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Doug DiPasquale
Sott.net 2012-11-28 16:22:00
I imagine I probably shot myself in the foot with the title of this piece. Over the years, health related journalism has beaten the artificial sweetener horse so beyond dead that I doubt anyone even pays attention to the words anymore. I know that when I see the words 'Artificial Sweetener' in the title of an article, I'm thinking "Oh good, another article about artificial sweeteners! I wonder if it will give me the exact same information as the last six articles I read about artificial sweeteners along with some sweet alternatives at the end like stevia and xylitol?" Sometimes I'll skim them to see if the author passes the acid test by notrecommending honey or agave syrup (i.e., sugar and sugar). Well this article is going to be a little different, and it's not because I'm going to annoyingly refer to sucralose by it's chemical name 1,6-dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-BETA- | |
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| Puppet Masters |
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J. D. Heyes
Natural News 2012-11-29 11:37:00
Likely empowered by a U.S. administration that favors the kind of nanny state politics a ruling global entity would no doubt embrace, the head of the United Nations' International Narcotics Control Board feels comfortable telling federal officials they should move to challenge measures in Colorado and Washington that decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana for adults 21 and over. Raymond Yans lectured the voter-approved measures - part of the United States' democratic process, something most UN member countries are not familiar with - send "a wrong message to the rest of the nation and it sends a wrong message abroad." In an interview with The Associated Press, Yans said he would like to see Attorney General Eric Holder "take all necessary measures" to ensure that marijuana possession remains illegal throughout the United States. | |
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Larry Magid
Forbes 2012-11-29 11:02:00
Syria has reportedly cut off all access to the Internet according to Akami and web monitoring firm Renesys. In a short blog post, Renesys said that "all 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet. Monitoring firm Akamai has also confirmed that no traffic is getting in or out of Syria. The BBC is reporting the mobile service has also been cut off. A Google Transparency Report page shows that Google traffic to Syria appears to have been cut off Thursday morning. Deposed Egyptian president Hasni Mubarak famously cut off Internet and mobile phone service in Egypt at the height of the Arab Spring demonstrations that led to his ouster. Although he was successful in getting the Egyptian carriers to cooperate, some Egyptians still managed to get online by making international data calls from old-fashioned telephone modem lines. | |
Comment: There is no way currently of telling if this is an internal kill switch act or the act of an external force within or outside of Syria causing this.
As the title of the article says. "Can Assad Really Block Information Flow?" | |
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Common Dreams
Judge's signed protection order against peaceful protest called an 'escalation' and an 'absurd' threat to free speech 2012-11-29 11:21:00
A local judge in upstate New York has signed an order of protection for a US Air Force colonel that could make it a crime, punishable by up to seven years in prison, for anti-drone activists to continue their weekly peace vigil outside or near the gates of the Hancock Air National Guard base there. How will they know if they've broken the rules of the order? Apparently, if one specific military officer at the base finds their protest or direct actions 'irritating' personally. Specifically troubling to the activists is that Colonel Earl A Evans, a commander at the base who filed the request for the order, is someone the activists have not once targeted directly. Though the order 'bans them specifically from approaching the home, school or workplace' of Evans, none of the activists even seemed to know who he is. | |
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Ray McGovern
Consortium News 2012-11-28 09:35:00
The pre-trial hearing on Pvt. Bradley Manning's court martial for leaking classified documents about U.S. government wrongdoing has turned up evidence that even Manning's Marine jailers were worried about the controversy over his degrading treatment in their custody, reports ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern. It is a bitter irony that Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, whose conscience compelled him to leak evidence about the U.S. military brass ignoring evidence of torture in Iraq, was himself the victim of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment while other military officers privately took note but did nothing. That was one of the revelations at Manning's pre-trial hearing at Ft. Meade, Maryland, on Tuesday, as Manning's defense counsel David Coombs used e-mail exchanges to show Marine officers grousing that the Marines had been left holding the bag on Manning's detention at their base in Quantico, Virginia, though he was an Army soldier. At Quantico, Manning, who is accused of giving hundreds of thousands of pages of classified material to WikiLeaks, was subjected to harsh treatment. He was locked in a 6-foot-by-8-foot cell for 23 hours a day and was kept naked for long periods. His incarceration led the UN Rapporteur for Torture to complain that Manning was being subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. | |
