terça-feira, 29 de dezembro de 2009

Multi - Dimensional Vortexes and White Holes

December 22, 2009
by Lewis Brackett


Several researchers have discussed multi - dimensional vortexes as being responsible for both Terran and Galactic phenomena. Top experts insist that there are as many as 14 dimensions that exist parallel to our own. One of the evidences of this is when the tiniest parts of matter are observed, they seem to be transient in our existence. They seem to fade in and out of our dimension. They are out of phase with us, either in the past or future.

Some researchers theorize that these vortexes are responsible for phenomena such as the Bermuda triangle. Other smaller vortexes may explain some UFO phenomena. These vortexes occasionally flare out from the Planets and the sun just like the Solar Prominences on the Sun that we CAN see. The Solar prominences may even be caused by these vortexes. We certainly don’t otherwise know what really causes them.

Science is dreadfully conceited, just like scientists 100 years ago who wanted to close the patent office because everything had been invented.

One of the scientifically humorous things that science has come up with recently is Dark Matter and energy. According to these experts :) 90% of all matter in the universe is composed of dark matter. Gentlemen have yet to show me that 90% of the milk in my glass is really Dark Milk from a Dark Cow.

Gentlemen insist that since they see evidences of motion of distant galaxies that cant be explained by our laws of gravity that this proves the existence of dark matter.

Really, ladies, all that proves is that your knowledge of science in incomplete. There is science and forces out there we don’t yet know anything about. We should be searching for them. Otherwise the next generation will be laughing at you.

General Relativity allows for passage both to and from other dimensions. This has made Astrophysics very nervous since White Holes were first theorized in the 1970’s as they give a perfectly acceptable alternative to the big bang.

Cosmology allows matter and energy to exit out Space time Continuum via Black Holes. This same cosmology allows Matter and energy to enter our Space time Continuum through White Holes. Both Black and White holes have event horizons where matter is in a timeless state until it is either expelled from our continuum as in the case of black holes or injected into our continuum from a white hole.

Instead of the Big Bang theory, it is acceptable in Einsteinium physics for the matter in our galaxies to have entered our universe from a multitude of White holes.

It is also conceivable that our galaxies are being carried along by these vortexes until they reach a spot where they will disappear down the drain so to speak into a parallel continuum...

As in much of “science,” Dr Hawking said, it all depends on which assumptions you base your conclusions upon.

Dr. DO Russell Humphreys wrote the book “Starlight and Time” exploring this phenomena.



Source: http://www.ufodigest.com

Top Cuban Official Says Obama Lied in Copenhagen

December 2009
By Will Weissert


Cuba's foreign minister called President Barack Obama an "imperial and arrogant" liar Monday for his conduct at the U.N. climate conference, a reflection of the communist island's increasingly fiery verbal attacks on the U.S. government.

Bruno Rodriguez spent an hour and a half lambasting Obama's behavior in Copenhagen, telling a news conference, "at this summit, there was only imperial, arrogant Obama, who does not listen, who imposes his positions and even threatens developing countries."

He called the summit "a fallacy, a farce" and said Washington used back-room deals and strong-arm tactics to foist on the world a deal that he labeled "undemocratic" and "suicidal" because it urges — but does not require — major polluters to make deeper emissions cuts.


Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez gestures during a press conference in Havana, Monday, Dec. 21, 2009. Rodriguez called President Barack Obama an 'imperial and arrogant' liar Monday for his conduct at the U.N. climate conference, a reflection of the communist island's increasingly fiery verbal attacks on the U.S. government. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Rodriguez also said Cuba and other poor nations have refused to recognize the agreement because they weren't permitted to participate in its development.

He singled out comments Obama made during a news conference in Copenhagen, when the U.S. president said no agreement had yet been reached but he was confident one would before the summit ended. "Obama knew he was lying, that he was deceiving public opinion," the foreign minister said.

When asked if Cuba was serious about forging a climate agreement given that President Raul Castro declared Copenhagen a failure days before it ended, Rodriguez said, "Cuba's prestige is well-recognized in international negotiations."

"It was an open secret that countries would not reach an agreement," he said.

Rodriguez would not answer questions about the status of an American citizen who was detained in Cuba on Dec. 5 while working as a U.S. government contractor.

Castro first publicly mentioned the detention Sunday, when he told the Cuban Parliament that the American was arrested for distributing illegal satellite communications equipment.

"The United States won't quit trying to destroy the revolution," Castro said, referring to the armed rebellion that brought his brother Fidel to power on New Year's Day 1959.

"In the past few weeks we have witnessed the stepping up of the new administration's efforts in this area," he said, adding that the arrest "demonstrates that the enemy is as active as ever."
American diplomats in Cuba have requested — but not yet received — Cuba's permission for consular access to the detainee, whose name has not been released. Rodriguez refused to say whether his office would grant the request.

Rodriguez's comments Monday echoed remarks by former President Fidel Castro, who in a weekend opinion column called Obama's speech in Copenhagen "deceitful, demagogic and full of ambiguities."

Last week, the elder Castro, who stepped down as head of state in February 2008, wrote that Washington is looking to solidify its control over Latin America and that Obama's "friendly smile and African-American face" hide his government's sinister true intentions for the region.

Raul Castro over the weekend mentioned recent war games Cuba conducted to prepare for a U.S. invasion and hinted that the contractor's arrest shows further American aggression against his country is a real possibility.

