taken on August 19.6 with a 0.5-m Uppsala Schmidt + CCD.Remanzacco Observatory 2012-09-10 14:41:00 2012 QC8 has an estimated size of 670 m - 1.5 km (H=18.0) and it will have a close approach with Earth at about 22.7 LD (Lunar Distances) or 0.0583 AU at 2256 UT on 14 Sept. 2012. This asteroid will reach an average magnitude of 14.6 around September 10-13. 2012 QC8 is a current radar target for ground based radio telescopes. We performed some follow-up measurements of this object, remotely from the Siding Spring-Faulkes Telescope South on 2012, September 10.4, through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD. Below you can see our image, stack of 5x5-second exposures, taken with the asteroid at magnitude ~14.6 and moving at 16.15"/min. At the moment of the close approach on 14 September, 2012 QC8 will move at ~ 29"/min.
Here you can see a short animation showing the movement of 2012 QC8 (each frame is a 5-second exposure). |
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Ray Villard
Discovery News 2012-09-10 11:25:00
We're only a little more than three months away from the imaginary 2012 End of Times (based on silly misinterpretations of the ancient Mayan calendar). The 2012 doom and gloom folks have glommed onto all kinds of nonsensical predictions where the Milky Way galaxy disrupts us: the passage of the solar system across the galactic plane, or a supposed "grand alignment" with the galactic center will trigger a mysterious and nondescript celestial 'force.' In reality, our Milky Way really does pose numerous hazards to Earth during the sun's orbital journey around the galactic center. But no future space disaster can be circled on a calendar on Dec. 21 or any other date. The sun has completed 20 orbits of the galactic hub since Earth formed. Each orbit is called a galactic year -- a vast stretch of time (220 million Earth years) that the Mayans could have never imagined. Whatever cosmic catastrophes might have happened along the way, it has not prevented complex life from arising and evolving on Earth over roughly the past three galactic years. There have been attempts at statistically linking mysterious mass extinctions to cosmic disasters, but we simply don't have enough data, says Colin Norman the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. The reality is that the potential of navigational hazards along our galactic journey lie far into the future over many millions or billions of years. Our distant descendants could come up with strategies to guard against some of these mishaps. However, the biggest threat is from extremely rare energetic events in the galaxy, says Norman. |
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Irene Klotz
New study could impact the odds that life had a chance to take hold on the Red PlanetDicovery News 2012-09-09 13:38:00
Early Mars may not have been as warm or wet as scientists suspect, a finding which could impact the likelihood that the Red Planet was capable of evolving life at the time when it was getting started on Earth. A new study presents an alternative explanation for the prevalence of Mars' ancient clay minerals, which on Earth most often result from water chemically reacting with rock over long periods of time. The process is believed to be a starting point for life. The clays, also known as phyllosilocates, are among the strongest pieces of evidence for a Mars that once was warmer, wetter and much more like Earth than the cold, dry, acidic desert which appears today. Data collected by orbiting spacecraft show Mars' clay minerals may instead trace their origin to water-rich volcanic magma, similar to how clays formed on the Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia and in the Parana basin in Brazil. That process doesn't need standing bodies of liquid water. |
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Mark Miller
News-Leader.com 2012-09-09 05:48:00
Drury physics professor Greg Ojakangas is recognized among his peers as an expert in junk, and NASA is sending him to Hawaii to share this expertise with scientists and military personnel. The junk Ojakangas studies floats hundreds of miles above the Earth. "There's a new initiative called active debris removal. It hasn't happened yet, but NASA is planning to have missions to remove space debris from orbit," Ojakangas said. "It's very expensive, but it's been predicted that the expense of not doing anything is going to be even greater." Ojakangas spoke at the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference in 2011. His talk centered on small pieces of space junk in geosynchronous orbit 22,000 miles above the Earth that could damage satellites and spacecraft. On Saturday, Ojakangas will present a paper titled "Probable Rotation States of Rocket Bodies in Low Earth Orbit." |
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NSF
2012-09-09 16:36:00
New research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reveals that some unlikely subjects--bacteria--can have social structures similar to plants and animals. The research shows that a few individuals in groups of closely related bacteria have the ability to produce chemical compounds that kill or slow the growth of other populations of bacteria in the environment, but not harm their own. Published in the September 7 issue of the journal Science, the finding suggests that bacteria in the environment can play different social roles and that competition occurs not only among individual bacteria, but also among coexisting ecological populations. The National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering, funded the research. "Bacteria typically have been considered purely selfish organisms and bacterial populations as groups of clones," said Otto Cordero, a theoretical biologist and lead researcher on the paper. "This result contrasts with what we know about animal and plant populations, in which individuals can divide labors, perform different complementary roles and act synergistically."Cordero and colleagues from MIT, along with researchers from the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, studied whether population-level organization exists for bacteria in the wild. |
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Wynne Parry
LiveScience 2012-09-09 10:40:00
Over the past 50 years, the salty parts of the oceans have become saltier and the fresh regions have become fresher, and the degree of change is greater than scientists can explain. Researchers are heading out into one particularly salty ocean region, in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, in the hopes of better understanding what drives variation in salinity in the upper ocean. Ultimately, they hope, research like this will offer insight on the dynamics behind the dramatic changes in the ocean's salt content. Many oceanographers have a hunch about what is going on: Climate change, Ray Schmitt, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told journalists during a news conference Wednesday (Sept. 5). "Climate is changing all the time, and some of that change is due to natural variation," Schmitt said. "The 50-year trend we are talking about, most of us believe is really due to the general trend of global warming." Salt & the global water cycle This matters because the ocean is at the heart of the planet's water cycle: 86 percent of global evaporation and 78 percent of global precipitation occur over the ocean, according to NASA, the lead entity behind the project, called Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS). Over the ocean, more evaporation as compared to precipitation translates into saltier water. Meanwhile, in regions where precipitation is favored, water is fresher. By tracking ocean salinity, researchers can better understand the global water cycle. Global warming is expected to intensify it, but current computer models do not predict the amount of change seen over the last 50 years, Schmitt said. Aside from an increase in evaporation caused by warming, such factors as winds can also contribute to changes in salinity. "We have a lot of questions about the basic physics we hope to resolve with this cruise," Schmitt said. |
