Science & Technology

Apr

2015

CERN Large Hadron Collider Restarts After 2-Year Hiatus: What Will It Find This Time?

CERN. Image credit: By alpinethread (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN nuclear research center in Europe has been restarted, ready to conduct more particle experiments after a two-year shutdown for upgrading.

Ready to smash particles in collisions at almost twice the energies as before, physicists will use the LHC to probe ever deeper into the secrets of the universe, perhaps even into a “dark” side of the universe, the invisible dark matter believed to make up more than 90 percent of all mass in the universe.

The restart of the LHC for a new three-year run went smoothly, CERN officials said, although it will need some testing of its $150 million upgrades before particle collisions at full energy will be attempted.

“It will take us about six weeks to two months to establish the first stable collisions for the experiments, because we have to commission all the instruments, all the systems one by one,” said Joerg Wenninger, coordinator of LHC operations.

Scientists who helped discover the Higgs boson, the fundamental particle underpinning the Standard Model of physics revealed by the LHC in 2012, say they hope to use the upgraded accelerator to go beyond that discovery into a “new physics.”

The LHC, a 16-mile ring of giant magnets and scientific instruments underground near Geneva, Switzerland, is operated by the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN).

In addition to probing for evidence of dark matter, physicists say there may be more Higgs bosons to be found, cousins of the so-called “God particle,” which gives all other particles in the Standard Model their mass.

They will also be looking for evidence to prove or disprove a new theory dubbed “supersymmetry,” which suggests the existence of a completely new set of particles, linked to the ones we know about but as yet undetected.

Supersymmetry could be one way to explain dark matter, whose existence is so far only inferred by its gravitational influence on the universe’s galaxies and stars that we can see.

The Higgs was seen as the last missing piece of the Standard Model, but a number of theories of what might exist underneath or beyond that model have been proposed – theories that will get tested in a number of new LHC experiments.

Mar

2015

Monash University Just 3D Printed Two Metal Jet Engines

By John Vibes | True Activist

Engineers at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia recently made history by 3D printing 2 whole metal jet engines.

One of the engines is currently on display at the International Air Show in Avalon, Victoria, Australia, and the other is at Microtubo (Safran), a French aerospace company.

“It was our chance to prove what we could do, but when we reviewed the plans we realised that the engine had evolved over years of manufacture. So we took the engine to pieces and scanned the components. Then we printed two copies,” Professor Xinhua Wu, director of the Monash Centre for Additive Manufacturing said in a statement.

“It was a challenge for the team and pushed the technology to new heights of success – no one has printed an entire engine commercially yet,” explained project participant Ben Batagol.

The project was created by the world’s largest selective laser sintering 3D printer.

Last month, we reported that a Chinese construction company named WinSun 3D printed a huge five-story apartment building and a 11,840 square foot mansion.

Source

Video: Monash Centre for Additive Manufacturing

The Monash Centre for Additive Manufacturing takes fundamental research from a broad range of disciplines and applies them to manufacturing challenges. These disciplines include material science, alloy design and processing, surface engineering, corrosion and hybrid materials.

Feb

2015

DARPA’s ‘Cortical Modem’ Will Plug Straight Into Your BRAIN

By Darren Pauli | The Register

Image credit: Gazzaleylab / SCCN / Neuroscapelab (video screen grab)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a brain interface it hopes could inject images directly into the visual cortex.

News of the “Cortical Modem” project has emerged in transhumanist magazine Humanity Plus, which reports the agency is working on a direct neural interface (DNI) chip that could be used for human enhancement and motor-function repair.

Project head Dr Phillip Alvelda, Biological Technologies chief with the agency, told the Biology Is Technology conference in Silicon Valley last week the project had a short term goal of building a US$10 device the size of two stacked nickels that could deliver images without the need for glasses or similar technology.

The project was built on research by Dr Karl Deisseroth whose work in the field of neuroscience describes how brain circuits create behaviour patterns.

Specifically the work dealt in Deisseroth’s field of Optogenetics, where proteins from algae could be inserted into neurons to be subsequently controlled with pulses of light.

“The short term goal of the project is the development of a device about the size of two stacked nickels with a cost of goods on the order of $10 which would enable a simple visual display via a direct interface to the visual cortex with the visual fidelity of something like an early LED digital clock,” the publication reported.

“The implications of this project are astounding.”

The seemingly dreamy research was limited to animal studies, specifically the real time imaging of a zebra fish brain with some 85,000 neurons, due to the need to mess with neuron DNA and the ‘crude device’ would be a long way off high fidelity augmented reality, the site reported.

Video: Glass brain flythrough – Gazzaleylab / SCCN / Neuroscapelab

This is an anatomically-realistic 3D brain visualization depicting real-time source-localized activity (power and “effective” connectivity) from EEG (electroencephalographic) signals. Each color represents source power and connectivity in a different frequency band (theta, alpha, beta, gamma) and the golden lines are white matter anatomical fiber tracts. Estimated information transfer between brain regions is visualized as pulses of light flowing along the fiber tracts connecting the regions.

The modeling pipeline includes MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) brain scanning to generate a high-resolution 3D model of an individual’s brain, skull, and scalp tissue, DTI (Diffusion Tensor Imaging) for reconstructing white matter tracts, and BCILAB (http://sccn.ucsd.edu/wiki/BCILAB) / SIFT (http://sccn.ucsd.edu/wiki/SIFT) to remove artifacts and statistically reconstruct the locations and dynamics (amplitude and multivariate Granger-causal (http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/G…) interactions) of multiple sources of activity inside the brain from signals measured at electrodes on the scalp (in this demo, a 64-channel “wet” mobile system by Cognionics/BrainVision (http://www.cognionics.com)).

The final visualization is done in Unity and allows the user to fly around and through the brain with a gamepad while seeing real-time live brain activity from someone wearing an EEG cap.

Team:
– Gazzaley Lab / Neuroscape lab, UCSF: Adam Gazzaley, Roger Anguera, Rajat Jain, David Ziegler, John Fesenko, Morgan Hough
– Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience, UCSD: Tim Mullen & Christian Kothe

http://neuroscapelab.com/projects/glass-brain/
http://gazzaleylab.ucsf.edu/
http://sccn.ucsd.edu/

Feb

2015

USDA Approves World’s First GMO Apples

By The Ecologist

After eight hours, Arctic Granny apples, right, do not brown like unmodified Granny apples. Image credit: Okanagan Specialty Fruits

Scientists, environmental and consumer groups have decried USDA’s approval of two ‘Arctic’ apple varieties, while major food companies and apple growers have no plans to source or grow them – despite their potential to ‘generate consumer excitement in the apple category.’

Arctic apples offer lower shrinkage and the related savings, while a whole new line of improved apple products will generate consumer excitement in the apple category.

The US Department of Agriculture has ‘deregulated’ two varieties of Arctic® apple, the world’s first genetically engineered apple produced by Canadian corporation Okanagan Specialty Fruits.

The USDA’s deregulation technically allows ‘Arctic Granny’ and ‘Arctic Golden’ apples to be planted and sold without specific oversight, although the FDA may engage Okanagan in a voluntary safety consultation process prior to the GMO apple being available in the US.

According to Okanagan, the apples will be labeled as ‘Arctic’, but will not be labeled as genetically engineered.

Despite this approval, a number of major food companies including McDonald’s and Gerber, Nestle’s baby food brand, have already stated that they have no plans to source or sell this genetically engineered apple.