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Karen McVeigh
Guardian 2012-11-28 20:02:00
Bioweapons expert fell from hotel room window nine days after being given LSD in a drink without his knowledge The family of a US government scientist who fell to his death from a New York hotel window six decades ago have launched a lawsuit for damages against the CIA, alleging the agency was involved in his murder and a subsequent cover-up. In one of the most notorious cases in the organisation's history, bioweapons expert Frank Olson died in 1953, nine days after he was given LSD by agency officials without his knowledge. In the lawsuit, filed in the US district court in Washington on Wednesday, Olson's sons Eric and Nils claim their father was murdered after he witnessed extreme interrogations in which the CIA killed suspects using the biological agents he had developed. The CIA has long denied any foul play, though it was forced to admit in 1975, more than 20 years after the death, that the scientist had been given LSD in a spiked glass of Cointreau. The agency, which originally told the family the death was a result of job-induced stress, has since maintained that it was a drug-induced suicide. | |
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Common Dreams
2012-11-28 20:03:00
The shoulders on which the Keystone Pipeline XL decision may fall happens to have a half-million dollar stake in the game. Secretary of State hopeful and current U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan E. Rice reportedly owns between $300,000 and $600,000 of TransCanada stock. The company is seeking a federal permit to transport Canadian tar sands 1,700 miles to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, crossing both fragile Midwest ecosystems and the largest freshwater aquifer in North America. According to full disclosure reports, Rice - the potential arbiter of this grant - reportedly hasa third of her significant net worth tied up in oil producers, pipeline operators, and related energy industries. | |
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Glenn Greenwald
A primitive graph provided by 'a country critical of Iran's atomic program' indicts the news outlet more than TehranThe Guardian 2012-11-28 06:49:00
Uncritical, fear-mongering media propaganda is far too common to take note of each time it appears, but sometimes, what is produced is so ludicrous that its illustrative value should not be ignored. Such is the case with a highly trumpeted Associated Press "exclusive" from Tuesday which claims in its red headline to have discovered evidence of "Iran Working on Bomb". What is this newly discovered, scary evidence? It is a "graph" which AP says was "leaked" to it by "officials from a country critical of Iran's atomic program to bolster their arguments that Iran's nuclear program must be halted before it produces a weapon" (how mysterious: the globe is gripped with befuddlement as it tries to guess which country that might be). Here's how AP presents the graph in all its incriminating, frightening glory:
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Comment: Iran denies any interest in such a weapon and has accused the United States and Israel of fabricating evidence that suggests it is trying to build a bomb.
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NBC Connecticut
2012-11-29 16:52:00
A 43-year-old state trooper has been charged with larceny, accused of stealing jewelry and cash from the victim of a fatal motorcycle crash on Route 15 in Fairfield on Sept. 22. Trooper Aaron Huntsman, an 18-year veteran of the department, has been suspended from the department, according to state police. John Scalesse, 49, of Orange, president of JAS Masonry, died from injuries sustained in the crash. Police began investigating when the Scalesse's family determined that jewelry, clothing and cash were missing, state police said. The Connecticut Post is reporting that Huntsman is accused of stealing $3,000 in cash and a gold chain from the victim's body. | |
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Michael Luciano
policymic 2012-11-29 16:15:00
Once again, the United States and Israel found themselves in the wrong end of a lop-sided vote in the United Nations General Assembly, as the international body voted 138 to 41 (with 9 abstentions) in favor of granting Palestine non-memmber observer state status - an upgrade from their current status as UN observer. The vote on the draft resolution came on the 65th anniversary of another UNGA vote, which called for the petition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state once the British mandate over the territory expired. In 1948, the state of Israel was created explicitly as a state for Jewish people. However, statehood for the Palestinians has remained elusive. After the vote, U.S. ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice criticized the vote from her seat in the assembly, saying, "Today's grand pronouncement will soon fade and that the Palestinian people will wake up tomorrow and find little has changed except the chance for a durable peace has receded." Rice went on to ridicule the Palestinian action as "unilateral," a strange use of the term, considering that the Palestinians took their case to an international governing body, and their bid for statehood received 138 out of a possible 188 votes. | |
Comment: In speeches after the vote win, UK ambassador acknowledged that it abstained because Abbas refused to give up the right to prosecute Israel for war crimes
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David M. Martosko
The Daily Caller 2012-11-29 15:22:00
