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Globalists Using London Cyberspace Summit to Push for Global Internet Treaty

Eric Blair
Activist Post
Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:58 UTC
censorship
© unknown
For the next two days, leaders from around the globe will collude with tech giants to discuss how to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the Internet. Translation: they'll be negotiating a global Internet treaty.

It's reported that officials from 60 countries will join Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Tudou.com (Chinese video sharing site), as well as cyber crime agencies, and computer security firms at the London Conference on Cyberspace.

The London summit is hosted by Foreign Secretary, William Hague, who said the purpose is to "discuss ideas and expected behaviour in cyberspace".

To which he claims the goal is bring together major players to determine how "collectively, we should respond to the challenges and opportunities which the development of cyberspace presents."

A few days before the conference, Council on Foreign Relations members Adam Segal and Matthew Waxman wrote that the conference presents those calling for a global Internet treaty with "a step in that direction."
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Magic Wand

Success for Andrea Rossi's E-Cat cold fusion system, but mysteries remain

David Hambling
Wired.com
Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:50 UTC
earth
© NASA
Against all the odds, Andrea Rossi's E-Cat cold fusion power plant passed its biggest test yesterday, producing an average of 470 kilowatts for more than five hours. (A technical glitch prevented it from achieving a megawatt as originally planned). The demonstration was monitored closely by engineers from Rossi's mysterious US customer, which was evidently satisfied and paid up.

The energy was output in the form of heat, measured by the quantity of water boiled off. The results are reported in NyTeknik and Pure Energy Systems News, who both had reporters present for the test. Associated Press also sent a correspondent who should be filing a story in the next few days (one suspects his editors might have some questions).

But this does not mean we can crack open the champagne and celebrate the end of fossil fuels quite yet. Skeptics have plenty of grounds to doubt whether the new test really takes us any further forwards.
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Attention

U.S. Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners

Michael Grabell
ProPublica
Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:41 UTC
TSA
© Scott Olson/Getty ImagesA sign at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint instructs passengers about the use of the full-body scanner at O'Hare International Airport.
On Sept. 23, 1998, a panel of radiation safety experts gathered at a Hilton hotel in Maryland to evaluate a new device that could detect hidden weapons and contraband. The machine, known as the Secure 1000, beamed X-rays at people to see underneath their clothing.

One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety - that humans shouldn't be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit.

"I think this is really a slippery slope," said Jill Lipoti, who was the director of New Jersey's radiation protection program. The device was already deployed in prisons; what was next, she and others asked - courthouses, schools, airports? "I am concerned ... with expanding this type of product for the traveling public," said another panelist, Stanley Savic, the vice president for safety at a large electronics company. "I think that would take this thing to an entirely different level of public health risk."
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Camcorder

British Police Surveillance System Can Turn Off Mobile Phones

Stephen C. Webster
The Raw Story
Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Flickr user nolifebeforecoffee
Police in London possess a surveillance technology that sounds like something straight out of science fiction: a mobile GSM device that pretends to be a cellular tower, tricking nearby phones into connecting to it, then intercepting all their communications.

The system was developed by the British firm Datong plc, according to The Guardian, which noted that the U.S. Secret Service and a number of Middle Eastern regimes also patronize the company.

The signal this device projects covers an area for 10 miles around, and the variety of data it can produce is specific enough to track the exact location of any mobile device on the network. It can even be used to shut off all mobile devices in its range.

The full range of its capabilities are classified, The Guardian added, and Datong plc did not comment on the initial report. The Metropolitan Police refused to say when or where the device has been used, if at all.
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Info

Do Animals Know Right from Wrong? New Clues Point to 'Yes'

Natalie Wolchover
Life's Little Mysteries
Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:38 UTC
Guilty Dog
© YouTube | puckeredpetebreweryTank the dog caught red-handed after digging through the trash.

In a famous YouTube video, Tank the dog sure does look guilty when his owner comes home to find trash scattered everywhere, and the trash can lid incriminatingly stuck on Tank's head. But does the dog really know he misbehaved, or is he just trying to look submissive because his owner is yelling at him?

In another new video from the BBC Frozen Planet series, Adelie penguins are seen gathering stones to build their nests. One penguin stealthily steals a stone from his neighbor's nest every time the neighbor goes a-gathering. Does the penguin thief know its covert actions are wrong?

These are some of the scenarios that interest ethologists, or scientists who study animal behavior. For years, these scientists categorically ruled out the possibility that animals might have a sense of morality - that they know right from wrong. Lately, though, the tide is turning.