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Seiichi Yoshida
Discovery Date: August 28, 2012Aerith Net 2012-09-08 13:33:00 Magnitude: 18.7mag Discoverer: R. A. Kowalski (Mount Lemmon)
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2012-R08. |
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April Flowers
RedOrbit 2012-09-08 13:18:00
Since 1927, when Werner Heisenberg formulated the uncertainty principle, it has stood as one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics. In a simplified form, the uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to measure anything without disturbing it. For example, any attempt to measure a particle's position must randomly change its speed. For clarity's sake, one should be aware that the uncertainty principle is not the same as the observer effect, which states that the act of observing a phenomenon will change the phenomenon itself. The uncertainty principle is more about how precisely something can be measured in two dimensions such as position and momentum, simultaneously. In common parlance, the two theories are often conflated. This principle has driven quantum physicists crazy for nearly a century. That is, it drove them crazy until recently, when researchers at the University of Toronto demonstrated the ability to directly measure the disturbance and confirm that Heisenberg was too pessimistic. "We designed an apparatus to measure a property - the polarization - of a single photon. We then needed to measure how much that apparatus disturbed that photon," says Lee Rozema, a PhD. candidate in Professor Aephraim Steinberg's quantum optics research group at U of T. "To do this, we would need to measure the photon before the apparatus but that measurement would also disturb the photon," Rozema says. To overcome this challenge, the team employed a technique known as weak measurement wherein the action of a measuring device is weak enough to have an imperceptible impact on what is being measured. Prior to sending each photon to the measurement apparatus, the physicists measured it weakly and then measured it again afterwards. They then compared the results and found that the disturbance induced by the measurement is less than Heisenberg's precision-disturbance relation would require. |
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Christine Schøtt Hvidberg
On Mars's poles there are ice caps of ice and dust with layers that
reflect to past climate variations on Mars. Researchers from the Niels
Bohr Institute have related the layers in the ice cap on Mars's north
pole to variations in solar insolation on Mars, thus established the
first dated climate history for Mars, where ice and dust accumulation
has been driven by variations in insolation. The results are published
in the scientific journal, Icarus.University of Copenhagen Niels Bohr Institute 2012-09-06 08:41:00
The ice caps on Mars's poles are kilometres thick and composed of ice and dust. There are layers in the ice caps, which can be seen in cliffs and valley slopes and we have known about these layers for decades, since the first satellite images came back from Mars. The layers are believed to reflect past climate on Mars, in the same way that the Earth's climate history can be read by analysing ice cores from the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica. Solar insolation on Mars has varied dramatically over time, mainly due to large variations in the tilt of Mars's rotational axis (obliquity) and this led to dramatic climate variations on Mars. For years people have tried to link the solar insolation and layer formation by looking for signs of periodic sequences in the visible layers, which can be seen in the upper 500 meters. Periodic signals might be traceable back to known variations in the solar insolation on Mars, but so far it has been unclear whether one could find a correlation between variations in insolation and the layers. |
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| Earth Changes |
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David Danelski and John Asbury
The Press Enterprise 2012-09-10 09:39:00
Investigators are probing the source of a rotten egg odor from the desert to the San Fernando Valley. The cause of the smell remains unknown, but some officials believe the bad smell may be coming from a summer storm and a fish die off at the Salton Sea, although authorities at the Salton Sea initially denied they were the source. Kevin Martin, a meteorologist with the independent Southern California Weather Authority, said a strong thunderstorm system moved north from Mexico late Sunday, Sept. 9, bringing in winds as strong as 70 miles per hour to the Saltan Sea areas. The unusual storm pushed the air from above the sea to the west. It then went through the San Gorgonio Pass, and into the Inland valleys, Martin said. Winds normally flow from west to east. The South Coast Air Quality Management District, however, has not identified a source of the odors, but the agency has dispatched inspectors to investigate. The air district received more than100 calls reporting a strong, foul rotten egg or sulfur odor, district officials said in statement. Possible sources include fish kills, algae blooms and other biologic conditions in lakes that can cause strong odors, the statement said. Industrial facilities such as wastewater plants also can cause sulfur odors. |
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BangkokPost.com
2012-09-10 15:09:00
Officials and resources were urgently mobilised to help people in areas of Sukhothai municipality which were abruptly hit by the flooding. The surging waters made many roads in municipal areas of Sukhothai's Muang district impassable, with the level more than a metre deep in some places. At least five schools suspended classes. His Majesty the King has had disaster relief packages worth more than 760,000 baht, delivered to 1,500 flood-affected households in the province via the Rajaprajanugroh Foundation. The government said water management at dams was still under control, and that the Sukhothai flood was due to the levee bases on which flood walls had been built breaking unexpectedly. Sukhothai municipality's Wichian Chamnong, Ratchathani, Pracha Ruamjai, Khlong Tapetch, Phra Maeya and Tan Diew communities were inundated. |
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NYDailyNews.com
2012-09-10 14:59:00
At least 78 people have died and dozens more injured in torrential rains and flash floods that have wreaked havoc in Pakistan over the past three days, a government spokesman said Monday. Heavy monsoon rains which began falling last week have destroyed more than 1,600 houses and damaged a further 5,000, Irshad Bhatti, a spokesman for the country's National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) told AFP. "A total of 78 people have died and 68 injured in rains and flash floods in the country so far," he said, adding that the casualties were caused mostly by houses collapsing and people being caught in floods. The worst-hit region was Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where 32 people have died and 26 injured in several districts, he said, adding that 83 houses were totally destroyed and another 4,200 were partially damaged. In the northwestern district of Swabi eight Afghan refugees were killed when the roof of their mud house collapsed overnight, police official Mohammad Ali said. |
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Megan Gannon
LiveScience 2012-09-10 10:23:00
