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Scientists discover new brain wave that reveals past thoughts and memories

Nicholas West
Activist Post
Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:25 UTC
neurons
© unknown
An alarming new study (posted in full below) illustrates how fast neuroscience is developing in its attempt to uncover every aspect of the human brain. A specific brain wave called P300 has been identified by researchers as a marker that essentially encodes what we observe as we go about our daily activities. Based on this specific brain wave marker, researchers are able to conduct a Concealed Information Test. In fact, the test is already being used in Japan and Israel. Researchers are hoping that new data they have published will demonstrate that the test is reliable enough to meet the higher standard of U.S. courtrooms.

The massive influx of money into Obama's BRAIN project, as well as similar research sponsored by the European Union , now exceeds $2 billion combined. Research continues full-steam ahead despite indications that human brain study is outpacing ethical parameters. Some scientists within the European arm of the project have recently threatened a boycott due to mismanagement and misuse along similar lines to what you will read below.

In our age of loosened constitutional standards and basic human rights that has permitted all innocent communications and movements to be tracked, traced and databased, any technology that aims to uncover our most mundane daily activities and thoughts must be heavily scrutinized for potential abuse. Moreover, I have highlighted some of the language in this press release that clearly demonstrates how this could move far beyond the courtroom and easily provide a new level of pervasive surveillance.

Comment: See also: A top neuroscientist warns that human cyborgs are a terrible idea
Neurological research has gotten much more attention at the federal level in recent years, especially after President Obama announced his BRAIN Initiative, a plan based on the Human Genome Project that aims to map the function of every neuron in the human brain over the next decade or so. Much of Obama's plan focuses on researching diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, but once we better understand how the brain works, we may be able to use that research to for transhuman tinkering like mind transfers, screwing with memories, and that kind of thing.


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Fireball 5

Rosetta update: Dirty snowball is "dry like hell"


ThunderboltsProject/YouTube
Fri, 26 Sep 2014 17:20 UTC

The European Space Agency's Rosetta Mission to the comet 67/P may be rewriting everything astronomers thought they knew about the nature of comets. The latest high-resolution images of the comet nucleus have astonished scientists around the world, revealing a remarkably jagged, pitted, black as coal surface. It is nothing like the so-called dirty snowball or fluffy ice ball that mainstream astronomers have long envisioned. Most astonishingly, scientists have reported they have not found a single trace of water ice on the comet surface. It is, in the words of mission scientist Holger Sierks, "dry like hell."
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Beaker

Unique organic molecule discovered forming in deep space gas cloud


RT
Fri, 26 Sep 2014 02:38 UTC
galaxies
© Agence France-Presse/ NASA
​A new kind of organic molecule has been discovered in a giant gas cloud in interstellar space, indicating that more complex molecules - the very core building blocks of life - can potentially form outside of the Earth and even be widespread in space.

The analysis of a star-forming gas cloud some 27,000 light years away from Earth, published in the journal Science, detected an iso-propyl cyanide molecule with a unique structure that is common in life-forming molecules, such as amino acids.

While finding a simple organic chemical in space is nothing new, a carbon-bearing molecule with a branched structure has been discovered for the first time, indicating that biologically crucial molecules can form not only on Earth, but in deep space too.

"This detection suggests that branched carbon-chain molecules may be generally abundant in the ISM [interstellar medium]," the study's abstract reads.

The scientists - Dr Arnaud Belloche of the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy and his colleagues - found the molecule in a gas cloud called Sagittarius B2 - the "star factory" near the center of the Milky Way where many new stars are formed.

galaxies
© Reuters/ESA/Hubble & NASA
The team used the 12 telescopes of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in Chile, to make its observations.

"Amino acids on Earth are the building blocks of proteins, and proteins are very important for life as we know it. The question in the background is: is there life somewhere else in the galaxy?" Belloche told the BBC.

"Our goal is to search for new complex organic molecules in the interstellar medium," he said.

And the evidence suggests their presence could actually be widespread.
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Network

Bash bug 'Shellshock' threatens millions of computer systems worldwide


RT
Thu, 25 Sep 2014 02:23 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Kacper Pempel
A vulnerability has been discovered within the widely used Bash software included on Linux and Mac operating systems, raising concerns about an exploit that some experts say stands to be more damaging than the Heartbleed bug identified earlier this year.

