Age of Aquarius meditation was very successful and we have reached the critical mass, albeit barely. Around 150,000 people were actively participating:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Yb3_60gwE&feature=youtu.beThis was just enough to push us over ...
Tag: director (page 1 of 10)
Derrick Broze, ContributorIn a recent speech, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency discussed the controversial topic of geoengineering, leading some activists to ask whether the agency is actively and deliberately modifying the weather.In late June, John Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, spoke at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting about threats to global security. Director Brennan mentioned a number of threats to stability before di [...]
An team of international experts has announced a new observation of high-energy neutrino particles using an instrument funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The particles from beyond our galaxy have been detected at the geographic South Pole, using a massive instrument buried deep in ice.The scientists from the IceCube Collaboration, a research team with headquarters at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, pub [...]
April McCarthy, Prevent DiseaseYou can fake a smile, but your phone knows the truth. Depression can be detected from your smartphone sensor data by tracking the number of minutes you use the phone and your daily geographical locations, reports a Northwestern Medicine study.More and more smartphones are able to see what many of us cannot.The ongoing use of this communications technology, as compared to computer-based use such as email, is linked to increased psychological di [...]
Julie Fidler, Natural SocietyCould it all be based on a myth?For years we’ve been told that depression is caused by low serotonin levels in the brain.Now, a leading professor of psychiatry is warning that belief is little more than a dangerous miscommunication, saying the marketing of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) drugs is “based on a myth.”SSRI use began to skyrocket in the early 1990’s. The drugs were seen as a safer alternative to [...]
By Carey Wedler for The Anti-Media(ANTIMEDIA) According to Defense One, the Pentagon is rushing to build a space war center to sustain its global power. Within six months, the space apparatus will be fully functional, as announced by Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work at the 2015 GEOINT conference. Work openly admitted the move is an attempt by the Pentagon to maintain global dominance and combat alleged attacks from China and Russia. Most prominently, the [...]
Excerpt from thenextdigit.com
On May 15, the 10th anniversary of Endangered Species Day has been kicked off across the United States, which sees a series of wildlife awareness events with the participation of over 200 zoos. These zoos across the country restricted access to a few of their endangered animals and birds to make visitors feel the non existence of such species.
Ohio’s Akron Zoo also participated in the awareness event, where it shrouded Sumatran tigers from visitors, with only limited access to visitors to capture a glimpse of the endangered tiger species. In Dallas Zoo, authorities kept the African penguins were kept away from visitors’ sight, while allowing those visitors who commit to eat sustainable seafood, switching off lights when not in use and such kind of conservation efforts.
Ohio’s Akron Zoo’s director of marketing and guest services David Barnhardt revealed that the zoo will be using this event to launch their own program SAFE (Saving Animals from Extinction) where the zoo will create awareness of saving endangered animals. SAFE is sponsored by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. He also said,
“Through SAFE we will pull all of these resources we have available to us and develop action plans, raise awareness and engage the public to help these endangered species.”
Endangered Species Day is an opportunity for every humans to learn about the importance of animals, especially endangered species, and day to day actions they can take to protect these species, according to the Endangered Species Coalition. The Endangered Coalition not only sponsors events in the states, but also provides toolkits for zoos which interested in its own endangered species awareness programs such as SAFE.
Dallas Zoo has initiated a program in February 2015, named as the Wild Earth Academy, which educates people about endangered species. Ben Jones, Wild Earth Academy’s Senior Director and Dean, said in a statement:
“There’s a balance in nature and it’s very evident that that balance is becoming imbalanced, it’s shifting. We have to do our part to use the resources that we have, but not use them up.”
The Coalition also produces the yearly report “Vanishing: Ten American Species Our Children May Never See” – listing the top 10 most endangered species during the time of reporting. 2014’s ‘Vanishing’ report listed endangered animals like the Monarch butterfly, Mountain yellow-legged frog (extinct from southern Sierra Nevada), North Pacific right whale, great white shark (California/Mexico), little brown bat (extinct due to white-nose syndrome, an illness caused by a deadly fungus from Europe), whitebark pine, rusty patched bumblebee, greater sage-grouse, polar bear and snake river sockeye salmon.