"I just want to note that here we have a people who are ready to protect, at any price, the successes of the revolution," he said. "I'd advise one and all that they cease provocations of this type."


Related





Article from: YahooNews.com

Source: http://www.redicecreations.com

UPDATE: Israel Admits Harvesting Organs Without OK

December 21, 2009
By Mark Lavie

Israel has admitted that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without the permission of families.

The issue emerged with the publication of an interview with the then-head of Israel's Abu Kabir forensic institute, Dr. Jehuda Hiss. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic, who released it because of a huge controversy last summer over an allegation by a Swedish newspaper that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. Israel hotly denied the charge.

Parts of the interview were broadcast on Israel's Channel 2 TV over the weekend. In it, Dr. Hiss said, "We started to harvest corneas ... . Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family."

Read the full story at: www.washingtontimes.com

sábado, 19 de dezembro de 2009

Earth's north magnetic pole racing towards Russia due to core flux

December 2009
From: newkerala.com




A new research has determined that Earth's north magnetic pole is racing toward Russia at almost 40 miles (64 kilometers) a year due to magnetic changes in the planet's core.

The core is too deep for scientists to directly detect its magnetic field. But researchers can infer the field's movements by tracking how Earth's magnetic field has been changing at the surface and in space.

Now, according to a report in National Geographic News, newly analyzed data suggest that there's a region of rapidly changing magnetism on the core's surface, possibly being created by a mysterious 'plume' of magnetism arising from deeper in the core.

'It's this region that could be pulling the magnetic pole away from its long-time location in northern Canada,' said Arnaud Chulliat, a geophysicist at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in France.

Magnetic north, which is the place where compass needles actually point, is near but not exactly in the same place as the geographic North Pole.

Right now, magnetic north is close to Canada's Ellesmere Island.

Navigators have used magnetic north for centuries to orient themselves when they are far from recognizable landmarks.

Although global positioning systems have largely replaced such traditional techniques, many people still find compasses useful for getting around underwater and underground where GPS satellites can't communicate.

The magnetic north pole had moved little from the time scientists first located it in 1831.

Then in 1904, the pole began shifting northeastward at a steady pace of about 9 miles (15 kilometers) a year.

In 1989 it sped up again, and in 2007 scientists confirmed that the pole is now galloping toward Siberia at 34 to 37 miles (55 to 60 kilometers) a year.

A rapidly shifting magnetic pole means that magnetic-field maps need to be updated more often to allow compass users to make the crucial adjustment from magnetic north to true North.

Geologists think Earth has a magnetic field because the core is made up of a solid iron center surrounded by rapidly spinning liquid rock.

This creates a 'dynamo' that drives our magnetic field.

Scientists had long suspected that, since the molten core is constantly moving, changes in its magnetism might be affecting the surface location of magnetic north.

Although the new research seems to back up this idea, Chulliat is skeptical whether magnetic north will eventually cross into Russia.


Related




Source: http://www.redicecreations.com

First Commercial 3-D bio-printer Makes Human Tissue and Organs

December 10, 2009



Invetech, an innovator in new product development and custom automation for the biomedical, industrial and consumer markets, today announced that it has delivered the world's first production model 3D bio-printer to Organovo, developers of the proprietary NovoGen bioprinting technology. Organovo will supply the units to research institutions investigating human tissue repair and organ replacement.

Dr. Fred Davis, president of Invetech, which has offices in San Diego and Melbourne, said, “Building human organs cell-by-cell was considered science fiction not that long ago. Through this clever combination of technology and science we have helped Organovo develop an instrument that will improve people’s lives, making the regenerative medicine that Organovo provides accessible to people around the world.”

Keith Murphy, CEO of Organovo, based in San Diego, said the units represent a breakthrough because they provide for the first time a flexible technology platform for organizations working on many different types of tissue construction and organ replacement.

”Scientists and engineers can use the 3-D bio printers to enable placing cells of almost any type into a desired pattern in 3-D,” said Murphy. “Researchers can place liver cells on a preformed scaffold, support kidney cells with a co-printed scaffold, or form adjacent layers of epithelial and stromal soft tissue that grow into a mature tooth. Ultimately the idea would be for surgeons to have tissue on demand for various uses, and the best way to do that is get a number of bio-printers into the hands of researchers and give them the ability to make three dimensional tissues on demand.”

The 3-D bio-printers include an intuitive software interface that allows engineers to build a model of the tissue construct before the printer commences the physical constructions of the organs cell-by-cell using automated, laser-calibrated print heads.

To help them develop the 3D bio-printers, Organovo selected Invetech in May 2009 as their technology development partner. “We selected Invetech because of their capabilities for sophisticated engineering and automation, cultural fit as a long term partner and their consideration towards protecting Organovo’s bioprinting IP and maximizing our commercial return on the program. They have good processes for product development and project management, and it was apparent that project execution would be handled very well. Invetech really offered the best overall package.” said Mr. Murphy.

Invetech was asked to design and develop a highly integrated, extremely reliable and simple to use 3D bio-printer system which could then be transferred to manufacture and commercial sale. Because of its history with precision design, robotics and manufacturing products, Invetech was able to combine prior art with new ideas to come up with a development plan that met Organovo’s budget and design goals. The process advanced smoothly and on schedule with Invetech teams in Melbourne and its San Diego office, not far from the Organovo office.