Less than two decades after wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, viral diseases like mange threaten the stability of the new population. Humans had killed off gray wolves in the region by the 1930s, but in 1995, U.S. wildlife officials tried to restore the native population by bringing 31 wolves captured from Canada into the national park. The new wolf community initially expanded rapidly, climbing to more than 170 at its peak. But researchers from Penn State University say that the most recent data show the number of animals has dipped below 100. "We're down to extremely low levels of wolves right now," researcher Emily S. Almberg, a graduate student in ecology, said in a statement. "We're down to [similar numbers as] the early years of reintroduction. So it doesn't look like it's going to be as large and as a stable a population as was maybe initially thought." The researchers point to pathogens as the culprit in the population's instability. By 1997, all of the new wolves at the park that were tested for disease had at least one infection, including canine distemper, canine parvovirus and canine herpesvirus. Starting in 2007, wolves inside the park were testing positive for mange - an infection in which mites burrow under the skin causing insatiable scratching and so much hair loss that infected wolves often freeze to death in the winter. |
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TODAYonline.com
Power failed across a large swath of western Cuba last night, plunging
millions of people into darkness, including those in the capital of
Havana and at the beach resort of Varadero. Other cities in central and
eastern Cuba also had outages but for only brief spans.2012-09-10 13:32:00 There was no immediate word on what caused the blackout, which struck a little after 8pm (Cuba time) and was still mostly out in the capital more than three hours later. Calls to the electrical system's headquarters were met with busy signals. Officials in the national government were not immediately able to offer an explanation. State radio said power was gradually being restored but urged people not to use power-hungry appliances. Lights came back on in at least one eastern Havana suburb after about two and a half hours. Havana's international airport reported that it had electricity and was continuing operations. In the capital, home to about two million people, the lights went out in a 40km stretch from Havana's western residential neighbourhoods across the city's centre and Old Havana district and on to suburbs on the other side of the bay. |
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Magee Hickey
PIX 11 2012-09-09 08:32:00
New York - The cleanup in Canarsie will resume tomorrow after a second, much stronger tornado touched down and created a two-block swath of destruction here in this corner of Brooklyn. And what's got people in Canarsie really amazed about this twister is how it destroyed one house and left the houses right next door undamaged. The winds were clocked at 110 mph in Brooklyn, compared to another twister in Breezy Point, Queens, which had 70 mph winds. Both tornados were about 150 feet wide. "This is Brooklyn, who ever thought there'd be a tornado," Zorina Khan told PIX 11's Magee Hickey. Mrs. Kahn showed me her daughter's house on Avenue N where the entire roof had been ripped off. The tornado also dislodged a chunk of concrete that just missed a sleeping baby by inches. "It was a huge piece, maybe 50 or 60 pounds and the baby was so close to it," Mrs. Kahn said. "But the baby is fine, thank God." |
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PhysOrg
2012-09-09 20:38:00
A new survey suggests that the chamber of molten rock beneath Santorini's volcano expanded 10-20 million cubic metres - up to 15 times the size of London's Olympic Stadium - between January 2011 and April 2012. The growth of this 'balloon' of magma has seen the surface of the island rise 8-14 centimetres during this period, a team led by Oxford University scientists has found. The results come from an expedition, funded by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, which used satellite radar images and Global Positioning System receivers (GPS) that can detect movements of the Earth's surface of just a few millimetres. The findings are helping scientists to understand more about the inner workings of the volcano which had its last major explosive eruption 3,600 years ago, burying the islands of Santorini under metres of pumice. However, it still does not provide an answer to the biggest question of all: 'when will the volcano next erupt?' A report of the research appears in this week's Nature Geoscience. In January 2011, a series of small earthquakes began beneath the islands of Santorini. Most were so small they could only be detected with sensitive seismometers but it was the first sign of activity beneath the volcano to be detected for 25 years. |
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Source
2012-09-09 16:48:00
VietNamNet Bridge - In the morning of September 6, thousands of residents of Bac Tra My district, Quang Nam province, panicked because of four consecutive quakes up to 3.4 on the Richter scale. In the last four days, this region suffered from 12 quakes. While attending a ceremony to see recruits off, many officials of Bac Tra My district heard big explosions in the earth and fell tremors. "After the explosion, the ground shook and my car was also shaken," said Ms. Dung, a district official. Mr. Tran Van Anh in Phuoc Hiep commune, Phuoc Son district, where is very close to Song Tranh 2 hydro-power plant, said: "At 7.20am, when I was drinking tea with my neighbors, an underground blast exploded. After that the ground shook strongly. We had to run out of the house immediately." In Hiep Duc and Nam Tra My districts, hundreds of people fled from their houses because of underground blasts and tremors in the early morning. The Geo-physic Institute verified that four quakes occurred near the Song Tranh 2 plant in the morning of September 6. The strongest tremor is 3.4 Richter and its epicenter was in Phuoc Hiep commune, which is very close to Song Tranh 2. According to the institute's statistics, up to 58 tremors were recorded around Song Tranh 2 plant over the last year. From September 3-6, up to 12 quakes occurred. The strongest tremor was 4.2 Richter. Tremors may come from the Tra Bong or Hung Nhuong-Ta Vi faults, around 3km from Song Tranh 2 dam. |
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OPB
2012-09-06 17:15:00
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is asking for help gathering clues about a hoof disease affecting elk in southwest Washington. Veterinarians with the wildlife agency say the disease, which causes severe hoof deformity, has spread rapidly. It began with a few isolated cases and is now common in herds across the region, from Vancouver to the foothills of Mount St. Helens. Hunters first spotted elk limping near Longview Washington in the 1990s. They reported the animals' hooves were deformed or missing. Darren Sparks can see the diseased elk in his backyard in Kelso. "You'll see, usually, half the herd have hoof rot," he says. Kristin Mansfield, a veterinarian with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, says the disease hasn't caused a decline in Washington's elk population yet, but it may if it continues to spread to new herds. Mansfield says the disease doesn't match any other reports of elk maladies in the United States. Forms of hoof rot do appear occasionally in Wyoming's populations of elk that congregate around feeding sites. Mansfield says those reports of hoof disease are limited to winter and to a few individual animals. | |
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Comment: It's the second mysterious disease to affect elk population around the world recently:
Swedish experts baffled by 'mystery' elk illness |
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Yahoo! News - Canada
Halifax - The Canadian Hurricane Centre says the likelihood of tropical