Jack Hanna is the Director Emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and the host of Jack Hanna’s Wild Countdown and Jack Hanna’s Into the Wild television shows.
Primatologist Jane Goodall's recent statement calling for the closing of zoos and aquariums such as Sea World obviously has big money wildlife theme parks very nervous. Firing back with their side of the debate is Jack Hanna, Director Emeritus (which means now retired) of the Columbus Zoo, through a Time.com feature story penned by Hanna entitled, Jack Hanna: What Zoo Critics Don’t Understand, a one-sided dialogue of pro-zoo and pro-aquarium absurdity. Isn't it funny that so often those who possess, let's say, cagey attitudes towards human and animal rights believe it is the rest of us who don't 'understand' something, and if we could just find a way to understand, then we'd see things their way.
This weak and quite scattered opposing view offered by Hanna begins its argument against animal rights supporters and their efforts to free wild life from their theme park imprisonment by first declaring just how popular zoos and aquariums are with folks. Oh well, gee, say no more Jack. Popular? Slavery was pretty popular with some folks too, perhaps we should rethink that whole abolition thing? Do go on. And on Hanna did just that.
This weak and quite scattered opposing view offered by Hanna begins its argument against animal rights supporters and their efforts to free wild life from their theme park imprisonment by first declaring just how popular zoos and aquariums are with folks. Oh well, gee, say no more Jack. Popular? Slavery was pretty popular with some folks too, perhaps we should rethink that whole abolition thing? Do go on. And on Hanna did just that.
Realizing quickly the only direction this lopsided piece could possibly go from that genius insight, I bit down hard and finished the article, which to me read more like a paid endorsement from those establishments that profit greatly from the abduction, caging, and exploitation of defenseless animals. I made it all the way to the point where the popular wildlife celebrity, whose biggest talent appears to be how he makes so many immediately see how the world was such a better place when Steve Irwin was in it, actually said that animals need to be in cages because there's not enough room for them in the wild. Here is the segment written by Jack Hanna as posted on time.com.
"Critics say the only place animals belong is in the wild, but those boundaries are shrinking each day. Having traveled the world, the only places I consider truly “wild” are Antarctica, parts of the Amazon and some places in Africa. Even in Africa, the “wild” places tend to be national parks with guarded boundaries. Animals face many challenges, including habitat loss, poaching, severe weather, and war. The “wild” is not necessarily the idyllic place people imagine..."
And you have just the 'idyllic place' for animals at your Columbus zoo, don't you Jack?
Greg Giles
Dr. MercolaThe US government has finally admitted they’ve overdosed Americans on fluoride and, for first time since 1962, are lowering its recommended level of fluoride in drinking water.1,2,3About 40 percent of American teens have dental fluorosis,4 a condition referring to changes in the appearance of tooth enamel—from chalky-looking lines and splotches to dark staining and pitting—caused by long-term ingestion of fluoride during the time teeth are forming.In some areas, fluoro [...]
Reuters
With the right expertise in molecular biology, one could start a basic laboratory to modify human embryos using a genome-editing computer technique all for a couple thousand dollars, according to a new report.
Genetic modification has received heightened scrutiny recently following last week’s announcement that Chinese researchers had, for the first time, successfully edited human embryos’ genomes.
The team at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China, used CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats), a technique that relies on “cellular machinery” used by bacteria in defense against viruses.
This machinery is copied and altered to create specific gene-editing complexes, which include the wonder enzyme Cas9. The enzyme works its way into the DNA and can be used to alter the molecule from the inside. The combination is attached to an RNA guide that takes the gene-editing complex to its target, telling Cas9 where to operate.
Use of the CRISPR technique is not necessarily relegated to the likes of cash-flush university research operations, according to a report by Business Insider.
"You could conceivably set up a CRISPR lab for $2,000,” he said, according to Business Insider.
Other top researchers have echoed this sentiment.
"Any scientist with molecular biology skills and knowledge of how to work with [embryos] is going to be able to do this,” Jennifer Doudna, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, recently told MIT Tech Review, which reported that Doudna co-discovered how to edit genetic code using CRISPR in 2012.