The printer, developed by Invetech, fits inside a standard biosafety cabinet for sterile use. It includes two print heads, one for placing human cells, and the other for placing a hydrogel, scaffold, or support matrix. One of the most complex challenges in the development of the printer was being able to repeatedly position the capillary tip, attached to the print head, to within microns. This was essential to ensure that the cells are placed in exactly the right position. Invetech developed a computer controlled, laser-based calibration system to achieve the required repeatability.

Invetech plan to ship a number of 3D bio-printers to Organovo during 2010 and 2011 as a part of the instrument development program. Organovo will be placing the printers globally with researchers in centers of excellence for medical research.


Related

Invetech

Organovo



Source: http://rdmag.com

terça-feira, 8 de dezembro de 2009

It's a return to the Star Chamber as Europe finally tramples Magna Carta into the dust

December 8, 2009




If you have a spare evening, read the Magna Carta. It is a restraining document. What leaps out from the pages of Langton’s text is the intent to protect subjects from overweening authority (in this case, Norman-French despotism), by restoring ancient freedoms.

I have a copy dated MDCCLXVI (1766) left to me by my father, and to him by his father. The customary law is Saxon, Celtic, even Visigoth.

"All men in our Kingdom have and hold the aforesaid liberties and rights, well and in peace, freely and quietly, fully and wholly, for ever."

"No free man shall be taken or imprisoned, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, unless by lawful judgment of his peers."

"No constable or bailiff shall take another man’s corn or chattels without immediate payment, nor take any horses or any man’s timber for castles."

"Any one may leave the Kingdom and return at will, unless in time of war, when he may be restrained for some short space for the common good".

Here is a nice one, as the Square Mile falls under the control EU authorities with "binding powers".

"The City of London shall have all its ancient liberties and free customs." Merchants should be free from "evil tolls".

The founding texts of the English Constitution – charter, petition, bill of rights – have one theme in common: they create nothing. They assert old freedoms; they restore lost harmony. In this they guided America’s Revolution, itself a codification of early colonial liberties.

Europe’s Constitution – the Lisbon Treaty, as we know it – began as a sort of Magna Carta. EU leaders agreed at Laeken in 2001 that the Project needed restraining after Danes and Swedes rejected EMU, the Irish rejected Nice, and youth torched Gothenburg in anti-EU riots.

People do not want Europe inveigling its way into "every nook and cranny of life", they said. Needless to say, insiders hijacked the process. A Hegelian monstrosity emerged. The text says much about the heightened powers of EU bodies, but scarcely a word to restrain EU bailiffs and constables.

The Charter of Fundamental Rights – legally binding in the UK as of Tuesday, when Lisbon came into force – asserts that the EU has the authority to circumscribe all rights and freedoms.

The text was modified after I threw a tantrum in the Daily Telegraph during the drafting process, comparing it to the "general interest" clause used by Fascist regimes to crush dissent in the 1930s.

Article 52 now reads: "Subject to the principle of proportionality, limitations may be made only if they are necessary and genuinely meet objectives of general interest recognised by the Union."

Don’t be misled by this inverted wording. What it states is that the EU may indeed limit rights in the "general interest". In other words, our Magna Carta has been superceeded.

It is the European Court (ECJ) that decides what is "proportional" or "necessary", and it cannot be trusted. The ECJ behaves like the Star Chamber of Charles I, as I learned following three cases where it rubber-stamped the abuse of state power against whistleblowers Bernard Connolly and Marta Andreasen, and German journalist Hans-Martin Tillack.

Mr Tillack was arrested by Belgian police and held incommunicado for ten hours. Incommunicado on the basis of a fabricated allegation by two EU officials. Police went through his notes and computers, identifying his network of informants inside the EU apparatus.

Mr Tillack took the case to the ECJ. It ruled in favour of the system. It always does.

This is our new Supreme Court under Lisbon, its jurisdiction vastly expanded from narrow commercial law (Pillar I) to the breadth of Union law (Pillars I, II, and III).

As my colleague Daniel Hannan writes, Lisbon gives the EU "legal personality" to enter treaties as a state, and contains an escalator clause that lets it aggregate further power without need for ratification by national parliaments – it draws charisma (papal usage) from itself.

French and Dutch voters rejected this leap from a treaty organisation to a unitary state when given a chance in 2005. The revamped version was slipped through by parliaments – except in Ireland, where voters said No, until coerced by events into acquiescence. In Britain, Labour did this knowing with absolute certainty that citizens would have voted No. You can conjure a Burkean argument to justify the denial of a referendum, but that is to traduce Burke.

"Yes’ votes are always pocketed in perpetuity: `No’ votes are good only until the weather changes. Those who feign not to see the asymmetry of this are being cynical.

By acting in this way, the EU has crossed a subtle line. It is no longer legitimate.

So what can a dissenting citizen do? Do we retreat into realpolitik, betting that the EU Project can go only so far before it provokes into an even bigger backlash from Europe’s tribes, and will in any case spend much of the next decade dealing with bitter fall-out from a currency that pits North against South?

Or do we let out a primordial scream, and agitate for total withdrawal from the EU – knowing that our backs are pressed against the wall, that this Government has spent us to the brink of a debt-compound spiral? Morgan Stanley has warned of a Gilts crisis next year. So have others. This is a perilous for time for heroics.

Makes you weep.

