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Niall Bradley
Sott.net 2013-06-19 04:28:00
The ongoing 'NSA surveillance scandal' has many parallels, and some direct links, with the disclosures made by WikiLeaks, the organisation its leader Julian Assange described as the "the intelligence agency of the people". While we took satisfaction in seeing government and corporate crimes come back to haunt their perpetrators, SOTT.net remained cautious about lauding Assange or the WikiLeaks organisation as heroic. What did any of the 'Iraq War Logs' or U.S. State Department 'diplomatic cables' reveal that was not already publicly available information? Obviously some details were new, but they didn't change the fact that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was illegal under international law and that everyone involved had either committed or were ancillary to war crimes. Nor did anything so damaging come out to bring the perpetrators to justice or to catalyse real political change that would actually improve ordinary people's welfare. Things, as you may have noticed in recent years, have only gotten worse for the masses. So is Edward Snowden, the U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower currently 'on the run' after disclosing 'top secret documents' to major media outlets, a hero or traitor? Is he neither? We discussed this and more in last Sunday's SOTT Talk Radio show on the NSA leaks. Have a listen:
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RT America
2012-07-28 22:34:00
While US politicians boast strong ties with Israel, CIA officials suggest Israel is one of its biggest counter-intelligence threats. With spyware that rivals that of American agencies, it is extremely difficult to detect the extent of its spying. In a CIA ranking of the world's intelligence agencies and their willingness to help the US fight the War on Terror, Israel fell below Libya. Speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, current and former US intelligence officials blame Israel for incidents that indicate attempts to acquire secret information. One CIA station chief noticed that the communication equipment that he used to contact CIA headquarters from Israel had been tampered with, even though it was in a locked box. Another CIA officer based in Israel had his home broken into. While nothing was stolen, the officer noticed his food had been rearranged. In addition to home intrusions and equipment tampering, CIA officials also suspect that a leak by Israel led to the capture and presumed death of an important US agent inside Syria's chemical weapons program. | |
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Stephen Lendman
My Cat Bird Seat 2013-06-11 00:34:00
Cybersecurity Law Is No Threat To Privacy: NSA Chief Gen. Alexander It doesn't surprise. On June 8, Haaretz headlined "What was the Israeli involvement in collecting US communications intel for NSA?" More on that below. On April 3, 2012, James Bamford headlined "Shady Companies with Ties to Israel Wiretap for US for the NSA. He said NSA chief General Keith Alexander's "having a busy year." He's "cutting ribbons at secret bases and bringing to life the agency's greatly expanded eavesdropping network." "In January he dedicated the new $358 million CAPT Joseph J. Rochefort Building at NSA Hawaii, and in March he unveiled the 604,000-square-foot John Whitelaw Building at NSA Georgia." | |
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| Puppet Masters |
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CBS
'Do as we say, not as we do!'2013-06-19 16:08:00 Vice-President Joe Biden criticising the Bush administration for domestic spying back in those dark times before he and Obama rescued Americans from the descent into totalitarianism...
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Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online 2013-06-18 19:49:00
They looked like two dejected schoolboys in front of the headmaster by the end of the two-hour Putin-Obama summit at the sidelines of the Group of Eight meeting in Northern Ireland. But as astonishing as the sound of silence was the fact that, on Syria, the former KGB guy was trying to save the "leading from behind" dude from himself. President Barack Obama coined the monster euphemism that they had "different perspectives" on Syria. He said, deceptively, "We want to try to resolve the issue through political means if possible, so we will instruct our teams to continue to work on the potential of a Geneva follow-up." If Obama was really trying to solve Syria "through political means" he would not have pre-emptively bombed the Geneva II talks with his "weapons-for-peace" program, as in weaponizing only the "good" Syrian "rebels" and only with a few "non-lethal" toys (that's the bottom line of Washington's spin). "If possible" in this case does translate into "impossible". As for the Geneva II talks, they don't rate anything better than "potential" because Obama knows the myriad, squabbling factions of the Syrian opposition will boycott it. Sometimes it sounded like Putin wanted to put Obama out of his misery (as in "Assad must go" but I have no clue how to make him obey me). He was visibly trying to impress to Obama that expanding the proxy war in Syria would make the current - horrible - status quo look like a walk in the park. | |
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| Society's Child |
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Becky Evans
More than 6,000 people were evacuated after explosions rocked a Russian munitions depot last night where up to 13million shells are stored. At least 30 people were injured when the shells exploded, causing huge blasts at the Chapaevsk military depot in the Samara region.The Daily Mail, UK 2013-06-19 14:48:00 Reports from Russia said about 1,500 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze and residents were evacuated from the nearby village of Nagorny, about 15km from the city of Chapaevsk.
