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| Puppet Masters |
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Dina Temple-Raston
National Public Radio 2012-09-20 10:16:00
The attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya last week has led to dueling versions of what unfolded that night in Benghazi. To hear the Obama administration tell it, the attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans was spontaneous - and staged by local extremists who saw an opportunity to hijack peaceful demonstrations against an offensive film. The Libyans have a different view. They say it was a premeditated strike, launched by foreign fighters with ties to al-Qaida. The divergence in accounts was at the center of a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. For the first time, a high-ranking intelligence official described the Benghazi attack as "terrorism" and provided an on-the-record account of what the U.S. knows and doesn't know about what took place over a number of hours on Sept. 11. Also, he allowed that al-Qaida might have had some hand in what happened. This is the first official U.S. confirmation of the group's possible role. Was It Planned? Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., for his part, got right to the point. "Do we have reason to believe at this point that that terrorist attack was preplanned for Sept. 11, or did the terrorists seize the moment?" he asked Matthew Olsen, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center. Comment: Sure, it was planned...but not by who they'd like you to think: Order Through Chaos: Who Wants to Set the World on Fire? |
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electronista.com
The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center
warned banks to be on heightened alert after Bank of America and
JPMorgan Chase experienced unexplained outages of public-facing websites
on Wednesday. The warning cited "recent credible intelligence" as the
justification for raising the threat level similar to that of the
Department for Homeland Security scale from "elevated" to "high."2012-09-19 09:03:00 JPMorgan Chase spokesman Patrick Linehan said that the bank was "experiencing intermittent issues with Chase.com. We apologize for any inconvenience and are working to restore full connectivity." Bank of America spokesman Mark Pipitone reported no continuing problems on Wednesday after seeing issues on Tuesday. "Our online banking services have been, and are, up and running. The vast majority of our customers have not experienced any issues." Electronista spoke with an official at Verizon who confirmed some aspects of the report: "we're seeing attack-related traffic across portions of our network related to financial services." The official declined to provide specific information on the volume or source of the attacks. |
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France 24
2012-09-19 00:00:00
France announced Wednesday it will close 20 embassies across the Muslim world on Friday after French weekly Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed naked, amid growing unrest over an anti-Islamic film that has left dozens dead. The French foreign ministry announced Wednesday that France will close 20 of its embassies in Muslim countries this Friday following the publication of controversial Prophet Mohammed cartoons by satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. Major protests in the Muslim world generally take place after Friday prayers. The illustrations, which show the Prophet Mohammed naked and refer to the incendiary US-made film which has been fueling deadly unrest among Muslim communities for over a week, hit newsstands across France on Wednesday. The magazine's editor, Stephane Charbonnier, told reporters that the pictures, which are printed on the back page, will "shock those who will want to be shocked." |
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Pierre Thomas, Jack Cloherty and Jason Ryan
ABC News 2012-09-19 00:00:00
Operation "Fast and Furious," the controversial undercover operation that allowed U.S. guns to be walked into Mexico, was a "risky strategy" that did not "adequately take into account the significant danger to public safety that it created." That was the conclusion today from the Office of the Inspector General, Department of Justice, after an investigation that spanned more than a year and a half. The OIG investigation found that Attorney General Eric Holder was not aware of the strategy and tactics used in "Fast and Furious," and turned up no evidence that Holder tried to cover up the operation, or mislead Congress about it. Holder was held in contempt of Congress earlier this year for allegedly withholding documents about DOJ's "Fast and Furious" investigation from congressional investigators. In a statement today, Holder said, "It is unfortunate that some were so quick to make baseless accusations before they possessed the facts about these operations -- accusations that turned out to be without foundation and that have caused a great deal of unnecessary harm and confusion." The IG report did find that a misleading letter that the DOJ sent to Congress was "troubling" because senior officials who were involved in drafting it knew, or should have known, that reckless behavior had occurred. | |
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Larry Margasak
KHOU.com 2012-09-19 05:01:00