David Icke

Origins and Symbolism of the EU


Part I



Part II

Source: telegraph.co.uk
Source: http://www.redicecreations.com

Egypt’s Cave Underworld Under Investigation

December 2009


Egyptian archaeological team move in to find answers

Egypt’s leading Egyptologist, Dr Zahi Hawass, has revealed that an excavation team under his charge are investigating an ancient tomb at the centre of claims regarding the alleged discovery of a cave underworld beneath the Pyramids of Giza.

In August British writer and explorer Andrew Collins announced that he had rediscovered the entrance to a previously unexplored cave system, entered via a mysterious tomb several hundred meters west of the Great Pyramid.

The cave entrance was found following clues left in the 200-year-old memoirs of British diplomat and explorer Henry Salt, who recorded how in 1817 he and Italian explorer Giovanni Caviglia had investigated cave “catacombs” at Giza for a distance of “several hundred yards” before coming across a “spacious” chamber.

This chamber linked to three others of equal size, from which went various labyrinthine passages, one of which the Italian later explored for a distance of “300 feet further”.

Dr Hawass, Secretary General for Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has now confirmed that he has ordered an all-Egyptian team to explore the tomb at the centre of the controversy.

“We are clearing this system now, and it is a Late Period catacomb, like many others around Egypt,” he stated this week. “There is no mystery about it, and there is no connection with esoteric topics. We will publish our results as part of our normal process.”

While applauding Dr Hawass’s new interest in the site, Collins remains sceptical of his motives. “We knew in August that he had started clearing the tomb,” he said. “The excavations began almost immediately after knowledge of the cave discovery hit the internet.”

Collins is also unconvinced by Hawass’s explanation of what he calls the “catacomb”. “Does his use of the term ‘system’ now suggest that he has found and entered the caves, which he previously denied even existed? he asks. “My colleagues and I have examined photographic evidence of dynastic catacombs throughout Egypt, and these all appear to be carved by human hands.

“Those at Giza are natural, and penetrate the bedrock for many hundreds of metres, perhaps following the course of local geological faulting.”

Although Dr Hawass suggests there is no mystery surrounding the “catacomb”, Collins suspects that the caves extend beneath the Second Pyramid, where ancient tradition puts the legendary tomb of Tomb of Hermes, Egypt’s legendary founder.

“This has never been found,” he added, “So perhaps it is still there, awaiting discovery, somewhere close to where Salt and Caviglia reached nearly 200 years ago.”

Collins book Beneath the Pyramids, published last month, tells the story of his discovery of the natural cave system. He has also released a YouTube video showing his exploration of the caves in 2008.



For more on the discovery of Giza’s cave underworld, go to www.andrewcollins.com, or read the full story in Andrew Collins book Beneath the Pyramids (4th Dimension Press, 2009).

Andrew Collins can be contacted via Jennie Taylor Martin of 4th Dimension Press at jennie.taylor.martin@edgarcayce.org, or via his website www.andrewcollins.com .



Intel Wants Brain Implants in Its Customers' Heads by 2020

November 20, 2009
By Jeremy Hsu


Researchers expect brain waves to operate computers, TVs and cell phones

Mind Trip Intel wants into your brain Warner Bros

If the idea of turning consumers into true cyborgs sounds creepy, don't tell Intel researchers. Intel's Pittsburgh lab aims to develop brain implants that can control all sorts of gadgets directly via brain waves by 2020.

The scientists anticipate that consumers will adapt quickly to the idea, and indeed crave the freedom of not requiring a keyboard, mouse, or remote control for surfing the Web or changing channels. They also predict that people will tire of multi-touch devices such as our precious iPhones, Android smart phones and even Microsoft's wacky Surface Table.

Turning brain waves into real-world tech action still requires some heavy decoding of brain activity. The Intel team has already made use of fMRI brain scans to match brain patterns with similar thoughts across many test subjects.

Plenty of other researchers have also tinkered in this area. Toyota recently demoed a wheelchair controlled with brainwaves, and University of Utah researchers have created a wireless brain transmitter that allows monkeys to control robotic arms.

There are still more implications to creating a seamless brain interface, besides having more cyborgs running around. If scientists can translate brain waves into specific actions, there's no reason they could not create a virtual world with a full spectrum of activity tied to those brain waves.

That's right -- we're seeing Matrix creep.


Source: http://www.popsci.com

Antarctica Was Oasis for Life During “Great Dying” 250 Million Years Ago

December 3, 2009


Today it’s tempting to think of Antarctica as an icy wasteland, hospitable for penguins and seals but not much else. However, before the continent was covered by a permanent ice sheet, it may have been a refuge from a world in chaos, according to findings published in a journal called Naturwissenschaften.

Jörg Fröbisch of Chicago’s Field Museum says that a distant relative of mammals, a cat-sized herbivore called Kombuisia antarctica survived the Permian-Triassic Extinction 250 million years ago by migrating from southern Africa to Antarctica. At the time of the end-Permian extinction, Antarctica was some distance north of its present location, warmer than it is today, and not covered with permanent glaciers [The Telegraph].

Scientists actually possessed the K. antarctica fossils for three decades before this paper was published, but didn’t bother with this question because identifying the animals wasn’t the reason for collecting the fossils. The fossil hoard had been assembled for the American Museum of Natural History as evidence of the existence of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea, in which all today’s continents were locked together in one land mass [New Scientist].

Because scientists have turned up no vertebrate fossils in Antarctica from before the “Great Dying” 250 million years ago, Fröbisch’s team is confident that K. antarctica migrated there across Pangaea in response to the changing world, rather than having lived there all along. That jibes with what scientists are seeing now—species on the move in response to the changing climate.


