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Computer Program to Read Human Thoughts!

February 2, 2012 1 comment

topnews.us

An X-ray shows one of the patients in the study with electrodes all over their brain (Pic: Adeen Flinker/UC Berkeley)

Computer Program to Read Human Thoughts!  A research that appeared recently in the journal PLoS Biology has revealed about a way of using a computer program to help read a person’s brain and then put the findings into words.

A group of neuroscientists at the University of California Berkeley said that the technique could be beneficial for patients who have speech impairment or are affected by stroke and degenerative disease. The research is said to be capable of taking mind reading to a new level.

In order to reach at the conclusion, the study researchers conducted an experiment in which they enrolled brain surgery patients. They inserted electrodes in the skulls of the patients and connected them with a computer program. They did it so they could know the working of temporal lobe which is associated with the processing of speech and images.

It was revealed that the computer program was successful in analyzing the brain and could also reproduce the Read more…

Haiti, Dominican Republic May Be Entering Big Earthquake Period

February 2, 2012 Comments off

insurancejournal.com

Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic could be in for a period of periodic powerful earthquakes, according to a recent scientific study.

The study says Haiti’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake two years ago is likely to be the first of several quakes of a similarly powerful magnitude.

The Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake caused widespread damage in the Haitian capital and surrounding cities. Officials say the disaster killed 314,000 people and toppled thousands of crudely built homes.

“The 2010 Haiti earthquake may mark the beginning of a new cycle of large earthquakes on the Enriquillo fault system after 240 years of seismic quiescence,” lead author William Bakun of the U.S. Geological Survey wrote. “The entire Enriquillo fault system appears to be Read more…

Death count rises as big freeze shuts down eastern Europe

February 2, 2012 Comments off

smh.com

Fisherman's tents on the Moscow River in Moscow, Russia. The death toll from a severe cold spell in Eastern Europe has risen to 79.Frozen fish … fishermen’s tents on the Moscow River, where the temperature has fallen to minus 21 degrees as eastern Europe suffers a severe cold spell. Photo: AP

BELGRADE: Rescue helicopters have evacuated dozens of people from snow-blocked villages in Serbia and Bosnia and airlifted in emergency food and medicine as a severe cold spell kept eastern Europe in its icy grip.

The death toll from the cold rose to 83 on Wednesday and emergency crews worked overtime as temperatures sank to minus 32.5 degrees in some areas. Parts of the Black Sea froze near the Romanian coastline and rare snow fell on Croatian islands in the Adriatic Sea. In Bulgaria, 16 towns recorded their lowest temperatures since records started 100 years ago as four more people were reported dead from hypothermia. In Russia, temperatures fell to minus 21 in Moscow.

In central Serbia, choppers pulled out 12 people, including nine who went to a funeral but then could not get back over icy, snow-choked roads. Two more people froze to death in the snow and two others are missing, bringing that nation’s death toll to five.

”The situation is dramatic. The snow is up to five metres high in some areas, you can only see Read more…

2/2/2012 — 6.9 magnitude earthquake north of New Zealand — Vanutau

February 2, 2012 3 comments

Full Body Scanners At Super Bowl 2012

February 2, 2012 Comments off

prisonplanet.com

First time devices linked with cancer risk used for public sports event

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, February 2, 2012

Fans attending the 2012 Super Bowl on Sunday will face a new level of security in addition to pat downs before they are allowed to enter the Lucas Oil Stadium – full body x-ray scanners.

Full Body Scanners At Super Bowl 2012 Lucas Oil Stadium1

According to WPRI.com News reporter Matt Touchette, despite a congressional demand for an investigation into the machines following health concerns, the scanners will be part of the security set up in Indianapolis this weekend, marking the first time that the controversial devices have been used for a public sporting event.

“I was out for a stroll with the intention of snapping some photos for our blog when my travels took me to Lucas Oil Stadium of all places,” writes Touchette. “It was there that I stumbled upon a temporary Patriots street sign put in place close to the site of Super Bowl XLVI (appropriately). I then found myself walking into the side gates of the stadium, through intense security which included full body scanners and then down the tunnel onto the field.”

Although Super Bowl authorities and Homeland Security have announced that pat downs and bag searches will be part of security procedures before the game, they have failed to Read more…

China’s Geostrategic Designs on Latin America

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americasquarterly.org

In the last 5 years China’s military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean have grown at an unprecedented rate.   Beijing now regularly hosts officers from Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay  in its military academies, has expanded arms sales and technology transfers to countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela, and in October last year even sent  a navy ship to the Caribbean.

Is China—now Brazil and Chile’s number-one trade partner—buttressing its economic interests in the Western Hemisphere with military ties and alliances?  Is this the Middle Kingdom’s equivalent of President Barack Obama’s Pacific pivot to balance China’s saber rattling in Asia?

