Science & Technology

Study find ebola survivors face long-term health and neurological issues

Sarah Boseley
The Guardian
Thu, 25 Feb 2016 18:50 UTC

© 20th Century Fox/Getty Images
Pauline Cafferkey enters an isolation tent in Glasgow earlier this week before boarding a plane bound for London.

Study undertaken in Liberia suggests Ebola virus has lasting impact on the brain of survivors, causing headache, memory loss and depressed mood

Ebola survivors are continuing to suffer from neurological problems more than six months after infection, according to the early results of a new study.

The findings from research undertaken by US neurologists in Liberia appear to confirm suspicions that there are serious long-term effects of Ebola virus disease. They have been made public days after Pauline Cafferkey, the nurse who contracted Ebola while working as a volunteer in Sierra Leone, was admitted for the third time to the infectious diseases unit of the Royal Free hospital.

The study was carried out in Liberia by researchers from the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda. A team of neurologists travelled to Liberia, where they recruited 87 survivors of the epidemic for a study on the long-term impact on the brain. Four were excluded because of other conditions. The remaining 82 were examined by the team and compared with close contacts who had not contracted the Ebola virus.

Comment: The Ebola virus may have many faces and unknown effects. Best to be in the best possible health.

Stress activates the sleeping herpes virus

Tim Sandle
Digital Journal
Thu, 25 Feb 2016 23:51 UTC

Helsinki - Once someone has contracted herpes the virus can emerge again at any time. The re-emergence is linked with periods of stress. Scientists have been looking into how this happens.

The first finding relates to how herpes establishes a life-long association with an infected person. Here the DNA genome of the virus hides within the nucleus of human infected cells.

The second finding relates to how stress triggers a reactivation of the virus. This is connected to human cellular stress responses. For the study, University of Helsinki researchers looked at Kaposi's sarcoma associated herpes virus.

Kaposi's sarcoma associated herpes virus causes Kaposi's sarcoma (an aggressive form of lymphoma), a cancer commonly occurring in AIDS patients. Due to its cancer association, the virus is classified as an oncovirus ,a group that includes both RNA and DNA-based viruses.

There are seven known oncoviruses that can cause cancer in humans. Other examples include human papilloma virus and Epstein-Barr virus.

Do aliens use radios? Mysterious FRB signals traced to distant galaxy

RT
Thu, 25 Feb 2016 21:16 UTC

For the first time, scientists have successfully traced mysterious "fast radio bursts" (FRBs), which have been speculated to be signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, to a galaxy six billion light years away.

Just 17 such radio blasts have been recorded since 2007 when they were first discovered. Each one came from space and lasted a few milliseconds at the most, emitting as much energy as the Sun in about 10,000 years.

Scientists are not sure what causes these bursts. The first step in establishing their origin was to estimate the distance to the object where it originated.

Astronomer Evan Keane from the UK's Jodrell Bank Observatory, who led the scientific team that published the new findings in the journal Nature, was able to record one of the most recent radio burst called FRB 150418 on April 18, 2015 with the help of the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. It lasted less than one millisecond, the shortest of them all.

Comment: Unfortunately, the theories for this and many other cosmic mysteries can only be as good as the models they're based on. The solution to many of these mysteries might be a lot faster coming if more scientists were to get on board with electric universe theory! Here's a start: Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

The evolution of Atlas: New generation of humanoid bots is unveiled

Nicholas West
Activist Post
Wed, 24 Feb 2016 18:51 UTC

The evolution of humanoid robots is happening at an ever-quickening pace. These advancements are occurring not only in their mechanics but also with the incorporation of artificial intelligence.

One of the humanoid robots that has garnered the most attention is ATLAS, developed for DARPA by Boston Dynamics. ATLAS has been through several incarnations since its inception in 2013 as part of the DARPA Robotics Challenge and, as you'll see in the videos below, if a truly Terminator-like killer robot ever does come to fruition, ATLAS very well could be the one.

Although ATLAS was seen as an improvement from the U.S. Army's version known as PETMAN, it began as a clunky and hulking 6′ 2″ 330-pound unstable creation that only could move indoors while connected to a tether. Nevertheless, it was equipped with sensors and an onboard computer system which set the framework for future models.

Drugging the ecosystem: Washington's Puget Sound fish full of cocaine and pharmaceuticals

RT
Thu, 25 Feb 2016 19:22 UTC

Fish found in Washington's Puget Sound are tripping on cocaine, Prozac, Advil, Benadryl, and Lipitor. Unfortunately, there is no aquatic drug dealer responsible for it. Instead, the intoxication is the result of tainted discharge water.

Pharmaceutical pollution could be to blame for the many drugs showing up in the tissues of juvenile Chinook salmon. Estuary waters near the sewage treatment plants were found to contain a cocktail of up to 81 different drugs, according to a new study out of the National Oceanie and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

There are several plausible theories about the Puget Sound's high concentration of drug-infused water. Jim Meador, an environmental toxicologist at the NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, published a study that offered two options.

One possibility is that people in the areas around the Puget Sound use more of the detected drugs. However, it is also likely that the problem lies with the treatment of waste water.

Comment: The wholesale drugging of Americans is not only destroying lives, but is proving equally harmful to the environment as well.

Confirmed: Native Americans and Siberians are cousins

Aram Ter-Ghazaryan
Russia Beyond the Headlines
Tue, 23 Feb 2016 18:57 UTC

After more than a century of speculation, an international group of geneticists has conclusively proven that the Aztecs, Incas, and Iroquois are closely related to the peoples of Altai, the Siberian region that borders China and Mongolia.

Scientists have suspected for a long time that Native Americans are closely related to the peoples of Altai. The theory of the Altai peoples migrating from Siberia across Chukotka and Alaska, down to the Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America, appeared almost a century ago.