Stevie Wonder has decided to withdraw from a commitment to headline a Dec. 6 benefit for the Israeli Defense Forces, according to JTA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The American entertainer's representatives are set to issue a statement, the news wire saidlate Wednesday, in which they will claim Wonder believes taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict clashes with his role as a "Messenger of Peace" for the United Nations. He has held that honorific title since 2009. JTA based its reporting on "a source who has read email exchanges between Wonder's representatives and organizers of the event." The Los Angeles event raises millions of dollars every year to support Israel's military. Wonder performed at a gala marking Israel's 50th anniversary in 1998. Three years earlier, however, he was photographed in Jerusalem receiving a traditional Palestinian kafia headdress from an aide to Yasser Arafat, then the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Wonder was in Israel to perform a concert. AFP, the French Press Agency, reported that he said he was happy "to see the Holy Land in spirit." An online petition at change.org had reached 4,000 signatures by Wednesday evening after going online Tuesday. It called on Wonder to "remember that apartheid is apartheid, whether it comes from White Afrikaaner settlers of South Africa or from Jewish Israelis in Israel." | |
Comment: Gilad Atzmon writes:
According to reporting from the Daily Caller, fearing he will look as though he's taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, singing/songwriting legend Stevie Wonder, has withdrawn from his starring role in a Dec. 6 Los Angeles benefit for the murderous IDF. | |
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CBS News
2012-11-28 11:48:00
Youth protection officials from Quebec's Montérégie region have taken custody of 10 children who had allegedly been living with followers of a self-styled prophet of the apocalypse in Arizona. Marcel Pontbriand, a former businessman from Beloeil, Que, who claims he can heal the sick and perform exorcisms, has been living in Marana, Ariz., with his followers and some children. He moved to the Marana area after facing a slew of accusations stemming from an illegal investment scheme he masterminded while living in Quebec. Border services officials intercepted the children in Vancouver on Monday. The children, who were accompanied by two adults, were heading into Canada from the U.S. It is unclear why the children and the two adults were crossing the border. At a news conference on Wednesday, Maryse Davreux, the director of the Montérégie youth protection services, confirmed that 10 children between the ages of two and seven were brought to Montreal while two others remained in British Columbia with their father. "We took care of the 10 children we have right now, we do not currently have contact with the parents, we are waiting for the parents to contact us. We do not know where they are," she said. Quebec provincial police had issued a warrant to warn U.S. officials of the presence of 14 children they believe resided with Pontbriand. | |
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Michael Allen
Opposing Views 2012-11-29 14:24:00
The Zurich, Switzerland city council has approved a plan to build 'sex boxes,' which will resemble garages, where prostitutes and their clients can meet discreetly. Located in an industrial area of Zurich, the garage-like boxes will have roofs and walls for privacy and easy access for cars, reports the Daily Mail. Prostitutes will also have to take out medical insurance, buy a license and pay five Swiss francs into a machine each night. Prostitution will be outlawed in certain areas of Zurich where it has led to local complaints, and will be confined to the booths and two other zones after they open in August. | |
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Sam Adams
Daily Mail 2012-11-29 09:06:00
The man accused of shooting dead 12 people during a screening of the latest Batman movie said he was programmed to commit the gun rampage by an 'evil therapist,' a former prison inmate has claimed. James Holmes, 24, has been charged with carrying out the killings - and injuring at least 58 others - on July 20, when he allegedly opened fire at a cinema in Aurora, Colorado, that was showing The Dark Knight Rises. Steven Unruh who claims to have been a fellow inmate at the detention centre where Holmes is being held said he told him that he was 'programmed' to carry out the massacre during psychotherapy he had been receiving. Thirty eight-year-old Mr Unruh said he was in the booking area of the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office Detention Facility in Colorado when Holmes was first brought in. He said he communicated with Holmes from a nearby cell and that he told him that 'he felt like he was in a video game' during the shooting and that 'he wasn't on his meds' and 'nobody would help him,' reports Infowars.com - the website of the Alex Jones radio show. | ||
Comment: Does this sound outlandish to you? Then watch this:
Easy as 1, 2, 3... | ||
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Helen Pow
An Oklahoma woman is suing her local police station after an officer attacked her with his taser while she was handcuffed in jail - and it was all caught on tape. The shocking video shows City of McAlester police officer Sterling Taylor-Santino stunning Nakina Williams in the chest at point-blank range while she is restrained inside Pittsburgh County Jail.Daily Mail 2012-11-29 09:53:00 He continues to use the weapon on the woman, who had been arrested for drunken behaviour, for what seems like minutes as she runs around the booking area, attempting to get away from the taser.
