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Lisa Guliani
Sott.net 2013-10-17 06:15:00
It seems pretty twisted to me that there are those out there who think people can be 'compensated' for the loss of loved ones. Look at the countries the U.S. government crime syndicate has attacked. Even IF this poser government were to offer compensation and a 'letter of apology' to all the families of the people they've murdered via drones, for example, would that be sufficient? Is that what we call justice? Does that 'compensate' for the brutal, senseless, needless coldblooded, systematic taking of a life, of so many lives? Does it wash away the knowledge that children have been murdered? Does that render 'absolution'? Does the wrongdoing somehow get purged from both the record and the memory of the survivors? What constitutes 'compensation'? Money? Money that, in many cases, is barely worth the paper it's printed on? Seems to me if this is the best they can do, (and they're not even doing that in any real way for most of these countries being attacked in the fake 'war on terror'), then their 'best' will never be enough, not even remotely enough. Not that they ever intend to 'compensate' other nations for trying to wipe out their people, or for stealing their lands and resources, or for assassinating their leaders - no, that I don't buy for a second. How do you invade a country, mercilessly, unrelentingly attack them, and then come back later and expect good will? |
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Niels Gerson Lohman
Huffington Post 2013-10-16 14:24:00
After a year of traveling, I had planned a last, short trip. I was going to take the train from Montreal to New Orleans. The travels I had been undertaking earlier this year had brought me to places that were meant to form the background of my second novel. This trip, however, was for my dad. He, a trumpet player, loved New Orleans and had died a year ago. It felt like the first sensible trip I undertook this year. I had been searching for ways to forget about the last hours at his deathbed. He had been ill for 15 years and his body just would not give up. It was a violent sight. I had decided the trip to New Orleans would put an end to those memories. Usually, I barely plan my trips in advance. But this time I had booked everything: my train tickets, hotels and my flight back to Montreal, from which I would depart back to Amsterdam. In total the trip was supposed to take three weeks. The confirmations and tickets I had printed and tucked away in a brown envelope I had bought especially for the trip. I like things to be neatly arranged. At home, in Amsterdam, my house enjoys a slight version of OCD. |
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| Puppet Masters |
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Henry Austin
NBC News 2013-10-16 15:52:00
Traces of the deadly radioactive material polonium-210 have been discovered on the belongings of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, findings that "support the possibility" of poisoning, according to new study. Toxicologists at Switzerland's University of Lausanne found the substance on a toothbrush and in underwear owned by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader, who died in a French hospital in 2004 at the age of 75. It is the same material connected to the London death of the former Russian spy-turned-Kremlin-critic Alexander Litvinenko two years after Arafat's death. In an article published Saturday in the medical journal The Lancet, Swiss toxicologists said they examined 38 items of Arafat's clothing, including his hat, toothbrush, hospital gown and underwear, and tested them for polonium. | |
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Comment: Read Joe Quinn's investigative essay to learn more about who's probably behind Arafat's death:
Litvinenko - By Way Of Deception - Part 1 Litvinenko - By Way Of Deception - Part 2 |
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Russia Today
2013-10-17 00:02:00
President Barack Obama has signed legislation passed by Congress Wednesday to temporarily lift the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown after 16 days, averting the threat of default just hours before the October 17 deadline. The legislation funds the government through January 15 and lifts the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling through February 7. As promised, Obama signed the legislation shortly after it was passed in the House of Representatives. As indicated before the US Senate vote, Republican House Speaker John Boehner did not block the fiscal deal from moving on, and it passed by a vote of 285-144 in the lower chamber. The measure was supported by every Democratic member of the House, but was rejected by a sizeable portion of Boehner's GOP caucus. Conservative Republicans were nearly unanimous in their opposition to the plan, as the federal health care law - the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare - they so object to will go virtually unscathed after all. The Senate approved the proposal by a vote of 81-18 on Wednesday evening. Republicans Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio were among the 18 'nay' votes in the Senate. |
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Alex Newman
Despite the wildly over-hyped partial "shutdown" of the federal government, U.S. taxpayer dollars continue flowing to foreign lands and innumerable other unconstitutional schemes
that are arbitrarily deemed "essential." The Obama administration's
Department of Agriculture (USDA), however, sent a letter to states
apparently ordering them to cut off food stamps for Americans by November 1,
pending further notice. A welfare program for women, children, and
infants known as WIC is also on the chopping block, and some analysts
are forecasting potential disaster. The New American 2013-10-16 21:51:00 As part of the effort to extort funds for ObamaCare from the people's representatives in Congress, the administration has already been caught deliberately trying to make the "shutdown" feel as "painful" as possible - closing parks, evicting homeowners, shuttering businesses, harassing veterans, trying to shut down parts of the ocean, and more, often at additional expense to taxpayers. Suddenly cutting off funds to the food stamp "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program" (SNAP) that some 50 million people have come to depend on, though, would take the obscene antics to a new level - especially doing it with no warning.