The same goes for major apple growing associations, including USApple and the Northwest Horticultural Council – which represents Washington state apple growers who grow more than 60% of the US apple crop – that have stated opposition to this GMO apple.

Lisa Archer, Food and Technology program director at Friends of the Earth, was among those who decried USDA’s “flawed approval” of the GMO apple. “There is no place in the US or global market for genetically engineered apples”, she said.

“Farmers don’t want to grow it, food companies don’t want to sell it and consumers don’t want to eat it.”

Watch whose RNA you’re interfering with!

The purported advantage of the Arctic apple is that it does not ‘brown’ when exposed to air, because the enymes that catalyse the natural browning process have been diasabled.

To achieve this the apple is genetically engineered via a new, virtually untested experimental technique called RNA interference (RNAi), to ‘silence’ the genes that express the enzymes.

But many scientists fear that the lack of these enzymes may have negative, unintended impacts on human health and the environment, in a number of ways. Without natural browning, apples may look fresh when they are actually decaying.

“We are concerned that USDA’s safety evaluation of this apple was inadequate, particularly with regard to the health and environmental implications of this particular RNAi technology”, says Dr. Michael Hansen, senior scientist at Consumers Union.

The natural browning enzyme in apples may also help to fight diseases and pests, meaning that famers may have to increase their pesticide use on these new GMO apples. Conventional, non-GMO apples already carry some of the highest levels of toxic pesticide residues, many of them linked to hormone disruption, reproductive harm and ADHD.

Another scientific concern, adds Archer, is that while Okanagan’s RNAi process aims to silence four of the apple’s genes, the process “may be dangerously imprecise.” Targeted gene sequences are similar to other closely related genes, so the silencing process “could unintentionally impact genes that affect other functions in the plant.”

“Okanagan’s petition for deregulation also does not adequately analyze the other potential functions that the targeted gene sequence could have, other than browning in apples, nor does it address the risk of unintentionally silencing the non-targeted genes. It is unclear how the USDA evaluates the risks from gene silencing and other powerful new biotechnologies.”

GMO pollen could contaminate apple crops, and seeds

If grown commercially, organic and conventional farms also face risks of contamination from neighboring GMO apple groves.

Feb

2015

Linda Moulton Howe: Boom Mystery — More Frequent and Intense?

By Linda Moulton Howe | Earthfiles

Emmy Award-winning Reporter Linda Moulton Howe Investigates the Boom Mystery

(Part 8 of 8. Go to Parts 1 – 7.)

Akron, Michigan; Wentzville, Missouri, near St. Louis; Nappanee and South Bend, Indiana; Danville, Virginia; Luzerne County, Herrick Center and Ellwood City, Pennsylvania; Coventry, West Warwick and Warwick, Rhode Island; Hamblen County, Tennessee; Hailey and Jerome, Idaho; Norman, Oklahoma; Lubbock and Odessa, Texas; east of Roswell, New Mexico; Cedar Falls, Iowa; Plainfield, Connecticut; Kansas City and Plattsburg, Missouri; Newark, Delaware; Mesa, Arizona; Jackson, Mississippi; Asheville, North Carolina; St. Johns County, Florida; Pilot Valley, Nevada; Salisbury, Maryland; Chehalis, Washington; Flintstone, Georgia; St. George, Utah; Paducah and northern Kentucky — all between January 1 and February 8, 2015.

“The booms are becoming more frequent and more powerful. My animals are terrified by these booms.” – Resident in Pilot Valley, Nevada

“Booms here in southern Idaho are usually heard and felt at night. …To me it feels like standing next to the P.A at a Grateful Dead concert when Phil Lesh plays his low strings on his bass guitar! …And the house vibrates! The next day we hear from the Boise State University Geologic Department that always tells us there were NO earthquakes!’ – Resident of Jerome, Idaho

February 9, 2015 Albuquerque, New Mexico – The first week of February 2015 has continued the January trend of increasing number of boom reports. Now people in at least 25 states in only five weeks have reported loud, often repeating, boom phenomena to local emergency authorities, to social media, local news media and Earthfiles. What is producing all these explosive, house-rattling boom sounds that leave authorities searching for causes, but not finding any answers? And why is the federal government’s Dept. of Homeland Security completely silent?

1)
February 8, 2015, Paducah, Kentucky

Paducah, Kentucky, is in a cluster of boom sites since 2011, that include Fort Knox, Kentucky, south of Louisville; the St. Louis, Missouri region; and Nashville and Knoxville, Tennessee.

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: Loud Booms in 5 Counties Around Paducah, KY
Date: February 9, 2015

I live in Paducah, KY with my fiancee. Last night, 02/08/2015 at around 8:30pm CST, we heard what could only be described as a very loud explosion. Then a few milliseconds after the first, a second one was heard and felt as this one actually made the apartment complex that we live in tremble.
Apparently similar noises being heard between the hours of 8pm – 3:30am and it covered as much as five counties in the surrounding area.

Earthfiles confirmed with WPSD-TV that there were loud booms the night of February 8, 2015, in the Paducah, Kentucky, area. The news room checked with several different authorities ranging from military bases to weather and reported in their local newscast that “there is no explanation for the booms.”

February 8, 2015 News Script:

WE’VE GOTTEN A LOT OF PHONE CALLS AND FACEBOOK POSTS AGAIN FROM VIEWERS ABOUT LOUD BOOMS IN THE AREA THIS WEEKEND.
MCCRACKEN COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPUTY TRENT HARDIN SAYS THEY ALSO GOT SEVERAL CALLS ABOUT THE BOOMS, SPECIFICALLY IN REIDLAND AND NEAR THE GRAVES COUNTY LINE.

THEIR INVESTIGATION DIDN’T TURN UP ANYTHING OF CONCERN.
DEPUTY HARDIN SAYS THERE’S NO EVIDENCE POINTING TO TANNERITE – A TYPE OF EXPLOSIVE USED FOR TARGET PRACTICE.
SO FAR, THERE IS NO EXPLANATION FOR THE BOOMS

2)
February 8, 2015, Plattsburg, Missouri

Plattsburg, Missouri, is about 40 miles northeast of Kansas City, both regions of repeated loud, mysterious booms.

Plattsburg Fire Protection District Facebook: “There have been numerous reports of back to back booms early this morning. Reports have ranged from Trimble to Plattsburg to Cowgill. Plattsburg Fire units also heard the booms. However the source remains unknown at this time.”

3)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: Strange Booms outside Asheville, NC
Date: February 7, 2015

Asheville, North Carolina is in the Great Smoky Mountains 116 miles east of Knoxville, Tennessee, another region that has had boom reports. Charlotte to the southeast of Asheville is North Carolina’s largest city.

Linda,
I know that you reported on strange booms around the country in the past and more recently on Coast to Coast. I just wanted to pass along an update from the western part of Buncombe County NC. I live about 8 miles outside of Asheville, NC and between 4:50 and 5:30 PM this evening 2/7/15 I heard 3 separate booms that were very startling. I contacted the local sheriffs office and they said I was the first to report in on the sounds. Very strange, thought you might like to know.

4)
February 6, 2015, St. Johns County, Florida’s Ponte Vedra Beach Region

The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office received about 50 calls before 11 a.m., Friday, February 6, 2015, many from the Ponte Vedra Beach area southeast of Jacksonville. The calls also came in from the Nocatee, Palencia, Fruit Cove and Durbin Crossing areas.