Washington - The son of a massacre victim at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin asked the Obama administration on Wednesday to begin collecting statistics on hate crimes against Sikhs. Harpreet Sing Saini, 18, told a Senate hearing he wanted to give his late mother "the dignity of being a statistic." Saini's mother, Paramjit Kaur Saini, was among six people killed and four wounded by a gunman on Aug. 5 before a service was to begin at the temple in Oak Creek, Wis. The shooter, Wade Michael Page, was shot during a firefight with police and died after he shot himself in the head. More than 400 people, many of them wearing the traditional Sikh turbans, attended the hearing - a crowd so large that an overflow room had to be used. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill, chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee, said he supported Saini's request and told a Justice Department witness that the government was moving too slowly on requests for the data collection. He noted that Sikh communities have been asking for these statistics for two years. Roy Austin Jr., an official of the department's civil rights division, said the agency will bring together a wide array of religious groups in October and make recommendations to the FBI on whether the data collection should be expanded to include hate crimes against Sikhs. |
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| Society's Child |
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John Neumann
RedOrbit 2012-09-20 17:42:00
Researchers in the UK are suggesting that suicide rates among middle-aged males are climbing after years of dropping off. Reasons for this trend are varied for individuals, but as a group, a panel of psychologists, economists and social scientists concluded that the pressure to meet the expectations of others is too much for some. Other reasons include a breakdown in supportive family units and the collapse of traditional male-dominated industries creating a "masculine identity" crisis. Traditionally, males are also more unwilling to discuss personal problems, which could alleviate their self-imposed pressure. Working class men who have lost not just a job, but an entire career, find themselves struggling to provide for the family. A reluctance to talk about emotions and a greater tendency to turn to drink and drugs were also cited as reasons for the suicide rates among this group, BBC Health News reports. Rory O'Connor, professor from the University of Stirling, suggested the shift could be partially explained by an aging generation of at-risk people. "The data would suggest it is the same group of people. We think of young people 20 years ago and the societal expectations of what is a successful man or a successful contributor to society, the expectations were particularly high." "And with the change in the male role being less well-defined now than it was 20 years ago, men have great difficulty responding to the challenge of how we define ourselves as men." |
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Eric Pfeiffer
Yahoo News 2012-09-20 14:39:00
A business developer in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Point Breeze is facing legal action after voluntarily cleaning up more than 40 tons of trash from a vacant lot neighboring his local business. As the old adage goes, no good deed goes unpunished. Ori Feibush says he visited the local offices of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority four times, sent in seven written requests and made 24 phone calls to the agency asking them to take care of a major eyesore: an empty lot next to his coffee shop was home to more than 40 tons of debris. Not only did the agency fail to act but it also denied Feibush's offer to clean up the mess himself. But the Daily News reports that Feibush went ahead with his plans anyway, reportedly spending more than $20,000 of his own money not only to remove the trash but also to level the soil; add cherry trees, fencing and park benches; and repave the sidewalk. "This was a lot of garbage," local resident Elaine McGrath told the paper. "Now it's gorgeous. I'm excited." However, the city agency was less excited, demanding that Feibush return the vacant lot to its previous condition and saying it is considering legal action against him. |
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David Schwartz and Tim Gaynor
Yahoo! News 2012-09-19 00:00:00
Phoenix - Arizona police on Wednesday began enforcing a controversial "show-your-papers" provision of a state law targeting illegal immigration as civil rights groups prepared to document allegations of racial profiling. Police in the border state with Mexico are now authorized to begin conducting immigration status checks of anyone they stop for any reason and suspect of being in the country illegally after a federal judge on Tuesday lifted an injunction against the provision requiring such checks. The measure, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in June, is part of a broad Arizona clampdown on illegal immigration signed into law in 2010 by Republican Governor Jan Brewer, an outspoken foe of President Barack Obama's administration on immigration. Brewer has said the law was needed because of the federal government's failure to secure the border with Mexico. She said enforcement would be free of any racial profiling. "It's definitely a new phase, and one where we'll be looking very carefully to monitor for civil rights violations in the state," said Karen Tumlin, managing attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, one of a coalition of groups that challenged the law. "There is a hotline set up ... where folks can report any violations or questionings or detentions that happen under the law," she added. |