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Comment: If people go hungry, would they revolt? And if
they revolt, would the government use it as an excuse to impose more
control measures on an already psychologically and physically exhausted
population? Food for thought...
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Paul Lewis and Dan Roberts
The Guardian/CBS 2013-10-16 21:34:00
The US Senate endorsed bipartisan legislation to lift the debt ceiling on Tuesday night, paving the way for legislation that pulls the country from brink of a looming debt default and signals the end of a two-week government shutdown. The bill, a temporary fix that will last through until the start of 2014, was passed 81-18 with a majority of both Democrats and Republicans in support. It now passes to the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, for another vote in the next few hours, where it was expected to pass the support of Democrats. In brief remarks at the White House, shortly before the House was due to vote, president Barack Obama said he hoped the deal would "lift the cloud of uncertainty" that has hung over the country in recent weeks. |
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Renee Maltezou and Deepa Babington
Reuters 2013-10-13 00:00:00
She first got into politics in Greece last year - when she bought herself a bullet-proof vest and learned how to beat up immigrants with poles hung with the national flag. Her training over, she was a full member of Golden Dawn, the far-right party whose rage against foreigners has propelled its stiff-arm saluting leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos and 17 others into parliament in Athens in the wake of the Greek debt crisis. A year on and the woman is Witness B, giving evidence used to arrest Mihaloliakos and five fellow Golden Dawn lawmakers. They have been charged with belonging to a criminal organization involved in many offences including the stabbing last month of a left-wing rap artist whose death has infuriated the government. "Abusing immigrants was fun," Witness B told prosecutors last month of her days riding with a party motorcycle gang, according to a partial transcript of testimony included in prosecutors' indictment submission and seen by Reuters. Defense lawyers challenge the testimony and the charges. The party denies wrongdoing. Accusing the government of tactics not seen since the military junta of 40 years ago, it says it is being persecuted for its politics after standing up for ordinary Greeks against a corrupt elite that has bankrupted the nation and flung open its borders to cheap migrant labor. Statements filed in court by purportedly penitent members of Golden Dawn paint the most detailed picture yet of the inner workings of a group that spent three decades on the far fringes of politics before becoming the fifth biggest party last year. That picture is one of violence and intimidation not only against migrants, the testimony suggests, but also within the party - against dissenters or some who sought to leave. As such, the witnesses may be key to proving that Golden Dawn is a criminal organization, people familiar with the case said. No date or venue has been set for a trial of the six lawmakers, three of whom have been released on bail. They face 10 years in jail if convicted of criminal association. |
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David-McCumber
SFGate 2013-10-11 00:00:00
No, Republicans, the Gallup Poll is not a limbo contest. Republicans seem to be playing "how low can you go." Just 28 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of the GOP, according to the latest monthly Gallup tracking poll. The number " is the lowest favorable rating measured for either party since Gallup began asking this question in 1992," the polling company stated. The number is 10 points lower than the party scored in the same poll in September. Democrats, meanwhile, got a favorable rating from only 43 percent of respondents, down four points from last month. |
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| Society's Child |
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youtube.com
2013-10-17 13:14:00
Towards the tail end of the House vote on ending the government shutdown, a stenographer started yelling on the House floor and had to be escorted out of the room. Very little is known about her thus far, but there is audio of her rant, and needless to say it is quite something. She grabbed the House microphone and proceeded to shout, "He will not be mocked!" She repeated that a number of times and then said, "The greatest deception here is this is not one nation under God! It never was!" She also, for some bizarre reason, went on about Freemasons writing the Constitution, and cried, "You cannot serve two masters!" as she was escorted away. One member of Congress told The Washington Post that this stenographer is "well-known and liked," and so they have a lot of "sympathy" for her, while another said this was very "disturbing" to witness. Needless to say, she became an instant Twitter sensation. |
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Press TV
2013-10-17 04:22:00