storm Leslie's centre making landfall in Newfoundland is quite high.2012-09-09 00:00:00 But Chris Fogarty, the centre's manager, says it's difficult to predict where the storm will land because its circulation is about 800 kilometres in diameter. Fogarty says the storm's effects will be far-reaching and winds could gust up to 100 km/h when it hits on Tuesday. He says Nova Scotia, P.E.I. and Newfoundland could see 100 to 150 millimetres of rain over about 36 hours. The centre says the small Category 2 hurricane Michael will likely be pushed northward out of the area by Leslie. Fogarty says Leslie is expected to reach hurricane status sometime today or Monday, but he could not say if it will maintain that status for its arrival in Atlantic Canada. Source: The Canadian Press |
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Yahoo! News - Canada
2012-09-09 00:00:00
Guohui, China - Rescuers in southwestern China tried on Saturday to reach remote communities rocked by earthquakes that killed at least 80 people and damaged thousands of buildings, state media reported. Shallow 5.6 magnitude quakes struck an impoverished, mountainous part of the country with poor infrastructure and communications on Friday and the death toll could rise as news trickles in from cut-off areas, the Xinhua news agency said. The quakes cut off electricity and triggered landslides that blocked roads, hampering rescue efforts. Adding to rescuers' difficulties was rain which forecasters said was expected for the next three days. "I was extremely scared when it started to shake. After it shook the first, second and third times, it was moving and I was extremely scared," said 56-year-old Zhou Weiping, a resident of the township of Guohui in Yiliang county, near the epicenter. "We panicked and quickly ran out," she said State television showed crumbled walls and roads strewn with rubble and rocks. The broadcaster put the death toll at 89 earlier in the day, but later revised it to "at least 80", in line with the official Xinhua news agency's tally. More than 800 people were injured, Xinhua said. |
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NHK Reloaded
2012-09-09 02:50:00
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US Geological Survey
2012-09-09 02:43:00
Event Time
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USGS
2012-09-08 21:50:00
Event Time
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Karen Matthews
Associated Press 2012-09-08 00:00:00
A tornado swept out of the sea and hit a beachfront neighborhood in New York City on Saturday, hurling debris in the air, knocking out power and startling residents who once thought of twisters as a Midwestern phenomenon. Firefighters were still assessing the damage, but no serious injuries were reported and the area affected by the storm appeared small. Videos taken by bystanders showed a funnel cloud sucking up water, then sand, and then small pieces of buildings, as it moved through the Breezy Point section of the Rockaway peninsula in Queens. Residents had advance notice. The National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for Queens and Brooklyn at around 10:40 a.m. The storm took people by surprise anyway when it struck about 30 minutes later. "I was showing videos of tornadoes to my 4-year-old on my phone, and two minutes later, it hit," said neighborhood resident Peter Maloney. "Just like they always say, it sounded like a train." In the storm's wake, the community of seaside bungalows was littered with broken flower pots, knocked-down fences and smashed windows. |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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No new articles. |
| Health & Wellness |
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Brett Smith
RedOrbit 2012-09-10 17:15:00
A team of American researchers has discovered a major cause of asthma that could lead to effective prevention and treatment of the disease. According to their recent report in the journal Nature Medicine, the team of immunologists and pediatricians found that a viral infection in newborns leads to the impairment of regulatory aspects of the immune system, increasing the risk of asthma later in life. In their experiment, researchers repeatedly exposed infant mice to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) through their mother's milk. The disease eventually stripped the immune cells of their regulatory ability to stop inflammation in its lung's passages after being exposed to a pathogen or irritant. When an irritant enters the airways of a person with asthma, the immune system reacts to it as if it were a pathogen, causing the airways to become inflamed and produce mucus that makes breathing difficult. This study illustrates that early exposure to RSV makes it hard for the body to tolerate the response of its own immune system, making it susceptible to asthma. Previous research has shown a connection between repeated lung exposures to RSV and developing asthma later in life. A 2010 study by Swedish scientists showed that 39 percent of infants taken to hospital with RSV had asthma when they were 18. They also noted that 9 percent of their control group developed asthma without contracting RSV. The latest study, which was led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine, expands on that research by providing evidence for a mechanism that drives the drop in immune tolerance. |
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Nicole Ostrow
Bloomberg News 2012-09-10 15:56:00
Acupuncture, an ancient Chinese therapy that inserts needles into the body, reduced back and neck pain, arthritis and headaches, according to the largest analysis of the treatment. Data compiled from 29 studies of almost 18,000 people found that acupuncture was better at relieving pain than not having the treatment at all or undergoing a sham procedure, according to research reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine today. About 3 million U.S. adults get acupuncture each year, mostly for chronic pain, the authors wrote. Doctors don't know why the ancient Chinese therapy can help relieve pain and more studies are needed to determine how the treatment fits with remedies such as drugs, surgery and physical and behavioral therapy, said Andrew Vickers, the lead author of the analysis. "We thought for a long time that the reason why acupuncture worked was just because people believed it work," Vickers, a researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said in a Sept. 7 telephone interview. "We now know that the effect of acupuncture goes above and beyond the placebo effect. Acupuncture is a reasonable option for chronic pain." Traditional Chinese medicine explains acupuncture as a technique for balancing the flow of energy in a person's body, according to the Mayo Clinic. Inserting needles into specific points along pathways in the body changes the flow. |
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Helen Branswell
Herald News 2012-09-10 15:21:00
A strange vaccine-related phenomenon spotted at the start of the 2009 flu pandemic may well have been real, a new study suggests. Canadian researchers noticed in the early weeks of the pandemic that people who got a flu shot for the 2008-2009 winter seemed to be more likely to get infected with the pandemic virus than people who hadn't received a flu shot. |
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Helen Branswell
The Vancouver Sun 2012-09-10 01:11:00
A strange vaccine-related phenomenon spotted in Canada at the start of the 2009 flu pandemic may well have been real, a new study suggests. Researchers, led by Vancouver's Dr. Danuta Skowronski, an influenza expert at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, noticed in the early weeks of the pandemic that people who got a flu shot for the 2008-09 winter seemed to be more likely to get infected with the pandemic virus than people who hadn't received a flu shot. Five studies done in several provinces showed the same unsettling results. But initially research outside Canada did not, and the effect was dismissed as a "Canadian problem," a problem with the flu vaccine used in Canada. But a new study suggests the findings were real. |
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Hannah Dreier