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Yahoo! News
2012-09-19 00:00:00
The University of California, Davis police officers who doused students and alumni with pepper spray during a campus protest last November won't face criminal charges, prosecutors said Wednesday. The chemical crackdown prompted widespread condemnation, campus protests and calls for the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi after videos shot by witnesses were widely played online. Images of an officer casually spraying orange pepper-spray in the faces of nonviolent protesters became a rallying point for the Occupy Wall Street movement. But the Yolo County District Attorney's office said in a statement that there was insufficient evidence to prove the use of force was illegal. A task force appointed by the university concluded in April that the Nov. 18 pepper-spraying was "objectively unreasonable" and could have been prevented. |
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Ladane Nasseri
Bloomberg 2012-09-19 06:23:00
An Iranian cleric said he was beaten by a woman in the northern province of Semnan after giving her a warning for being "badly covered," the state-run Mehr news agency reported. Hojatoleslam Ali Beheshti said he encountered the woman in the street while on his way to the mosque in the town of Shahmirzad, and asked her to cover herself up, to which she replied "you, cover your eyes," according to Mehr. The cleric repeated his warning, which he said prompted her to insult and push him. "I fell on my back on the floor," Beheshti said in the report. "I don't know what happened after that, all I could feel was the kicks of this woman who was insulting me and attacking me." |
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Ian Drury and David Williams
Daily Mail 2012-09-19 00:00:00
The woman had a son in Camp Bastion on Tuesday - just days after the Taliban launched a deadly attack on the UK's main base in Helmand. The baby was born five weeks premature. Last night both mother and child were said to be doing well. A paediatric team from the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford will travel to Afghanistan in the next few days to provide care for the soldier and her son on their RAF flight home. The birth has stunned military chiefs and led to calls for extra medical checks on women who are sent to the warzone. Almost 200 troops have discovered they were pregnant at war since 2003 - forcing commanders to send them straight back to Britain. But this is the first time a UK soldier has given birth to a baby in Afghanistan. |
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David Koenig
The Wall Street Journal 2012-09-18 06:38:00
Dallas - American Airlines is sending layoff warning notices to more than 11,000 employees although a spokesman says the company expects job losses to be closer to 4,400. The notices went out to mechanics and ground workers whose jobs will be affected as American goes through a bankruptcy restructuring. American Airlines spokesman Bruce Hicks said Tuesday that fewer than 40 percent of those getting notices will lose their jobs. Hicks said federal law requires the company to notify anyone whose position could change, including those who could get "bumped" by more-senior employees whose jobs are eliminated or outsourced. American said in February that it planned to cut 14,000 jobs, including 13,000 held by union workers. But if Hicks is right, the final job losses will be about a third of that. Over the summer American accepted slightly smaller cost-cutting measures as it negotiated new labor contracts, and it agreed to give bonuses to flight attendants and ground workers who quit. So far 1,800 flight attendants and 800 ground workers have applied to take the money and leave. Layoff notices went to nearly 3,000 workers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where a maintenance facility will close, and nearly 3,000 more at a base in Tulsa, Okla. Also receiving notices were about 1,200 workers in Miami, 1,100 in New York and Newark, N.J., 900 in Chicago, and smaller numbers elsewhere. |
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Daily Mail
2012-09-18 00:00:00
A vigilante who gunned down two registered sex offenders in Washington state was unrepentant as he was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday. Patrick Drum, 34, told a judge that his victims deserved to die. Drum, who is himself a convicted felon, admitted to stalking Gary Lee Blanton, 28, and Jerry Wayne Ray, 57, and shooting them multiple times in their homes near Port Angeles, Washington. Blanton was convicted in 2001 of third-degree rape of a 17-year-old girl. Ray was convicted in 2002 of raping two children, age 4 and 7. Blanton's family claims he was put on the sex offender registry after he was caught having sex with his high school girlfriend when he was a senior and she was a freshman. |
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RT America
2012-09-19 14:27:00