A Lao Airlines plane has crashed into the Southeast Asian country's Mekong River, killing all 44 passengers, about half of them foreigners, and five crewmembers on board, the Laotian government says. The turboprop ATR-72, carrying passengers from 11 countries, was on a domestic flight from the capital Vientiane to the south of the country when it went down around eight kilometers from Pakse Airport in Champasak province because of bad weather on Wednesday. "Upon preparing to land at Pakse Airport the aircraft ran into extreme bad weather conditions and was reportedly crashed into the Mekong River," the Ministry of Public Works and Transport said in a statement, adding that 44 passengers and five crew members were aboard flight QV301.Seven French citizens, six Australians and five Thais were reportedly among the dead. |
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Reuters
An Afghan man wearing an Afghan army uniform shot at U.S. soldiers in
eastern Afghanistan, killing at least one serviceman on Sunday, local
officials and the NATO-led coalition said.2013-10-13 00:35:00 The so-called "insider attack" in Paktika province is the fourth in less than a month and is likely to strain already tense ties between coalition troops and their allies, with most foreign troops scheduled to withdraw by the end of next year. A Reuters tally shows Sunday's incident was the tenth this year, and took the death toll of foreign personnel to 15. "A man wearing an Afghan army uniform shot at Americans in Sharana city (the provincial capital) near the governor's office," said an Afghan official, adding that two soldiers had been hit by the gunfire. The NATO-led coalition confirmed one soldier had been shot by a man in security forces uniform, but did not comment on his nationality or whether the Afghan was wearing a army uniform. Insider attacks threaten to further undermine waning support for the war among Western nations sending troops to Afghanistan. |
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Jennifer Whelan
The Conversation 2013-10-16 00:20:00
The presence of only one woman, albeit a high profile one, in Tony Abbott's cabinet has prompted renewed calls for the introduction of quotas to ensure greater numbers of senior women in government. And with the 2013 AGM season well underway, resolving issues surrounding gender inequality in leadership roles is a hot topic. However, calls for quotas are usually instantly met with the claims that they are anti-meritocratic. Particularly in Australia, merit has become synonymous with fairness, equality, or objectivity. In fact, merit-based processes operate much differently. Discrimination is actually integral to a meritocratic system. A merit-based system "discriminates" on the basis of how much "merit" a person has - assuming the pre-condition that everyone has equal opportunity to acquire it - and favours those who have more of it. Or more precisely, are perceived to have more of it. And this is where the trouble starts. How are perceptions of merit shaped and influenced? There are two immediate problems with the merit argument. Firstly, everyone must have equal access to acquiring whatever quality is defined as "merit" - the so-called level playing field. Secondly, people must be assessed only on criteria that predict performance. Can we say that either of these conditions is ever truly met, particularly in organisational decision-making processes? In terms of the first condition, while women are overrepresented in tertiary education, they still remain under-represented in senior roles in virtually every professional sphere. So while this playing field may start off level, it doesn't stay that way for long. Equally qualified women are being denied the managerial exposure of their male counterparts. |
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Lloyd Grove
The Daily Beast 2013-10-14 23:48:00
The compromise-friendly New Jersey governor tells Lloyd Grove he thinks Washington - including his own party - has failed at its only job: keep the government running. "It's ridiculous," Chris Christie said. New Jersey's blunt-spoken, bipartisanly-inclined Republican governor was discussing the ongoing federal shutdown and debt ceiling crisis plaguing the nation's capital. "You get hired to do a job. Do your job!" he said. "There are too many people down here who spend all their time pontificating rather than working. And that applies to both parties. I don't have patience for that." The 51-year-old Christie - who many hope will launch a presidential campaign once he gets past what is widely expected to be an easy reelection on Nov. 5 - was making a rare visit to Washington, D.C. Technically, however, he was in the sovereign nation of Italy, having been selected to receive a Points of Light voluntarism award during a black-tie dinner Friday at the Italian Embassy. "My mother" - the late Sondra Grasso, a descendant of Sicilians and a Democrat to boot - "would always be happy to have me spend any time in Italy," he quipped. Earlier in the day, during a meeting with the editorial board of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Christie had suggested that the dysfunction in Washington drives him to thoughts of suicide: "If I was in the Senate right now, I'd kill myself." | |
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Comment: Nice talking points. But Chris Christie's association with the Bush clan does not bode well for the U.S.
