Science & TechnologyS


Black Magic

US marines reveal plans for plasma 'crowd control' weapon that screams, burns, blinds and kills from 3,000 feet away

Mark Prigg
Daily Mail
Wed, 17 Oct 2018 23:23 UTC
lazer
Using the different effect would allow operators to control crowds or enemies, first warning them before using the higher settings
The US Marines are developing a new laser weapon that can transmit voice messages at long range, or be turned up to deafen, dazzle or even kill.

The Scalable Compact Ultra-short Pulse Laser System (SCUPLS) will be mounted on a truck or tank.

It will initially be used as a non-lethal weapon for crowd control, according to US Government documents.

Using the different effect would allow operators to control crowds or enemies, first warning them before using the higher settings

The aim of the project is to 'Develop a lightweight and energy efficient next-generation Ultra-Short Pulse Laser (USPL) system that can produce sustainable and controllable plasma at range capable of inducing a full spectrum of scalable non-lethal effects.'

The weapon works using an igniter laser, that fires an intense short pulse powerful enough to create a ball of plasma.

This can be created in mid-air, or on the surface of a target.

Comment: While Russia creates some of the most advanced technology on the planet in order to defend its citizens, the US is busy creating weapons to target its citizens: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Microscope 2

Heavy hydrogen tracks glucose metabolism in vivo

Liam Stubbington
Physics World
Fri, 14 Sep 2018 00:01 UTC
MRI DMI
© Robin de Graaf and Henk De FeyterImaging tumour metabolism using deuterium metabolic imaging (DMI). Left: MR image. Right: abnormal glucose metabolism, mapped using the DMI technique.
Researchers at Yale University have reported a new imaging modality, known as deuterium metabolic imaging (DMI), in which sugars and other nutrients are labelled with a heavy hydrogen (2H) atom and subsequently administered to track and monitor their uptake and metabolism (Science Advances 4 eaat7314).

Mapping glucose metabolism is important for monitoring the development and treatment of cancer, as tumours metabolize glucose both at an elevated rate and through a different set of chemical reactions compared with healthy tissue - a phenomenon known as the Warburg effect.

2H, a form of atomic hydrogen with one extra neutron, is harmless and exists naturally in a very small abundance. In comparison, current methods of imaging glucose metabolism in the clinic rely on radioactive labelling of glucose molecules for detection by PET scans. In addition to the radiation risk, PET is unable to track the downstream metabolites of glucose and often gives misleading results in organs with intrinsically high glucose metabolism, such as the brain and the liver.
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Comet 2

"Comet of the year" 46P/Wirtanen making close approach, may become visible in December


Space Weather
Wed, 17 Oct 2018 12:00 UTC
Comet 46P/Wirtanen
© Yasushi AoshimaComet 46P/Wirtanen
Taken by Yasushi Aoshima on October 7, 2018 @ Ishikawa, JAPAN
Astronomers are calling Comet 46P/Wirtanen the "comet of the year." Two months from now, on Dec. 16th, the kilometer-wide ball of dirty ice will come within 11.5 million km of Earth--making it one of the 10 closest-approaching comets of the Space Age. Comet 46P/Wirtanen will probably become a naked eye object for several weeks during the holidays. Here's what it looks like now:

Yasushi Aoshima of Ishikawa, Japan, took the picture using a 12-inch telescope. It shows the comet's green atmosphere which is, impressively, almost twice as wide as the planet Jupiter. The green color comes from diatomic carbon (C2)--a gaseous substance common in comet atmospheres that glows green in the near-vacuum of space.

At the moment, the integrated brightness of the comet is similar to a 10th magnitude star--that is, dim. However, forecasters expect it to brighten more than 200-fold by December. If current trends hold, 46P could ultimately reach magnitude +3, making it not a Great Comet but a very good one, visible to the unaided eye and an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes.

Comment: Close calls are becoming increasingly common, and, while they may be a awesome sight, historically they portend disaster: Also check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Who was Jesus? Examining the evidence that Christ may in fact have been Caesar!

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Snow Globe

Stephen Hawking's newly published essays reveal dark prediction: Wealthy will create 'superhuman race'


RT
Sun, 14 Oct 2018 16:37 UTC
Stephen Hawking
© Reuters / Lucas Jackson'Brief Answers to the Big Questions' is a collection of articles and essays revealing the final thoughts of the late Stephen Hawking.
A collection of newly published essays written by Stephen Hawking before his death reveal the iconic physicist believed wealthy people could create a new race of "superhumans" by editing their children's DNA.