Huge explosive booms were reported February 6, 2015, throughout St. Johns County, Florida. Military bases said not theirs. More mysterious boom reports elsewhere.

Click here for News4Jax, Jacksonville, Florida.

5)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: Booms and High Strangeness, Magic Valley, Idaho
Date: Feb. 6, 2015

Jerome, Idaho, is 118 miles southeast of Boise and only 13 miles north of Twin Falls in the Magic Valley of southern Idaho.

Dear Ms. Howe, I live in the small town of Jerome, Idaho, about 10 miles north, across the Snake River Canyon, from Twin Falls. I was very intrigued with what you had to say about the “Big Booms” the other night on Coast to Coast Am.
I live in the Magic Valley in South Central Idaho. It has quite a few small towns and one, what we call a city (Twin Falls, Idaho), is scattered across the lower Snake River Plain. The Magic Valley is about 24,000 square miles and is the bread basket and the dairy capital of our state. Here I have heard BIG Booms and Rumbles on a regular basis. After which everyone calls in to the local police, TV stations and radio stations. Booms here in southern Idaho are usually heard and felt at night. The next day we hear from the Boise State University Geologic Department that always tells us there were NO earthquakes!
We also have the Mountain Home Air Force Base about 45 miles away and they always say they had NO activity during that time and DO NOT break the sonic barrier and have nothing to do with what we hear and feel here!
It is a deep and low noise and it will rumble over the entire valley. To me it feels like standing next to the P.A at a Grateful Dead concert when Phil Lesh plays his low strings on his bass guitar! Right in the gut, and the house doesn’t rack and twist or even shakes, it VIBRATES!!
I have never recorded the boomings, nor do I know anyone who has, BUT I will investigate and find out if it has been.

6)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: Booms in Lewis County, Washington
Date: February 5, 2015

Chehalis, Washington, is 30 miles south of Olympia.

Just to let you know there’s been a series of booms over Lewis County, Washington state today (south of Seattle and near Mt. Rainier). I went online to possibly see if there was any explanation and it led me to your Earthfiles.com website. Chehalis is the main area where booms were heard, but also reports east of there. There is a Facebook feed called Lewis County Sirens where people are posting about it. You might want to check it out.
I also saw various military planes that we don’t usually see and they ended up headed towards the Mt. Saint Helens area. I’m sure there’s probably just some logical explanation like the military is practicing, but it’s really weird. It woke me up this morning. Several other people have the same reports of waking up to loud booming this morning and their dogs growling and barking. We had the same issue.

7)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: Booms in St. George, Utah
Date: February 5, 2015

St. George, Utah, is 120 miles northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The highly classified Area 51 in the Nellis AFB complex is 83 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

More booming noises @ about midnight tonight here in St George Utah. Rattled the windows of the house.
An earlier house-shaking boom reported Jan. 25, Kimball Junction, Utah:
Incident: January 25th 9:30pm; Kimball Jct , Utah
Last night I felt a fast loud rumble and immediately thought it was an earthquake. It was brief…maybe 2 or 3 seconds and shook the house and rattled the windows.
I checked the earthquake sites and saw no activity near us.
I was on Facebook shortly afterwards and one of my friends nearby asked if anyone felt an earthquake. About 6 people responded that they had, all within about 3 miles of me.
I live at Kimball Junction near Park City, Utah and people reported the noise all the way to Parley’s Summit which is about 3 miles west of me.
One of the girls characterized it as feeling like a huge gust of wind that slammed briefly into their house, but there was no wind.

8)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Loud boom in Odessa, Texas
February 3, 2015

At 1615 central time on Feb. 3, 2015 a large boom was heard in Odessa, TX. Not only was the boom heard by all personnel in our work area, but all felt it. The boom shook vehicles, the ground, and one could feel it in one’s core.

9)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: Loud Boom in Eastern Wicomico County, Maryland
Date: February 2, 2015

Salisbury, Maryland, is 115 miles southeast of Washington, D. C.

During the evening of February 2, around 7 p.m. I heard an unusual sound I can only describe as a very loud explosion or perhaps a sonic boom. The source seemed distant, but my house shook and my windows rattled. I had never heard anything like it before. On the Salisbury, Wicomico County First Alert Facebook site, there are a string of comments about the sound.

See Wicomico First Alert Facebook.

10)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: Recent boom report, Mesa, AZ
Date: February 2, 2015

Hello Linda,
I listened to your interview on Coast to Coast about mysterious boom reports in 13 states, but Arizona was not one of them. In the last week or so, I have heard them twice — both in the Usery Pass area in east Mesa, Arizona. I did a Google search and found quite a few news reports of booms all over the Phoenix area in the last few years. The Verde valley was one area with numerous reports and in one of my incidents, that’s precisely where the booms seemed to be coming from. Verde Valley is north of Usery Pass, where the Verde River joins the Salt River. As I remember it, both incidents had multiple booms, at least two. It sounded like demolition, or military ordnance.

11)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: No clear answers after ‘mysterious booms’ on Feb. 1 and in late December.
Date: Kansas City, MO, news Feb. 3-4. Also see 13) January 31 report below.

Kansas City and Wentzville, Missouri, boom reports are amid the other cluster of unexplained sounds between 2011 and 2015 from St. Louis to Evansville, Indiana, Fort Knox, Paducah and northern Kentucky, and Nashville and Knoxville, Tennessee.

Click to KSHB-TV to hear Dec. 2014 mysterious boom sounds.

February 3-4, 2015 KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Loud booms in the Kansas City metro on February 1, 2015, were reported to media and authorities. In a December 2014 YouTube video when there were other repeating booms (above video), you can hear what sounds like explosions.
On Sunday afternoon, February 1, 2015, Jimmy Brewer of Independence, Mo., heard a similar loud boom sound. He told KSHB 41 Action News: “I helped sell fireworks during the summertime, so to me it sounded like a pretty substantial Class B firework which is a lot bigger than what you sell at a fireworks stand.”

KSHB-TV Transcript: “He was out jogging in Kansas City near the Independence border, but he couldn’t tell where the noise came from. Brewer said he didn’t think it was a sonic boom either.
“No, I’ve heard a sonic boom before when I was in the military but this was still pretty loud,” he said.
KSHB News called Whiteman Air Force Base to see if they ran any training operations, but they didn’t have any aircraft flying this past weekend.
In another YouTube video a locomotive horn goes off before a long boom. There are several train lines that run near the location where Brewer heard the noise, but he said that’s not where it came from.
“I just got hired by Union Pacific and I’ve heard trains, so I don’t believe it would have been a train,” Brewer said.
KSHB went to UMKC Assistant Physics Professor Paul Rulis. He didn’t know the source of the noise, but said there is a way to determine its location.
“Once you have the equations and you have the recordings, you’d be able to figure out where that sound came from even if it wasn’t inside the triangle made by those points,” Rulis said.
Another possibility is it was a “frost quake.” It’s rare but it happens when there’s a rapid drop in temperature. That causes an expansion of frozen water creating a sort of mini explosion.
We’re still investigating the source of the booms. If you notice one, let us know where you heard it and when.”