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Domenico Montanaro
NBC News 2013-10-10 23:32:00
Throw the bums out. That's the message 60 percent of Americans are sending to Washington in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, saying if they had the chance to vote to defeat and replace every single member of Congress, including their own representative, they would. Just 35 percent say they would not. According to the latest NBC/WSJ poll, the shutdown has been a political disaster. One in three say the shutdown has directly impacted their lives, and 65 percent say the shutdown is doing quite a bit of harm to the economy. NBC's Chuck Todd reports. The 60 percent figure is the highest-ever in that question recorded in the poll, registered in the wake of the government shutdown and threat of the U.S. defaulting on its debt for the first time in history. If the nation's debt limit is not increased one week from now, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warns that the entire global economy could be in peril. "We continue to use this number as a way to sort of understand how much revulsion there is," said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted the poll with Republican Bill McInturff. "We now have a new high-water mark." Read the full poll here (.pdf) The numbers reflect a broader trend over the last few years. Americans have traditionally said that while they might not like Congress, they usually like their own representatives. But that sentiment appears to have shifted |
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Jack Healy
The New York Times 2013-10-15 22:52:00
As he made his way across the country, Joe Bell walked through rain squalls, slept in ditches and talked to anyone who would listen about how his gay son had killed himself after being taunted and bullied at school. Mr. Bell's artificial knees ached and his feet were mapped with blisters, but he told friends and strangers that he was determined to make it on foot from his home in eastern Oregon to New York City, where his son, Jadin, 15, had dreamed of one day working in fashion or photography. "I miss my son Jadin with all my heart and soul," he wrote on Facebook in late May. "I know you're with me on this walk." But last Wednesday, Mr. Bell's American journey - one that drew attention from local newspapers and attracted thousands of followers on social media - ended in an instant on a two-lane road in rural eastern Colorado. He was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer whose driver had apparently fallen asleep, the state police said. For nearly six months, Mr. Bell, 48, had been on the road, sharing his son's story and trying to salve his own grief. He spoke at motorcycle rallies and college bars, schools, diners and gay-outreach centers, telling people about his sensitive, artistic son who hanged himself from a piece of playground equipment on Jan. 19. |
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Al Jazeera
2013-10-16 22:38:00
At least 44 dead after internal flight from capital Vientiane crashes into Mekong river, local media reported. A Lao Airlines plane carrying 44 people from the capital Vientiane to the southern town of Pakse crashed on Wednesday, killing all on board, among them nationals of 10 countries, a Thai foreign ministry spokesman said. Laos officials informed Thailand that the plane carrying 39 passengers and five crew went down around 8km from the airport in Champasak province in southern Laos, Sek Wannamethee said. |
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Sibylla Brodzinsky
The Guardian 2013-10-16 21:24:00
The government wants to correct decades of 'land reform in reverse'. But powerful criminal, armed and business interests are ranged against the country's displaced peasants The threats against Sifredy Culma's life come in many forms: suspicious men on motorcycles circling his neighbourhood; a flyer slipped under the door declaring him a "military target"; a menacing phone call warning that he will be killed if he tries to reclaim the plot of land he abandoned when rightwing paramilitary militiamen stormed into his town in Colombia. The intimidation started in 2010, when Culma began collecting signatures from other farmers who had fled the village of Santafe and been forced to sell their land under threat from the paramilitaries. Culma is reclaiming that property as part of an ambitious government programme to return abandoned or stolen land to millions displaced by the country's half-century-old conflict. |
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Jeffrey M. Jones
Gallup Politics 2013-10-11 00:00:00
Twenty-six percent believe Democratic and Republican parties do adequate job Amid the government shutdown, 60% of Americans say the Democratic and Republicans parties do such a poor job of representing the American people that a third major party is needed. That is the highest Gallup has measured in the 10-year history of this question. A new low of 26% believe the two major parties adequately represent Americans. |
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News.com.au
2013-10-16 11:49:00
A judge in Tel Aviv has stepped down after commenting aloud that “some girls enjoy rape” during an appeals committee hearing on the rape of a teenager. Judge Nissim Yeshaya of the District Court announced he would step down from present duties after meeting with Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Supreme Court President Asher Grunis, ynetnews.com reports. "All judges need to know they are under scrutiny and must conduct themselves in a manner becoming those entrusted with safeguarding the law and deciding the fates of others," said Ms Livni. "This isn't just about any single statement, it's about a perception women have fought against for years whereby victims are being blamed for the rape, " she added. "Such a statement, even if unintentional, could legitimise rape in the twisted minds of potential offenders. And judges too need to know that when a woman says 'no' she means 'no'." The offence by four Palestinian youths from the Shuafat refugee camp, took place six years ago, against a 13-year-old girl, Army Radio reported. The judicial review panel was assembled in the Tel Aviv District Court discussed the rape victim's appeal of a decision of the Defence Ministry not to recognise her rape as an act of terrorism, as she had requested. The victim was not present at the hearing when the statement was made by Judge Yeshaya. |
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Michael Harper
RedOrbit 2013-10-16 19:23:00
