This week on SOTT Talk Radio we discussed the recently released book by SOTT.net editors Pierre Lescaudron and Laura
Knight-Jadczyk, Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

While official science portrays the crazy weather, more frequent sinkholes, increased meteor fireball activity, and intensifying earthquakes as phenomena that are unrelated, research put together by Pierre and Laura strongly suggests that all this (and more!) is intimately connected and may stem from a common cause.

In times past, people understood that the human mind and states of collective human experience influence cosmic and earthly phenomena. How might today's 'wars and rumors of wars', global 'austerity measures', and the mass protest movements breaking out everywhere play into the climate 'changing'?

Running Time: 01:59:00

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Studies suggest there's a parenting brain network common to both sexes.

Fatherhood can change a man's life. It also changes his brain, in ways that it seems to equip dads with the very same "baby sense" that's often attributed to moms.

From an animal kingdom perspective, human dads are unusual. They belong to a group of less than 6 percent of mammal species in which fathers play a significant role in rearing offspring. In these species, paternal care often involves the same behaviors as maternal care, with the exception of nursing.

But how does fatherhood change a man's brain? Science has only recently delved into the neural and hormonal mechanisms of paternal care, but so far the evidence suggests that mothers' and fathers' brains use a similar neural circuitry when taking care of their children. Moms and dads also undergo similar hormonal changes that are linked to their brain and behavior changes.

Here are five ways men's brains change when they become fathers:

Dad's brain looks like mom's

Taking care of a child reshapes a dad's brain, causing it to show the same patterns of cognitive and emotional engagement that are seen in moms.

In one recent study, researchers looked at brain activity in 89 new parents as they watched videos, including some that featured the parents' own children. The study examined mothers who were their children's primary caregivers, fathers who helped with childcare and gay fathers who raised a child without a woman in the picture.

All three groups of parents showed activation of brain networks linked to emotional processing and social understanding, according to the findings published May 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In particular, fathers who were their children's primary caregivers showed the kind of activation in emotional processing seen mostly in primary caregiver moms. The results suggest there's a parenting brain network common to both sexes.

Scientists have discovered a frozen underworld beneath the ice sheet covering northern Greenland.

The previously unknown landscape, a vast expanse of warped shapes including some as tall as a Manhattan skyscraper, was found using ice-penetrating radar loaded aboard Nasa survey flights.

The findings and the first images of the frozen world more than a mile below the surface of the ice sheet are published on Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Scientists said the findings could deepen understanding of how the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica respond to climate change.

"We see more of these features where the ice sheet starts to go fast," Robin Bell, the study's lead author and a geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, said in a statement. "We think the refreezing process uplifts, distorts and warms the ice above, making it softer and easier to flow."

Until recently, scientists studying the Greenland ice sheet for evidence of change under global warming had thought the shapes they discerned beneath the ice sheet were mountain ranges.

But with sophisticated new gravity-sensing and radar operating from Nasa's airborne surveys of the ice sheet over the last 20 years, scientists eventually concluded the formations were ice - not rock.

We now know of a potentially habitable planet five times the size of Earth that has existed for more than twice as long.

A mere thirteen light years away, Kapteyn b is now the oldest known possibly rocky planet in a habitable zone. This 5-Earth-mass planet orbits swiftly: once every 48 days around its parent star. Kapteyn itself is no slouch: it flies across the sky faster than almost any other nearby star.

NASA scientists have created a new recipe that captures key flavors of the brownish-orange atmosphere around Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

The recipe is used for lab experiments designed to simulate Titan's chemistry. With this approach, the team was able to classify a previously unidentified material discovered by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in the moon's smoggy haze.

"Now we can say that this material has a strong aromatic character, which helps us understand more about the complex mixture of molecules that makes up Titan's haze," said Melissa Trainer, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The material had been detected earlier in data gathered by Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer, an instrument that makes observations at wavelengths in the far infrared region, beyond red light. The spectral signature of the material suggested it was made up of a mixture of molecules.

