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Brain

Your brain contains magnetic particles, and scientists want to know why

Yasemin Saplakoglu
LiveScience
Wed, 08 Aug 2018 11:48 UTC
brain
© Shutterstock
In a remote forest laboratory in Germany, free from the widespread pollution found in cities, scientists are studying slices of human brains.

The lab's isolated location, 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Munich, gives the researchers the opportunity to examine a bizarre quirk of the brain: the presence of magnetic particles deep within the organ's tissues.

Scientists have known since the 1990s that the human brain contains these particles, but researchers didn't know why. Some experts proposed that these particles served some biological purpose, while other researchers suggested that the magnets came from environmental pollution. [Inside the Brain: A Photo Journey Through Time]
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Snowflake

New water memory research may lead to a better understanding of Homeopathic medicine

John Stuart Reid
Greenmedinfo.com
Thu, 02 Aug 2018 14:06 UTC
memory of water
On July 14th 2018 a conference held at London's Royal Society of Medicine, titled New Horizons in Water Science focussed on homeopathy. The conference hosted many esteemed speakers including Nobel Laureate, Professor Brian Josephson, Nobel Laureate, Professor Luc Montagnier, Professor Gerald Pollack, Professor Vladimir Voeikov, Professor Alexander Konovalov and Dr. Robert Verkerk

The Western medical model is heavily reliant on pharmaceutical drugs and surgery, and for acute medical conditions the model has proven to be highly effective. The case is significantly different for chronic conditions, when pharmaceutical drugs and surgery are ineffective and for which mainstream hospitals and clinics can offer little support for a patient beyond pain reduction. No one therapy or medical technique answers all that our health needs and today many complimentary and alternative therapeutic modalities have been developed that offer support for chronic conditions, including acupuncture, audible sound therapy, Reiki, hypnotherapy, homeopathy and many others. While complimentary and alternative therapies offer support for many aspects of health, including chronic conditions, homeopathy, in particular, has come in for major criticism. In the UK homeopathy remains available as an alternative treatment under the National Health System, yet the detractors are often vicious in their attacks on homeopathic medicine and even though patients of homeopathic treatment, worldwide, continue to report excellent results.
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Sun

NASA launches solar probe in daring mission to "touch" our Sun


Sputnik
Sat, 11 Aug 2018 10:08 UTC
sunset
© CC0
The US space agency NASA will fire off a solar probe on Saturday in an ambitious bid to touch the Sun's millions-of-degrees-hot atmosphere.

The Parker Solar Probe will lift off atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket at 3:53 a.m. ET (7:53GMT) from Cape Canaveral air force station in Florida, the United States.

The satellite will zoom through space past Venus at a speed of up to 430,000 miles per hour, possibly setting the record for the fastest spacecraft in history.

During its 7-year mission, the probe will complete 24 orbits of the Sun, coming within 3.8 million miles of its surface, and dip into the corona, the plasmic aura that is even hotter than the surface.

Comment: Considering mainstream sciences current understanding our Sun, they could be in for some big surprises. And right now, it's undergoing changes not seen for hundreds of years or more see: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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HAL9000

China looking for ways to employ Artificial Intelligence to help shape its foreign policy

Aaron Kesel
Activist Post
Fri, 10 Aug 2018 00:00 UTC
AI in China
China is using artificial intelligence as a tool to help it decide its foreign policy, detaching from the emotions of useless humans that get in the way of the thought process. What could possibly go wrong allowing A.I. to help decide foreign policy with other countries?

The South China Morning Post has reported that "Several prototypes of diplomatic systems using artificial intelligence are under development in China, according to researchers involved or familiar with the projects."

The Post notes that "one early-stage machine, built by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is already being used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."

If it's still not worrying you that robotic algorithms could be deciding foreign policy in China with other nations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs further confirmed to the South China Morning Post that they had plans to use A.I. in diplomacy.

"Cutting-edge technology, including big data and artificial intelligence, is causing profound changes to the way people work and live. The applications in many industries and sectors are increasing on daily basis," a Ministry spokesman said last month, the news agency reported.
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Hammer

Science as social control: Political paralysis and the genetics agenda

Jonathan Latham, PhD
Greenmedinfo.com
Tue, 31 Jul 2018 11:55 UTC
genetics
Synopsis: Over the last twenty years, human genetic research has convinced the public that genetic factors often underly disease and human behavior. Yet this genomic research project, which is one of the most expensive science programs ever conceived, has almost entirely failed to identify the important genes that geneticists predicted, or to account for the occurrence of human illness. Thus the BRCA1 equals breast cancer example, which remains the most cited example of a genetic contribution to common disease, plays a role in less than 10% of all breast cancer cases. This contrast between the hype of genetics and the meagre reality exposes, first a failure of geneticists to honestly report their results, and second a failure of the science media. It also brings into focus the disturbing historical fact that human disease genetics first attained prominence with money from the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry had decided it urgently needed to find alternative explanations for lung cancer and tobacco addiction that were capable of dissipating public opprobrium and derailing potential legal actions.
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Laptop

'Inverse spectre attack': The newest security flaw with Intel processors

Tim Sandle
Digital Journal
Wed, 08 Aug 2018 10:42 UTC
microchip carta
A new security flaw has been detected by German researchers in relation to Intel. This comes on the back of earlier concerns from January and March 2018. The flaw means that passwords can potentially be stolen.