British children are largely missing out on the bounties of nature. This is the conclusion of a three-year study that set out to measure the effects of the great outdoors on today's modern children. According to research results, only 21 percent of eight- to 12-year-olds living in the UK have a discernible connection with nature. It's possible that even if these children were going outside, they wouldn't see the same plant and animal life their ancestors did. The study, published in Connecting with Nature, found 60 percent of species native to the UK are on the decline. The researchers believe children who get outdoors and take an interest in nature would not only reap the rewards of being outside but could also help protect these declining species. "Nature is in trouble, and children's connection to nature is closely linked to this," said Dr. Mike Clarke, the chief executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the group that carried out the study. "This report is groundbreaking stuff. Millions of people are increasingly worried that today's children have less contact with nature than ever before, but until now there has been no robust scientific attempt to measure and track connection to nature among children in the UK, which means the problem hasn't been given the attention it deserves," Dr. Clarke told The Guardian's Adam Vaughan. |
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Patricia Borns and Daniel Chang
Miami Herald 2013-10-13 00:00:00
Will the Floridians who have enrolled for Obamacare please stand up? Nearly two weeks after the federal government launched the online Health Insurance Marketplace at HealthCare.gov, individuals who have successfully used the choked-up website to enroll for a subsidized health insurance plan have reached a status akin to urban legend: Everyone has heard of them, but very few people have actually met one. The Miami Herald searched high and low for individuals who completed enrollment for a subsidized health plan through the marketplace, also called an exchange, launched by the federal government on Oct. 1 in 36 states, including Florida. The Herald solicited readers for stories of enrollees online and in the newspaper, and received a fair number of responses reflecting various degrees of success with HealthCare.gov, which has been plagued by technical problems that federal officials attribute to an overwhelming number of people trying to access the website at once. |
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Kyle Cheney
Politico 2013-10-15 08:14:00
Think you're exempt from Obamacare's individual mandate? Good luck proving it. The health law's least popular component - the requirement to obtain insurance or face a tax penalty - also features a lengthy list of exceptions for people facing certain hardships like foreclosure, domestic violence or homelessness. Members of certain religious sects or Native American tribes also are exempt. But if the online system for getting into Obamacare coverage is rickety, the system for getting out of the mandate doesn't even exist yet. HHS says it will take another month at least for the administration to finalize the forms. The Obama administration estimates that as many as 12 million people will seek exemptions through the federal enrollment system. But if they try now through HealthCare.gov, a customer service representative will tell them that applications aren't available. To make it even more confusing, not everyone who is exempt from the mandate will have to prove it via the exchange. Millions of people will have straightforward income-related exemptions - for example, low-income people in states that aren't expanding Medicaid. Their exempt status will get wrapped into their annual tax filing. But for those who want to start the exemption process online - or who incorrectly think they have to purchase health insurance or be fined despite their personal circumstances - the lack of a pathway has been another example that critics cite about how the White House bungled the rollout. | |
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Comment: Even if you wanted to sign up for ObamaCare or
find out if you are eligible for exemptions, it is impossible given
that the HealthCare.gov site is non-functional.
Obamacare is either the product of mentally retarded criminals or a conspiracy to destroy the American healthcare system |
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| Secret History |
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NERC
A record of Neanderthal archaeology, thought to be long lost, has
been re-discovered by NERC-funded scientists working in the Channel
island of Jersey.2013-10-17 10:51:00 The study, published today in the Journal of Quaternary Science, reveals that a key archaeological site has preserved geological deposits which were thought to have been lost through excavation 100 years ago. The discovery was made when the team undertook fieldwork to stabilise and investigate a portion of the La Cotte de St Brelade cave, on Jersey's south eastern coastline. A large portion of the site contains sediments dating to the last Ice Age, preserving 250,000 years of climate change and archaeological evidence. The site, which has produced more Neanderthal stone tools than the rest of the British Isles put together, contains the only known late Neanderthal remains from North West Europe. These offer archaeologists one of the most important records of Neanderthal behaviour available. |
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Josephine Lethbridge
The Conversation 2013-08-20 23:04:00
The Faroe Islands could have been inhabited 500 years earlier than was previously thought, according to a startling archaeological discovery. The islands had been thought to be originally colonised by the Vikings in the 9th century AD. However, dating of peat ash and barley grains has revealed that humans had actually settled there somewhere between the 4th and 6th centuries AD. The Faroes were the first stepping stone beyond Shetland for the dispersal of European people across the North Atlantic. The findings therefore allow speculation as to whether Iceland, Greenland, and even North America were colonised earlier than previously thought Mike Church from the University of Durham said he and his research partner, Símun V Arge from the National Museum of the Faroe Islands, had not expected to find such evidence. |
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Tia Ghose
LIveScience 2013-10-16 15:52:00