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Chris Francescani
Reuters 2012-11-28 14:02:00
New York City passed a day without a single report of a person being shot, stabbed or subject to other sorts of violent crime for the first time in recent memory, police said on Wednesday. The rare day occurred on Monday, near the end of a year when the city's murder rate is on target to hit its lowest point since 1960, according to New York Police Department chief spokesman Paul Browne. Browne said it was "first time in memory" the city's police force had experienced such a peaceful day. While crime is up 3 percent overall, including a 9 percent surge in grand larceny police attribute to a rash of smart phone thefts, murder is down 23 percent over last year, the NYPD said. As for a day without violent crime, experts said they could not recall that happening in recent memory. "In a city of 8 million people, this is extremely rare," said Tom Repetto, author of 'American Police, 1949-2012.' | |
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Michael Allen
Opposing Views 2012-11-28 20:40:00
William Bailey was sentenced to one month in jail after he was recorded (video below) with his nine-year-old son Joseph mocking 10-year-old Hope Holcomb, who has cerebral palsy. Every day after school at the bus stop, William and Joseph mocked the disabled girl, who repeatedly ask them to stop, reports the Daily Mail. The girl's grandmother videotaped William and Joseph hobbling to the school bus in Pike Township, Ohio, and gave the video to police. William plead no contest to reduced misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and aggravated menacing. Tricia Knight, Hope's mother, told Fox News: "It started last year we had trouble on the bus, she was miserable she didn't want to ride the bus, cried every morning. He treats her like crap, and most recently the dad got involved. We just want the bullying and the ridiculous behavior from the kids and the adults to stop." | |
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Susan Jacobson
Orlando Sentinel 2012-11-27 09:31:00
A Brevard County man remained in jail late Tuesday, accused of shooting a teenager dead in an argument over loud music. Michael David Dunn, 45, and his girlfriend were in Jacksonville Friday for Dunn's son's wedding when they stopped at a convenience store, Jacksonville sheriff's Lt. Rob Schoonover said. Jordan Russell Davis, 17, and several other teenagers were sitting in a sport utility vehicle in the parking lot when Dunn pulled up next to them in a car and asked them to turn down their music, Schoonover said. Jordan and Dunn exchanged words, and Dunn pulled a gun and shot eight or nine times, striking Jordan twice, Schoonover said. Jordan was sitting in the back seat. No one else was hurt. | |
Comment: This is utterly insane. It's not like they were neighbours and Dunn couldn't escape whatever noise was annoying him. But even that would not call for such an extreme reprisal.
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| Secret History |
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Daily Mail
Pieces of a medieval board game and 1,000-year-old combs are among rare artefacts uncovered during an archaeological dig that is set to rewrite the history books. Experts have hailed the finds in Co Fermanagh as internationally significant, claiming they shed new light on life in medieval Ireland and its connection with the wider world.2012-11-29 15:49:00 Iron, bronze and bone ornaments have been discovered at the crannog just outside Enniskillen, along with the chess-like pieces believed to have been part of the game. Parts of log boats, leather shoes, knives, decorated dress pins, wooden vessels and a bowl with a cross carved on its base have also been unearthed during the six-month dig.
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Owen Jarus
LiveScience 2012-11-29 07:52:00
Call it a card player's dream. A complete set of 52 silver playing cards gilded in gold and dating back 400 years has been discovered. Created in Germany around 1616, the cards were engraved by a man named Michael Frömmer, who created at least one other set of silver cards. According to a story, backed up by a 19th-century brass plate, the cards were at one point owned by a Portuguese princess who fled the country, cards in hand, after Napoleon's armies invaded in 1807. At the time they were created in 1616 no standardized cards existed; different parts of Europe had their own card styles. This particular set uses a suit seen in Italy, with swords, coins, batons and cups in values from ace to 10. Each of these suits has three face cards - king, knight (also known as cavalier) and knave. There are no jokers. [See Photos of the Silver Playing Cards] In 2010, the playing cards were first put on auction by an anonymous family at Christie's auction house in New York. Purchased by entrepreneur Selim Zilkha, the cards were recently described by Timothy Schroder, a historian with expertise in gold and silver decorative arts, in his book Renaissance and Baroque Silver, Mounted Porcelain and Ruby Glass from the Zilkha Collection (Paul Holberton Publishing, 2012). "Silver cards were exceptional," Schroder writes. "They were not made for playing with but as works of art for the collector's cabinet, or Kunstkammer." Today, few survive. "[O]nly five sets of silver cards are known today and of these only one - the Zilkha set - is complete." On the cards, two of the kings are depicted wearing ancient Roman clothing while one is depicted as a Holy Roman Emperor and another is dressed up as a Sultan, with clothing seen in the Middle East. . The knights and knaves are depicted in different poses wearing (then-contemporary) Renaissance military or courtly costumes. Each card is about 3.4 inches by 2 inches (8.6 centimeters by 5 centimeters) in size and blank on the back. | |