Last week, the Sun Yat-Sen University research team said it attempted to cure a gene defect that causes beta-thalassemia (a genetic blood disorder that could lead to severe anemia, poor growth, skeletal abnormalities and even death) by editing the germ line. For that purpose they used a gene-editing technique based on injecting non-viable embryos with a complex, which consists of a protective DNA element obtained from bacteria and a specific protein.
"I suspect this week will go down as a pivotal moment in the history of medicine," wrote science journalist Carl Zimmer for National Geographic.
Response to the new research has been mixed. Some experts say the gene editing could help defeat genetic diseases even before birth. Others expressed concern.
“At present, the potential safety and efficacy issues arising from the use of this technology must be thoroughly investigated and understood before any attempts at human engineering are sanctioned, if ever, for clinical testing,” a group of scientists, including some who had worked to develop CRISPR, warned in Science magazine.
Meanwhile, the director of the US National Institutes for Health (NIH) said the agency would not fund such editing of human embryo genes.
“Research using genomic editing technologies can and are being funded by NIH,” Francis Collins said Wednesday. “However, NIH will not fund any use of gene-editing technologies in human embryos. The concept of altering the human germline in embryos for clinical purposes ... has been viewed almost universally as a line that should not be crossed.”
Although the discovery of CRISPR sequences dates back to 1987 – when it was first used to cure bacteria of viruses – its successes in higher animals and humans were only achieved in 2012-13, when scientists achieved a revolution by combining the resulting treatment system with Cas9 for the first time.
On April 17, the MIT’s Broad Institute announced that has been awarded the first-ever patent for working with the Crisp-Cas9 system.
The institute’s director, Eric Lander, sees the combination as “an extraordinary, powerful tool. The ability to edit a genome makes it possible to discover the biological mechanisms underlying human biology.”
The system’s advantage over other methods is in that it can also target several genes at the same time, working its way through tens of thousands of so-called 'guide' RNA sequences that lead them to the weapon to its DNA targets.
Meanwhile, last month in the UK, a healthy baby was born from an embryo screened for genetic diseases, using karyomapping, a breakthrough testing method that allows doctors to identify about 60 debilitating hereditary disorders.
Tesla's expected home battery announcement could spark energy revolution. SolarCity has already installed 300 Tesla-made batteries in California homes.
Excerpt from CBC News
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is set to make an announcement later tonight. There's been speculation that a large-scale battery announcement is expected, but it's not clear if that will be the case.
While the battery will likely slash power bills for consumers, some say it's also a move toward democratizing energy systems.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, teased the announcement on Twitter a month ago, saying a major new Tesla product line will be unveiled at Hawthorne Design Studio at 8 p.m. local time Thursday. "Not a car," he wrote, sparking speculation that it may be a home battery.
Musk, who moved to Canada from South Africa and who briefly studied at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, is also chairman of SolarCity, a solar power provider.
SolarCity has already run a pilot program where it installed 300 home batteries made by Tesla in California homes. Another 130 systems were being installed in early 2015, according to the company's website.
The product will be available again in late summer, the company says, as it's working on "the next phase" of the program.
Tesla is also in the midst of building its gigafactory, which has added to the speculation that the company is unveiling a home battery. Musk says that by 2020, the factory will produce more lithium-ion batteries than all the current factories producing them today.
A home battery attaches to a home's electrical system and collects energy gathered by solar panels when the sun is out, Michael Ramsey, a Wall Street Journal automotive reporter, told CBC's The Current. That energy can then be used when the sun is no longer out.
'This is this shift away from very large centrally operated plants towards everybody owning their own little power grid or part of a small power grid in a condo building.'-— Warren Mabee, of Queen's University"The idea is that you purchase this system and it allows you effectively to cut the cord," he says of a consumer's ability to forgo energy from the grid. The consumer's electricity bills would be significantly reduced because they would be paying for less electricity from the grid.
This innovation could move the world toward a future where power is generated where we need it and where we use it, says Warren Mabee, director of the Queen's Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy.