Researchers revealed on Wednesday this week that a bug has been spotted in Bash - a command-line shell developed in the 1980s and common to Linux and Unix systems - the likes of which may allow attackers to target computers and, if successful, run malicious codes that could let them take control of entire servers pertaining to potentially millions of machines.

But while the so-called Heartbleed bug found in April allowed hackers to spy on vulnerable systems due to a previously undiscovered flaw in the open-source encryption software called OpenSSL, security experts say already that the Bash exploit - being referred to as "Shellshock" - is more severe because exploiting it could allow attackers to seize systems that are vulnerable by running unauthorized code that, in a worst case scenario, gives them full privileges on the plundered machine.

"The method of exploiting this issue is also far simpler," Dan Guido, the chief executive of a cybersecurity firm Trail of Bits, told Reuters on Wednesday this week of the differences. "You can just cut and paste a line of code and get good results."

After discovery of Shellshock was identified by researcher Stephane Schazelas on Wednesday, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, acknowledged the severity of the issue by releasing a statement warning that "exploitation of this vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on an affected system."
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Info

No single 'missing link' found in dinosaur-to-bird evolution process

Chuck Bednar
RedOrbit
Fri, 26 Sep 2014 02:28 UTC
Archaeopteryx
© ThinkstockWhile paleontologists previously believed that the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird, marked a massive evolutionary leap forward, research conducted over the past 20 years indicates that the avian characteristics had started showing up in dinosaurs far earlier.
The early stages of the process through which birds evolved from dinosaurs was slow and gradual, and there was no single "missing link" separating the two different types of creatures, according to research published in Thursday's edition of the journal Current Biology.

Lead author Dr. Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and his colleagues analyzed the anatomical make-up of more than 850 body features in 150 extinct species in order to map the evolutionary journey from meat-eating dinosaurs to ancient birds. Based on the fossil records, they found that the emergence of birds took place bit-by-bit over the course of 150 million years.

"There was no moment in time when a dinosaur became a bird, and there is no single missing link between them," Dr. Brusatte said in a statement. "What we think of as the classic bird skeleton was pieced together gradually over tens of millions of years. Once it came together fully, it unlocked great evolutionary potential that allowed birds to evolve at a super-charged rate."

"Our study adds to a growing number of works that approach this problem from different angles, but all seem to confirm that the origin of birds was a truly special event in Earth history," added Dr. Graeme Lloyd, a lecturer at the University of Oxford. "It is particularly cool that it is evidence from the fossil record that shows how an oddball offshoot of the dinosaurs paved the way for the spectacular variety of bird species we see today."
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Magic Wand

Alien origin: Water on Earth predates Sun, meaning our life originated elsewhere


RT
Fri, 26 Sep 2014 17:16 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Marcos Brindicci
Science relies on signs of water to tell a story of how a celestial body or its region came to be. Now it appears our own solar system holds water older than itself, which could have dramatic consequences for our search for alien life.

To explain this new theory, a previously long-held conception of star formation needs to be examined.

Each star is forged from materials found in its own interstellar molecular cloud.

It also surrounds it with a protoplanetary disk, or a solar nebula - a belt from which its planets are born. Previous research was uncertain whether the ice in this disk comes from open space or is formed in a chemical reaction by the star's own processes after the previous building blocks of water are evaporated.

That uncertainty is now gone and we can say that our own life is not the result of activity created within the protoplanetary disk at all.
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Eye 2

Google mounting defenses to fight biggest wiretap case in U.S. history

Karen Gullo
Bloomberg
Wed, 24 Sep 2014 07:17 UTC
google street view
© Getty
Data from two hard drives locked up in the San Francisco federal courthouse may make or break an effort to hold Google Inc. (GOOG) to account for what privacy advocates call an unprecedented corporate wiretapping case.

If 22 people who sued the company can pinpoint their personal data in a massive cache of communications that Google's Street View cars captured from private Wi-Fi networks, their lawyers may be able to seek billions of dollars of damages from the the world's largest search engine owner.

If they come up empty-handed, an outcome the company that pioneered search optimization is betting on, the case will join a stack of failed privacy lawsuits accusing Google, Apple Inc. (AAPL), Facebook Inc. (FB) and other technology companies of tracking, capturing or sharing personal information.