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In one of the most violent weekends Chicago has seen since the temperature has risen, seven people were shot dead and at at over 40 were wounded in incidents, police said. Overnight from Saturday into Father's Day, six were killed and 13 other shootings happened across the city. The bleak news comes after Chicago experienced a 34 percent drop in murderscompared with last year this period, a rate the city hadn't seen since the 1960s. A series of deadly shootings On Friday, the weekend's first fatality happened at 11:34 p.m. on the West Side of Chicago. Police said two men were shot during a "dispute," according to NBC Chicago. A 24-year-old man was taken to Loyola University Medical Center and later pronounced dead, police said. According to reports, the other man, a 23-year-old, suffered a gunshot wound to the stomach and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital. On Saturday, 21-year-old Ricardo Herrera was shot and killed at about 10:50 p.m. when two others were wounded in the Little Village neighborhood on the Southwest Side of Chicago, police said. Later that night at 11:45 p.m., police said a 16-year-old boy was shot by a gunman who rode on a bicycle on the West Side of the city. According to reports, he tried to escape, but collapsed steps away from where he was shot. The boy sustained gunshot wounds to the back and arm, police said. He was pronounced dead at 1:37 a.m. at Illinois Masonic Medical Center. Police said Sunday the teen had gang affiliations, according to NBC Chicago, and although his death was ruled a homicide, police said no one was in custody as of Sunday morning. | |
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Interfax
Five artillery projectiles exploded at a range near Chapayevsk, the Samara region, at about 7:30 p.m. Moscow time.2013-06-18 02:01:00 Two fire trains were sent to the scene, and Defense Ministry and Emergency Situations Ministry special hardware has also been engaged in dealing with the emergency situation. Samara regional police spokesman Sergei Goldstein said there were about 13 million rounds of ammunition at the range depot. The range had been cordoned off, and roads leading to it blocked, he said. Four people have been injured in explosions of projectiles at a range in Chapayevsk, the Samara region, a Samara medical source told Interfax. |
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Michael Allen
Opposing Views 2013-06-18 00:00:00
Student loans have eclipsed credit cards as the number one cause of debt, but it might come as a surprise to struggling students that part of their college tuition is subsidizing the multibillion-dollar world of college sports. According to research by Jeff Smith at the University of South Carolina Upstate, 227 public colleges at the NCAA Division 1 level made more than $2 billion in athletic fees from students during the 2010-2011 school year. Ironically, the colleges and universities with the higher percentages of poorer students (with large debt) are the institutions charging the highest "student fees" for sports. All students have to bear the burden of college athletic programs, but few actually benefit. Critics say this creates a "regressive tax" on low income students. | |
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laist.com
2013-06-18 18:57:00
In case you've been completely unplugged and are just tuning in now, Angelina Jolie revealed last month that she had a preventative double mastectomy. The controversial procedure nearly broke the Internet, with supporters applauding her bravery and others scorning American healthcare. Her husband Brad Pitt called her choice "absolutely heroic," but not everyone in Hollywood is as in awe of the actress - notably breast cancer survivor Melissa Etheridge. During a recent interview with the Washington Blade, the 52-year-old rocker was asked her opinion on Jolie's double mastectomy, and her sentiments did not echo those of other celebrities who lauded the 38-year-old mother of six. Etheridge said, "I wouldn't call it the brave choice." She added, "I actually think it's the most fearful choice you can make when confronting anything with cancer." | |
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truthout
2013-06-18 00:00:00
Surprise, surprise. Just when we thought the big banks couldn't hit a new low, they do. Six former employees of Bank of America have come forward, alleging that the big bank intentionally denied eligible homeowners mortgage loan modifications, and lied to those homeowners about the status of their mortgage payments and documents. Bank of America allegedly used these dirty tactics to lead homeowners into foreclosures and in-house loan modifications, both of which helped reap massive profits for BOA's bottom-line. The employees who have come forward have also said that the big bank rewarded customer service representatives with hefty cash bonuses and gift cards to popular stores when they foreclosed on homes. According to a lawsuit filed in federal court, a Bank of America employee who placed ten or more mortgage accounts into foreclosure a month could get up to a $500 bonus. | |