For several decades, malicious software has been able to abstract data from the inner workings of operating systems and hardware. Although significant research resources have been spent on assuring software security, vulnerabilities remain.

Earlier in 2018, research indicated a security flaw with Intel processors. Since the resolution of this, technologist working at the CISPA Helmholtz Centre (Saarbrücken, Germany) have identified a new security gap. As EE News reports, researchers described the new flaw enables an "inverse spectre attack".

With the earlier issues, in January 2918, computer firms needed to fix the Meltdown and Spectre flaws that, under a given set of conditions, would allow attackers to steal data. Later on, a new concern was raised in relation to a new bug called Spectre Next Generation. Spectre NG is similar to the previously patched flaws, allowing third parties to extract sensitive information such as passwords stored in memory.

Comment: See also:

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Cassiopaea

Study on spectacular space storms shows geomagnetic threat occurs before auroras

Emily Underwood
EOS
Mon, 06 Aug 2018 12:00 UTC
2015 St. Patrick's Day aurora
© NASA/Sebastian Saarloos
The 2015 St. Patrick's Day aurora seen in Donnelly Creek, Alaska.
On St. Patrick's Day in 2015, people living as far south as Tennessee spotted brilliant green and red auroras glowing in the night skies. The northern lights-which are typically visible only at high latitudes-were caused by a space storm so intense it disrupted electrical fields on Earth's surface. Now, a new study helps to explain how space storms produce powerful, ground-level electric currents that disrupt power grids, gas and oil pipelines, and communication systems.

Scientists have long known that these currents, called geomagnetically induced currents (GICs), result from interactions between the fluctuating solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere, a region around the upper atmosphere dominated by the magnetic field that buffers our planet from space radiation. The ionosphere, a pulsating layer of charged particles that produces auroras, also plays an important role. Precisely how the storms produce the on-the-ground electric currents has been difficult to pinpoint, however.

Comment: With the sun reaching its lowest activity in years and consequently our planets protective magnetosphere weakening, one can expect our vulnerability to electromagnetic storms will be heightened. The strange sky phenomena being documented with increasing regularity demonstrates how dramatically our atmosphere is changing:

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Attention

HSBC warns governments and corporations are not prepared for climate change


RT
Wed, 08 Aug 2018 13:03 UTC
vanishing road
© Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
Road to the future?
One of the world's largest banks, HSBC, has highlighted research indicating that Earth is running out of resources to sustain life and that governments and corporations are failing to prepare for the effects of climate change.

The world has spent its entire budget of natural resources for the year after crossing the threshold on August 1. The date, dubbed 'Earth Overshoot Day', marks the earliest point the planet hit its annual resource limit.

HSBC highlighted the issue using research from the Global Footprint Network (GFN), an independent think tank that promotes conservation and sustainability. The bank blamed businesses and governments for not adequately preparing for climate change, and not using natural resources efficiently.

The bank noted extreme weather events, such as rising temperatures across Europe and wildfires in California, Greece and Scandinavia in its remarks about the research. "As scientists work on attribution analysis for specific events - the general consensus is that climate change is making these events more likely to occur and more severe," HSBC said, according to Business Insider.

Comment: IPCC's faulty predictions of rising temperatures are based on a faulty premise and therefore the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures' financial risk assessments will be faulty as well. That said, and given we are entering a massive cold spell, some of the above statistics have relativistic value and implication. We shouldn't doubt that human consumption is outstripping the Earth's capacity to provide, compounded by scant evidence of compensating preparation for a future lack of resources in terms of an ice age.

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Blackbox

When and how did the Aboriginal people first arrive in Australia?

Alan Cooper, Alan N Williams, Nigel Spoone
The Conversation
Tue, 07 Aug 2018 17:01 UTC
Kata Tjuta Australia
© Alan Cooper
Humans would have first seen Kata Tjuta very shortly after arriving in Australia 50,000 years ago.
Many Aboriginal Australians would say with conviction that they have always been here. Their ancestors and traditional learnings tell them of this history, and their precise place within it.

Our review of the scientific evidence, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that for all practical purposes, this is indeed the case.

Their ancestors arrived shortly after 50,000 years ago - effectively forever, given that modern human populations only moved out of Africa 50,000-55,000 years ago.
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Moon

"Extraordinary" electromagnetic waves spotted coming out of Jupiter's moon Ganymede

Andrew Griffin
The Independent
Tue, 07 Aug 2018 01:48 UTC
ganymede
© By NASA/JPL/DLR /Wikimedia
Enhanced-color Galileo spacecraft image of Ganymede's trailing hemisphere.[48] The crater Tashmetum's prominent rays are at lower right, and the large ejecta field of Hershef at upper right. Part of dark Nicholson Regio is at lower left, bounded on its upper right by Harpagia Sulcus.
Electromagnetic activity a million times more intense than on Earth

Scientists have spotted "extraordinary", intense waves coming out of Jupiter's moon Ganymede.

The "chorus waves" are a million times more powerful than they are on Earth, and could have disastrous effects on spacecraft.

On Earth, listening to electromagnetic waves around the planet is something like the soft chirping of birds in the morning, which gives chorus waves their name. They can cause spectacular polar lights but can also create "killer" electrons that can damage spacecraft.

Comment: More information on the magnetic environment surrounding Jupiter and its moons.



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