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has announced it will close its offices in Russia. After 20 years of working in Russia, USAID officials said they were informed by the Russian government that their services were no longer required. According to the Foreign Ministry, USAID was attempting to manipulate the election processes in the country. "The character of the agency's work...did not always comply with the declared aims of cooperation in bilateral humanitarian cooperation," the Foreign Ministry said on its website. "We are talking about issuing grants in an attempt to affect the course of the political processes in the country, including elections at different levels and institutions in civil society." Russian civil society has become fully mature, the Foreign Ministry said, and did not need any "external direction." Moscow is read to work with USAID in third-party countries, it said. |
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RT America
2012-09-19 22:30:00
The United States may be in crisis, but the rich keep getting richer. The net worth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans grew by 13 per cent in the past year to $1.7 trillion, as the gap between rich and poor continues to widen at a staggering rate. The average net worth of the 400 wealthiest Americans shot up by $400 million to a record $4.2 billion, Forbes said, serving to underscore glaring wealth inequality in America. Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft Corp, is one year shy of topping the list for two decades straight with $66 billion, a massive $7 billion hike from the previous year. Warren Buffet, the American investor who likely became infamous amidst the uber-rich for proposing a tax hike on the wealthy, somewhat ironically trailed Gates with $46 billion. Larry Ellison, the cofounder and CEO of Oracle, clinched third with $41 billion - up $8 billion from last year. Charles and David Koch, the energy and chemical magnates notorious for bankrolling scores of right-wing advocacy groups, came in fourth and fifth respectively with $31 billion each. The top five remain unchanged from last year, though collectively they are much richer: all five men are worth $34 billion more than in 2011. |
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Seattle pi
2012-09-19 05:37:00
A riot Wednesday at a California prison holding many of the state's most hardened criminals left 11 inmates hospitalized, including one who was shot by correctional officers. The disturbance inside a yard at the California State Prison, Sacramento in Folsom involved an unknown number of inmates after it broke out shortly after 11 a.m., said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. In addition to the inmate who was shot, at least 10 were either stabbed or slashed during the riot, Thornton said. Their conditions have not been released and no other injuries have been reported. Prison officials still don't know how many inmates were involved nor a possible motive, Thornton added. It is at least the second known incident within a year at the 2,800-inmate maximum-security facility that opened in 1986 commonly known as New Folsom, due to its proximity to the more well-known Folsom State Prison, located 20 miles east of Sacramento. |
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Will Dunham
Reuters 2012-09-19 05:35:00
Denver - Prosecutors have filed a motion to add 10 new charges against accused Colorado gunman James Holmes, arrested following the July movie theater shootings that killed 12 people, and have asked to amend 17 others, the Denver Post reported on Wednesday. The judge in the case has ordered nearly all court filings be sealed, and it was not clear what the additional charges were from a register of court actions, the Denver Post reported. The newspaper did note that a separate motion was filed to amend 16 counts of attempted murder and one count of crime-of-violence sentence enhancement against Holmes, although it did not reveal how they would be amended. Holmes, a former neuroscience graduate student, is accused of opening fire on July 20 at a midnight screening of the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, a Denver suburb. Twelve people were killed and 58 were wounded in the attack. Reporting by Keith Coffman |
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David Gray
Policymic 2012-09-19 00:00:00
I am really getting sick and tired of hearing these kinds of stories. What makes this one worse is that it happened in my backyard of Cobb County, Georgia. A Cobb County police officer shot and killed a chocolate lab when responding to a call about a burglary. The problems with this are so numerous it is hard to know where to begin. First off, there was no burglary. The owner of the home was nervous and in a rush to get to the hospital to see his first grand-kid being born. He was on the phone with the alarm company, but couldn't remember his password to turn it off so he decided to wait for police to arrive. When police did arrive, one officer went around to the back door (apparently proper procedure for a burglary call) and met the "aggressive" chocolate lab named Luke. Luke, based on personal experience with labs, was very excited to see the new person! He barked loudly in excitement and rushed to the officer to play. Instead of playing, he was shot dead. Second off, the police report contains falsified material! Apparently, the police questioned the sister of Luke's owner who told the police a story about how a chihuahua had bitten her in the past, and explained that Luke would never bite someone under any circumstances. The police report though, states that she said that Luke had bitten her recently, which is absolutely false, yet it helped close the case file as a justifiable shooting. |
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| Secret History |
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Jim Gomez
Huffington Post 2012-09-20 08:51:00
