Science & TechnologyS


Evil Rays

This Is Your Brain on Advertising

Amber Haq
Business Week
Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:12 UTC
Neuromarketers use sophisticated brain-imaging technology to test consumer response and help clients fine-tune their strategies

Do you ever get the creepy feeling that advertisers know how to put a lump in your throat, inspire subconscious brand loyalty, or make your mouth water? Just wait: It could get worse. An emerging technique called neuromarketing that uses brain scans to measure human response to promotional messages is starting to catch on in Europe - and soon ads may become even more effective at prompting you to pull out your wallet.

Comment: Given that the military and CIA are some 30 years ahead of public research into such areas as this - thanks to Project Paperclip which brought over the Nazi scientists to the US, Project Bluebird, MK-ULTRA, Monarch and the like - one wonders how easily they are able to manipulate the public to "buy" their nefarious policies or to predict reactions from "terrorist" events. Yet another reason to believe 9/11 was just such a neuromarketing tool.

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Magnify

Stem Cell Nuclei Are Soft Hard Drives


Space Daily
Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:01 UTC
Biophysicists at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered that the nuclei of human stem cells are particularly soft and flexible, rather than hard, making it easier for stem cells to migrate through the body and to adopt different shapes, but ultimately to put human genes in the correct nuclear "sector" for proper access and expression. Researchers pulled cell nuclei into microscopic glass tubes under controlled pressures and visualized the shear of the DNA and associated proteins by fluorescence microscopy.

©Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the University of Pennsylvania
A stem cell nucleus flows like a soft plastic. The chromatin fibers are tagged yellow and a dark stripe is painted to help visualize the flow into a micro-capillary.
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Red Flag

Boeing Advanced Military Satellite Begins On-Orbit Checkout

Staff Sgt. Don Branum
50th Space Wing Public Affairs
Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:33 UTC
Airmen with the 3rd Space Operations Squadron and contractors with Boeing Corporation took over early-orbit operations on Wideband Global SATCOM Satellite Vehicle 1 from a Boeing facility in El Segundo, Calif., approximately 30 minutes after it launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., Oct. 10. The teaming gives 3rd SOPS Airmen an opportunity to become acquainted with WGS during its initial stages, said 50th Operations Group commander Col. Clinton Crosier.

©Unknown
USAF launches first of next generation communications satellites
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Coffee

Partnership In Space

Yuri Zaitsev
RIA Novosti
Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:09 UTC
October has brought welcome news. NASA administrator Michael Griffin, on a visit to Moscow, said he looked forward to Russians and Americans flying together to the Moon next decade. International projects, he said, were better paying than national ones. Meanwhile, Russian-American space cooperation has a history to celebrate. In May 1972, the two superpowers agreed to join forces for progress. Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin and U.S. President Richard Nixon signed an agreement on cooperation in space exploration and utilization.

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Electromagnetic Wormhole Possible With Invisibility Technology


Space Daily
Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:52 UTC
The team of mathematicians that first created the mathematics behind the "invisibility cloak" announced by physicists last October has now shown that the same technology could be used to generate an "electromagnetic wormhole." In the study, which is to appear in the Oct. 12 issue of Physical Review Letters, Allan Greenleaf, professor of mathematics at the University of Rochester, and his coauthors lay out a variation on the theme of cloaking. Their results open the possibility of building a sort of invisible tunnel between two points in space.

©Unknown
One of the views through the "wormhole." Different lengths result in different bending of light.
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Rocket

China Space Program Eyes Farther Frontiers

Xin Dingding
Xinhua News Agency
Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:04 UTC
Major breakthroughs are expected by 2010 in the country's ambitious space programs - from manned flights to the lunar probe - a senior space administrator said Thursday. Scientists are working toward astronaut space walks, and spacecraft rendezvous and docking procedures by the end of the decade, said Sun Laiyan, chief of the China National Space Administration. The deep space exploration program aims to achieve the first phase goal of the lunar probe, which is to have the orbiter Chang'e I circle the moon, he said.

©Unknown
The current indigenously-developed Long March series of rockets can carry 9 tons to an orbit 300 km from Earth, or send satellites of 5 tons to a geosynchronous orbit 36,000 km away.
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Info

Fearful looks get brain's attention fast

Julie Steenhuysen
Reuters
Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:03 UTC
Smiles may take a while, but a horrified expression is a sure-fire attention getter, U.S. researchers said on Sunday, based on a study of how fast people process facial expressions.

©REUTERS/Vanderbilt University/Handout
An undated handout photo shows a man looking fearful. New research has found that the brain processes images of fearful faces faster than images of neutral or happy faces.
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Gear

Nanotech: The Next American Revolution?

Brad Kenney
IW
Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:22 UTC
For a U.S. manufacturing community beset by energy, materials and labor costs and struggling to remain competitive in the global economy, nanotech may have a positive impact that rises far beyond its small scale.
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Bizarro Earth

Pipes hung in the sea could help planet to 'heal itself'

Michael McCarthy
The Indipendent
Sun, 14 Oct 2007 07:26 UTC
Pipes hanging in the ocean might bring global warming under control, two of Britain's most distinguished scientists suggest today.

©Jurgen Brauer


Comment: Planet Earth may have its own embedded mechanism to heal itself. Certainly those pipes can do nothing about earthquakes, volcanoes and huge quantity of gases flowing out the ocean's basin.

Could be mere coincidence but this story reminds us the recent Richard Sauder interview in our podcast:

Richard is the author of several books that minutely detail US government research and development of electronic equipment which can be used for mind control, as well as the disconcerting topic of Underground and Underwater Bases and Tunnels.

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Coffee

Preventing Extinction: The Miracle of the Frozen Zoo

Alisa Opar
Plenty Magazine
Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:11 UTC
With the California Condor already saved, genetic samples from endangered species at the Frozen Zoo will prevent extinctions all over the planet.


On a sunny spring afternoon, the San Diego Zoo is teeming with shorts-clad tourists of all ages. While most visitors gravitate toward the pandas, giraffes, and gorillas, one little boy seems particularly taken with the Javan bantengs, a species of endangered Southeast Asian wild cattle that can grow to be seven feet long and weigh nearly a ton. Asked which one is his favorite, the child sizes up each of the animals before settling on a male with a dark blue-black coat grazing closest to him. It happens to be the spitting image of another banteng that died in 1980, and the resemblance is more than superficial: The four-year-old animal at the zoo is its clone.
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