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Documents recently obtained by Bold Nebraska show that TransCanada - owner of the hotly-contested Keystone XL (KXL)tar sands pipeline - has colluded with an FBI/DHS Fusion Center in Nebraska, labeling non-violent activists as possible candidates for "terrorism" charges and other serious criminal charges. Further, the language in some of the documents is so vague that it could also ensnare journalists, researchers and academics, as well. TransCanada also built a roster of names and photos of specific individuals involved in organizing against the pipeline, including 350.org's Rae Breaux, Rainforest Action Network's Scott Parkin and Tar Sands Blockade's Ron Seifert. Further, every activist ever arrested protesting the pipeline's southern half is listed by name with their respective photo shown, along with the date of arrest. It'sPSYOPs-gate and "fracktivists" as "an insurgency" all over again, but this time it's another central battleground that's in play: the northern half of KXL, a proposed border-crossing pipeline whose final fate lies in the hands of President Barack Obama. The southern half of the pipeline was approved by the Obama Admin. via a March 2013 Executive Order. Together, the two pipeline halves would pumpdiluted bitumen ("dilbit") south from the Alberta tar sands toward Port Arthur, TX, where it will be refined and shipped to the global export market. Activists across North America have put up a formidable fight against both halves of the pipeline, ranging from the summer 2011 Tar Sands Action to the ongoingTar Sands Blockade. Apparently, TransCanada has followed the action closely, given the level of detail in the documents. | |
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| Secret History |
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Michael Balter
ScienceNow 2013-06-19 12:10:00
Humans have been mating with their relatives for at least 10,000 years. That's the conclusion of a new study, which finds the earliest known evidence of deliberate inbreeding - including missing teeth - among farmers who lived in what is today southern Jordan. Although inbreeding over long periods can lead to a rise in genetic defects, the team concludes that it may have helped prehistoric peoples make the transition from hunting and gathering to village life. Researchers agree that the best evidence for family ties is DNA. For example, ancient DNA from a group of Neandertal skeletons found in a Spanish caveshowed that they belonged to the same extended family. But DNA often preserves poorly, especially at early farming sites from the so-called Neolithic period in the Near East where high temperatures and burials under house floors or in shallow graves easily degrade the genetic material. So some researchers have searched for signs of family relationships in the skeletons themselves, looking for rare anomalies that might suggest shared genetic heritage. A team led by Kurt Alt, an anthropologist at the University of Mainz in Germany, examined the skeletons of individuals buried at the Neolithic site of Basta, in southern Jordan. Between about 9500 and 9000 years ago, up to 1000 early farmers lived there; the site was excavated in the 1980s and 1990s by an international team of archaeologists. At least 56 skeletons were found in one area, perhaps a graveyard. In earlier research, Alt had identified more than 100 skeletal traits that can be used to determine family ties, most of which concern features of the teeth and jaws. Although inbreeding with very close relatives - such as between brothers and sisters, parents and children, or even cousins - boosts the incidence of genetic disease, mating with even more distant family members can increase the prevalence of traits that indicate family relationships. So his team set about looking at the upper jaws, or maxillae, of the Basta skeletons, which were well preserved in 28 individuals. | |
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| Science & Technology |
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John Lawless
After a string of high-profile cases, a new agreement between scientists and the people who fund them aims to usher in a new era of 'research purity'The Independent, UK 2013-06-17 12:19:00
Britain's leading science institutions will be told on Monday that they will be stripped of many millions of pounds in research grants if they employ rogue researchers who fake the results of experiments, The Independent has learnt. The clampdown comes as retractions of scientific claims by medical journals are on course to top 500 for the first time in 2013 - having been just 20 a year in the late 1990s, when Andrew Wakefield notoriously claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism in children. In April, the UK's first researcher was jailed for falsifying data over a prolonged period. The Government is concerned that Britain's prized second place in global research behind the US will be at threatened if more fact-fabricators are exposed. It knows that hundreds of thousands of jobs could easily go to foreign rivals if British laboratories do not keep coming up with new product ideas, to be made by major multinational companies in UK factories. All of the country's 133 universites and colleges of higher education are being forced to sign a new Concordat for Research Integrity - having been warned by major fund providers that those who do not will be refused access to more than £10 billion in research grants funded each year by British taxpayers - and as much again from the private sector. A spokesman for Universities UK, which chaired negotations with the grant providers, said: "From next year, universities in the UK will have to prove compliance with the research integrity concordat in order to receive research grant. They are doing this to help demonstrate to government, business, international partners and the wider public that they can continue to have confidence in the research." Retractions of medical claims alone in 2013 - logged by the Retraction Watch blog - are certain to be more than 400, and could easily top 500. Some result from genuine mistakes, several plagiarise other scientists' work, breakthroughs that haven't been checked. But as many as one in 10 of them contain lies. | |
Comment: In an ideal world, most of the above would sound all fine and dandy, but in realty research science today been mostly corrupted and is beholden to vast, vested commercial interests.