"You have to show that you were the victim," said Susan Freiwald, a law professor at University of San Francisco School of Law. "If they don't, then why should they get money?"
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Galaxy

Scientist claims to mathematically prove there are no black holes


RT
Thu, 25 Sep 2014 01:52 UTC
An American physicist claims she has mathematically refuted the existence of black holes in our universe. The new theory combines Steve Hawking's radiation theory with quantum theory's fundamental law that no information ever disappears from the universe.
spiral galaxy
© Reuters/NASAOne of the lowest mass supermassive black holes ever observed in the middle of a galaxy located in the middle of the spiral galaxy NGC 4178, is shown in this image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
Professor Laura Mersini-Houghton from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill maintains she managed to merge two seemingly contradicting theories, Einstein's theory of gravity and a fundamental law of quantum theory.

While Einstein's theory predicts the formation of black holes, the quantum theory law says that no information from the universe can ever disappear, in an attempt to resolve the so-called 'information law paradox.'

Until now modern science generally believed that a black hole forms from a massive star that collapses under its own gravity into a single spot in space the astronomers call a singularity, surrounded by the event horizon that neither light nor energy could escape from. Three decades ago renowned physicist Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes could emit radiation. Hawking's hypothesis, made in 1974, was based on quantum mechanics.

Mersini-Houghton agrees with Hawking on the radiation being given off by a collapsed star for a certain period of time, yet she also insists that by emitting radiation the star also loses too much of its mass right to the point when formation of a singularity - and a black hole - is impossible.
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Bug

Brazil releases GM mosquitoes to combat dengue fever

Kounteya Sinha
The Times of India
Thu, 25 Sep 2014 12:44 UTC
genetically modified mosquitoes
© Alamy
Thousands of British made genetically engineered mosquitoes were released by Brazilian researchers in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday infected with bacteria that suppress dengue fever.

The hope is they will multiply, breed and become the majority of mosquitoes, thus reducing cases of the disease.

The British biotech firm Oxitec has altered the DNA of the Aedes aegypti mosquito to prevent it from spreading the potentially deadly virus.

Oxitec's new factory in the Brazilian city of Campinas, outside Sao Paulo, is the first in the world to launch production of genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes to target dengue.

The mosquitoes, which Oxitec has dubbed OX513A, have been bred to carry a sort of genetic self-destruct mechanism that causes their offspring to die before they reach sexual maturity, preventing them from reproducing.

The Oxford-based biotech firm found the perfect way to cut down on the world's malaria and dengue numbers - create and release genetically engineered mosquitoes which are sterile and unable to reproduce.

Comment: Comment: If the male mosquitoes are sterile and unable to reproduce, how do they pass the self-destruct gene onto their offspring? Illogic aside, only time will tell the results of this idiotic experiment. Don't mess with mother nature.

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Solar Flares

Solar explosions inside a computer

Barbara Vonarburg
phys.org
Wed, 24 Sep 2014 11:38 UTC
solar flare
© Credit: Nasa/SDOThis solar flare was shot with one of the cameras on the NASA SDO satellite on 10 June 2014.
Strong solar flares can bring down communications and power grids on Earth. By demonstrating how these gigantic eruptions are caused, ETH physicists are laying the foundations for future predictions.

The shorter the interval between two explosions in the solar atmosphere, the more likely it is that the second flare will be stronger than the first one. ETH Professor Hans Jürgen Herrmann and his team have been able to demonstrate this, using model calculations. The amount of energy released in solar flares is truly enormous - in fact, it is millions of times greater than the energy produced in volcanic eruptions. Strong explosions cause a discharge of mass from the outer part of the solar atmosphere, the corona. If a coronal mass ejection hits the earth, it can cause a geomagnetic storm. Heavy storms can disrupt satellites, radio traffic and electrical plants. When in autumn 2003 one of the strongest solar eruptions in history was registered, there was a power failure in southern Sweden and air traffic had to be redirected as communications above the Polar Regions broke down.

ETH scientists have examined the processes that take place when explosions occur on the Sun's surface. They were able to accurately reconstruct the statistical size distribution and temporal succession of the solar flares with a computer model. "The agreement with measurements from satellites is striking", state the researchers in the scientific journal Nature Communications. Hans Herrmann, Professor at the Institute for Building Materials, reveals that the Sun was not actually his subject of focus at all. The theoretical physicist and expert in computer physics has developed a method to examine phenomena from a range of diverse fields. Similar patterns to those in solar flares can also be found in earthquakes, avalanches or the stock market.
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