"This is this shift away from very large centrally operated plants towards everybody owning their own little power grid or part of a small power grid in a condo building," Mabee says.
In this system, centralized power generation becomes more of a backup than a driver, he says.
Costs remain high
However, the current systems are still very expensive, says Ramsey. The 300 home batteries installed in California cost upward of $20,000, he says."It would take years and years and years to cover the utility costs," he says. "It doesn't make sense unless the costs come down."
Ramsey views businesses as having the highest possible economic advantage from this development. The battery could offer businesses a surge of electricity when they have a high demand for power and cut their bills.
Mabee compares the cost of solar panels to cellphones. Smartphones were once very expensive, but each new generation has brought the cost down, he said.
Each year, solar panels become better and cheaper. Solar panels are getting close to their grid parity moment — when the cost of generating solar power is the same or cheaper than buying energy off the grid.
Another grid parity moment may be close, says Mabee. It won't be long before the cost of a solar panel and battery system will match the cost of purchasing electricity from the grid, he estimates.
"That magic grid parity moment is coming faster and faster," he said.
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The Hooker 100-inch reflecting telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, just outside Los Angeles. Edwin Hubble's chair, on an elevating platform, is visible at left. A view from this scope first told Hubble our galaxy isn't the only one. Courtesy of The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science Collection at the Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. |
Excerpt from hnpr.org
The Hubble Space Telescope this week celebrates 25 years in Earth's orbit. In that time the telescope has studied distant galaxies, star nurseries, planets in our solar system and planets orbiting other stars.
But, even with all that, you could argue that the astronomer for whom the telescope is named made even more important discoveries — with far less sophisticated equipment.
A young Edwin Hubble at Mount Wilson's 100-inch telescope circa 1922, ready to make history.
Edwin Hubble Papers/Courtesy of Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.
In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble was working with the 100-inch Hooker telescope on Mount Wilson, just outside Los Angeles. At the time, it was the largest telescope in the world.
On a chilly evening, I climb up to the dome of that telescope with operator Nik Arkimovich and ask him to show me where Hubble would sit when he was using the telescope. Arkimovich points to a platform near the top of the telescope frame.
"He's got an eyepiece with crosshairs on it," Arkimovich explains. The telescope has gears and motors that let it track a star as it moves across the sky. "He's got a paddle that allows him to make minor adjustments. And his job is to keep the star in the crosshairs for maybe eight hours."
"It's certainly much, much easier today," says John Mulchaey, acting director of the observatories at Carnegie Institution of Science. "Now we sit in control rooms. The telescopes operate brilliantly on their own, so we don't have to worry about tracking and things like this."
The headquarters of the Carnegie observatories is at the foot of Mount Wilson, in the city of Pasadena. It's where Hubble worked during the day.
A century's worth of plates are stored here in the basement. Mulchaey opens a large steel door and ushers me into a room filled with dozens of file cabinets.
"Why don't we go take a look at Hubble's famous Andromeda plates," Mulchaey suggests.
The plates are famous for a reason: They completely changed our view of the universe. Mulchaey points to a plate mounted on a light stand.
"This is a rare treat for you," he says. "This plate doesn't see the light of day very often."
This glass side of a photographic plate shows where Hubble marked novas. The red VAR! in the upper right corner marks his discovery of the first Cepheid variable star — a star that told him the Andromeda galaxy isn't part of our Milky Way.
Courtesy of the Carnegie Observatories
The plate shows the spiral shape of the Andromeda galaxy. Hubble was looking for exploding stars called novas in Andromeda. Hubble marked these on the plate with the letter "N."
"The really interesting thing here," Mulchaey says, "is there's one with the N crossed out in red — and he's changed the N to VAR with an exclamation point."
Hubble had realized that what he was seeing wasn't a nova. VAR stands for a type of star known as a Cepheid variable. It's a kind of star that allows you to make an accurate determination of how far away something is. This Cepheid variable showed that the Andromeda galaxy isn't a part of our galaxy.
At the time, most people thought the Milky Way was it — the only galaxy in existence.
"And what this really shows is that the universe is much, much bigger than anybody realizes," Mulchaey says.