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Independent.ie
2012-11-29 10:07:00
Archaeologists working in western Cyprus are raising a glass to the discovery of a Bronze Age "microbrewery". The team excavated a 2 metres x 2 metres mud-plaster domed structure which it says was used as a kiln to dry malt and make beer 3,500 years ago. Beers of different flavours would have been brewed from malted barley and fermented with yeasts with an alcoholic content of around 5%. The yeast would have either been wild or produced from fruit such as grape or fig, according to the researchers. Dr Lindy Crewe, from the University of Manchester, has led the excavation at the Early-Middle Bronze Age settlement of Kissonerga-Skalia, near Paphos, since 2007. She said: "Archaeologists believe beer drinking was an important part of society from the Neolithic onwards and may have even been the main reason that people began to cultivate grain in the first place. "But it's extremely rare to find the remains of production preserved from thousands of years ago so we're very excited. The excavation of the malting kiln with associated sets of pottery types and tools left in place gives us a fantastic opportunity to look at Bronze Age toolkits and figure out techniques and recipes." | |
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Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience 2012-11-28 16:00:00
Despite a seaside home overlooking the Mediterranean, the very first human settlers of Sicily weren't seafood lovers, new research finds. In an analysis published today (Nov. 28) in the journal PLOS ONE, skeletal remains of the people who occupied the site around 10,000 years ago show no telltale signs of seafood eating. Instead, researchers say, these hunter-gatherers chowed down on game such as deer and boar. These first settlers, found on the modern-day island of Favignana, which was once connected to Sicily by a land bridge, probably ate little seafood for two reasons, said study researcher Marcello Mannino, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. First of all, the Mediterranean is relatively nutrient-poor - there just aren't that many fish in the sea. Second, these Mesolithic people likely didn't have the technology to do much fishing. "The fact that these hunter-gatherers did not develop sophisticated fishing technologies in response to sea-level rise suggests that the potential returns of doing so were insufficient and that their population numbers were probably low," Mannino told LiveScience. | |
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| Science & Technology |
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Damien Gayle
Astronomers have discovered a mammoth black hole containing as much mass as 17billion Suns. The monster object is more than 11 times wider than the orbit of Neptune, the eighth planet in our Solar System. It lies at the heart of a small lens-shaped galaxy called NGC1277, 220million light years away in the constellation Perseus.Daily Mail 2012-11-29 16:06:00 News of the incredible object comes as a separate research team reported the discovery of a quasar with the most energetic outflow ever seen. Observations of the incredible quasar known as SDSS J1106+1939 may answer questions about how the mass of a galaxy is linked to its central black hole mass and why there are so few large galaxies in the universe. The black hole at NGC1277 makes up an enormous 14 per cent of the galaxy's mass. Other black holes found at the centres of galaxies only account for around 0.1 per cent.
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Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire 2012-11-29 15:32:00
Among the long list of items bundled by consensus reality merchants under the banner of 'conspiracy theory', is a world without cash - where technocrats rule over the populace, and everything and anything is exchanged via plastic and RFID chips. In this sterile and controlled Orwellian hi-tech society, the idea of cash being passed from hand to hand would be as archaic as the thought of carrying around a rucksack of tally sticks today. Still, despite the incredible penetration of credit and debit card transactions into economic aggregate, and the boom in internet shopping, few will comfortably admit that a cashless society is nearly upon us. In part, it's a natural denial by many fueled by the idea of our society is indeed on a collision course with the sort of dystopic impersonal future like that depicted in the 1970′s sci-fi film classic, 'Logan's Run'. Cashless money is here, and growing rapidly. Over the years, futurists and commentators alike seemed to agree that a cashless society will be a slow creep, and would automatically phase itself in simply by virtue of the sheer volume of electronic transactions that would gradually make cash less available and more costly to redeem, or exchange. This is still true for the most part. What few counted on, however, was how the final push would like place, and why. Some will be surprised by these new emerging mechanisms, and the political and sinister implications they will ultimately lead to. | |
Comment: The article ends with a wise observation:"The cashless society is already here. The question now is how far will society allow it to penetrate and completely control each and every aspect of their day to day lives."