To investigate that mixture, the researchers turned to the tried-and-true approach of combining gases in a chamber and letting them react. The idea is that if the experiment starts with the right gases and under the right conditions, the reactions in the lab should yield the same products found in Titan's smoggy atmosphere. The process is like being given a slice of cake and trying to figure out the recipe by tasting it. If you can make a cake that tastes like the original slice, then you chose the right ingredients.

Sometimes the internet goes a little crazy with quirky, fantastical, scary stories. Take for example the recent hoax, 'huge sting ray attacks man', which turned out to be a great video of a man diving around the shadow of a kite.

So, what can we make of the mysterious discovery of a CSIRO shark tag washed up on a beach that had some fairly typical data recorded on it? Some are incorrectly interpreting the data and speculating that this is evidence of the existence of a megalodon, an ancient extinct species of shark that lived millions of year ago. The megalodon was huge, around 15-24 metres in length... eek. White sharks grow up to 6 m in length.

People want to know the truth about the shark-eating-shark, so here it is.

In late 2003 we tagged a white shark approximately 3m in length off south-west Western Australia with a tag that collects data on swim depth, water temperature and light levels. The tag records data at regular intervals against a date/time stamp. The tag was programmed to release from the shark on a pre-programmed date, float to the surface and transmit the data collected back to us via satellite. These 'archival' tags are commercially produced and are in common use by researchers around the world.

A pair of software developers has unveiled a piece of open source technology that aims to make it possible for anyone hoping to leak secret information to be paid in bitcoin, a model that could make for-profit classified disclosures a thing of the future.

Amir Taaki and Peter Todd told Wired magazine they are still at work on the program known as PayPub, but hope that the prototype creates the notion that information will become even more decentralized. Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and other whistleblowers have traditionally been motivated by their ideals, although PayPub creates the possibility that money will be a major incentive for future leakers.

* Researchers in Sweden say dogs like to solve problems just like humans

* They found the pets were visibly happier when they had a 'eureka moment'

* In experiments 12 beagle dogs were trained to use pieces of equipment

* Half had to use the equipment to get a reward while the other half didn't

* And the scientists found those that had to earn their reward were happier

In humans the 'eureka moment' is a commonly known feeling that occurs when we solve a particularly troubling problem.

But new research suggests that we're not the only animals to experience this - dogs, too, gain pleasure from solving a tricky task.

In a series of experiments, scientists found dogs were happier when they earned a reward by performing a task, rather than just being handed a treat.

Sacramento, California - New evidence implicates one of Earth's biggest impact craters in a mass extinction that occurred 33.7 million years ago, according to research presented here Wednesday (June 11) at the annual Goldschmidt geochemistry conference.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles precisely dated rocks from beneath the Popigai impact crater in remote Siberia to the Eocene epoch mass extinction that occurred 33.7 million years ago. Popigai crater is one of the 10 biggest impact craters on Earth, and in 2012, Russian scientists claimed the crater harbors a gigantic industrial diamond deposit.

The new age, which is later than other estimates, means the Eocene extinction - long blamed on climate change - now has another prime suspect: an "impact winter." Meteorite blasts can trigger a deadly global chill by blanketing the Earth's atmosphere with tiny particles that reflect the sun's heat.

"I don't think this will be the smoking gun, but it reopens the door to Popigai being involved in the mass extinction," said lead study author Matt Wielicki, a UCLA graduate student.

This isn't the first time flying space rocks have been implicated in the Eocene's mass die-offs. Other possible culprits besides Popigai crater include three smaller Earth-meteorite smashups between 35 million and 36 million years ago: Chesapeake Bay crater offshore Virginia, Toms Canyon crater offshore New Jersey and Mistastin crater in Labrador, Canada.

* Ingredients for water are bound up in rock deep in the Earth's mantle

* Scientists claim the find may represent the planet's largest water reservoir

* It is believed to cover most of the U.S - 400 miles below the surface

* Researchers will now carry out further tests to discover if the water wraps around the entire planet

The Earth's largest expanse of water isn't on the surface of the planet, but instead is buried deep within its mantle, researchers have found.

They claim the ingredients for water are bound up in deep rocks, and scientists believe the discovery may represent the planet's largest water reservoir.

Deep pockets of magma were found using seismic waves beneath North America, and this magma is said to be a clear sign of water.