12)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: January 6th Booms, Newark, Delaware
Date: February 4, 2015

Newark, Delaware is 43 miles southwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Dear Linda,

I just listened to your report on Dreamland and I was reminded of something experienced here in Newark, Delaware, on January 6, 2015. It was snowing, but not extremely cold — somewhere around 28 degrees F. It had actually warmed up a little to snow and was forecast to get cold after the snow passed, so there was no quick temperature change in either direction during the snow. It was during the day from late morning to early afternoon, but I am not certain of the exact time.

I was sitting at my computer, beside a large window. There was no flash at all like lightning. It happened only once, but the house shook (vibrated) from a loud, multi-toned, boom. By multi-toned, I mean it had more than one frequency or “note” all simultaneously, almost like a 2-3 note “chord”. Then if you would combine that with a vibratory booming of rumbling thunder that would be close.….or better yet — combine 2-3 low pitch tones with the grand finale of a fireworks show and there you’d have it for about 10 seconds +/-. It seemed longer at the time, because it was so strange, but I am saying 10 seconds looking back at it as being more accurate.

The really weird thing was how long it continued. It was not a boom and gone. This lasted for about 10 seconds!! It sounded like it was above me and perhaps a little farther north in the sky, but that could be because the window faces the north and sound would travel through it louder than the brick walls. My phone rang moments later and it was my brother who lives 3 miles east of me. His words were; “Did you hear that?” I said I did and he said “What the hell was it?” …..neither of us knew. We have both heard “snow quakes” or “snow thunder” before. This was not that, this was very strange.

13)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: Big Booms, Kansas City, Missouri
Date: January 31, 2015

Linda, today around 5:30 PM CST, the central and west parts of Missouri heard and felt loud booms. From east of Kansas City to inside Kansas, this was heard. 911 calls lit up. Facebook and other social media lit up. I live on a farm in Lafayette County, Missouri. I heard it, but our friends felt it. I can’t believe this happened here as I just heard you on Coast to Coast AM. Something is going on, but what the hell is it? Thank you for your work.

14)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: Local Booms in Ellwood City, PA
Date: January 31, 2015

Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, is 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

Linda,
My name is Jeff. I live in Ellwood City, PA. Its located 60 miles north of Pittsburgh. I heard you on Coast to Coast on Friday 1/30/15. We have also been experiencing weird booms that SHAKE our home. After a loud boom event, Facebook will light up from posts around the area from people wanting to know what it was.
This all started about a year ago (2014) and in the last month of January 2015, we heard three different loud boom events. The one I remember most was around 10 PM on a Friday in mid-December 2014. I was asleep on the recliner and my 14-year-old son was playing a video game. The boom woke me, and the look on my son’s face was complete terror! He said he thought the windows were going to explode.
I would explain the sound as a cannon, but the sound hits the house on all sides. Like the loudest thunder boom you could imagine. People I have talked to have also experienced this in other parts of western, and central PA. Hope this information helps you.

15)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: Loud Booms in Flintstone, Northern Georgia
Date: January 31, 2015

Flintstone, Georgia (Google marker) is just over the Tennessee border making a triangular relationship with Nashville and Knoxville, Tennessee, two areas noted for loud boom reports since 2011.

Linda,
A loud boom shaking our mother’s very sturdy house occurred at about 6:30 PM EST, January 11, 2015, in Flintstone, Georgia, 1.5 miles south of Chattanooga, TN.
On January 26, two boom occurred about 2 miles south of there, also in Flintstone, at 5:58 and 6:01 PM Eastern time. I found no news reports on this or evidence of earthquakes on the USGS site.
The discussion on Facebook described the booms as sounding like “explosions,” “something blown up,” or “thunder,” and said houses shook or windows rattled. Another FB participant said she’d heard such a boom “the other day,” but did not state the date.
I am sorry I can’t tell you more. Thank you for all your work.

16)

To: earthfiles@earthfiles.com
Re: Booms in Pilot Peak, Northeastern Elko County, Nevada
Date: January 30, 2015

Pilot Peak, Nevada, is about 250 miles straight west of Provo, Utah, near Salt Lake City, where there have been repeated cycles of loud, unexplained booms and military helicopters showing up where mysterious booms have occurred since 2011. North of Pilot Peak is Twin Falls and Jerome, Idaho, in the Magic Valley where many booms have been reported.

Hi, Linda,
I live in Pilot Valley located at the base of Pilot Peak in Elko County, Nevada. I listened to you last night on Coast to Coast and your interview with Todd Seelye and I quote from him,

“Just suddenly out of the blue came this enormous, deep boom.
It shook the windows, shook the whole house, and the floor.
It was notable for its power and its resonance.”
– Todd Seelye, Cedar Falls, Iowa, January 12, 2015

Todd took the words right out of my mouth!

Pilot Valley is located in rural northeastern NV by the Utah Border. We have had these booms for sometime now. The first time it happened, I thought it was a sonic boom as we are close to the Utah Test and Training Range. However, the booms are becoming more frequent and more powerful. My animals are terrified by these booms and during the second week of January 2015 they occurred 4 times that I know about. The strongest one happened on January 8, 2015. On that day I was outside when suddenly BOOM BOOM two booms back to back.

Those booms startled me so bad that I dropped to the ground. I could feel the shock wave hit me as to say I felt like it vibrated all through my body. I have heard many Sonic Booms in my life time, but this was something different than I have ever encountered before.

My one dog refused to go outside unless I or my Son was with him and he stayed right by our sides. Only now has he started back to somewhat of his routine, but he is not the same. He starts to cower down even when a plane flies overhead.

We that live in Pilot Valley are somewhat accustomed to strange happenings out here. We attribute this to our close proximity to the bombing range and Hill Air Force Base in Utah, but I have never in my 55 years experienced anything like these booms.

It astounds me that other parts of the U. S. are reporting these same loud booms. I hope and pray that you will be able to one day identify this very disturbing activity.”

(Return to Parts 1 – 7.)

If viewers have any information about the persistent boom phenomenon, please email earthfiles@earthfiles.com. All requests for confidentiality are honored.

Feb

2015

Samsung Admits Private Conversations Being Sent to Internet Server

By Paul Joseph Watson | Infowars

Smart TVs prompt privacy backlash

In responding to privacy concerns over their Smart TVs recording private conversations and sending them to a third party, Samsung admitted that voice data is “sent to a server” during the process.

Infowars first reported on the issue three months ago in November, but the story went viral over the weekend after being picked up by numerous technology websites.

The controversy stems from Samsung’s global privacy policy, which advises users to, “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.”

After an Electronic Frontier Foundation activist made a chilling comparison between the Smart TVs and telescreens in George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, Samsung was forced to respond, telling the Guardian that users could opt out of the voice recognition feature.
However, the company did admit that if consumers gave permission for the voice recognition feature to be activated, their words would be, “sent to a server, which searches for the requested content then returns the desired content to the TV.”
“We employ industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including data encryption, to secure consumers’ personal information and prevent unauthorised collection or use,” the company added.

However, when challenged by a blogger who called Samsung to find out more about the process, representatives seemed to be confused about the precise reason as to why voice data was being collected.

“Is that what this is, are you complying with a federal court order to record what’s going on in my living room?” asked Joe Fabeets, to which the Samsung representative responded, “Yes sir, exactly.”

Samsung is by no means the only company potentially capturing private conversations during its data collection process. In 2013, gamers complained that Microsoft Kinect was monitoring their Skype conversations for swearing and then punishing them with account bans.

The company informs its users that they “should not expect any level of privacy concerning your use of the live communication features,” while Microsoft also “may access or disclose information about you, including the content of your communications.”