Turning reality on its head right from the outset ,this article mentions the now infamous Dr Andrew Wakefield affair, where he warned of the dangers of the MMR vaccine and the links to autism in the Lancet (which initially accepted his paper with no qualms). Due to commercial pressure, corrupted science then set out in an attempt to destroy him and his reputation rather than stand up for the truth and integrity. Read about the despicable treatment he endured below - http://www.sott.net/article/ http://www.sott.net/article/ http://www.sott.net/article/ | |
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RT
2013-06-18 16:48:00
Mission control has instructed the crewmembers of the International Space Station (ISS) to open the hatches of the recently docked ATV-4 unmanned cargo spaceship and carry out disinfection procedures, over fears of mold and bacteria contamination. The ATV-4 (the fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle) was launched from the Kourou space center in French Guyana on June 5, and docked with Russia's Zvezda ISS module on Saturday. The hatch opening was initially planned for Monday, but was delayed. According to NASA TV, the delay was over a possible "mold and bacteria contamination" on three bags inside the cargo ship. "The level of contamination poses no risk to the crew members, however, teams want to make sure the problem is taken care of in order to protect the atmosphere aboard the space station," website Spaceflight101 reported before the opening of the hatch. | |
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| Earth Changes |
Heavy floods in southwest France have left two dead and forced the closure of the Catholic pilgrimage site in Lourdes and the evacuation of pilgrims from nearby hotels. Muddy floodwaters swirled Wednesday in the grotto where nearly 6 million believers from around the world, many gravely ill, come every year seeking miracles and healing. It has been a major pilgrimage site since a French girl's vision of the Virgin Mary there in 1858. Heavy rains around the region inundated town centers and swelled the Gave de Pau river, forcing road closures. Interior Minister Manuel Valls said on BFM television that a man in his seventies died Wednesday, swept away by the river. The Interior Ministry says it is the second person who has died in this week's rains. The spokesman for the Lourdes pilgrimage complex, Mathias Terrier said that the site in the foothills of the Pyrenees wasn't likely to reopen before the end of the week. Rescue services evacuated hundreds of people from nearby hotels. Authorities were particularly concerned with bringing weak and sick pilgrims to safety. | |
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The Extinction Protocol
On the seafloor just off of the U.S. East Coast lies a barely known world, explorations of which bring continual surprises. As recently as the mid-2000s, practically zero methane seeps - spots on the seafloor where gas leaks from the Earth's crust - were thought to exist off the East Coast; while one had been reported more than a decade ago, it was thought to be one of a kind. But in the past two years, additional studies have revealed a host of new areas of seafloor rich in seeps, said Laura Brothers, a research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. New technologies have allowed scientists to keep locating new seeps, including one that may be the largest in the world. The findings have changed geologists' understanding of the processes taking place beneath the seafloor. "These newly discovered [seafloor] communities show that there is much more seafloor methane venting then we previously thought, and suggests that there are many more seeps out there that we don't know about," Brothers said.2013-06-19 12:57:00
An even larger, previously unknown vent was found off the coast of Virginia, in research by Steve Ross, a scientist at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and Sandra Brooke, a scientist at Florida State University. Discovered near the Norfolk submarine canyon, the vent is the largest in the Atlantic, and possibly in all of the world's oceans, Ross told LiveScience. North America's continental shelf, the underwater edge of the continent that borders the Atlantic Ocean basin, is littered with underwater canyons etched by rivers thousands of years ago when the region was above sea level. | |
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The Extinction Protocol
German and Turkish scientists on Tuesday said they had pinpointed an extremely dangerous seismic zone less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the historic heart of Istanbul. Running under the Sea of Marmara just south of the city of some 15 million people, this segment of the notorious North Anatolian fault has been worryingly quiet in recent years, which may point to a buildup in tension, they wrote. "The block we identified reaches 10 kilometers (about six miles) deep along the fault zone and has displayed no seismic activity since measurements began over four years ago," said Marco Bohnhoff, a professor at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam, near Berlin. "This could be an indication that the expected Marmara earthquake could originate there."2013-06-19 12:53:00