Associated Press 2012-09-10 14:11:00
Sacramento, California -- Parents who send their children to private schools in California are much more likely to opt out of immunizations than their public school counterparts, an Associated Press analysis has found, and not even the recent re-emergence of whooping cough has halted the downward trajectory of vaccinations among these students. The state surveys all schools with at least 10 kindergartners to determine how many have all the recommended immunizations. The AP analyzed that data and found the percentage of children in private schools who forego some or all vaccinations is more than two times greater than in public schools. More troubling to public health officials is that the number of children entering private schools without all of their shots jumped by 10 percent last year, while the opt-out rate held steady in public schools for the first time since 2004. Public health officials believe that an immunization rate of at least 90 percent in all communities, including schools, is critical to minimizing the potential for a disease outbreak. About 15 percent of the 1,650 private schools surveyed by the state failed to reach that threshold, compared with 5 percent of public schools. There were 110 private schools statewide where more than half the kindergartners skipped some or all of their shots, according to AP's analysis, with Highland Hall Waldorf School in Northridge - where 84 percent opted out - topping the list. Parents cite a variety of reasons for not immunizing their children, among them: religious values, concerns the shots themselves could cause illness and a belief that allowing children to get sick helps them to build a stronger immune system. Likewise, there's no single explanation that accounts for why so many more parents who send their children to private schools apparently share a suspicion of immunizations. |
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Howard Brody
Hooked: Ethics, Medicine, and Pharma 2012-09-10 13:12:00
Thanks to an exchange of e-mails on a list that includes journalists Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee (whose great work I've previously blogged about), I was directed to an article (subscription required) that I failed to make note of when it came out nearly two years ago. It provides useful background to an issue that has become even more heated this last year, the medical device safety oversight problem (see for example here). Lenzer and Brownlee looked in depth at the vagus nerve stimulator manufactured by Cyberonics, a device in which a pacemaker-type pack is surgically inserted near the collarbone, and electrodes are wrapped around the vagus nerve in the neck. The device was intended at first for a select population of patients with a particular type of epilepsy that's resistant to all drug treatment. Like many devices and drugs (and in keeping with the Inverse Benefit Law), once having gotten the camel's nose into the tent, Cyberonics is now claiming that the stimulator can be used for a large number of other conditions, notably depression, and perhaps obesity and traumatic brain injury (stay tuned for hair loss and bad breath). All such uses rely on the purported safety of the device, which is what Lenzer and Brownlee zeroed in on. | |
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Comment: There's no need for anyone to use invasive,
and potentially fatal, devices in order to enjoy the benefits of vagus
nerve stimulation. Try instead the Éiriú Eolas program, which is designed to stimulate the vagus nerve through simple and natural breathing techniques.
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ScienceDaily
An international team of scientists have shown at an unprecedented level
of detail how cells prioritize the repair of genes containing
potentially dangerous damage. The research, published in the journal Nature
and involving academics from the University of Bristol, the Institut
Jacques-Monod in France and Rockefeller University in the US, studied
the action of individual molecules in order to understand how cellular
repair pathways are triggered.2012-09-09 00:00:00 The genetic information that forms the "instruction booklet" for cells is encoded in the molecular building blocks of DNA, and can be damaged by mutagens such as ultraviolet light or tobacco smoke, as well as by normal "wear and tear" as the cells age. If left unrepaired, such damage can kill the cells or cause them to change their behaviour and perhaps cause disease. Cells protect themselves by producing proteins that detect the damaged building blocks, cut them out and replace them with a patch of new DNA. Most cells, including bacteria and humans, contain mechanisms that ensure that the genes that are currently in use are repaired most quickly. |
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Rod Mills
Express, UK 2012-09-09 16:27:00
Scotland's drinking water may be partly to blame for the nation's high rates of liver disease, new research suggests. A link has been discovered between water hardness and the risk of damage to the organ by drinking too much alcohol. The study found softer water, which is plentiful in Scotland and the north of England, increases the risk of alcoholic liver disease (ALD), a major killer. Experts believe those living in soft-water areas may be more at risk because of lower levels of magnesium. The mineral can help to protect the liver from alcohol. It is the first time a link between water softness and the disease has been established. In the UK, hard water is found in the south and east of the country, where the principal rock is limestone. Soft water is found in the north where the rock is millstone grit and ALD rates are consistently higher. The research may explain why rates of the disease in Scotland are almost double those in England, despite average alcohol consumption being approximately the same. Last night there were calls for ministers to ditch their alcohol minimum-pricing strategy. John Duffy, a public health lecturer at Birmingham University and former Scotland Office adviser, said: "I have my doubts over the efficacy and legality of the policy of minimum-pricing of alcohol so if it were proved that there are problems relating to the water supply then we could see liver disease dealt with a different way." |
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RedOrbit
2012-09-09 16:13:00
As many as half of all women could be suffering from sleep apnea, if a study published in an August edition of the European Respiratory Journal is any indication. As part of the research, experts from Umeå University and Uppsala University, both in Sweden, recruited a random population sample of 400 women, had them complete a questionnaire and monitored them while they were sleeping, Reuters reporter Kerry Grens said on Friday. Of those women, "half experienced at least five episodes an hour when they stopped breathing for longer than 10 seconds, the minimum definition of sleep apnea," Grens noted. "Among women with hypertension or who were obese - two risk factors for sleep apnea - the numbers were even higher, reaching 80 to 84%of women." According to Anthony Bond of the Daily Mail, lead author Dr. Karl Franklin, a professor at Umea University, and colleagues selected 400 female subjects, ages 20 to 70, from a population sample of 10,000 people. Each of them were fitted with sensors that measured their heart rate, eye movement, leg movement, blood oxygen levels, brain waves, and air flow. |
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Health24
2012-09-07 16:05:00