The Wari, an ancestor culture to the Incas that flourished throughout the Andean Highlands, expanded their reign largely through trade and semiautonomous colonies, rather than through the iron fist of conquest and centralized control, new research suggests. To reach that conclusion, detailed this month in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, researchers looked at the settlement patterns of the pre-Columbian culture. The Wari seemed to use a lighter touch when governing than leaders of the Inca Empire that rose to prominence around the 15th century. "The identification of limited Wari state power encourages a focus on colonization practices rather than an interpretation of strong provincial rule," said study lead author R. Alan Covey, an anthropologist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. "A 'colonization first' interpretation of early Wari expansion encourages the reconsideration of motivations for expansion, shifting from military conquest and economic exploitation of subject populations to issues such as demographic relief and strategic expansion of trade routes or natural resource access." |
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| Science & Technology |
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Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience 2013-10-17 13:01:00
The earliest, now-extinct human lineages, once thought to be multiple species, may actually have been one species, researchers now controversially suggest. Modern humans, Homo sapiens, are the only living member of the human lineage, Homo, which is thought to have arisen in Africa about 2 million years ago at the beginning of the ice age, also referred to as the Pleistocene Epoch. Many extinct human species were thought to once roam the Earth, such as Homo habilis, suspected to be among the first stone-tool makers; the relatively larger-brained Homo rudolfensis; the relatively slender Homo ergaster; and Homo erectus, the first to regularly keep tools it made. To learn more about the roots of the human family tree, scientists investigated a completely intact, approximately 1.8-million-year-old skull excavated from the medieval hilltop town of Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia. Archaeological excavations there about 30 years ago unexpectedly revealed that Dmanisi is one of the oldest-known sites for ancient human species out of Africa and the most complete collection of Homo erectus skulls and jaws found so far. The world's largest, extinct cheetah species once lived in the area, and scientists cannot rule out whether it fed on these early humans. This fossil, the most massively built skull ever found at Dmanisi, is the best-preserved fossil of an early human species discovered yet. It probably belonged to a male, and its right cheekbone has signs that it healed from a fracture. "We can only guess how the fracture was inflicted on the individual - it could be that it had an argument with another member of the group it lived in, or it could be that it fell down," study co-author Christoph Zollikofer, a neurobiologist at the Anthropological Institute and Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, told LiveScience. |
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Nick Collins
Chimpanzees "catch" yawns from humans, scientists have discovered in
one of the first examples of cross-species "yawn contagion". The Telegraph, UK 2013-10-17 14:48:00
Chimpanzees can "catch" yawns from humans as they grow older, according to scientists who say the behaviour is most likely an attempt to bond with their keepers. 'Contagious' yawning, which happens when one person's yawn sets off the same reaction in others, is thought to be a measure of empathy, or sharing others' emotions. Humans are more likely to catch yawns from people they are close to, and the only previously documented example of contagion between humans and animals has been between dogs and their owners. Now researchers from Lund University in Sweden have found that chimpanzees exhibit the same behaviour, according to a study in the PLOS ONE journal. Like young human children, infant chimpanzees are unaffected by the yawning of others but pick up the habit at about the age of five, they concluded. |
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Ellie Zolfagharifard
The Daily Mail, UK 2013-10-17 12:30:00
The mysterious six-sided storm on Saturn's North Pole has long captivated astronomers. But up until now, images taken of it have been in infrared wavelengths, showing false-colour shades of red, orange and green. Now Nasa's Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting the planet for over nine years, has captured the northern hexagon in its true, incredible colours.
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Tia Ghose
Live Science 2013-10-16 22:28:00
Ötzi the Iceman, a stunningly preserved mummy found in the Italian Alps in 1991, has living relatives in the region, new genetic analysis shows. The study, published in the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics, found that the 5,300-year-old mummy has at least 19 male relatives on his paternal side. "We can say that the Iceman and those 19 must share a common ancestor, who may have lived 10,000 to 12,000 years ago," study co-author Walther Parson, a forensic scientist at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Innsbruck, Austria, wrote in an email. "In that sense, those 19 are closer related to the Iceman than other individuals. We usually think about our families when we talk about relatives. However, these data demonstrate that DNA can also be used to trace relatives much further back in time." |
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C. E. Huggins
An Internet-based system could be a useful tool for screening adults for
mental health disorders and giving preliminary diagnoses, according to a
new Dutch study.Reuters 2013-10-10 19:44:00 This eDiagnostics system is already used in primary care practices in The Netherlands, the researchers say, but nowhere else, and more study is needed to determine if it is reliable, valid and cost-effective. "Using the Internet to diagnose mental health problems in primary care seems very promising," writes lead author Ies Dijksman and colleagues from Maastricht University. "The great advantage of an electronic system is that patients can complete diagnostic tests at home," Dijksman told Reuters Health in an email, adding that people may be quicker to reveal themselves over the Internet and provide genuine responses to questions because of their perceived anonymity. |
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Bahar Gholipour
LiveScience 2013-10-16 15:39:00