Related

  • DISCOVER: The Day Everything Died, an account of the scientific fight over what really happened 250 million years ago.


Source: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com

Machine Converts CO2 into Gasoline, Diesel, and Jet Fuel

November 23, 2009
by Lisa Zyga


Sandia CR5 Sandia researcher Rich Diver assembles a prototype device intended to chemically reenergize carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, which ultimately could become the building block to synthesize a liquid combustible fuel.

Photo by Randy Montoya




Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have built a machine that uses the sun's energy to convert carbon dioxide waste from power plants into transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The system could provide an alternative to carbon sequestration; instead of permanently storing CO2 underground, the CO2 could be recycled and put to use.

A prototype of the machine, which was invented by Sandia researcher Rich Diver, was tested recently for the first time.

Called the Counter-Rotating-Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5), the cylindrical machine consists of two chambers on the sides and 14 rotating rings in the center. The outer edges of the rings are made of iron oxide. When the scientists heat the inside of one chamber to 1,500C with a solar concentrator, the iron oxide undergoes a thermo-chemical reaction where it gives up oxygen molecules. As the rings rotate (at one revolution per minute), the hot side approaches the opposite chamber and begins to cool down. When carbon dioxide is pumped into this chamber, the retrieves oxygen molecules from the carbon dioxide, transforming it into carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide could then serve as a building block to create a liquid combustible fuel.

Diver originally designed the machine to generate hydrogen without using electrolysis. By substituting water for the in the second chamber, the researchers can make the machine produce hydrogen. Also, by mixing the resulting hydrogen with , they can produce syngas.

It will probably take 15-20 years before the technology is ready for the market, with the biggest challenge being to increase the system's efficiency. The researchers' goal is to achieve an efficiency of a few percent, which is about twice as efficient as photosynthesis' real-world efficiency of 1%. One way to increase efficiency is to develop new ceramic composites that release at lower temperatures.

"Ultimately, we believe we have to get in the range of 10% sunlight-to-fuels, and we're a long way from doing that," said James Miller, a chemical engineer with Sandia's advanced materials laboratory.

via: Technology Review



© 2009 PhysOrg.com
Source: http://www.physorg.com

VIDEO: Smart Dust is Already in our Environment

December 2, 2009





Smartdust is a hypothetical wireless network of tiny microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS), robots, or devices, that can detect (for example) light, temperature, or vibration.

The devices, or motes, will eventually be the size of a grain of sand, or even a dust particle, with each mote having self-contained sensing, computation, communication and power.


Link:

When clustered together, these motes automatically create highly flexible, low-power networks with applications ranging from climate control systems to entertainment devices that interact with information appliances.

The smartdust concept was introduced by Kristofer S. J. Pister (University of California) in 2001, though the same ideas existed in science fiction before then (The Invincible, 1964). A recent review discusses various techniques to take smartdust in sensor networks beyond millimeter dimensions to the micrometre level.

Some attribute the concepts behind smart dust to a project at PARC called Smart Matter.

Smartdust devices will be based on sub-voltage and deep-sub-voltage nanoelectronics and include the micro power sources with all solid state impulse supercapacitors (nanoionic supercapacitors).

The recent development of nanoradios may be employed in the implementation of smartdust as a usable technology.

A typical application scenario is scattering a hundred of these sensors around a building or around a hospital to monitor temperature or humidity, track patient movements, or inform of disasters, such as earthquakes. In the military, they can perform as a remote sensor chip to track enemy movements, detect poisonous gas or radioactivity. The ease and low cost of such applications have raised privacy concerns. The possibility that a 'swarm' designed to self-replicate and evolve to solve a problem might progress beyond our control has also raised safety concerns in science fiction stories, such as Prey by Michael Crichton. See also self-replicating machines in fiction. This possibility comprises an end of the world scenario known as grey goo.

Read more: Smartdust



Red Ice Radio

Sofia Smallstorm - Chemtrails, Nanotechnology & The Artificial Environment

Kevin Warwick - Artificial Intelligence & The Rise of the Machines in 2020



Related




Source: http://www.redicecreations.com

The Top 10 Brain Foods that make you Smarter and Healthier

By Jillian McMullen
Source: Health Source Magazine




When it comes to food, you have a wealth of delicious choices. And each one not only tastes good but also supplies unique health benefits. From blueberries to dark chocolate, leading nutritionists and physicians are pointing to certain foods that enhance brain power and, they say, a heart-healthy lifestyle.

Although theres no conclusive research about the healthful brain benefits of particular supplements, food sources rich in vitamin E and Omega 3 fatty acids may provide benefit, says Jillian McMullen, R.D., LD/N, Outpatient Clinical Dietician with Mayo Clinic.

Vitamin E-rich foods include vegetable oils, nuts, seeds, green leafy vegetables, and whole grains. Omega 3-rich foods include fish, walnuts and flax seeds.

We also know that adequate amounts of B vitamins are essential for brain function, says McMullen. Some studies suggest a protective role of vitamins B9 (folic acid) and B12, but more research is needed before we can recommend these supplements. It doesnt hurt to eat foods rich in folic acid such as green, leafy vegetables, fortified breads and cereals, and dried beans, as well as those chocked full of vitamin B12 like fish, meat, eggs, cheese and chicken.