City authorities in Durban have issued a warning to customers who bought an over-the-counter skincare product after eight people were hospitalised. The Daily News reported that officials were now looking for other customers of the ayurvedic product Skintocare, which is imported from India and available from homeopaths and health shops. Durban officials found the product contained high levels of lead. Most of the patients were teenage girls and taking the product in capsule form for treatment of acne and skin blemishes. Product is toxic "The product overall is toxic to many organs in the body, including the heart, nervous system and bones. In severe cases, after a long period of ingestion, it leads to seizures, comas and sudden death," said Tim Houston from the eThekwini Municipality's health unit. Some of the consumers were tracked down by the unit, using a distribution list from the importer of the product. Manufacturer Bacfo Pharmaceuticals has recalled the product but residual products may still be on the market. Shops have been ordered to remove the product from shelves. People who have been using the product have been told to see their doctor immediately. Symptoms of lead poisoning are non-specific and people could have toxic levels in their blood and not even know about it. |
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ScienceDaily
2012-09-06 00:00:00
Every activity in the brain involves the transfer of signals between neurons. Frequently, as many as one thousand signals rain down on a single neuron simultaneously. To ensure that precise signals are delivered, the brain possesses a sophisticated inhibitory system. Stefan Remy and colleagues at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases and the University Bonn have illuminated how this system works. "The system acts like a filter, only letting the most important impulses pass," explains Remy. "This produces the targeted neuronal patterns that are indispensible for long-term memory storage." How does this refined control system work? How can inhibitory signals produce precise output signals? This was the question investigated by Remy and his colleagues. Scientists have known for some time that this inhibitory system is crucial for the learning process. For instance, newest research has shown that this system breaks down in Alzheimer's patients. Remy and his team investigated the nerve cells of the hippocampus, a region of the brain that plays a crucial role in memory formation. |
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Frances Moore Lappe
readersupportednews.org 2012-09-07 15:51:00
I first heard about a new Stanford "study" downplaying the value of organics when this blog headline cried out from my inbox: "Expensive organic food isn't healthier and no safer than produce grown with pesticides, finds biggest study of its kind." What? Does the actual study say this? No, but authors of the study - "Are Organic Foods Safer or Healthier Than Conventional Alternatives? A Systematic Review" - surely are responsible for its misinterpretation and more. Their study actually reports that ¨Consumption of organic foods may reduce exposure to pesticide residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria." The authors' tentative wording - "may reduce" - belies their own data: The report's opening statement says the tested organic produce carried a 30 percent lower risk of exposure to pesticide residues. And, the report itself also says that "detectable pesticide residues were found in 7% of organic produce samples...and 38% of conventional produce samples." Isn't that's a greater than 80% exposure reduction? In any case, the Stanford report's unorthodox measure "makes little practical or clinical sense," notes Charles Benbrook - formerly Executive Director, Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences: What people "should be concerned about [is]... not just the number of [pesticide] residues they are exposed to" but the "health risk they face." Benbrook notes "a 94% reduction in health risk" from pesticides when eating organic foods. |
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Science Daily
2012-09-06 00:00:00
Women carrying a mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes (which control the suppression of breast and ovarian cancer) who have undergone diagnostic radiation to the chest before the age of 30 are more likely to develop breast cancer than those who carry the gene mutation but who have not been exposed, a study published on bmj.com today reveals. The BMJ published a commentary in August which argued that a breast cancer charity was using misleading statistics to persuade women to undergo mammography, concluding that charities should stop generating false hope and that women need and deserve the facts instead. Exposure to radiation is an established risk factor for breast cancer in the general population. Some studies have suggested that women with a mutated BRCA1/2 gene may have increased radiation sensitivity because BRCA1 and BRCA2 are the genes involved in the repair of DNA breaks, which can be caused by radiation. The benefit from mammographic screening in young BRCA1/2 mutation carriers may therefore not outweigh the radiation risk. Some countries have even gone as far as recommending that women avoid mammographic screening before the age of 30 but results of studies have been inconsistent. |
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Lisa Garber
Natural Society 2012-09-08 17:40:00
Researchers at North Carolina State University found that bisphenol-A (BPA) exposure in early life stages can actually cause gene expression changes. These effects are seen in a part of the brain called the amygdala, which can lead to increased levels of anxiety. What may surprise you is that soy - which has been accused of mimicking estrogen, as has BPA - prevented the behavioral changes. BPA and Genetic Changes Lead author of the study as published in the journal PLOS ONE, Dr. Heather Patisaul is an NC State associate professor of biology. For the research, she and other researchers divided rats into four groups:
Group IV - rats fed no soy and exposed to BPA - showed markedly higher levels of anxiety than the other groups. Their genes had changed, specifically where expressed in the amygdala (a region of the brain that deals with responses to fear and stress, also associated with behavior). The affected genes - estrogen receptor beta and melanocortin receptor 4 - both deal with the process of releasing oxytocin, a hormone and neurotransmitter linked to social behavior. Researchers therefore believe that the increased anxiety must have to do with BPA's ability to change the oxytocin/vasopressin signaling pathway. The abstract of the study states:
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Wang Hongyi
Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline will open a new research unit in China to look at traditional Chinese medicine.China Daily 2012-09-07 16:42:00 According to the company, Innovative TCM will be one of GSK's R&D programs in China, aiming to transform TCM from an experience-based practice to evidence-based medicines through innovation and differentiation. "Traditional chinese medicine is a well-established system of medical practice developed through thousands of years of empirical testing and refinement of herbal mixtures, and relies generally on clinical experience," said Zang Jingwu, senior vice president and head of R&D China. "Western medicines, on the other hand, are generally target-based small molecules or biologics, and their approvals for clinical use are based on clinical evidence of safety and efficacy by staged clinical trials," he said. He said the newly formed unit is working with academic TCM experts in China to develop new TCM products for the benefits of patients in China and the rest of the world. The strategy is to integrate the existing TCM knowledge of diseases with modern drug discovery technology and clinical trial methodology. "We are developing novel therapeutic TCM mixtures as prescription medicines through innovative extraction methods and combinations, and we use clinical data/evidence to differentiate from existing TCM products on the market," he said. The company's R&D China center was founded in 2007 with a focus on neurosciences. So far, the center has developed into a fully integrated global R&D organization in China to deliver medicine globally and for China. |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Mike Krumboltz