The collection of articles and essays, which has appeared in part in the Sunday Times, will be published in their entirety as a book called: 'Brief Answers to the Big Questions', due to be released on October 16.

Hawking, who died in March, writes that he is sure breakthroughs in genetic engineering will allow people to create a superhuman race within this century. He also predicted that while laws will try to prevent it, the rich and greedy will be unable to resist the temptation.

Comment: See: Humanity 2.0?! The transhumanism agenda has gone totally mainstream

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Info

Catastrophic geological events could have created evolutionary bottlenecks

Sarah Wild
AstroBiology Magazine
Sun, 14 Oct 2018 21:45 UTC
Impact Event
© NASA/Don DavisGiant asteroid impacts could have created evolutionary bottlenecks that decided the path that evolution should take.
Evidence that catastrophic geological events could have created evolutionary bottlenecks that changed the course of life on Earth may be buried within ancient rocks beneath our feet.

There is a 700-million year gap in Earth's history, and in that time one of the most transformative events happened: life appeared. This missing epoch could hold not just the secret of humanity's first ancestor, but could guide our search for life on other planets.

To this end a recent paper, published in the scientific journal Astrobiology, tries to bring the worlds of geology and chemistry together by laying out what Earth's ancient geology tells us about when life began on the planet, and how geological constraints - such as those caused by an asteroid impact or evolutionary bottlenecks - can be used to vet the different theories about the evolution of life.

"Geologists have only weakly constrained the time when the Earth became habitable and the later time when life actually existed to the long interval between about 4.5 billion years ago and 3.85 billion years ago," Norm Sleep, a geologist at Stanford University in the United States, writes in his paper.
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Cheesecake

Scientists claim virtual reality environments can change our food tastes


RT
Tue, 16 Oct 2018 14:48 UTC
virtual reality alter tastes
© Global Look Press / Maximilian SchönherrParticipants were asked to rate the pungency of cheese in various VR environments.
When we eat, the ambiance and environment play a much larger role than previously thought. A team of scientists at Cornell University have shown that we can alter how our food tastes using virtual reality.

"When we eat, we perceive not only just the taste and aroma of foods, we get sensory input from our surroundings - our eyes, ears, even our memories about surroundings," said Robin Dando, associate professor of food science and senior author of the research.

In the study, published in the Journal of Food Science, a total of 50 test subjects were given three samples of blue cheese which they tasted while wearing a virtual reality headset that placed them in three distinct digital environments: a sensory booth, a park bench, and a cow barn at Cornell University.

Unbeknownst to the participants, all three samples of cheese were identical, only the digital environment in which they ate the cheese changed. They were then asked to rate the taste and odor of the cheese and, as a control method, were also asked to rate its saltiness.
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Microscope 1

Harvard Medical School determines that pioneer of cardiac stem cell treatment fabricated 31 studies


RT
Tue, 16 Oct 2018 01:38 UTC
stem cell research
© Reuters / Gareth Watkins
Two prestigious US hospitals have concluded a prominent cardiologist whose research served as the foundation for cardiac stem cell therapy fabricated or falsified data in at least 31 published studies that should now be retracted.

Piero Anversa's research first made waves in 2001, when he published a paper in Nature suggesting that stem cells could regenerate damaged heart muscle. The revolutionary discovery sparked a massive clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health and led to the formation of numerous startup companies seeking to develop new treatments for heart attacks and stroke based on his research.

Anversa conducted his research at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. In April 2017, after reviewing his work for four years, Brigham and Women's paid $10 million to the federal government to settle allegations the doctor had secured research funding using fraudulent data.

Comment: Whether Anversa is guilty of conducting shoddy science, or was on a pathological quest to make a name for himself (or both), is unclear. What is clear is that stem cell research may be leading to a very promising path to healing - and now has something of a black mark because of this scientist's intentional or unwitting lack of rigor.