New York - The line between life and death is not as clear as once thought, now that developments in the science of resuscitation have made it possible to revive people even hours after their heart has stopped beating and they are declared dead, medical experts say. "Historically, when a person's heart stopped and they stopped breathing, for all intents and purposes, they were dead," said Dr. Sam Parnia, an assistant professor of critical care medicine at State University of New York at Stony Brook. "There was nothing you could do to change that," Parnia told an audience at the New York Academy of Sciences last week. However, in the process of unraveling mysteries of death at the cellular level, scientists have learned that death does not occur in a single moment, but instead is a process. It is actually after a person has died -- by our current definition of death -- that the cells of the body start their own process of dying. This process "could take hours of time, and we could potentially reverse that," Parnia said. |
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| Earth Changes |
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Chris Yandell,
DailyEcho, UK 2013-10-17 17:29:00
The mystery surrounding a strange noise that is keeping people awake at night has taken a new twist. Southampton residents say they are being plagued by the same sound that is making life a misery for people living on the eastern edge of the New Forest. As revealed in yesterday's Daily Echo, the low-frequency drone is causing sleepless nights in Hythe, Holbury and Dibden Purlieu. One woman has resorted to visiting a friend in a bid to escape the din. Another is said to be considering early retirement after being badly affected by the stress of living with the noise. Now people living in Southampton and West End have come forward to report similar problems. Gordon Windebank, 82, of Broadlands Road, Swaythling, said: "It's driving me mad. "It started with a low rumble about 18 months ago and has been getting steadily worse since last Sunday. I notice it when I go to bed at 10.30pm and it still seems to be going on when I get up the next morning." Mr Windebank has been prescribed sleeping pills by his doctor and says he may be forced to go back for more. |
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Big Story
2013-10-16 23:23:00
Los Angeles - A rare whale that has a dolphin-shaped head and saber-like teeth has been found dead on Los Angeles' Venice Beach, even though it prefers frigid subarctic waters. The roughly 15-foot-long female Stejneger's beaked whale washed ashore Tuesday night, the Los Angeles Times reported. A truck hauled away the mammal, which was being examined at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum to determine how it died. |
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Martin Zavan
9News, Australia 2013-10-16 23:18:00
Residents of a sleepy town on the southern coast of NSW were treated to scenes resembling a winter wonderland after a freak hail storm blanketed a popular beach in snow only a day after the mercury soared above 30 degrees. Local Allen Coulthard, 27, captured some of the spectacular scenes at Malua Bay Beach last night as his children used a body board to glide along the seemingly snow-blanketed shore. |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Spaceweather.com
New: Every night, a network of NASA all-sky cameras
scans the skies above the United States for meteoritic fireballs.
Automated software maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office
calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth in Earth's
atmosphere and many other characteristics. Daily results are presented
here on Spaceweather.com.2013-10-17 02:33:00 On Oct. 16, 2013, the network detected 15 fireballs. (12 sporadics, 1 chi Taurid, 1 southern Taurid, 1 Orionid)
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| Health & Wellness |
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Marc Lallanilla
LiveScience 2013-10-17 13:23:00
A young man from Tennessee is living with an alarming medical condition - without warning, he begins to bleed from his eyes. And some of the best doctors in the country are completely stumped by his ailment. What's more confounding is that the condition is very rare, but some of the only other people known to bleed from the eyes - a condition called haemolacria - are also from Tennessee. At age 22, Michael Spann was walking down the stairs of his home in Antioch, Tenn., when he was gripped by an extremely painful headache. "I felt like I got hit in the head with a sledgehammer," he told the Tennessean. Moments later, Spann realized that blood was trickling from his eyes, nose and mouth. The bleeding and headaches became a daily occurrence for Spann; now, about seven years later, they happen only once or twice a week. Though he's hampered by a lack of health insurance, doctors in Tennessee and at the Cleveland Clinic performed an exhaustive series of tests, but were unable to pinpoint a cause or recommend a treatment, according to news reports. |
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Natalia Van Stralen
San Diego State University 2013-05-20 13:08:00
Mucus may be slimy and gross, but a San Diego State University research team, led by Jeremy Barr, a biology post-doctoral fellow, has discovered that it is also home to a powerful immune system that could change the way doctors treat a number of diseases. In this previously undocumented immune system, researchers uncovered bacteria-infecting viruses known as bacteriophage, which shield the body from invading infection. The discovery, made possible with funding from the National Institutes of Health, concentrates on the protective layers of mucus which are present in all humans and animals. It serves both as a home for large populations of beneficial microbes - which can include fungi, bacteria and viruses - and as an entry point for infection. A new immune system The researchers sampled mucus from animals and humans - ranging from a sea anemone to a mouse and a person - and found that bacteriophage adheres to the mucus layer on all of them. They placed bacteriophage on top of a layer of mucus-producing tissue and observed that the bacteriophage formed bonds with sugars within the mucus, causing them to adhere to the surface. They then challenged these mucus cells with E. coli bacteria and found that the bacteriophage attacked and killed off the E. coli in the mucus, effectively forming an anti-microbial barrier on the host that protected it from infection and disease. |
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Erika Matich
The results of a recent study show kids that are home-schooled are
leaner than kids attending traditional schools. The results challenge
the theory that children spending more time at home may be at risk for