The Lookout 2012-09-10 17:26:00
A heartbreaking story out of Kazakhstan: According to reports, a dog was killed while trying to save its owner from an oncoming train. The suicidal owner had passed out on the train tracks after drinking a bottle of alcohol. According to Russian news site Ria Novosti, the man told authorities that his dog dragged him to safety. The dog wasn't able to avoid being hit. "Upon seeing the train, the dog started pulling its owner away," said Aida Muldashevam, who investigated the incident. "When train drivers saw the dog on the rail tracks, they used the emergency brake." Unfortunately, it was too late. The dog was killed instantly, while the owner was taken to the hospital. He had two broken ribs and an injury to his shoulder. Dogs have a well-deserved reputation for loyalty. At a funeral for a Navy SEAL who died in Afghanistan in 2011, dog Hawkeye lay by the casket during the memorial service. And in a small village in China last year, a dog remained at its owner's grave for weeks. When villagers took the dog back to town, the dog returned to the grave. Villagers eventually decided to build the dog a kennel near its departed friend. |
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Makini Brice
Medical Daily 2012-09-10 14:32:00
Forget about reading minds; researchers from Case Western University have developed a way to insert memories into mice's minds. Ben Strowbridge, a Professor of Neurosciences of Physiology and Biology, and Robert Hyde, a neuroscience post-doctoral student, have discovered how to store diverse types of artificial memories into brain tissue. They believe that their research will allow them the means to study exactly which brain circuits are responsible for creating short-term memories. Memories are generally grouped into two categories. Implicit memories are the type of memory that uses previous memories to inform a new skill, even when a person is not consciously aware of those memories; these are used when a person rides a bike or other similar tasks. Declarative memories are ones that can be consciously recalled, like names or facts. The study tried to create declarative memories, like the ones that are used to remember a phone number or email address that someone has just given. The neuroscientists used isolated rodent tissue to form a memory in which one of four neural pathways was activated. The neural circuits located in the hippocampus maintained the memory of input for 10 seconds. Researchers were then able to identify which pathway was being stimulated by examining brain cell activity. |
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Sheila Eldred
Discovery News 2012-09-08 15:01:00
How does Venus Williams return smashing serves? How does Josh Hamilton hit home runs off 90 mile-per-hour pitches? It's not just talent: preparing to leap over a hurdle or dunk a basketball makes the brain process information differently. The athlete perceives it as a slowing down of time, say researchers at University College London after a new study. "John McEnroe has reported that he feels time slows down as he is about to hit the ball, and F1 drivers report something very similar when overtaking," Dr. Nobuhiro Hagura from University College London's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience told BBC News. "Our guess is that during the motor preparation, visual information processing in the brain is enhanced. So, maybe, the amount of information coming in is increased. That makes time be perceived longer and slower." |
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Dr Raj Persaud and Helinä Häkkänen-Nyholm
The Huffington Post 2012-09-10 12:28:00
In one of the largest studies of its kind ever published, US psychologists have found a particular aspect of personality in men and women, predicts what the researchers refer to as 'hypersexuality'. The 'hypersexual' have more sexual partners than the rest of the population, fantasise more about others than their current partner, and tend to favour more sex without love. They take greater pleasure in casual sex with different partners, and don't need attachment to enjoy lovemaking. Hypersexuality was found strongly linked with a particular aspect of personality. Another especially intriguing aspect of this research, conducted on 482 people aged 17-56 years old, was that this personality feature applied equally to both men and women, in predicting hypersexuality. Psychologists are beginning to concur that it's this unique element of character which most powerfully predicts higher numbers of different sexual partners, as well as impulsive one night stands, and a gamut of risky sexual behaviours. This character trait is - Psychopathy. |
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Association for Psychological Science
Joking around can land us in hot water. Even the professionals often
shoot themselves comedically in the foot. Last month, comedian Jeffrey
Ross's routine at a roast of Rosanne Barr was censored when he joked
about the shooting in Aurora, Colorado. "Too soon!" everyone said.2012-09-10 12:31:00 And yet, it's not quite as simple as certain topics being "too soon" to joke about. Two weeks after 9/11, The Onion was able to successfully publish a satirical issue about the terrorist attacks. So the question is: When are tragedies okay to joke about -- and when are they not? According to the "Benign Violation Theory," humor emerges when we perceive something that is wrong (a violation), while also seeing that it is okay (benign). Psychological distance is one key ingredient that can make a violation seem okay and several studies have shown that being removed from a violation - by space, time, relationships, or imagination - enhances humor. But new research suggests that psychological distance isn't the only feature that matters - the severity of the violation also plays an important role. "Having some distance from tragedy helps to create a benign violation, which facilitates comedy," observes psychological scientist Peter McGraw, who runs the Humor Research Lab (HuRL) at the University of Colorado Boulder. "But when you become too distant from a mild violation, it's just not funny anymore." Evidence In a new article forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, McGraw and colleagues explore how violation severity (how "bad" it is) and psychological distance (how removed we are) work together to facilitate humor. In their first study, the researchers looked at the effect of psychological distance in terms of time. In an online survey, participants were asked to describe an event from their lives that either became more funny or less funny as time passed. Participants then rated the event's severity. In line with the researchers' hypothesis, events that became funnier over time were rated more severe than the events that lost their comedic effect, which were seen as mild violations. |
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Source
A team of Israeli scientists have experimented on rats to see how they
cope with stress, and hope the study would contribute to understanding
the cause of human depression and suicide.2012-09-04 17:03:00 Results of the study suggest that while exposure to stress in childhood increases the risk of depression, as one might expect, exposure to stress in adolescence may actually provide protection against depression and suicidal behaviour later in life. |
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Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News 2012-08-31 16:57:00