The notion of every private conversation, even within the confines of someone’s living room, being under surveillance, was a prospect raised by Senator John McCain in the aftermath of the Donald Sterling controversy last year.

“It’s the world we’re living in, you don’t like it, but everything I say I expect to be recorded,” McCain stated.

Source

Feb

2015

CERN To Attempt ‘Big Bang’ In March, Stephen Hawking Issues Warning

By Cyrus Khoroushi | Your News Wire

CERN is due to re-open the large hadron collider in March of 2015 in order to recreate the big bang, despite warnings from top scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Neil de Grasse Tyson.

Allnewspipeline.com reports:

Dr. Stephen Hawking recently warned that the reactivation in March of CERN’s large hadron collider could pose grave dangers to our planet…the ultimate reality check we are warned. Hawking has come straight out and said the ‘God particle’ found by CERN “could destroy the universe” leaving time and space collapsed as shared in the 2nd video. Is CERN the most dangerous thing in the cosmos that could lead to the ultimate destruction of the Earth and the entire universe? Recent developments prove to us the scientific community is no longer able to explain ‘reality’ without looking at the ‘supernatural’. Will we soon learn CERN is really the ‘ultimate stargate’ and one of the gate-keepers most closely guarded secrets? Will this be the way man attempts to break the ultimate ‘God barrier’, an attempt to encounter demi-God’s in an all-out rush towards the destruction of all creation? We understand they won’t be releasing the secrets until they’re prepared to release them.

Does CERN headquarter’s symbol of Shiva, dancing the cosmic dance of death and destruction, signal the TRUE purpose of CERN’s existence? A look at the ‘Shiva’ (the Hindu God of Destruction) symbology surrounding CERN’s headquarters gives us the beginning of what we need to know. “The men who would play God, in searching for the God particle, are truly going to find more than they bargained for as they open the gates of hell” we are warned by Stephen Quayle, “they will find inter-dimensional beings who have a taste for human flesh and humanities destruction. Most scientists, in lacking an understanding of the ‘supernatural entities’ that are going to confront them, are way beyond their ability to comprehend, let alone control, the forces of Pandora’s box that will be released.”

Video: Stephen Hawking: God Particle Could Destroy Universe

Professor Stephen Hawking is saying theoretically the Higgs Boson or the God Particle is very unstable at high energies and thinks that it’s possible with a large collider, much larger than any we’ve constructed, the god particle could break down time and space itself, destroying everything.

Feb

2015

Tesla Updating P85D To 0–60 MPH In 2.8 Seconds With Firmware?

By James Ayre | CleanTechnica

Tesla Model S charging at a public charging station in Zoutelande, Netherlands. Image credit: David van der Mark (https://www.flickr.com/photos/d_vdm/14088596712/) [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Will the Tesla Model S P85D soon have its acceleration improved to 0–60 mph in just 2.8 seconds, via nothing but a firmware update?

Yes, that’s apparently exactly what’s going to happen… based on rumors (unverified insider information) circulating in specific corners of the net.

The interesting, but not necessarily easy to believe, information is coming to us via the user “anxman” of the Tesla Motors Club forum. Here it is in his own words:

I’m happy to bring you a TMC exclusive rumor. According to my sources deep inside Tesla, a firmware update for the P85D will increase its 0-60 performance from 3.2 seconds to 2.8 seconds. I have not personally operated this P85D, but my sources have allegedly seen it in action and historically these sources have been accurate for Tesla rumors. Please take it with a grain of salt because I have not seen or operated this vehicle myself.

My fingers are crossed — though, I’d rather see Active Blind Spot Detection and Autopilot features before this bump to the “Insane” mode.

Those who are currently doubting this information aren’t wrong to do so, but, it’s worth noting here that other forum members chimed in to corroborate the rumor.

Jan

2015

$50 3D-printed part replaces $42,000 medical prosthetic hand

By Ethan A. Huff | Natural News

A photo of a MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printer. Image credit: Peabodybore

(NaturalNews) The power of open-source, 3D-printing technology has reached the medical field with a new breakthrough in homemade prosthesis. Jeremy Simon of 3D Universe has successfully developed a prosthetic hand using 3D-printing technology that is not only more useful than traditional prostheses but significantly less expensive.

After spending about $42,000 on a conventional prosthetic hand, 53-year-old Jose Delgado, Jr., who was born without most of his left hand, was left wanting. The seemingly lifelike hand doesn’t grip as well as he would like, and the ring and pinky fingers don’t work at all, and are there primarily for aesthetic purposes.

It was really his only option until 3D printing came along, offering regular people the opportunity to design their own tools, parts and, in this case, synthetic limbs, for a fraction of the price of their conventional counterparts. Interestingly enough, it really wasn’t that hard for Simon, a 3D-printing expert, to design a better prosthetic hand for Delgado, and for a fraction of the price.

Simon calls it the e-NABLE Hand, and it only cost him about $50 to make, or about one-tenth of 1 percent of what Delgado paid for his original prosthetic hand from conventional medicine. And the best part about e-NABLE is that it is more functional, grips better and is incredibly durable, something that Delgado isn’t able to say about his other hand.

“It’s useful for carrying boxes,” stated Delgado about the functionality of the “Cyborg Beast,” the colloquial name for the 3D-printed hand. “This one [the $42,000 hand], if I grab something, it’ll just fall out. These have more grip,” he added, pulling on the slick, black appendages attached to the Cyborg Beast.

$50 3D-printed hand has full movement while $42,000 one is severely limited
The way it works is a series of non-flexible cords on the underside of each finger is attached to a tensioning block on the top rear of the device — Simon refers to this block as “the gauntlet.” As Delgado bends his wrist downward, tension is created and the Cyborg Beast closes its fingers, allowing him to pull or lift objects weighing up to about 20 pounds.

When the wrist is returned to a normal resting position, a series of non-flexible cords on the top part of the device is pulled, opening up the hand in the same way as a real hand would remain open, with the fingers slightly curved inwards. These corresponding movements allow Delgado to close his hand naturally by simply bending his wrist about 20-30 degrees downward, and opening it back up by returning to the natural position.

You can see the “Cyborg Beast” in action here:
YouTube.com.

You can learn more by visiting eNABLingTheFuture.org.

Video: Hands For Haiti

Jan

2015

Asteroid Comes Close Jan. 26th – Mysterious Sand Dunes On Comet 67P?

By Linda Moulton Howe | Earthfiles

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

At present, we know almost nothing about asteroid 2004 BL86, so there are bound to be surprises.” – Lance Benner, Ph.D., NASA Radar Astronomer

The circular ‘goosebumps’ (on Comet 67P) look very, very bizarre. To be frank, we don’t know how those things were created. We have no clue.” – Nicholas Thomas, Ph.D., Prof. of Experimental Physics, Switzerland’s Univ. of Bern

January 26, 2015 Albuquerque, New Mexico – On Monday, January 26, 2015, at 11:19 AM EST, a large asteroid about one-third of a mile wide will zip past Earth some 750,000 miles (1.2 million km) away. The Goldstone Deep Space Network near Barstow, California, will track the asteroid. At that time, the asteroid should be close to the Beehive Cluster and with a powerful pair of binoculars, you might be able to see it. See sky map.