Manila - Archaeologists have unearthed remnants of what they believe is a 1,000-year-old village on a jungle-covered mountaintop in the Philippines with limestone coffins of a type never before found in this Southeast Asian nation, officials said Thursday. National Museum official Eusebio Dizon said the village on Mount Kamhantik, near Mulanay town in Quezon province, could be at least 1,000 years old based on U.S. carbon dating tests done on a human tooth found in one of 15 limestone graves he and other archaeologists have dug out since last year. The discovery of the rectangular tombs, which were carved into limestone outcrops jutting from the forest ground, is important because it is the first indication that Filipinos at that time practiced a more advanced burial ritual than previously thought and that they used metal tools to carve the coffins. Past archaeological discoveries have shown Filipinos of that era used wooden coffins in the country's mountainous north and earthen coffins and jars elsewhere, according to Dizon, who has done extensive archaeological work and studies in the Philippines and 27 other countries over the past 35 years. |
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| Science & Technology |
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Megan Gannon
LiveScience 2012-09-20 12:50:00
New research suggests we may be able to sniff out psychopaths by their poor scores on a smell test. In the study, psychologists at Macquarie University in Australia tested the noses of more than 70 college-age participants, all without criminal records. The researchers had the subjects try to identify common odors (like orange, coffee and leather) and distinguish between different scents. The participants then were given personality tests to check for their level of empathy and psychopathic tendencies. For example, the subjects were asked to rate on a 5-point scale how much they agreed with statements such as: "I purposely flatter people to get them on my side;" "People sometimes say that I'm cold-hearted;" and "I have broken into a building or vehicle in order to steal something or vandalize." Psycopathy is a personality disorder marked by superficial charm, a lack of empathy and impulsive tendencies. |
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Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience 2012-09-20 13:32:00
Humans may be very close to extracting all of the Earth's available plant resources, says a University of Montana researcher. In fact, said Steven Running, a professor in the university's College of Forestry and Conservation, humanity may realistically have only 10 percent or so of our planet's annual plant resources in reserve, with little ability to boost yearly growth. The calculations don't suggest that humanity is on the verge of starvation, Running said, but they do indicate there are limits to our species' growth. "Economic logic just seems to be about endless growth with no limits," Running told LiveScience. "And this is my attempt to say that on the planet we at least have some biophysical limits, and here's one." Boundaries to growth The concept of resource-imposed limits to growth, or "planetary boundaries" first came up in the 1970s with the book "Limits to Growth" (Club of Rome, 1972). The authors of that book modeled the planet's productivity and predicted that population and economic growth would run up against basic resource scarcity sometime around 2030. The calculations were somewhat primitive, Running said. The methodology and findings of the modeling were criticized, though researchers have recently revisited the predictions and found them to be relatively accurate. One 2011 analysis, published in book form by SpringerBriefs in Energy found that "reality seems to be closely following the curves that the [Limits to Growth] scenarios had generated." Climate change and other environmental concerns have prompted scientists to revisit the idea of planetary boundaries, Running said. Likewise, he said, environmental policy-makers have become more interested in whether those boundaries can be defined. Researchers have suggested that important boundaries might include climate change, ocean acidification, land-use change and loss of species. |
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ScienceDaily
2012-09-20 09:11:00
No question about it... they're very good at what they do. But they don't take well to orders, especially those to carry out inspection work in oily or dangerous environments, or in any kind of harsh environment, for that matter. Still, they're one of the fastest and most maneuverable creatures on the planet, having extraordinary abilities at both high and low speeds due to their streamlined bodies and a finely tuned muscular/sensory/control system. This impressive creature is the humble tuna fish. The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is funding the development of an unmanned underwater vehicle designed to resemble a tuna, called the BIOSwimmer™. Why the tuna? Because the tuna has a natural body framework ideal for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), solving some of the propulsion and maneuverability problems that plague conventional UUVs. |
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Medicalnewstoday.com
On 15 to 16 September, a team of researchers, doctors and specialists at
the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, carried out the world's first
mother-to-daughter womb transplant, where two Swedish women received new