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Roland Pease
New Scientist 2012-11-28 12:00:00
It's the most famous corkscrew in history. Now an electron microscope has captured the famous Watson-Crick double helix in all its glory, by imaging threads of DNA resting on a silicon bed of nails. The technique will let researchers see how proteins, RNA and other biomolecules interact with DNA. The structure of DNA was originally discovered using X-ray crystallography. This involves X-rays scattering off atoms in crystallised arrays of DNA to form a complex pattern of dots on photographic film. Interpreting the images requires complex mathematics to figure out what crystal structure could give rise to the observed patterns. The new images are much more obvious, as they are a direct picture of the DNA strands, albeit seen with electrons rather than X-ray photons. The trick used by Enzo di Fabrizio at the University of Genoa, Italy, and his team was to snag DNA threads out of a dilute solution and lay them on a bed of nanoscopic silicon pillars. The team developed a pattern of pillars that is extremely water-repellent, causing the moisture to evaporate quickly and leave behind strands of DNA stretched out and ready to view. The team also drilled tiny holes in the base of the nanopillar bed, through which they shone beams of electrons to make their high-resolution images. The results reveal the corkscrew thread of the DNA double helix, clearly visible. With this technique, researchers should be able to see how single molecules of DNA interact with other biomolecules. | |
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NASA
NASA's Cassini orbiter has been sending back incredible images of Saturn and its moons to earth, since 2004. The latest Saturn photos from the spacecraft reveal a dizzying glimpse into a monster storm raging on the ringed planet's north pole.2012-11-29 08:41:00
Nasa's Cassini spacecraft has captured dramatic images of rolling storm clouds on Saturn. The pictures were obtained while the spacecraft was "travelling the Saturnian system in a set of inclined, or tilted, orbits that give mission scientists a vertigo-inducing view of Saturn's polar regions," Nasa said. The results show storm clouds and a swirling vortex at the centre of Saturn's north polar hexagon. | ||
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Irene Klotz
Discovery News 2012-11-29 11:20:00
NASA dispatched the Curiosity rover to Mars to look for organics, but a probe orbiting Mercury has beaten it to the punch. New results from the MESSENGER spacecraft not only confirm that the planet closest to the sun has ice inside shaded craters near the north pole, but that a thin layer of very dark organic material seems to be covering a good part of the frozen water. Both likely arrived via comets or asteroids millions -- or hundreds of millions -- of years ago. Unlike Curiosity, which will be directly sampling Martian rocks and soils to look for signs of organic material, MESSENGER bounces laser beams and counts neutrons and gamma rays to collect information remotely about chemical elements on Mercury's surface. The information is correlated with detailed topographical and temperature maps, laboratory tests and computer models and then compared with candidate materials to find the best match for the observed conditions. After years of painstaking work, scientists believe the most likely explanation is that the warmer parts of the shadowed craters contain black patches of organic material overlaying ice. The material, which is somewhat like tar, coal and soot, is believed to be similar to what has been observed on icy bodies in the outer solar system and in the nuclei of comets. | |
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LiveScience
2012-11-28 18:25:00
Scientists have found a stalagmite in an Oregon cave that tells the story of thousands of winters in the Pacific Northwest. "Most other ways of estimating past climate, like tree ring data, only tell us about summers, when plants are growing," Oxford researcher Vasile Ersek said in a statement. But understanding ancient winters is also important for regions like western North America, where chilly conditions are critical for determining water resources. For their study, Ersek and his colleagues examined a stalagmite that started forming 13,000 years ago in a cavern in what is now Oregon Caves National Monument. During the region's damp winters, water from the ground seeped through the cave's ceiling and trickled onto the floor, with the drips slowly forming the stalagmite over time. | |
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| Earth Changes |
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FoxNews.com
A record-breaking snowfall in Moscow has disrupted flights, created havoc on the roads, and forecasters say the storm will rage until Friday morning. Moscow's city hall said the Russian capital hasn't seen a bigger snowfall in November in about 50 years. The weather forecast service said on Thursday that a third of November's typical amount of snow had fallen in the past 24 hours, creating a 12 centimeter (4.7 inches) cover.2012-11-29 16:24:00 The roads in the capital were clogged up and about 70 flights from Moscow's largest Domodedovo airport were disrupter overnight. On Thursday, all three of the capital's airports are working normally.