Close passage of 2004 BL86 on January 26, 2015. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This diagram shows the close passage of 2004 BL86 on January 26, 2015, with closest approach occurring at about 16:19 UTC, or about 11:19 AM EST. The view is nearly edge-on to the Earth’s orbit. The Moon’s nearly circular orbit is highly foreshortened from this viewpoint. The asteroid moves from the south to the north, from below the Earth’s orbit to above. The roughly 500-meter (1500-foot) asteroid approaches to within 1.2 million kilometers (750,000 miles) of Earth, or about 3.1 times the distance of the Moon.

This is the largest known asteroid to come near Earth until 2027, when another large rocky body called 1999 AN10 could come as close as 22,000 miles from Earth on August 7, 2027.

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko – “A World of Surprises”

The January 23, 2015, issue of the journal Science has ten new articles by European Space Agency scientists about the Rosetta Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko mission that landed in November 2014, on the rubber-duck-shaped icy structure. All of the new science data adds up to what one researcher calls “a world of surprises” in the comet.

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is showing a large crack about 300 feet long

The European Space Agency (ESA)’s Rosetta mission reports in the journal Science that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is showing a large crack about 300 feet long “across the neck of Comet 67P that raises the question: if, or when, will the comet break up?” See January 23, 2015, journal Science in Websites below.

Comet 67P is 2.5 miles long (4 km) and oddly shaped like a child’s rubber duck toy. Image credit: ESA/Rosetta.

Comet 67P is 2.5 miles long (4 km) and oddly shaped like a child’s rubber duck toy. ESA’s Philae lander bounced down on the comet and cameras took photos while Philae’s batteries lasted for 57 hours – unprecedented close-ups of a comet’s surface. It’s possible that Philae will “wake up” again when the sun shines on Philae again.

— The Rosetta orbiter in December took high-resolution photographs as fine as 2.5 feet per pixel and looked for the washing-machine-size Philae lander, but could not see it. Where is the Philae lander?

— What look like sand dunes and wind-tails on Earth or Mars ripple across some Comet 67P surfaces. But how is that possible? There is not supposed to be an atmosphere on a comet and so no wind to blow around surface materials into dunes. One hypothesis is that jets of gas seen in the above photograph could cause “intermolecular attraction known as the van der Waals force instead of gravity.”

Hapi region shows evidence of possibly local gas-driven transport producing dune-like ripples. Image credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team.

Features in the Hapi region show evidence of possibly local gas-driven transport producing dune-like ripples (left) and boulders with ‘wind-tails’ (right) – where the boulder has acted as a natural obstacle to the direction of the gas flow, creating a streak of material ‘downwind’ of it. The images were taken with the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on September 18, 2014.

— In the smooth areas of Comet 67P, there are circular “goosebump” structures. Nicholas Thomas, Ph.D., Professor of Experimental Physics at Switzerland’s University of Bern told reporters, “The circular ‘goosebumps’ look very, very bizarre. To be frank, we don’t know how those things were created. We have no clue.”

Close-ups of a curious surface texture on Comet 67P. Image credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS.

Close-ups of a curious surface texture on Comet 67P nicknamed “goosebumps,” all of them at a scale of around 3 meters diameter and going across areas for as far as 100 meters.

— There are various cracks in the icy comet, the longest being about 300 feet long at the neck where the two comet sections meet. Scientists wonder if that crack will get bigger and that 67P could break in two.

$A narrow-angle camera image shows part of a large fracture running across Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko's neck.$

A narrow-angle camera image shows part of a large fracture running across Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko’s neck. Image: credit ESA/Rosetta/MPS.

Source

Jan

2015

The Trouble with the Fake Net Neutrality Bills

By FreePress

Why new legislation before Congress undermines the open Internet it claims to protect

WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, the House and Senate Commerce Committees will discuss companion bills introduced by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.).

The two members of Congress proposed the legislation in advance of an anticipated Net Neutrality ruling by the Federal Communications Commission, which is expected to reclassify Internet access under Title II of the Communications Act in a vote next month.

Free Press Action Fund Policy Director Matt Wood made the following statement:
“If you want a few unregulated monopolies and duopolies to stifle competition and control the future of communications, these are the bills for you. But if you think that essential communications networks deserve basic protections, then these bills are a wreck.

“Both fail to even mention nondiscrimination, a glaring sign of Thune and Upton’s intent. Despite what they claim, this legislation won’t safeguard Net Neutrality. The bills instead would undermine the FCC’s ability to protect Internet users by removing broadband and wireless companies from nearly all agency oversight.

“The legislation fails at the very thing it claims to accomplish. It prohibits a few open Internet violations but opens the door to new industry abuses. It claims to give the FCC limited adjudication powers but removes the agency’s ability to adopt and adapt rules to fit the changing landscape for high-speed Internet access.

“What Thune and Upton are actually trying to do is declaw the one agency responsible for protecting the public interest in communications. Having lost their fight against Net Neutrality in the court of public opinion, companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are trying to use fake Net Neutrality bills to end all effective oversight of their anti-competitive, anti-consumer practices.

“The solution is simple: The FCC should return to Title II, the applicable law that a bipartisan Congress wrote for all telecom networks, including broadband Internet access. That would restore the FCC’s critical authority to prevent harmful discrimination, and also to promote competition, universal service and access, interconnection, public safety, and general consumer protections in an increasingly concentrated market that’s drifting dangerously toward monopoly.

“The FCC can adopt rules under Title II and forbear from those that aren’t needed to protect the public interest. Title II with forbearance will protect Net Neutrality while preserving the agency’s flexibility to respond to the ever shifting cat-and-mouse games ISPs play to favor their own content.

“The American people, the president and businesses of all stripes have spoken up for real Open Internet rules. If the bills’ sponsors really wish to honor their constituents’ wishes, they should let the FCC do its job by using the existing law and the vital bipartisan principles in Title II.”
Free Press Breaks Down the Legislation:

The Bills Offer Inadequate Net Neutrality Protections
- The bills legalize numerous harmful discriminatory practices while preventing the FCC from adopting and enforcing rules that respond to changing circumstances. While the legislation appears to prevent a few of the more harmful Net Neutrality violations, it also opens the door to various other ways to discriminate.
- The legislation offers an extremely narrow approach to preserving Net Neutrality. While the bills may prohibit a few specifically defined harms, they do not allow any safeguards against forms of discrimination the legislation doesn’t describe (i.e., even if such other practices might constitute unreasonable discrimination, unjust or commercially unreasonable practices, harmful behavior, etc.).
- The removal of the FCC’s rule making authority handcuffs the agency while also limiting the public’s ability to comment on the process. Under the legislation, the FCC can only adjudicate complaints alleging violations of these rigidly defined categories, and there’s no timetable required for such adjudications.
- Beyond the procedural limitations, the legislation may hamstring the FCC so that similar violations (e.g., different technical variations of throttling or prioritization practiced by different ISPs) may have to be separately adjudicated, an expensive and lengthy process.
- Reasonable network management is just as loosely defined as it was in the 2010 rules definition, creating a potentially unbounded loophole — especially if the FCC is prevented from implementing rules or providing further guidance about what constitutes a “legitimate network-management purpose” under the legislation. Considering how narrow the prohibited harms listed in the bills are, almost any other network-management practice may need to be deemed reasonable and outside of the FCC’s authority, no matter how discriminatory and harmful that practice may be.
- Because the FCC can’t even adjudicate beyond the “obligations” listed in the legislative provisions, this legislation could allow by implication all other practices omitted from the legislation, including:
  - ISPs’ unpaid or vertical prioritization, allowing for prioritization of their own or their affiliates’ content, so long as there’s no specific payment for such treatment.
  - ISPs’ throttling based on application used or some other factor may be expressly allowed, because the legislation only prohibits throttling based on the source, destination or content of Internet traffic. This could allow, for instance, throttling of any and all voice or video apps that compete with an ISP’s legacy cable or voice services, or throttling of other applications so long as such throttling did not take the form of prohibited paid prioritization.
  - ISPs’ discriminatory application of data caps, where an ISP could exempt its own content from such caps, or a third party could pay the ISP for such an exemption since no packets would be sped up or slowed down for payment or non-payment.
  - ISPs’ continued argument that they may impose access charges and/or so-called “interconnection fees” simply for delivering traffic that the ISPs’ own customers request, so long as the congestion allowed to occur at interconnection points does not constitute prioritizing or de-prioritizing packets over the last-mile network.
The Legislation Will Cause Collateral Damage to Broadband Competition and Service
- The legislation effectively guts all the consumer protections and public-interest principles Congress adopted in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion in 1996 for existing and future two-way communication networks. Americans need competitive, universal, affordable, accessible and fully interconnected nondiscriminatory communications services. This legislation fails on all these fronts by stripping the FCC of authority to deal with such topics under Title II and even under the weaker and less-tested Section 706 framework.
- The legislation would thus turn the public broadband network into a private one, allowing the Internet to be shaped by Comcast, Verizon and AT&T instead of by consumer and business demand, and the Internet innovation to meet this demand.
- Classifying broadband Internet access as an information service could hamper the FCC’s ability to promote competition and protect users of any broadband telecom service, and all telecommunications service beyond plain old telephone service. Indeed, the legislation mandates treatment of any service that offers “advanced telecommunications capability” as an information service. This one single amendment to the law could void the entirety of the Communications Act.

Why Title II Is the Correct Path Forward

The Internet exists today because of Title II. Researchers were able to use telecommunications services to connect computers together to form the Internet, without asking for the phone company’s or the FCC’s permission. This bill will kill any hope of a future, more open, more secure Internet, as it hands over control completely to the ISPs to determine the future of the Internet and all communications networks.
The existing law, written and passed on a bipartisan basis, gives the FCC the power to keep all two-way communications networks open and nondiscriminatory, as well as to ensure that essential services like broadband access are universally available, competitive, and affordable, and to make sure that consumers are protected from all possible harms. This new bill takes away the FCC’s ability to uphold these values and to respond to changing markets and technologies.
Our nation’s broadband problems go beyond just concerns about Net Neutrality. The FCC’s restoration of the bipartisan Title II framework will not only preserve nondiscrimination and Net Neutrality, but also several other critical communications principles such as competition, universal service, interconnection and consumer protections.

Source

Jan

2015

Remember Facta? The IRS Database to Manage Everyone’s Bank Accounts

By Kenneth Schortgen Jr.

When Congress and the the President sought to institute a measure of capital controls on the people of the United States, and keep the public from rushing outside the country to move their money for protection, they came up with a scheme known as FACTA. FACTA is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, and under this draconian piece of legislation is the demand on any foreign bank that does business with the U.S., or utilizes SWIFT to trade in dollars, that they must provide the Internal Revenue Service all personal and financial information on any America having an account outside of the U.S..

The ramifications of this became felt almost immediately as foreign banks began closing customer accounts and halting any future programs that allowed Americans to transact, invest, or deposit money offshore.

And on Jan. 13, the next phase of FACTA came online as the IRS announced the initiation of a database to monitor in real time customer accounts of sovereign and foreign banks. Known as the International Data Exchange Service, this colossal repository will now treat anyone with a bank account as a suspect and person of interest, and assume guilt no matter if any financial crime or evidence of tax evasion has occurred.

Yesterday, the IRS announced the International Data Exchange Service.

If you’ve not heard of it, it’s is an outgrowth of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which requires every single bank in the world to get in bed with IRS to share information about customers.

We’ve said this over and over, FATCA is probably the dumbest law in the history of the United States. And I don’t say that lightly, because there’s definitely stiff competition.

Like any other bankrupt government, the US government has taken to intimidating its own citizens and the entire world in an attempt to make ends meet.

Here’s the ultimate irony: there are nations in this world that are not recognized by the United States. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Abkhazia. Etc. Yet banks in these regions still have to sign up with the IRS.

It’s like– you don’t exist. But you must still comply. – The Sovereign Man Blog

With the Patriot Act, the government can access your financial information on a whim or at the drop of a hat using the guise of ‘War on Terrorism’ as its excuse. And now, the U.S. believes it has the moral authority to claim access to foreign banks and sovereign countries simply because they control the reserve currency, and the medium for most global trade. Which in the end leads to only one effective solution for the American people, and perhaps account holders situated around the world… if you do not want Daddy government monitoring and spying on your bank accounts, then what reason is there to hold your money any longer in a bank or financial institution?

Kenneth Schortgen Jr is a writer for Secretsofthefed.com, Examiner.com, and hosts the popular web blog, The Daily Economist. Ken can also be heard Friday evenings giving an weekly economic report on the Angel Clark radio show.

Jan

2015

Nissan and NASA to Work on Self-driving Cars

By RT

Google Self-driving Car. Image credit derivative work: Mariordo [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Nissan and NASA will jointly develop cars able to move without a driver. The first tests of autonomous vehicles are expected to be carried out by the end of 2015.

The companies on Thursday announced establishing a five-year research and development partnership to advance self-drive systems and bring them to a commercial level. Further research will be carried out in Silicon Valley, NASA and Nissan said in a joint statement. The first vehicle should be tested at the facility by the end of 2015.

“The partnership brings together the best and brightest of NASA and Nissan and validates our investments in Silicon Valley,” said Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn. “The partnership will accelerate Nissan’s development of safe, secure and reliable autonomous drive technology that we will progressively introduce to consumers beginning in 2016 up to 2020,” he added.

The scientists will focus on creating autonomous drive systems, network-enabled applications, human-machine interface solutions, and software analysis and verification, involving hardware and software used in space applications.

The system will include automatic braking sensors and elements that will help preventing road traffic accidents. Special sensors will let the cars know they are about to collide and will brake automatically without any human action involved. Besides, the cars will be able to park themselves.

The experts involved in the project believe such vehicles will be safer for humans and the environment, and will see promising future.

Nissan has long been developing self-driving cars. However, the company’s CEO Carlos Ghosn believes NASA can teach Nissan how to create a more reliable human-machine interface, as it has great experience in building durable space rovers controlled from Earth. NASA, in turn, is looking to find a way of incorporating self-driving technology into its vehicles.

“We have a rover on Mars. It is not very autonomous,” Pete Worden, director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, told Wired. “As we go deeper into space, into more and more dangerous locations, we need to add that autonomy.”

Nissan is not the only car producer working on the technology. It’s Japanese rival Toyota along with US Ford and General Motors are also developing autonomous vehicles.

Companies outside the industry are also getting involved in similar developments. At the end of 2014, Google Inc. presented its first fully working autonomous car prototype.

Source

Jan

2015

Beyond Plastic: Talking New Directions in 3D Printing

By Donald Bell | CNet

In a short amount of time, the options in consumer 3D printers have exploded. Makers now have a vast amount of choices when it comes to print size and print quality, but are still restricted to one medium: plastic.