Dogs may empathize with humans more than any other animal, including humans themselves, several new studies suggest. The latest research, published in the journal Animal Cognition, found that pet dogs may truly be man (or woman's) best friend if a person is in distress. That distressed individual does not even have to be someone the dog knows. "I think there is good reason to suspect dogs would be more sensitive to human emotion than other species," co-author Deborah Custance told Discovery News. "We have domesticated dogs over a long period of time. We have selectively bred them to act as our companions." "Thus," she added," those dogs that responded sensitively to our emotional cues may have been the individuals that we would be more likely to keep as pets and breed from." Custance and colleague Jennifer Mayer, both from the Department of Psychology at the University of London Goldsmiths College, exposed 18 pet dogs -- representing different ages and breeds -- to four separate 20-second human encounters. The human participants included the dogs' owners as well as strangers. |
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Maia Szalavitz
Using punishment to try to rehabilitate people who have already suffered years of punishment doesn't workTIME Magazine 2012-08-17 12:12:00 Dr. Gabor Mate is renowned in Canada for his work in treating people with the worst addictions, most notably at Vancouver's controversial Insite facility, which provides users with clean needles, medical support and a safe space to inject drugs. Canada's Conservative government has tried to shut Insite down, but the country's Supreme Court ruled late last year that doing so would contravene human rights laws because the program has been shown to save lives. In Mate's book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, which was a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, he advocates for the compassionate treatment of addiction, a position that is increasingly receiving international attention. Healthland recently spoke with Mate about the causes and consequences of addiction and what to do about the problem. Maia Szalavitz: How do you define addiction? Dr. Gabor Mate: Any behavior that is associated with craving and temporary relief, and with long-term negative consequences, that a person is not able to give up. Note that I said nothing about substances - it's any behavior that has temporary relief and negative consequences and loss of control. When you look at process or behavior - sex, gambling, shopping or work or substances - they engage the same brain circuitry, the same reward system, the same psychological dynamic and the same spiritual emptiness. People go from one to the other. The issue for me is not whether you're using something or not; it's, Are you craving, are you needing it for relief and does it have negative consequences? |
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phys.org
2012-09-07 00:00:00
Eggs of insect pests deposited on plants trigger the production of scents by plants that affect different plant community members probably helping the plant to get rid of the pest before it becomes harmful. These results are reported the journal PLOS ONE by researchers, of the Laboratory of Entomology of Wageningen University and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW). The research team, led by Nina Fatouros, tested how parasitic wasps, natural enemies of a common cabbage pest, the large cabbage white butterfly, and gravid butterfly females respond to black mustard, a cabbage relative, emitting scents during the initial phase of herbivore attack, when eggs are laid. They show that butterfly egg deposition triggers highly specific chemical and structural changes in the plant that attract different parasitic wasps attacking either butterfly eggs or caterpillars but repel egg-laying butterflies. However, egg deposition by a less common pest, the cabbage moth, does not trigger such changes. A specific plant response to butterfly egg deposition might help the plant defending itself before actual damage by hatching caterpillars starts. |
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| High Strangeness |
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Sheilaaliens
YouTube 2012-09-10 09:08:00
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Hindustan Times
Heavy rains washed away a culvert at Takav in Chelavali region of
Palghar taluka as people residing near rivers and creeks here shifted to
safer locations, the district control room said. Meanwhile, geological
experts visited Jawhar on Monday to study so called 'tremors' in the
related stories area and submit their report to the collector directly.2012-09-03 09:02:00 The Thane district additional collector Ashok Shingare told PTI that told this correspondent that the intensity of loud sounds were on the rise causing concern among citizens. Seismologists from IMB Mumbai and Pune as well other experts will also be visiting Jawhar on Tuesday to study the situation, he said. For the past ten days, Jawhar town's residents have been running out of their houses after hearing mysterious loud sounds like 'tremors' throughout the day on Monday. | |
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Information Nigeria Org
2012-09-09 16:19:00
The ancient town of Abeokuta, Ogun State witnessed an amazing event as a man that was believed to have died about four decades ago was sighted at Mawuko area of Odeda local government area of the state. Late Sheikh Ibraheem Nyaas was said to have appeared at a newly constructed building in the area, and his sudden appearance has continued to attract visitors both within and outside the State since the unusual event occurred few days ago. Credible sources confirmed that last week Friday, the "ghost" of sheikh Ibraheem who had died for almost 37 years ago started appearing on the walls of a building belonging to one Saubana Fadeyi. Expectedly, the strange happening has turned the sleepy Mawuko village into a Mecca of sorts as people thronged the area to see another oddity and seek the face of Allah. The owner of the building who moved into the yet to be completed two bedroom flat a day to the eid el fitri celebration while speaking with a reporter confirmed that he started noticing a very faint brightness on the wall of his sitting room and the figure that showed on the wall was a replica of the portrait of Sheikh Nyass that he engraved at the entrance of the building. |
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Mike Dinsdale
The Northern Advocate 2012-09-08 08:36:00
The truth may be out and about in Northland with numerous reports of strange phenomena above the region - from curious lights, mysterious craft and even a possible alien landing, and video footage being sent overseas for expert analysis. Suzanne Hansen, network director for Ufocus NZ research, which collates UFO/UAP (unidentified flying object/unidentified aerospace phenomena) reports, said she had received 237 such sightings so far this year, with many from Northland. Ms Hansen said there had been a significant increase in sightings involving descriptions of actual objects (not aircraft) as opposed to "lights in the sky" sightings. "Several of these have involved the sighting of entities in conjunction with an object," she said. However, president of the Northland Astronomical Society Terry Hickey said there were sound explanations for what people thought they had seen. Mr Hickey said he believed there was alien life "out there" but that it had yet to make it to Earth. But Ms Hansen said specific objects have been described, with reports coming from scientists, pilots, aviation personnel and police. | |
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Comment: Interesting how Mr. Hickey keeps saying that
it is Venus or Jupiter when the reports are of "actual objects (not
aircraft) as opposed to "lights in the sky" sightings." How many of
these sightings has Mr. Hickey actually researched? Most skeptics don't
do research, they just keep giving the same old excuses of the planet
Venus. Really, Mr. Hickey, you are embarrassing yourself.
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MOXNEWSd0tC0M
youtube 2012-09-07 00:48:00
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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