Since then researchers have tried to prove this, and in late 2015 the famous Russian geneticist, Oleg Balanovsky, finally confirmed the theory. In addition, Dr. Balanovsky's studies also proved that some Native Americans have kinship with the indigenous populations of Australia.

"The current study confirms the theory that the Altai peoples are closely related to Native Americans,'' said geneticist Valery Ilyinsky at the RAS Institute of General Genetics. ''We now have clear proof, and it is useless to contest it.''

French astronomers may be closer to locating mysterious ninth planet

RT
Wed, 24 Feb 2016 16:18 UTC

French scientists say they may be one step closer to locating a mysterious ninth planet, after cutting their search area in half. US astronomers earlier said the solar system's 'Planet Nine' might exist, but conceded they had no idea where it could be.

After studying data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn, French researcher Jacques Laskar of the Paris Observatory stated on Tuesday that a ninth planet may indeed exist in the outer reaches of our solar system, but "not just anywhere," AFP reported.

Using mathematical modeling, Laskar and his colleagues calculated what influence the ninth planet would have on the movement of other planets as it passed nearby. They studied the orbit postulated by the US astronomers, on the assumption that the planet would circle the Sun in a lop-sided, highly elongated, oval loop.

Comment: Astronomers say a Neptune-sized ninth planet may lurk beyond Pluto

Closest flyby of comet in centuries in March

Anna Norris
Weather.com
Tue, 23 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC

© M. Kelley/S. Protopapa/UMD
The image on the left is a combination of five 300-s exposures tracking the ‘asteroid,’ while the image on the right is a smoothed version to help enhance the tail (indicated by the arrow), proving that it is in fact a comet.

Astronomers with their eyes on the sky thought they spotted an asteroid, but a closer look revealed a comet.

It was initially labeled as asteroid 2016 BA14 by the Pan-STARRS survey, but a group of astronomers from the University of Maryland took a closer look and found something very intriguing: a tail. Rather than a rocky, metallic asteroid, it appears the space object is actually an icy comet.

That means it's one of two comets flying by Earth in March. The other, Comet 252P/LINEAR 12, will pass by on March 21.

The newly discovered comet will fly by Earth the very next day, March 22, in the morning, and it will set a record.

"The P/2016 BA14 (PanSTARRS) flyby is significant because it is one of the closest flybys of a comet since comet Lexell in 1770, which passed about six lunar distances away," Michael Kelley of the University of Maryland, who confirmed the asteroid was a comet, told weather.com. "Asteroids frequently flyby at such close distances, but comet encounters are rare."

It will be the third closest comet flyby of Earth of all time, but it will still be 9 times the distance to the moon - well out of Earth's range.Even more interesting than its close range, Kelley says, is the possibility that the comet is a sister comet to 252P/LINEAR 12.

Comet P/2016 BA14 could very well have broken off from comet 252P/LINEAR 12, Slate reports.

"If we can understand if and why these small comets broke apart years ago, we may be able to better determine the general impact threat comets present to the Earth," Kelley says.

Astronomers will keep a close eye on both comets through Hubble Space Telescope observations. If you want to see the comet, you'll need binoculars or a telescope.

Stephen Hawking: Black holes could be a passage to another universe

Andrew Griffin
The Independent
Tue, 25 Aug 2015 19:16 UTC

Humans could escape from black holes, rather than getting stuck in them, according to a new theory proposed by Stephen Hawking.

Unfortunate space travellers won't be able to return to their own universe, according to Hawking. But they will be able to escape somewhere else, he has proposed at a conference in Stockholm.

Black holes in fact aren't as "black" as people thought and could be a way of getting through to an alternative universe.

"The existence of alternative histories with black holes suggests this might be possible," Hawking said, according to a report from Stockholm University. "The hole would need to be large and if it was rotating it might have a passage to another universe. But you couldn't come back to our universe. So although I'm keen on space flight, I'm not going to try that.

Internet by light connection so fast, it promises to leave Wi-Fi in the dust

Laure Fillon
Yahoo News
Tue, 23 Feb 2016 16:32 UTC

Connecting your smartphone to the web with just a lamp -- that is the promise of Li-Fi, featuring Internet access 100 times faster than Wi-Fi with revolutionary wireless technology.

French start-up Oledcomm demonstrated the technology at the Mobile World Congress, the world's biggest mobile fair, in Barcelona. As soon as a smartphone was placed under an office lamp, it started playing a video.

The big advantage of Li-Fi, short for "light fidelity", is its lightning speed. Laboratory tests have shown theoretical speeds of over 200 Gbps -- fast enough to "download the equivalent of 23 DVDs in one second", the founder and head of Oledcomm, Suat Topsu, told AFP. "Li-Fi allows speeds that are 100 times faster than Wi-Fi" which uses radio waves to transmit data, he added.

The technology uses the frequencies generated by LED bulbs -- which flicker on and off imperceptibly thousands of times a second -- to beam information through the air, leading it to be dubbed the "digital equivalent of Morse Code".

.. .. Ernesto Guido, you know much that his hidden! [Link]

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Science & Technology

Study find ebola survivors face long-term health and neurological issues

Stress activates the sleeping herpes virus

Do aliens use radios? Mysterious FRB signals traced to distant galaxy

The evolution of Atlas: New generation of humanoid bots is unveiled

Drugging the ecosystem: Washington's Puget Sound fish full of cocaine and pharmaceuticals

Confirmed: Native Americans and Siberians are cousins

French astronomers may be closer to locating mysterious ninth planet

Closest flyby of comet in centuries in March

Stephen Hawking: Black holes could be a passage to another universe

Internet by light connection so fast, it promises to leave Wi-Fi in the dust

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