excessive weight gain.University of Colorado Denver 2013-10-17 11:10:00 The study was published in the journal Obesity and conducted by researchers from University of Colorado's Anschutz Health and Wellness Center (AHWC) and University of Alabama at Birmingham. It looked at both home-schooled and traditionally-schooled children between the ages of seven and 12 in Birmingham. Participants and their parents reported diet, the kids' physical activity was monitored and they were measured for body fat, among other things. "Based on previous research, we went into this study thinking home-schooled children would be heavier and less active than kids attending traditional schools," said Michelle Cardel, PhD, RD, the study's lead author. "We found the opposite." |
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Julianne Taylor, RN
Primal Docs 2013-10-17 09:26:00
Non celiac gluten sensitivity is becoming a recognised health condition distinct from celiac disease, but in my observation is not yet recognised by many doctors. This is perhaps because much of the clinical literature is fairly recent. Many people suffer a range of unexplained health problems, often similar to those suffered by celiac patients, for example gut issues, fatigue, foggy brain, aches and pains, joint inflammation, skin rashes, and associated auto-immune diseases, yet blood tests are negative for celiac disease. Many discover they are gluten sensitive by chance or through diet experimentation. For example they may switch to a raw/ raw vegan diet (you can't eat raw wheat), a blood type diet (O in particular), strict Zone diet, low carb diet or a paleo diet, and get resolution of health problems. Comment: You might want to abstain from the vegan option, it is the least healthy one. See Burying The Vegetarian Hypothesis and Lierre Keith on 'The Vegetarian Myth - Food, Justice and Sustainability' for more information. This case study was published las year in the British Medical Journal, it is typical of the experiences of many of those who discover they are gluten sensitive. Here are some excerpts, this was written by the patient. Non-coeliac gluten sensitivity, A patient's journey. (full text) |
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Katy Haldiman, RN
Primal Docs 2013-10-17 09:20:00
Although the main functions of the digestive system were once believed to include little beyond the breakdown of food into usable energy for the body and elimination of waste, the digestive tract is also home to 100 trillion microorganisms, known as the gut flora. The majority of these microorganisms are bacteria, with a small percentage consisting of fungi and protozoa. The functions of the gut flora are complex enough to resemble those of an organ, leading some researchers to refer to the gut flora as a "forgotten organ". Indeed, the gut flora plays a number of roles so vital to the human body that if the gut were to be sterilized, long-term survival would be unlikely. Types of Gut Flora There are three main categories of microorganisms found in the gut: 1.) Essential Flora: This is the "friendly" bacteria that is found in the gut. In the healthy individual, essential flora dominates and controls other types of less desirable microorganisms. When functioning normally, this type of flora is responsible for conducting numerous roles that keep the body healthy. 2.) Opportunistic Flora: This group of microbes is found in the gut in limited numbers that are strictly controlled by the essential flora in the healthy individual. This type of flora is capable of causing disease if the essential flora becomes compromised and is unable to control the growth and numbers of opportunistic flora. 3.) Transitional Flora: These are various microorganisms that are introduced into the body through eating and drinking. When the essential flora is healthy and functioning normally, this type of flora will pass through the digestive track without causing harm. However, if the essential flora is damaged, this group of microbes can cause disease. |
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Christopher Wanjek
Live Science 2013-10-15 22:17:00
Your liver could be "eating" your brain, new research suggests. People with extra abdominal fat are three times more likely than lean individuals to develop memory loss and dementia later in life, and now scientists say they may know why. It seems that the liver and the hippocampus (the memory center in the brain), share a craving for a certain protein called PPARalpha. The liver uses PPARalpha to burn belly fat; the hippocampus uses PPARalpha to process memory. In people with a large amount of belly fat, the liver needs to work overtime to metabolize the fat, and uses up all the PPARalpha - first depleting local stores and then raiding the rest of the body, including the brain, according to the new study. | |
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Comment: Otherwise known as "wheat belly", is one among
a huge list of unhealthy symptoms that develop with the consumption of
grains. For information on how to transition to the healthier Paleo
diet, read this forum thread.
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Alan McStravick
RedOrbit 2013-10-16 19:19:00
Individuals suffering with schizophrenia are subject to a whole host of disturbing, life-changing symptoms. They can range from disorganized thinking and an inability to plan for the future to full-on hallucinations and paranoid delusions. Through treatment with psychiatric therapy and medication can be effective for some, the psychiatric disease has largely remained a medical mystery. However, researchers at the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT have uncovered what they term "a faulty brain mechanism" they believe is crucial in the eventual development of schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders in humans. Speaking about the study published in today's issue of Neuron, Susumu Tonegawa, director at RIKEN-MIT said, "Our study provides new insight into what underlies schizophrenia's disordered thinking and zeroes in on a new target for future investigation into the neural basis of a cognitive disorder that affects more than 1 percent of the world's population." Tonegawa is also a senior author of the study. This study, like many others in the fields of genetics, was an animal study. The team employed the use of genetically engineered mice that displayed symptoms of schizophrenia. One difficulty faced by this study, in particular, was figuring out how to model the complex nature of disorganized thought in the mice. |
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| High Strangeness |
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No new articles. |
| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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