"People used to like to make that stark division between human and nonhuman animals," said ethologist Marc Bekoff. "But there's just no doubt that the scientific evidence for animal morality is accumulating as more and more animals are studied."
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Display

Fertility Chip Measures Sperm in Home Test Accurately


Science Daily
Fri, 28 Oct 2011 20:11 UTC
Image
© University of TwenteSchematic drawing of the fertility chip with fluid channels and electrodes.
Loes Segerink, a researcher at the University of Twente has developed a "fertility chip" that can accurately count sperm and measure their motility. The chip can be inserted into a compact device for one-off use. A home test kit will soon make it possible for men to test their sperm in a familiar environment. As a result, there is a greater chance of obtaining a correct diagnosis, also the method is simple and inexpensive. Segerink's doctoral defence will take place on 4 November 2011.

The lab-on-a-chip developed by Segerink measures sperm concentration. The importance of the sperm concentration is that the fertility standard states that a millilitre of ejaculate should contain at least 20 million sperm. A second important aspect of fertility is motility. This too can be measured using the lab-on-a-chip. Simple home test kits are already commercially available. These indicate whether the concentration is "above or below the standard value." These tests are too limited, however, as they do not give accurate concentration readings.
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Info

Chinese Scientists Make Blood from Rice

Mary Quinn O'Connor
Fox News
Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:00 UTC
Dracula
© Universal Pictures
Dracula may have a square meal at last.

Researchers in China believe they have found a way to produce and harvest large quantities of human serum albumin (HSA) -- a blood protein that is widely used in drug and vaccine production -- from ordinary grains of rice.

"It looks like an interesting technological step forward," Dr. Richard J. Benjamin, chief medical officer for the American National Red Cross, told FoxNews.com. "It could potentially produce large quantities in a reasonable time."

According to the study, Yang He and his colleagues discovered a way to produce the protein in rice seeds and were able to purify the HSA from it, obtaining about 2.75 grams of HSA per kilogram of rice. The protein was tested on rats and they found that the rice-produced HSA was chemically equivalent to the blood-derived version.

"The disadvantage of what we currently use is that it is a blood product, which means it could transmit infection," Benjamin noted.
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Light Saber

World's Most Powerful Laser to Tear Apart the Vacuum of Space

Richard Gray
The Telegraph
Sun, 30 Oct 2011 07:11 UTC
Image
A laser powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of space could be built in Britain as part major new scientific project that aims to answer some of the most fundamental questions about our universe.

Due to follow in the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider, the latest "big science" experiment being proposed by physicists will see the world's most powerful laser being constructed.

Capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it would be equivalent to the power received by the Earth from the sun focused onto a speck smaller than a tip of a pin, scientists claim it could allow them boil the very fabric of space - the vacuum.

Contrary to popular belief, a vacuum is not devoid of material but in fact fizzles with tiny mysterious particles that pop in and out of existence, but at speeds so fast that no one has been able to prove they exist.

The Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility would produce a laser so intense that scientists say it would allow them to reveal these particles for the first time by pulling this vacuum "fabric" apart.

They also believe it could even allow them to prove whether extra-dimensions exist.
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Bizarro Earth

Plate tectonics may control reversals in the Earth's magnetic field


PhysOrg
Mon, 24 Oct 2011 16:28 UTC
Earth Magnetic Field
© Unknown
The Earth's magnetic field has reversed many times at an irregular rate throughout its history. Long periods without reversal have been interspersed with eras of frequent reversals. What is the reason for these reversals and their irregularity? Researchers from CNRS and the Institut de Physique du Globe, France, have shed new light on the issue by demonstrating that, over the last 300 million years, reversal frequency has depended on the distribution of tectonic plates on the surface of the globe. This result does not imply that terrestrial plates themselves trigger the switch over of the magnetic field. Instead, it establishes that although the reversal phenomenon takes place, in fine, within the Earth's liquid core, it is nevertheless sensitive to what happens outside the core and more specifically in the Earth's mantle. This work is published on 16 October 2011 in Geophysical Research Letters.
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Info

Genetically Modified Mosquito Could Help Battle Dengue Fever


redOrbit
Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:01 UTC
GMO Mosquito
© redOrbit

Scientists have found that a genetically modified mosquito could help tackle dengue fever and other insect-borne diseases.

Researchers found that the genetically modified males mated successfully with wild females in a dengue-affected part of the Cayman Islands.

They said that mating has not been proven in the wild, and could cut the number of disease-carrying mosquitoes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) believes there may be 50 million cases every year.

Scientists realized in the 1940s that sterile males could help control insects that carried disease or areas with agricultural pests.

When females breed with the sterile males, there would be fewer mosquitoes around that could transmit the disease.

The screwworm fly was eradicated from the Caribbean island of Curacao in the 1950s by using males sterilized by radiation.
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