It's All About Balance

Theres no denying that as we age, our body (and brain) ages right along with us. Getting older brings some risk of cognitive problems such as Alzheimers disease or dementia. Theres also increased brain function risk from certain diseases like hypertension, diabetes and obesity that can cause damage to the brain.

Theoretically, we can control these diseases and keep our brain healthy unlike old age or genetic factors that we cant control, says Floyd Willis, M.D., family medicine practitioner and creator of Mayo Clinics LiveWell. ThinkWell. program.

It all ties together, Willis says. People who have the most risk of strokes are those with hypertension, diabetes and obesity. Often, people dont associate the truism that as goes the heart, so goes the brain (and kidney). The impetus of the Mayo LiveWell. ThinkWell. healthy brain program is about maintaining a healthy balance and healthy lifestyle.

Dr. Willis created the community outreach program offered through Mayos Memory Disorder Clinic to educate African-Americans about healthy brain aging and memory disorders. African-Americans may have higher risk for Alzheimers disease because they have a higher incidence of some medical conditions associated with dementia, according to the Alzheimers Association. The program provides information to seniors and their families about memory disorders and brain aging, including tips on how to keep the mind healthy.

Research is showing that you can increase your chances of maintaining a healthy brain well into old age if you add super foods to your daily diet. Blueberries have been found to help protect the brain and animal studies have shown that diets rich in blueberries significantly improved both the learning capacity and motor skills of aging rats, making them mentally equivalent to much younger rats.

But, we cant conclude that antioxidant-rich foods like blueberries, strawberries and spinach will have the same age-related reversal of brain deficits in humans as those they found in rats. The American Dietetic Association is currently studying the effect of strawberries, blueberries, prunes, spinach and fatty fish, and may find positive benefits to short term memory, says McMullen.

Whether or not the foods are brain super foods, theyre heart healthy and a great part of a balanced diet, she says. A diet rich in a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean meats and low-fat dairy is essential to overall health and energy.

Healthy Food for a Healthy Life

Carol Albanesi, Director of Food Services and a registered nurse for Flagler Hospital, agrees. The foods were talking about are foods that are necessary and appropriate for a healthy diet. Theres not any true super food. A healthy diet has to be part of a healthy lifestyle that includes getting enough sleep (six to eight hours a day) and eating right. By that I also mean eating breakfast, not skipping meals and adding several small snacks during the day.

Albanesi suggests that by eating healthy food, getting enough sleep and exercising three to five times a week youll increase your optimum health. All of these activities, including eating brain boosting super foods, bring oxygen to the brain by expanding blood vessels for increased blood flow to the brain.

Your circulatory system feeds your cells and pulls away toxins, she says. Thats why you need to increase blood flow with these activities. Exercise is particularly good because it increases blood flow, lowers blood pressure and keeps your body healthy.

Beans, she says, are a great food source because theyre a good carbohydrate and protein source, theyre inexpensive and they stabilize your glucose during the day. Drinking water is also important. Albanesi also suggests six to eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day.

The Top Ten Brain Boosting Foods

Sally Clifton, MSH, RD, LD/N, at Shands Hospital, offers her top ten brain super food picks:

1. Coffee - The caffeine and the coffee bean itself have been shown to have some antioxidant properties, she says. Most of the benefits for boosting brain power come from the caffeine. Suggested serving: no more than two or three cups a day.

2. Tea - Freshly brewed green and black tea have antioxidant properties and some caffeine that dilates blood vessels and increases the blood flow to the brain, enhancing memory focus and mood. Its temporary so everyone should judge the amount, Clifton says. The tea contains catechines that are the antioxidant properties; flavored tea doesnt have caffeine. Suggested serving: no more than two or three cups a day.

3. Blueberries - Blueberries are one food that really stands out, she says, because they have a certain antioxidant that prevents oxidative stress to help reduce age-related diseases. Over time, because youre exposed to the environment, youre more exposed to free radicals. Thats why its so important that athletes take in fruits and vegetables.
She advises adding a variety of fruits to your diet. An easy way to add them is putting a cup in your smoothie, shake, yogurt or on cereal. Suggested serving: 1 cup a day.

4. Wild or farm-raised salmon - Wild salmon tends to be leaner and purer than farm-raised but both are good, she says. Salmon is rich in Omega 3 fatty acids and contains anti-inflammatory substances that ultimately aid in blood flow and brain activity, lowering dementia and stroke risk and enhancing memory. Salmon even keeps the blood flowing in the very small capillaries in the brain, she says. Suggested serving: 4-ounces two or three times a week grilled, baked or broiled.

5. Nuts and seeds - Nuts and seeds are rich in vitamin E that boosts brain function and corresponds with less cognitive decline. Nuts and seeds also offer a large dose of monounsaturated fat that is heart healthy and promotes blood flow. A caveat is that nuts and seeds are very high in good fat, so limit the amount. Choose unsalted if you have hypertension. Almonds, walnuts and peanuts are very good but choose a variety, she says. Suggested serving: about one-fourth cup or one ounce a day.

6. Avocados - Although avocados got a bad rap for having a lot of fat several years ago, the green fruit is actually very healthy all around. Theyre packed with monounsaturated fat but its good fat. Avocados also have a lot of antioxidants and some amino acids (protein), help lower blood pressure and help reduce inflammation. I suggest putting them on a sandwich, in a salad or on your salmon for a double brain boost. Suggested serving: one-quarter to one-half of an avocado daily.