The North Anatolian fault, created by the collision of the Anatolia Plate with the Eurasia Plate, runs 1,500 kilometers (950 miles) along northern Turkey. At the western tip of the fault, an earthquake took place in 1912 at Ganos near the Aegean Sea. On its eastern side, a domino series of earthquakes in 1939, 1942, 1951, 1967 and 1999 displaced the stress progressively westwards, bringing it ever closer to Istanbul. What is left now is a so-called earthquake gap under the Sea of Marmara, lying between the two fault stretches whose stress has been eased by the quakes. The "gap" itself, however, has not been relieved by an earthquake since 1766. Seeking a more precise view of the gap, the GFZ and Istanbul's Kandilli Earthquake Observatory set up a network of seismic monitors in the eastern part of the sea. They calculate that the Anatolian fault normally has a westward motion of between 25 and 30 millimeters (one to 1.2 inches) per year. | |
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Rachel D'Oro
A heat wave hitting Alaska may not rival the blazing heat of Phoenix or Las Vegas, but to residents of the 49th state, the days of hot weather feel like a stifling oven - or a tropical paradise. With temperatures topping 80 degrees in Anchorage, and higher in other parts of the state, people have been sweltering in a place where few homes have air conditioning.Associated Press via Yahoo News 2013-06-19 12:38:00
They're sunbathing and swimming at local lakes, hosing down their dogs and cleaning out supplies of fans in at least one local hardware store. Mid-June normally brings high temperatures in the 60s in Anchorage, and just a month ago, it was still snowing. The weather feels like anywhere but Alaska to 18-year-old Jordan Rollison, who was sunbathing with three friends and several hundred others lolling at the beach of Anchorage's Goose Lake. "I love it, I love it," Rollison said. "I've never seen a summer like this, ever." State health officials even took the unusual step of posting a Facebook message reminding people to slather on the sunscreen. Some people aren't so thrilled, complaining that it's just too hot. "It's almost unbearable to me," said Lorraine Roehl, who has lived in Anchorage for two years after moving here from the community of Sand Point in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. "I don't like being hot. I'm used to cool ocean breeze." | |
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P. Solomon Banda
Associated Press via Yahoo News 2013-06-18 00:00:00
Radar indicated a tornado briefly touched down Tuesday over the east runways of Denver International Airport, where thousands of people took shelter in bathrooms, stairwells and other safe spots until the dangerous weather passed, officials said. Airport spokeswoman Laura Coale reported no damage. Nine flights were diverted elsewhere during a tornado warning that lasted about 40 minutes, she said. A 97 mph wind gust was measured at the airport before communication with instruments there was briefly knocked out, said National Weather Service meteorologist Kyle Fredin. Chris Polk, a construction foreman, was working on a renovation project just outside the airport's main concourse when he got the tornado warning at 2:15 p.m., looked up and saw a funnel cloud. He and his crew ran inside and took shelter with some 100 people, including luggage-toting passengers, inside a basement break room as tornado sirens sounded. "It got pretty crazy around here," Polk said. Asked whether he was nervous when he spotted the funnel cloud, he shrugged. "No, I'm from Missouri," he said. Everyone inside the break room was calm, Polk added. | |
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Douglas Main
LiveScience 2013-06-18 16:26:00
A very large dead zone, an area of water with no or very little oxygen, is expected to form in the Gulf of Mexico this year - a trend in recent years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Computer models put together by scientists predict that the zone will cover an area between 7,286 and 8,561 square miles (18,871 to 22,173 square kilometers) this summer, the typical time for such zones to form. The large end of the estimate is roughly the size of the state of New Jersey, and would be the largest dead zone ever recorded. The biggest one recorded to date, in 2002, reached 8,481 square miles (21,966 square km). Meanwhile, models predict the dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay will be smaller than usual. | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Koin News
2013-06-16 00:00:00
A flaming meteor in the night sky could be seen in Oregon - with reported sightings from Marion to Washington counties - Saturday night. Note that it's the white orb to the left of the larger light, which is a street light. OMSI Planetarium Manager Jim Todd told KOIN 6 News the meteor was a combination of a "fireball and space junk." Todd said the fireball was visible for 7 seconds. He described it as being "a minus 10 on the brightness scale," which according to the International Comet Quarterly is nearly as bright as the full moon. | |
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Tim Sherno
An Arlington Minnesota couple discovered a strange rock in one of their corn fields.KSTP 2013-06-18 18:29:00 Bruce Lilienthal says he was removing rocks when he discovered the large flat object, "It was just party sticking out of the ground. I picked it up and noticed it was a lot heavier than what it looked." The Lilienthals say they had some time to research the strange stone, and discovered that the object was probably not a stone, but a meteorite instead. A representative from the University of Minnesota drove out to the farm to verify that the rock is a meteorite. The expert informed the Lilienthals that there was one found about three miles away from their farm 120 years ago. There's no way of knowing when the meteorite the Lilienthals found made landfall. The meteorite weighs in at 33 pounds. |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Kris Gunnars