wombs donated by their mothers.2012-09-20 08:42:00 One of the women to receive a new womb in the pioneering procedure had to have her uterus removed many years ago because of cervical cancer. The other woman was born without a womb. |
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Natalie Wolchover
Yahoo! News Canada 2012-09-18 00:00:00
Over the past few centuries, science can be said to have gradually chipped away at the traditional grounds for believing in God. Much of what once seemed mysterious - the existence of humanity, the life-bearing perfection of Earth, the workings of the universe - can now be explained by biology, astronomy, physics and other domains of science. Although cosmic mysteries remain, Sean Carroll, a theoretical cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology, says there's good reason to think science will ultimately arrive at a complete understanding of the universe that leaves no grounds for God whatsoever. Carroll argues that God's sphere of influence has shrunk drastically in modern times, as physics and cosmology have expanded in their ability to explain the origin and evolution of the universe. "As we learn more about the universe, there's less and less need to look outside it for help," he told Life's Little Mysteries. He thinks the sphere of supernatural influence will eventually shrink to nil. But could science really eventually explain everything? |
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Nic Halverson
Discovery News 2012-09-19 11:09:00
Either as a culprit or a witness, we've all been there. Your niece's piano recital, your sister's wedding, your best friend's funeral. Wherever it's been, it never fails to happen: someone forgets to turn off their phone and, at the most inopportune time, a ringer detonates with as much tact as an air horn in a cathedral. Thankfully, Victor Johansson has come up with a solution that could put an end to all that red-faced scrambling in pockets and purses. The UK-based designer has designed what he calls the Escape Jacket, a jacket that features a Faraday cage in its inside pocket. Simply slip your phone inside the pocket and all radio waves are blocked. |
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| Earth Changes |
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apa.com
2012-09-20 09:07:00
Arif Huseynov: "The Volcano was too powerful at the beginning and the mud covered more than 2 ha of the area" Baku. Kamala Guliyeva - Lokbatan mud volcano erupted in the morning has weakened, Executive of Mud Volcanism Department under the Geology Institute of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences Arif Huseynov told APA. Huseynov said that the eruption process is being studied. The volcano accompanied by a rumble at 05.00 spew flames at 09.00: "According to the preliminary observations, the eruption was powerful and mud spread across the area of more than 2 ha. The exact information will be announced after the measurements. But this eruption was more powerful than the eruption in 2010. At that time, the mud covered about 2 ha area." Husyenov says that no flame is being observed in the area: "The volcano has already weakened. It is not likely to flame again, as it's weakened." |
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The Weather Channel
A powerful storm wreaked havoc on the Arctic sea ice cover in August
2012. This visualization shows the strength and direction of the winds
and their impact on the ice.2012-09-19 00:00:00
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| Fire in the Sky |
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No new articles. |
| Health & Wellness |
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Sabrina Tavernise
The New York Times 2012-09-19 14:28:00
Washington State is home to Bill and Melinda Gates, champions of childhood vaccines across the globe. Its university boasts cutting-edge vaccine research. But when it comes to getting children immunized, until recently, the state was dead last. "You think we're a cut above the rest," said Dr. Maxine Hayes, state health officer for Washington's Department of Health, "but there's something in this culture out West. It's a sort of defiance. A distrust of the government." The share of kindergartners whose parents opted out of state immunization requirements more than doubled in the decade that ended in 2008, peaking at 7.6 percent in the 2008-9 school year, according to the state's Health Department, raising alarm among public health experts. But last year, the Legislature adopted a law that makes it harder for parents to avoid getting their children vaccinated, by requiring them to get a doctor's signature if they wish to do so. Since then, the opt-out rate has fallen fast, by a quarter, setting an example for other states with easy policies. For despite efforts to educate the public on the risks of forgoing immunization, more parents are choosing not to have their children vaccinated, especially in states that make it easy to opt out, according to a study published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine. And while the rate of children whose parents claimed exemptions remains low - slightly over 2 percent of all kindergarten students in 2011, up from just over 1 percent in 2006 - the national increase is "concerning," said Saad Omer, an assistant professor of global health at Emory University who led the study. Families of unvaccinated children tend to live in close proximity, increasing the risk of a hole in the immunity for an entire area. That can speed the spread of diseases such as measles, which have come back in recent years. |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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MessageToEagle