7. Whole grains - Whole grains like whole wheat bread, pasta, cereals, wheat germ and brown rice create good blood flow because they have more intact nutrients including vitamin E, antioxidants, fiber and some have Omega 3 fatty acids. Blood flow is crucial because it helps keep the integrity of cells in the brain, says Clifton.

8. Pomegranate juice - Although juice has been maligned because its packed with sugar, pomegranate juice is full of antioxidants and a small amount of sugar helps with immediate energy. Stick to about 2 ounces of natural fruit juice per serving. A way to do that is to mix the juice with sparkling water or sprite for a flavor boost. You can add it to water several times a day and eat a piece of fruit, she says. Suggested serving: about 6 to 8 ounces a day.

9. Beans - All kinds of beans including black beans, kidney beans and lentils offer a lot of fiber and help stabilize your glucose levels throughout the day, allowing your brain to better use the food for fuel. Suggested serving: one-half cup a day.

10. Dark chocolate - This decadent food has powerful antioxidant properties and also has a small amount of caffeine, a natural stimulant that aids with focus and concentration. Dark chocolate also stimulates production of endorphins that help improve mood. For a double health surge, try chocolate covered blueberries. Suggested serving: one-half to one ounce a day.

Back to Basics

The key is a healthy diet and eating small meals throughout the day to boost brain power because the food is giving you small energy boosts, says Clifton. I most often work with people to establish balance. Some people will drink coffee all day long. The unhealthy aspect of drinking this much coffee is that the caffeine suppresses appetite. So they deprive their body during the day and then overeat at night. Thats not a balanced, healthy way of eating.

Almost all of the super foods can easily be incorporated into one meal such as a salad or wrap. You may be thinking diet, but by adding these foods youre also sharpening your thinking. Clifton agrees that getting back to basics with exercise, getting eight hours of sleep a night (eight is more beneficial than less) and using meditation and relaxation exercises like yoga all help increase your body awareness and health.

With meditation and relaxation, you're breathing better and relieving tension and stress. It all goes together, but eating right does take some planning. The bonus to taking time to plan your meals is that youll gain more health benefits. A good idea is to get your spouse and children involved. Its more fun and motivating if you and your family cook together. Online resources for healthy recipes include eatright.org, the official website of the American Dietetic Association, and cookinglight.com, she says.


Source: http://www.mindpowernews.com

domingo, 6 de dezembro de 2009

A Lost European Culture, Pulled From Obscurity

November 30, 2009
by John Noble Wilford



Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade.

For 1,500 years, starting earlier than 5000 B.C., they farmed and built sizable towns, a few with as many as 2,000 dwellings. They mastered large-scale copper smelting, the new technology of the age. Their graves held an impressive array of exquisite headdresses and necklaces and, in one cemetery, the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts to be found anywhere in the world.

The striking designs of their pottery speak of the refinement of the culture’s visual language. Until recent discoveries, the most intriguing artifacts were the ubiquitous terracotta “goddess” figurines, originally interpreted as evidence of the spiritual and political power of women in society.

New research, archaeologists and historians say, has broadened understanding of this long overlooked culture, which seemed to have approached the threshold of “civilization” status. Writing had yet to be invented, and so no one knows what the people called themselves. To some scholars, the people and the region are simply Old Europe.

The little-known culture is being rescued from obscurity in an exhibition, “The Lost World of Old Europe: the Danube Valley, 5000-3500 B.C.,” which opened last month at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. More than 250 artifacts from museums in Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania are on display for the first time in the United States. The show will run through April 25.

At its peak, around 4500 B.C., said David W. Anthony, the exhibition’s guest curator, “Old Europe was among the most sophisticated and technologically advanced places in the world” and was developing “many of the political, technological and ideological signs of civilization.”

Dr. Anthony is a professor of anthropology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., and author of “The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World.” Historians suggest that the arrival in southeastern Europe of people from the steppes may have contributed to the collapse of the Old Europe culture by 3500 B.C.

At the exhibition preview, Roger S. Bagnall, director of the institute, confessed that until now “a great many archaeologists had not heard of these Old Europe cultures.” Admiring the colorful ceramics, Dr. Bagnall, a specialist in Egyptian archaeology, remarked that at the time “Egyptians were certainly not making pottery like this.”

A show catalog, published by Princeton University Press, is the first compendium in English of research on Old Europe discoveries. The book, edited by Dr. Anthony, with Jennifer Y. Chi, the institute’s associate director for exhibitions, includes essays by experts from Britain, France, Germany, the United States and the countries where the culture existed.

Dr. Chi said the exhibition reflected the institute’s interest in studying the relationships of well-known cultures and the “underappreciated ones.”

Although excavations over the last century uncovered traces of ancient settlements and the goddess figurines, it was not until local archaeologists in 1972 discovered a large fifth-millennium B.C. cemetery at Varna, Bulgaria, that they began to suspect these were not poor people living in unstructured egalitarian societies. Even then, confined in cold war isolation behind the Iron Curtain, Bulgarians and Romanians were unable to spread their knowledge to the West.

The story now emerging is of pioneer farmers after about 6200 B.C. moving north into Old Europe from Greece and Macedonia, bringing wheat and barley seeds and domesticated cattle and sheep. They established colonies along the Black Sea and in the river plains and hills, and these evolved into related but somewhat distinct cultures, archaeologists have learned. The settlements maintained close contact through networks of trade in copper and gold and also shared patterns of ceramics.