Authority Nutrition 2013-06-17 14:35:00
For decades, many scientists and the media have been waging a war against fat. The idea that fat caused harm was never based on any facts and has now been proven to be completely false. But yet this bias against perfectly healthy foods lingers on... foods that have been demonized for the sole reason that they are naturally high in saturated fats. Here are 4 foods that were considered "dangerous" due to their fat content, but are actually extremely healthy. | |
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Mike Archer
The Conversation 2011-12-16 06:34:00
The ethics of eating red meat have been grilled recently by critics who question its consequences for environmental health and animal welfare. But if you want to minimise animal suffering and promote more sustainable agriculture, adopting a vegetarian diet might be the worst possible thing you could do. Renowned ethicist Peter Singer says if there is a range of ways of feeding ourselves, we should choose the way that causes the least unnecessary harm to animals. Most animal rights advocates say this means we should eat plants rather than animals. It takes somewhere between two to ten kilos of plants, depending on the type of plants involved, to produce one kilo of animal. Given the limited amount of productive land in the world, it would seem to some to make more sense to focus our culinary attentions on plants, because we would arguably get more energy per hectare for human consumption. Theoretically this should also mean fewer sentient animals would be killed to feed the ravenous appetites of ever more humans. But before scratching rangelands-produced red meat off the "good to eat" list for ethical or environmental reasons, let's test these presumptions. Published figures suggest that, in Australia, producing wheat and other grains results in:
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John Cotter,
The Canadian Press 2013-06-16 12:01:00
Experts say it may not be possible to eliminate chronic wasting disease in deer and elk in Canada. The fatal infectious disease is so well established in Saskatchewan and Alberta that the federal government and some provinces are rethinking how to deal with what is commonly known as CWD. In 2005, Ottawa announced a national strategy to control chronic wasting disease in the hope of finding ways to eradicate it. Now the emphasis is shifting to preventing CWD from spreading, especially in the wild. "We have to realize that we may not be able to eradicate this disease currently from Canada, given that we don't have any effective tools, so we may be looking at switching from eradication to control," said Penny Greenwood, national manager of domestic disease control for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The agency says it is working with the provinces and the game-ranching industry to come up with a better plan, perhaps by next spring. "We feel that the current program that we have had in place for chronic wasting disease ... is not effective in achieving its goals," Greenwood said. CWD is caused by abnormal proteins called prions and is similar to mad cow disease. There is no vaccine against it. Symptoms can take months or years to develop. They include weight loss, tremors, lack of co-ordination, paralysis and, ultimately, death. | |
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Jane E. Brody
The New York Times 2013-06-17 11:01:00
Think you do just fine on five or six hours of shut-eye? Chances are, you are among the many millions who unwittingly shortchange themselves on sleep. Research shows that most people require seven or eight hours of sleep to function optimally. Failing to get enough sleep night after night can compromise your health and may even shorten your life. From infancy to old age, the effects of inadequate sleep can profoundly affect memory, learning, creativity, productivity and emotional stability, as well as your physical health. According to sleep specialists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, among others, a number of bodily systems are negatively affected by inadequate sleep: the heart, lungs and kidneys; appetite, metabolism and weight control; immune function and disease resistance; sensitivity to pain; reaction time; mood; and brain function. Poor sleep is also a risk factor for depression and substance abuse, especially among people with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Anne Germain, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. People with PTSD tend to relive their trauma when they try to sleep, which keeps their brains in a heightened state of alertness. | |
Comment: For some tips on getting a better night's sleep visit our forum thread:
Are You Getting Enough Sleep? Sleeping properly? | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Emma Innes
People in dim light are better at solving creative insight problemsThe Daily Mail, UK 2013-06-19 14:12:00 Those in normal light are no more creative than those in bright light And we can become more creative just by thinking about being in dim light Dimming the lights can increase your creativity levels, new research reveals. German researchers found that people sitting in dim light are significantly better able to solve creative insight problems than those working under normal or bright lights. However, people working under normal lights are no more creative than those in very bright light.