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ENENews
2012-11-29 16:00:00
Times-Reporter, Nov 28, 2012: A section of land the length of four football fields collapsed Wednesday afternoon leaving a gaping hole [...] | ||
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The Telegraph
2012-11-29 15:54:00
Moscow has recorded its heaviest November snowfall for half a century with a 24-hour snowstorm that has blanketed the city in more than four inches of cover. Officials in the Russian capital have called in 12,000 snow-removal vehicles to help combat the effects of the snow on the city's transport system but, in spite of lengthy efforts to minimise disruption, traffic jams have been reported to stretch back several kilometres on Moscow's roads. "I was speaking with the forecasters, and it's been more than 50 years since Moscow's seen something like this," said Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov on a television interview. Further to gridlock in the city, flights from Moscow's airports have also faced major delays overnight. The capital's largest airport, Domodedovo, experienced over 70 flight delays, but was back to regular service by 5 a.m. | |
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2011MESSAGE
Youtube 2012-11-29 15:40:00
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Sott.net
A freak twister rips through Europe's largest steel plant in the Italian city of Taranto, leaving one person missing and dozens injured. The tornado rolled off the sea and hit the Ilva steel works on Wednesday. The video was filmed by a university student in southern Italy.2012-11-29 05:48:00
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Noah Goldman
University of Maryland 2011-02-01 11:49:00
Comets have inspired dread, fear, and awe in many different cultures and societies around the world and throughout time. They have been branded with such titles as "the Harbinger of Doom" and "the Menace of the Universe." They have been regarded both as omens of disaster and messengers of the gods. Why is it that comets are some of the most feared and venerated objects in the night sky? Why did so many cultures cringe at the sight of a comet? When people living in ancient cultures looked up, comets were the most remarkable objects in the night sky. Comets were unlike any other object in the night sky. Whereas most celestial bodies travel across the skies at regular, predictable intervals, so regular that constellations could be mapped and predicted, comets' movements have always seemed very erratic and unpredictable. This led people in many cultures to believe that the gods dictated their motions and were sending them as a message. What were the gods trying to say? Some cultures read the message by the images that they saw upon looking at the comet. For example, to some cultures the tail of the comet gave it the appearance of the head of a woman, with long flowing hair behind her. This sorrowful symbol of mourning was understood to mean the gods that had sent the comet to earth were displeased. Others thought that the elongated comet looked like a fiery sword blazing across the night sky, a traditional sign of war and death. Such a message from the gods could only mean that their wrath would soon be unleashed onto the people of the land. Such ideas struck fear into those who saw comets dart across the sky. The likeness of the comet, though, was not the only thing that inspired fear. | |
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| Health & Wellness |
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David Evans
Healthy Diets and Science 2012-11-22 00:00:00
This study was published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 2012 Jun 7;9(1):67 Study title and authors: 'Vegetarian diet and mental disorders: results from a representative community survey'. Michalak J, Zhang XC, Jacobi F. This study can be accessed here. The study investigated the association between meat eaters or vegetarians and mental disorders. The study included 4,181 participants, aged 18 to 65 years and examined the prevalence rates of mental disorders at one month, 12 months and lifetime. | |
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April McCarthy
PreventDisease 2012-11-29 12:50:00
Use your morning java as a quick pick me up before work? Forget coffee - it seems green tea has the key. A new study has found that the tea - already credited with providing a host of health benefits and can help improve memory and cognition. Green tea is made solely from the leaves of Camellia sinensis that have undergone minimal oxidation during processing. It has become the raw material for extracts which are used in various beverages, health foods, dietary supplements, and cosmetic items. Users should be aware the some sources of green tea may contain excess levels of fluoride. Researchers recruited 12 healthy men and divided them into two groups. One group was given a drink containing a green tea extract, while a second group was given a placebo drink without the extract. Then, using an MRI machine, scientists studied the effects of the two drinks on the men's brains while they performed a memory test. Compared to the placebo group, the green tea drinkers experienced an increase in the activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with working memory, which you need for problem solving and focus. The results of the new study are reported in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. | |
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Sayer Ji
GreenMedInfo 2012-11-29 05:00:00
New research flies in the face of a new theory that statin drugs, used to lower cholesterol, may be of value in those suffering from osteoarthritis. To the contrary, statin drugs are likely contributing to the epidemic of knee osteoarthritis in exposed populations. Symptomatic knee osteoarthritis is quite common in people older than 40 years, and will affect nearly 1 in 2 people by the age of 85 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.[i] Basic symptoms include
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Christine Hsu
Medical Daily 2012-11-29 08:45:00