Anyone who has used a 3D printer will tell you how much patience is required in working with hot plastic. It shifts, it shrinks, it sticks, it is slow to work with, and the end product feels cheap.

For this panel, I speak with representatives from three companies who are taking 3D printing in new directions by opening up new possibilities in materials: wood, paper, metal, circuit boards, rubber and resins.

If 3D printing is to be a revolution in product prototyping and fabrication, it’s going to take more than plastic. These are the innovators who are expanding the scope of 3D printing and the palette of options available to us.

The panelists include Danielle Applestone, CEO of Other Machine Co.; Conor MacCormack, CEO of Mcor Technologies and Colin Raney, managing director of Formlabs.

Source

Video: New directions in 3D printing

CNET’s Donald Bell hosts a panel discussion with Other Machine Co., Formlabs, and MCOR, three unique outliers in the increasingly crowded world of 3D printers.

Jan

2015

Dr. Ewen Cameron and Psychiatric Mind Control

By Jon Rappoport | Activist Post

Image credit:“Captive” by Todd Tarselli, American Journal of Public Health.

“It’s important to understand that the professionals who put the most emphasis on the brain as the source of consciousness are also the people who drug it, sedate it, coerce it, and try to control it. They’re going mad trying to reduce life to purely physical terms. They’re agents of destruction.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

This is what happens when you put Materialists in charge of human life. They destroy themselves and everything around them. It’s their only option, because their understanding is Zero.

They’re trying to make thought and imagination and passion into material objects. Since that’s an absurdity, they do the only thing they can do: try to control those “objects.”

In this way, they become the perfect voluntary dupes for men who want control of the whole planet.

There is a whole brand of mind control that is little more than torture.

In other words, by inflicting duress, applying coercion, making threats, causing pain and disorientation, an “expert” can make a victim do and say many things. That’s no secret. There are obviously drugs and hypnotic techniques that will soften up a person and/or put him into tremendous confusion, where he is pliable. And microwaves create pain.

Example: One of the foremost lunatic practitioners of torture was world-famous Canadian psychiatrist, Ewen Cameron, who carried out experiments on unwitting patients in the 1950s.

Cameron, during his career, was President of the Canadian, US, and World Psychiatric Associations, the American Psychopathological Association, and the Society of Biological Psychiatry. There was no one in his profession more highly decorated.

Partially funded by a CIA front, Cameron’s method was called psychic driving.

After horrendous electric shocks, very heavy drugs were given to place patients in days of prolonged sleep. Cameron then subjected them to audio tapes he made, in which he repeated phrases thousands of times, in order to produce “new personalities” for them.

This is murderous coercion. There is nothing sophisticated about it. And it assumes that a human being is merely a sum of physical parts, pieces of a puzzle that can be rearranged at will by “those in charge.”

A 2012 lawsuit filed by veterans’ groups, against the CIA and the DOD, refers to Cameron’s methods. The suit also states that two researchers, Dr. Louis West and Dr. Jose Delgado, working together under the early CIA MKULTRA subproject 95, utilized two protocols: brain implants (“stimoceivers”) and RHIC-EDOM to program the minds of victims. RHIC-EDOM stands for Radio Hypnotic Intracerebral Control-Electronic Dissolution of Memory.

Translation: bury memory, and insert new data. But here again, burying memory, the first phase, is achieved through force. The force of subjecting the brain to massive electromagnetic disruption.

Later and more sophisticated means of mind control can utilize loops, during which a person’s own brainwaves are fed back to him, along with suggestions.

But different people have different degrees of consciousness about their own thoughts and feelings.

No system exists which would make every person believe a thought planted in his brain is his own thought.

There is another gap. Just because certain naturally occurring brain waves can be read and recorded, this does not mean that feeding back those waves will result in “perfect reception” and integration by every person.

The third gap can be enormous, depending on the person. Voluntary thought in its basic form isn’t a product of the brain at all. The brain REFLECTS thought that is created by the person.

People who are aware of this wouldn’t fooled by brainwaves fed to them with suggestions.

As I’ve written before, the entire obsession with the brain is misplaced. If this organ is viewed as the fountainhead of all thought, then there is no such thing as freedom. Why? Because the brain, like every material object, is made up of tiny particles or waves that move according to physical laws—in which case the brain is just “another object” where the particles aggregate and mix and match.

There is absolutely nothing inherent in sub-atomic particles that would lead to a notion of free will.

The existence of freedom (choice) directly implies a non-material space. And a non-material individual who is inhabiting a physical form.

Mind control is most successful when inflicted on people who ALREADY have trouble making the distinction between what they think and believe, and what other people around them think and believe.

Ongoing research to take real-time pictures of brain activity is likely to focus on two major targets: people who hold very strong individualistic beliefs and those who are intensely creative.

The aim here is to introduce new brain activity that will cumulatively erode “the determination to believe” and the commitment to create. Why? Because those are distinct threats to a controlled status quo.

This research direction parallels a social propaganda campaign to eliminate the whole concept of “will power.” That phrase has become passe. It is now viewed by many people as a negative and essentially meaningless notion. In its place? Genetic determinism. DNA rules all. A person is what a person is because of his genes, and that’s the beginning and end of the story.

Never mind the fact that research along these lines has turned up precious little to explain human behavior. It’s a propagated myth of “science.” And it’s promoted for its social impact: “you can’t change what you are.”

It has always been true, since the dawn of time, that one person can force another person to take certain actions. But this is no mystery.

These days, with the use, say, of acoustic weapons or other forms of wave-disruption broadcasting, criminals can make people sick, make them feel pain or anger or fatigue—but this is really on the level of an electromagnetic “fist” to the head. Is it dangerous? Of course. But so is a concussion or a heavy blow to the gut or a bullet to the leg.

The people at the CIA, the Pentagon, DARPA, and other agencies, who are trying to change thought and behavior, are much crazier than they appear to be. They assume that the process of thought is so directly a product of the brain that they can make Thought A turn into Thought B with the flip of a switch. They have many surprises in store for them.

The major problem for humanity, vis-a-vis mind control, is the large number of people who already are only dimly aware of what they’re thinking and feeling. They can be manipulated with relative ease. But that is no surprise.

Nor is it a shock when people who are members of a cult do something horrendous to others or themselves. They’ve been subjected to social conditioning every day. They’ve bought the package. They’ve sworn allegiance to a leader. It takes relatively little to push them over the edge.

The SSRI antidepressants (Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, etc.) are themselves a form of mind control. They elicit, in some people, suicide and homicide. But this isn’t a precise process of switching off one thought and inserting another. This is the creation of a wholesale brain storm, in which neurotransmitters go haywire and scramble the brain and the nervous system. The person is literally being tortured, and he responds with violence.

The bottom-line issue in all these heinous methods is freedom of the individual. Freedom to think his thoughts, act on the basis of his chosen goals. Mind control advocates and researchers deny such freedom exists. For them, it’s just a matter of replacing one piece of equipment for another in what they believe humans are: biological machines.

It’s the end-game of philosophic Materialism, a bankrupt and contradictory system.

See that. Know that. Understand it.

Human beings are not machines.

Human beings are not material objects.

The brain is not the source of consciousness or thought.

And because this is true, it opens up an endless vista of possibility for human thought, creation, power.

Source

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.

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