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Nsikan Akpan, PhD
Medical Daily 2013-06-18 16:02:00
How much of this world does your mind actually see? Potentially more than you think, according to series of studies on a blind man whose brain can still record and respond to the facial expressions from others without him being aware of it. These observations, published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggest the existence of visual brain pathways that register hostile or unhappy visages without our conscious knowledge. The man in question, who the study's authors refer to as Patient TN, suffered two strokes in 2003 that almost completely eradicated his primary visual cortex. This brain region, located at the back of the skull, is responsible for processing visual input from the eyes and shipping it to the rest of the brain. Thus, Patient TN's blindness is caused by a faulty brain circuitry rather than eye damage. Indeed, one could assume that his eyes are still transmitting visual information to his brain, but "nobody is home" to collect the message. Without his primary visual cortex, you might have predicted that Patient TN should be utterly blind, but follow-up experiments at the University of Geneva suggested the contrary. In 2005, neuropsychologist Dr. Alan Pegna and colleagues placed a series of pictures with facial expressions in front of Patient TN's eyes and asked him to guess the emotions being portrayed in the photos. Amazingly Patient TN could accurately distinguish between happy and angry faces 60 percent of the time, which is a success rate that could not be attributed to mere chance. | |
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Susie Steiner
The Guardian 2012-02-01 18:40:00
A nurse has recorded the most common regrets of the dying, and among the top ones is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'. What would your biggest regret be if this was your last day of life? There was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'. Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again." Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware: | |
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| High Strangeness |
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Stuart Minting
A Labour politician has defended his beliefs in extra-terrestrial life - after claiming to have fathered a chilThe Northern Echo, UK 2013-06-17 22:00:00
d with an alien. Married father-of-three Simon Parkes, who represents Stakesby on Whitby Town Council, said his wife had rowed with him after revealing he had a child called Zarka with an alien he refers to as the Cat Queen. The 53-year-old driving instructor said he has sexual relations with the alien about four times a year. "What will happen is that we will hold hands and I will say 'I'm ready' and then the technology I don't understand will take us up to a craft orbiting the earth," he explained. "My wife found out about it and was very unhappy, clearly. That caused a few problems, but it is not on a human level, so I don't see it as wrong. Councillor Parkes, who also claims his "real mother" is a 9ft green alien with eight fingers, said people only claim he is mad because they have not shared his experiences and that the encounters don't affect his work on behalf of Whitby residents. | |
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Jamie Brown
Northern Star, Australia 2013-06-15 12:20:00
Call it what you will: A Yeren, a Yeti or a Yowie, but the fact remains that people the world over keep seeing these big hairy buggers lurking in the night. The latest sighting took place recently just north of Bexhill when a Lismore resident and music videographer spied the classic creature crossing a moonlit Bangalow Road. The witness, who has asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, said he was driving back home from a night of filming at Eltham and had just turned onto the Bangalow Road heading for Lismore when he spied a creature jumping a barbed wire paddock fence before briefly pausing at the edge of the road. Suddenly the beast moved across the two lanes of bitumen, raising his arm to apparently shield its eyes from the bright high beam glare of the approaching car. "I would have seen it for between 20 and 30 seconds," the witness recalled. "It was really moving at the time. It leapt the fence no problem. "All I can remember was seeing this large black object with a solid build, lanky legs and long lanky arms. "It wasn't clothed ... it wasn't wearing clothes like a human." | |
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