There’s no doubt that China’s torrid economic growth rate and its arrival as an emerging—if not already emerged—global economic superpower has shifted the international system and brought a more muscular Chinese foreign policy.  That policy—part of what the Chinese labeled its “Going Out” strategy—has come with a growing Chinese diplomatic, economic and even military presence in many of its closest trade partners.  Given China’s need for raw materials to feed its manufacturing growth and urbanization—gobbling up everything from iron, to oil, to soybeans and frozen chicken—the country’s rise has been felt most obviously (at times with alarm) in Read more…

Americans get closer to building weapon of the future

February 2, 2012 1 comment

pravda

Americans get closer to building weapon of the future. 46511.jpeg

The US Navy may have the world’s most powerful unit – the so-called railgun – during the forthcoming 15 years. The “Weapon of the 21st Century,” as Russian specialists described it, was undergoing tests during the recent several years. US defense officials were satisfied with the results. They have already signed the first contract to create the power source for the gun. The railgun needs a lot of energy to accelerate projectiles to supersonic speeds.

Raytheon Company, one of the USA’s largest defense suppliers, signed an agreement with the Naval Sea Systems Command for the creation of the power system for the railgun. The agreement was evaluated at $10 billion, a message on the website of the company said.

In accordance with the agreement, Raytheon undertakes to design and build the power module, which will become a part of the Pulse Forming Network (PFN). In the future, the system can be used for the production of railguns and combat lasers.

“This new system will dramatically change how our Navy defends itself and engages enemies while at sea,” said Joe Biondi, vice president of Advanced Technology for Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems business. “We have the expertise to design and build a solution that provides our warfighters with a decisive advantage over a multitude of current and emerging threats.”

A railgun is an entirely electrical gun that Read more…

2011 Was A Year of Weather Extremes, With More to Come

February 2, 2012 Comments off

treehugger.com

The global average temperature in 2011 was 14.52 degrees Celsius (58.14 degrees Fahrenheit). According to NASA scientists, this was the ninth warmest year in 132 years of recordkeeping, despite the cooling influence of the La Niña atmospheric and oceanic circulation pattern and relatively low solar irradiance. Since the 1970s, each subsequent decade has gotten hotter — and 9 of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred in the twenty-first century.


© Earth Policy Institute

Each year’s average temperature is determined by a number of factors, including solar activity and the status of the El Niño/La Niña phenomenon. But heat-trapping gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, have become a dominant force, pushing the Earth’s climate out of its normal range. The planet is now close to 0.8 degrees Celsius warmer than it was a century ago. Hidden within Read more…

Sun Delivered Curveball Of Powerful Radiation At Earth Say UNH Scientists

February 2, 2012 Comments off
nanopatentsandinnovations
A potent follow-up solar flare, which occurred Friday (Jan. 17, 2012), just days after the Sun launched the biggest coronal mass ejection (CME) seen in nearly a decade, delivered a powerful radiation punch to Earth’s magnetic field despite the fact that it was aimed away from our planet.According to University of New Hampshire scientists currently studying and modeling various aspects of solar radiation, this was due to both the existing population of energetic particles launched by the first CME and a powerful magnetic connection that reeled particles in towards Earth from the Sun’s blast region, which had spun to an oblique angle.”Energetic particles can sneak around the ‘corner,’ as was the case in Friday’s event when it was launched at the Sun’s limb, or edge,” says astrophysicist Harlan Spence, director of the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS) and principal investigator for the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) instrument onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission. CRaTER is designed to measure and characterize aspects of the deep space radiation environment.

Caption: Particle radiation from the Jan. 23, 2012 solar flare speeds away from the Sun along curved magnetic field lines (blue lines) and arrives before the coronal mass ejection (orange mass from the Sun) and its driven shock.

Image courtesy of Nathan Schwadron, UNH-EOS.
Space weather events can disrupt Earth-based power grids, satellites that Read more…

Are Jellyfish Increasing in World’s Oceans?

February 2, 2012 Comments off

sciencedaily.com

Giant jellyfish clog fishing nets in Japan. (Photo Credit: Shin-ichi Uye)

A global study has questioned claims that jellyfish are increasing worldwide.

Blooms, or proliferation, of jellyfish have shown a substantial, visible impact on coastal populations — clogged nets for fishermen, stinging waters for tourists, even choked intake lines for power plants — and recent media reports have created a perception that the world’s oceans are experiencing increases in jellyfish due to human activities such as global warming and overharvesting of fish. Now, a new global and collaborative study questions claims that jellyfish are increasing worldwide and suggests claims are not supported with any hard evidence or scientific analyses to date.

Dr Cathy Lucas, a marine biologist at the University of Southampton, who is based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton was involved in the study, which appears in the latest issue of BioScience. Her co-authors are composed of experts from the Global Jellyfish Group, a consortium of approximately 30 experts on gelatinous organisms, climatology, oceanography and socioeconomics from around the globe, that Read more…