2012-09-20 14:10:00
Phobias, post-traumatic stress and panic attacks difficult to live with - can be erased from the human brain. This research may represent a breakthrough in research on memory and fear, according to researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden Thomas Ågren, a doctoral candidate at the Department of Psychology under the supervision of Professors Mats Fredrikson and Tomas Furmark, has shown, that it is possible to erase newly formed emotional memories from the human brain. When a person learns something, a lasting long-term memory is created with the aid of a process of consolidation, which is based on the formation of proteins. When we remember something, the memory becomes unstable for a while and is then restabilized by another consolidation process. In other words, it can be said that we are not remembering what originally happened, but rather what we remembered the last time we thought about what happened. By disrupting the reconsolidation process that follows upon remembering, we can affect the content of memory. |
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Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience 2012-09-20 11:00:00
A part of the brain usually associated with movement may also control our responses to rewards, according to new research that finds stimulation of the region with an opium-like chemical can make rats gorge on M&M candies. The brain naturally produces opioids, or chemicals with similarities to the drug. One of these, enkephalin, induced hungry rats to pounce on chocolate treats faster the more of the chemical they produced, researchers report online today (Sept. 20) in the journal Current Biology. When scientists dosed the rats with a big jolt of enkephalin in a brain region called the neostriatum, the rats became eating machines, downing the equivalent of a 150-pound (68 kilogram) person eating 7 to 8 pounds (3.1 to 3.5 kg) of M&Ms in an hour, said study researcher Alexandra DiFeliceantonio. "This drug injection causes them to eat just obscene amounts of food," DiFeliceantonio, a graduate student in biopsychology at the University of Michigan, told LiveScience. |
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Sarah B. Weir
Shine.Yahoo 2012-09-19 11:42:00
Do pacifiers harm boys? Popping a binky in a baby's mouth is a quick way to stop them from fussing, but for boys, it may also short-circuit their emotional growth. Before a baby can talk, he or she relies on non-verbal cues, especially facial expressions, to communicate. Babies also mirror those cues, and in so doing, discover the emotions the cues are attached to. In a recent study published in the Journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology researchers from the University of Wisconsin scientists evaluated over 100 kids and found that that six and seven-year-old boys who had heavily used pacifiers were worse at mimicking emotions expressed by faces on a video. They also interviewed more than 600 college students and discovered that college-age men whose parents reported they had relied on pacifiers scored lower on tests measuring empathy and the ability to evaluate the moods of others. For girls and young women, the researchers found there was no difference in emotional maturity based on pacifier use. "Females tend to be more precise both in both expressing and reading emotional cues," lead author Paula Niedenthal, PhD, tells Shine. "We don't exactly know how that occurs. One reason might be that be that society encourages girls to read emotions. They might work harder at it." She adds, "Parents talk to girls about emotional processing more than they do to boys. That's not a revolutionary statement." Since boys aren't expected to be as emotional, parents may not compensate for pacifier use by helping them learn in other ways. |
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| High Strangeness |
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Message to Eagle
2012-08-25 19:27:00
They are considered as a mystery of archaeology and all attempts to solve it - have unfortunately, failed. Over 100 of these anonymous and enigmatic objects have been discovered on Roman sites in Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, and Eastern Europe. They do not appear in any surviving pictures of the time, although, they can be found in museums and many private collections. The purpose of these odd objects - commonly known as a Roman dodecahedron - has been widely discussed, but it is completely unknown why they were created. Were the dodecahedron really created by the Romans or just named "Roman" because many of them were unearthed in countries that once were part of the Roman Empire? It seems that the artifact's origin is also unclear because it's existence was never mentioned in the Roman, meticulously kept accounts. In fact, the artifact's existence has never been mentioned in any known ancient source! It's logical to assume that the objects are simply a mystery, dated from the 2nd or 3rd century AD. The dodecahedron are made of bronze or stone and has twelve flat pentagonal faces sides, each with a circular hole in the middle, (usually not the same size). |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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M4GW
YouTube 2012-09-20 15:11:00
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