A new study says that more than a third of all sofas in the United States may contain potential toxic material that can be dangerous for people to inhale as furniture foam breaks down into dust. Researchers from Duke University and University of California-Berkeley tested 104 couches and found that 85 percent of the couches were treated with chemical flame-retardants. Furthermore, researchers found that 41 percent contained chlorinated tris (TDCPP), which was phased out from use in baby pajamas and clothes in 1977 because of the health risks, and 17 percent of the sofas tested contained pentaBDE, a flame-retardant which has been banned in 172 counties and in 12 U.S. states. Researchers said exposure to pentaBDE has been linked to low birth weight, lower IQs and abnormal motor and behavioral development. In California, in order for furniture makers to abide by flammability standard called Technical Bulletin 117, which states that all residential furniture sold in California must not ignite when exposed to a 12-second exposure to an open flame, manufacturers treat sofa foam padding with retardants. | |
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twincities.com
A disease that can devastate prairie dog colonies has been confirmed on the Fort Pierre National Grassland in South Dakota.2012-11-29 12:21:00 The bacteria that causes sylvatic plague was found in fleas collected from prairie dog colonies, according to District Ranger Ruben Leal. Sylvatic plague was first detected in South Dakota in 2004. The disease has been migrating north and west. It also has been detected on the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, in Badlands National Park and on the Lower Brule Indian Reservation. There have not been any confirmed cases of the plague in people in South Dakota. Source: Associated Press |
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Agence France-Presse
2012-11-28 11:18:00
A French appeals court Wednesday upheld a ruling ordering pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline to pay 197,000 euros to a man who claimed that its drug to treat Parkinson's turned him into a gay sex and gambling addict. The court in the northern city of Rennes said father-of-two Didier Jambart had suffered side effects after being administered the drug Requip in 2003 for the illness, which causes tremors, slows movement and disrupts speech. A court in the western city of Nantes had previously ordered the British drug company to pay 117,000 euros ($151,000) in compensation in March. Jambart, who was accompanied by his wife, burst into tears after the ruling. "It's a great day," he said. "It's been a seven-year battle with our limited means for recognition of the fact that GSK lied to us and shattered our lives." | |
Comment: This is encouraging but will not stop Big Pharma's greed:
Big Pharma Crimes: Record $11 bln Fines No Deterrence - Psychopaths Consider it Just a Cost of Doing Business! Big Pharma: Getting Away With Murder Big Pharma's Deadly Experiments Big Pharma Continues Drug Experiments in Underdeveloped Nations for Profit | |
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Alliance for Natural Health
2012-11-27 00:00:00
Next week, ANH-USA will travel to Germany to represent YOU at the next Codex meeting. Here's what to expect. The Alliance for Natural Health USA has been selected to represent US consumers at the international Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU), which will meet December 3 - 7 in Germany. The Codex Alimentarius (Latin for "Food Code") is a collection of internationally adopted food standards, guidelines, codes of practice, and other recommendations which supporters hope will become a global standard and also facilitate international trade. The CCNFSDUstudies specific nutritional problems and advises the Codex Commission on general nutrition issues. They also develop guidelines for foods and supplements for special dietary uses, so having a seat at the table and being able to directly convey your concerns is a significant step forward for our consumer advocacy organization. The Codex Commission's decisions are far-reaching, and generally work to the advantage of the world's most powerful countries and powerful industry members. Smaller countries and companies can easily get shut out of the process. We represent only the interests of the consumer, particularly the natural health community. The Commission, through their various committees, addresses acceptable levels of pesticide residues, the amount of gluten allowed in gluten-free foods, GMOs and GMO labeling, infant formula, supplements, and contaminants in food. Regular Pulse readers will recall that we have some major concerns with the US adopting an international standard, particularly since the Commission usually follows the European Union, and the EU has adopted absurd limits on supplements - either banning them or allowing for sale only dosage strengths so low as to be completely ineffective. | |
Comment: For more information on Codex Alimentarius read:
Codex Threatens Health of Billions | |
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LiveScience
2012-11-29 09:27:00
The brain waves of two musicians synchronize when they are performing duet, a new study found, suggesting that there's a neural blueprint for coordinating actions with others. A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin used electrodes to record the brain waves of 16 pairs of guitarists while they played a sequence from "Sonata in G Major" by Christian Gottlieb Scheidler. In each pair, the two musicians played different voices of the piece. One guitarist was responsible for beginning the song and setting the tempo while the other was instructed to follow. In 60 trials each, the pairs of musicians showed coordinated brain oscillations - or matching rhythms of neural activity - in regions of the brain associated with social cognition and music production, the researchers said. "When people coordinate their own actions, small networks between brain regions are formed," study researcher Johanna Sänger said in a statement. "But we also observed similar network properties between the brains of the individual players, especially when mutual coordination is very important; for example at the joint onset of a piece of music." | |
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