The Spondylus shell from the Aegean Sea was a special item of trade. Perhaps the shells, used in pendants and bracelets, were symbols of their Aegean ancestors. Other scholars view such long-distance acquisitions as being motivated in part by ideology in which goods are not commodities in the modern sense but rather “valuables,” symbols of status and recognition.

Noting the diffusion of these shells at this time, Michel Louis Seferiades, an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, suspects “the objects were part of a halo of mysteries, an ensemble of beliefs and myths.”

In any event, Dr. Seferiades wrote in the exhibition catalog that the prevalence of the shells suggested the culture had links to “a network of access routes and a social framework of elaborate exchange systems — including bartering, gift exchange and reciprocity.”

Over a wide area of what is now Bulgaria and Romania, the people settled into villages of single- and multiroom houses crowded inside palisades. The houses, some with two stories, were framed in wood with clay-plaster walls and beaten-earth floors. For some reason, the people liked making fired clay models of multilevel dwellings, examples of which are exhibited.

A few towns of the Cucuteni people, a later and apparently robust culture in the north of Old Europe, grew to more than 800 acres, which archaeologists consider larger than any other known human settlements at the time. But excavations have yet to turn up definitive evidence of palaces, temples or large civic buildings. Archaeologists concluded that rituals of belief seemed to be practiced in the homes, where cultic artifacts have been found.

The household pottery decorated in diverse, complex styles suggested the practice of elaborate at-home dining rituals. Huge serving bowls on stands were typical of the culture’s “socializing of food presentation,” Dr. Chi said.

At first, the absence of elite architecture led scholars to assume that Old Europe had little or no hierarchical power structure. This was dispelled by the graves in the Varna cemetery. For two decades after 1972, archaeologists found 310 graves dated to about 4500 B.C. Dr. Anthony said this was “the best evidence for the existence of a clearly distinct upper social and political rank.”

Vladimir Slavchev, a curator at the Varna Regional Museum of History, said the “richness and variety of the Varna grave gifts was a surprise,” even to the Bulgarian archaeologist Ivan Ivanov, who directed the discoveries. “Varna is the oldest cemetery yet found where humans were buried with golden ornaments,” Dr. Slavchev said.

More than 3,000 pieces of gold were found in 62 of the graves, along with copper weapons and tools, and ornaments, necklaces and bracelets of the prized Aegean shells. “The concentration of imported prestige objects in a distinct minority of graves suggest that institutionalized higher ranks did exist,” exhibition curators noted in a text panel accompanying the Varna gold.

Yet it is puzzling that the elite seemed not to indulge in private lives of excess. “The people who donned gold costumes for public events while they were alive,” Dr. Anthony wrote, “went home to fairly ordinary houses.”

Copper, not gold, may have been the main source of Old Europe’s economic success, Dr. Anthony said. As copper smelting developed about 5400 B.C., the Old Europe cultures tapped abundant ores in Bulgaria and what is now Serbia and learned the high-heat technique of extracting pure metallic copper.

Smelted copper, cast as axes, hammered into knife blades and coiled in bracelets, became valuable exports. Old Europe copper pieces have been found in graves along the Volga River, 1,200 miles east of Bulgaria. Archaeologists have recovered more than five tons of pieces from Old Europe sites.

An entire gallery is devoted to the figurines, the more familiar and provocative of the culture’s treasures. They have been found in virtually every Old Europe culture and in several contexts: in graves, house shrines and other possibly “religious spaces.”

One of the best known is the fired clay figure of a seated man, his shoulders bent and hands to his face in apparent contemplation. Called the “Thinker,” the piece and a comparable female figurine were found in a cemetery of the Hamangia culture, in Romania. Were they thinking, or mourning?

Many of the figurines represent women in stylized abstraction, with truncated or elongated bodies and heaping breasts and expansive hips. The explicit sexuality of these figurines invites interpretations relating to earthly and human fertility.

An arresting set of 21 small female figurines, seated in a circle, was found at a pre-Cucuteni village site in northeastern Romania. “It is not difficult to imagine,” said Douglass W. Bailey of San Francisco State University, the Old Europe people “arranging sets of seated figurines into one or several groups of miniature activities, perhaps with the smaller figurines at the feet or even on the laps of the larger, seated ones.”

Others imagined the figurines as the “Council of Goddesses.” In her influential books three decades ago, Marija Gimbutas, an anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, offered these and other so-called Venus figurines as representatives of divinities in cults to a Mother Goddess that reigned in prehistoric Europe.

Although the late Dr. Gimbutas still has an ardent following, many scholars hew to more conservative, nondivine explanations. The power of the objects, Dr. Bailey said, was not in any specific reference to the divine, but in “a shared understanding of group identity.”

As Dr. Bailey wrote in the exhibition catalog, the figurines should perhaps be defined only in terms of their actual appearance: miniature, representational depictions of the human form. He thus “assumed (as is justified by our knowledge of human evolution) that the ability to make, use and understand symbolic objects such as figurines is an ability that is shared by all modern humans and thus is a capability that connects you, me, Neolithic men, women and children, and the Paleolithic painters in caves.”

Or else the “Thinker,” for instance, is the image of you, me, the archaeologists and historians confronted and perplexed by a “lost” culture in southeastern Europe that had quite a go with life back before a single word was written or a wheel turned.



Source: http://www.nytimes.com