See also:

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Beaker

Nobel chemistry research validates intelligent design concept of irreducible complexity

Michael Egnor
Evolution News
Mon, 15 Oct 2018 18:15 UTC
michael behe
Michael Behe, in a scene from Revolutionary: Michael Behe and the Mystery of Molecular Machines
My Discovery Institute colleagues and I have observed that the recent Nobel Prize in chemistry, awarded to Drs. Frances H. Arnold, George P. Smith, and Gregory P. Winter for the ingenious engineering of biomolecules, rewards research that is crucially dependent on the inference to design in biochemistry and to intelligent design as a method of science. The Nobel laureates (implicitly or explicitly) inferred design in cellular structure and function and used random genetic variation of molecules to design highly effective biomolecules. It's beautiful bioengineering - using random variation in biomolecules to design better molecules. It's beautiful work in intelligent design science.

Coyne Is Aghast

Predictably, Darwinists are aghast. At Why Evolution Is True, Professor Jerry Coyne is exasperated: "I have no words," he says. He then goes to write:
I presume that Egnor thinks that Frances Arnold [one of the Nobel laureates] is God. Either that, or he fails to understand that humans mimicking evolution in the lab isn't the same thing as a designer being humanlike and creating plants and animals.

And the first ID prize?

"Linus Pauling's groundbreaking work on protein structure in the early 20th century (for which he won the Nobel Prize) depended critically on his correct inference that the structure of a protein must account for the purpose the protein serves in cellular metabolism."

That all turns on the ambiguous meaning of "purpose", and this is a prime and a rare correct example of "begging the question". For Egnor, "purpose" presupposes a God rather than being shorthand for "what the protein does as well as the nature of the reproductive advantage conferred by evolutionary changes in that protein."

Comment: Coyne is an idiot. Purpose means purpose, something that is impossible in a materialistic - and thereby non-teleological - universe.


Coyne misunderstands design science. Intelligent design is two scientific inferences: 1) design is the most reasonable explanation for some aspects of biology, and 2) inference to design in biology is a powerful tool in scientific methodology. These Nobel laureates used the second inference - that inference to design is a powerful tool in biological science - to guide their research.
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Bulb

Camera captures light in slow motion: 10 trillion frames per second

Devin Coldewey
TechCrunch
Sat, 13 Oct 2018 14:35 UTC
light speed measurement
© Caltech Optical Imaging LaboratoryThe trillion-frame-per-second compressed ultrafast photography system.
Light is the fastest thing in the universe, so trying to catch it on the move is necessarily something of a challenge. We've had some success, but a new rig built by Caltech scientists pulls down a mind-boggling 10 trillion frames per second, meaning it can capture light as it travels along - and they have plans to make it a hundred times faster.

Understanding how light moves is fundamental to many fields, so it isn't just idle curiosity driving the efforts of Jinyang Liang and his colleagues - not that there'd be anything wrong with that either. But there are potential applications in physics, engineering, and medicine that depend heavily on the behavior of light at scales so small, and so short, that they are at the very limit of what can be measured.
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Network

Telecoms firm Orange collaborating with Google to lay private undersea cable between France and US

Alex Hern
The Guardian
Mon, 15 Oct 2018 12:38 UTC
The 6,600km undersea cable will open in 2020 and is one of seven Google is building over the next two years

undersea cable US France
The cable will provide Orange alone with a capacity of ‘more than 30 terabits per second, per [fibre] pair’ – enough, the company says, ‘to transfer a 1GB movie file in 30 microseconds’.
Telecoms firm Orange has teamed up with Google to work on a private undersea cable connecting the Atlantic coasts of France and the United States.

Measuring 6,600km in length, the undersea cable will be named Dunant after Henry Dunant, the first Nobel peace prize winner and founder of the Red Cross. When it comes online in 2020, it will provide Orange alone with a capacity of "more than 30 terabits per second, per [fibre] pair" - enough, the company says, "to transfer a 1GB movie file in 30 microseconds". Neither Orange nor Google released information about the total capacity of the cable, nor how they would allocate it between them.

The cable will be the first new submarine cable between the US and France in 15 years. It's Google's fourth completely private undersea cable, following two short-distance tests, named Alpha and Beta, and the long-distance Curie cable - named after the famed physicist Marie Curie - that links the US west coast to Chile. That cable, which will come online in 2019, will make Google the first major non-telecom company to build a private intercontinental cable. It is also the first subsea cable to land in Chile in almost 20 years, and will be the largest single data pipe connecting the country to the rest of the world.
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