It was another blow to our human conceit that we are the center of the universe.
Hubble went on to use the Mount Wilson telescope to show the universe was expanding, a discovery so astonishing that Hubble had a hard time believing it himself.
If Hubble could make such important discoveries with century-old equipment, it makes you wonder what he might have turned up if he'd had a chance to use the space telescope that bears his name.
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Excerpt from computerworld.com
By Sharon Gaudin
IBM scientists say they have made two critical advances in an industrywide effort to build a practical quantum computer, shaving years off the time expected to have a working system.
"This is critical," said Jay Gambetta, IBM's manager of theory of quantum computing. "The field has got a lot more competitive. You could say the [quantum computing] race is just starting to begin… This is a small step on the journey but it's an important one."
Gambetta told Computerworld that IBM's scientists have created a square quantum bit circuit design, which could be scaled to much larger dimensions. This new two-dimensional design also helped the researchers figure out a way to detect and measure errors.
Quantum computing is a fragile process and can be easily thrown off by vibrations, light and temperature variations. Computer scientists doubt they'll ever get the error rate down to that in a classical computer.
Because of the complexity and sensitivity of quantum computing, scientists need to be able to detect errors, figure out where and why they're happening and prevent them from recurring.
IBM says its advancement takes the first step in that process.
"It tells us what errors are happening," Gambetta said. "As you make the square [circuit design] bigger, you'll get more information so you can see where the error was and you can correct for it. We're showing now that we have the ability to detect, and we're working toward the next step, which would allow you to see where and why the problem is happening so you can stop it from happening."
Quantum computing is widely thought to be the next great step in the field of computing, potentially surpassing classical supercomputers in large-scale, complex calculations.
Quantum computing would be used to cull big data, searching for patterns. It's hoped that these computers will take on questions that would lead to finding cures for cancer or discovering distant planets – jobs that might take today's supercomputers hundreds of years to calculate.
IBM's announcement is significant in the worlds of both computing and physics, where quantum theory first found a foothold.
Quantum computing, still a rather mysterious technology, combines both computing and quantum mechanics, which is one of the most complex, and baffling, areas of physics. This branch of physics evolved out of an effort to explain things that traditional physics is unable to.
For instance, each bit, also known as a qubit, in a quantum machine can be a one and a zero at the same time. When a qubit is built, it can't be predicted whether it will be a one or a zero. A qubit has the possibility of being positive in one calculation and negative in another. Each qubit changes based on its interaction with other qubits.
Because of all of these possibilities, quantum computers don't work like classical computers, which are linear in their calculations. A classical computer performs one step and then another. A quantum machine can calculate all of the possibilities at one time, dramatically speeding up the calculation.
However, that speed will be irrelevant if users can't be sure that the calculations are accurate.
That's where IBM's advances come into play.
"This is absolutely key," said Jim Tully, an analyst with Gartner. "You do the computation but then you need to read the results and know they're accurate. If you can't do that, it's kind of meaningless. Without being able to detect errors, they have no way of knowing if the calculations have any validity."
If scientists can first detect and then correct these errors, it's a major step in the right direction to building a working quantum computing system capable of doing enormous calculations.
"Quantum computing is a hard concept for most to understand, but it holds great promise," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. "If we can tame it, it can compute certain problems orders of magnitude more quickly than existing computers. The more organizations that are working on unlocking the potential of quantum computing, the better. It means that we'll see something real that much sooner."
A year ago, D-Wave Systems Inc. announced that it had built a quantum system, and that NASA, Google and Lockheed Martin had been testing them.
Many in the computer and physics communities doubt that D-Wave has built a real quantum computer. Vern Brownell, CEO of the company, avows that they have.
"I think that quantum computing shows promise, but it's going to be quite a while before we see systems for sale," said Olds.
IBM's Gambetta declined to speculate on whether D-Wave has built a quantum computing but said the industry is still years away from building a viable quantum system.
"Quantum computing could be potentially transformative, enabling us to solve problems that are impossible or impractical to solve today," said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president and director of IBM Research, in a statement.
IBM's research was published in Wednesday's issue of the journal Nature Communications.
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