Science Special News

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Japanese turn to past lives

The room suddenly grows quiet as Hiroyuki Ehara stares at the Japanese actress in front of him, closes his eyes and leans forward in deep thought. Moments later, the wide-eyed actress’s past life is revealed — she is the reincarnation of a British nobleman’s daughter. “You should never go to Britain,” she is told. “You have too many painful memories there. You couldn’t marry the man you loved and were instead forced to marry someone else. But that family was ruined and for the rest of your past life you were impoverished.” The popularity of Ehara, a self-professed spiritual counsellor, and his weekly television show where he looks into celebrities’ past lives and reads their “auras”, has set off a boom of Japanese seeking comfort in their inner selves. Spiritual books, counselling centres and even ‘power stone’ jewellery have become hits in a country where spiritualism has a long tradition but has met with scepticism in modern times.

Ehara’s books alone have sold more than seven million copies. The fascination, social commentators say, appears to reflect growing anxieties over work, family and lifestyles in general that have led many Japanese to feel a loss of identity. For Yukari Kato, head of a company that makes teaching materials, visits to spiritual counsellors are an annual ritual.

[Rasputin]

'Hogwarts' dragon unveiled

A dragon-like dinosaur named after Harry Potter's alma mater has performed a bit of black magic on its own family tree, say paleontologists who unveiled the "Dragon King of Hogwarts" on Monday in Albuquerque. The newly described horny-headed dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia lived about 66 million years ago in South Dakota, just a million years short of the extinction of all dinosaurs. But its flat, almost storybook-style dragon head has overturned everything paleontologists thought they knew about the dome-head dinos called pachycephalosaurs."What you knew about pachycephalosaurs -- you can chuck it," said Spencer Lucas, curator of paleontology at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History."Dracorex hogwartsia is a rather fantastic new dinosaur," affirmed paleontologist Robert Sullivan of the State Museum of Pennsylvania.For years dinosaur experts had thought the classic dome-headed, head-butting sorts of pachycephalosaurs evolved from earlier flat-headed ancestors.

The last thing they expected to find at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs was a dramatically flat-headed pachycerphalosaurs, or "pachy.""If you were going to predict the kind of dinosaur that would live at that time, it would not be this," said Lucas.Without so much as a nod of the head or the waving of a wand, hogwartsia has reversed the pachy family tree."Instead of going from flat-headed to domed, you're going from dome-headed to flat," Sullivan told Discovery News. Along with several colleagues, Sullivan co-authored the first detailed study of the new dinosaur, published this week in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science Bulletin.

[Rasputin]

Britons report 'psychic powers'

More than half of Britons believe in psychic powers such as mind-reading and premonitions, a survey suggests. Of 1,006 adults polled for Readers Digest Magazine, 43% reported reading others' thoughts or having theirs read. More than half had had a dream or premonition of an event before it happened and 26% said they had sensed when a loved-one was ill or in trouble. A fifth said they had seen a ghost and 29% believed near-death experiences were evidence there was an afterlife. Of those questioned, 43% claimed to have tapped into other people's thoughts or to have had their own minds read by someone else. More than two-thirds said they could sense when someone was looking at them and 62% could tell who was ringing before they picked up the phone. More than 10% thought they could influence machinery or electronic equipment using their minds. One in 10 said something bad had happened to another person after they had wished for it to happen.

Women were more likely to believe in the paranormal than men, though 53% of males said they sometimes knew who was ringing before picking up the phone and 45% had experienced dream or premonition before an event. Despite the high numbers who said they had experienced such phenomena, only 9% described themselves as psychic. Simon Bacon, lecturer at London's College of Psychic Studies and a practising medium, said: "When you say psychic, many people have an image of an old woman in a gown with a crystal ball. They don't associate themselves with that."

[Rasputin]

Robot hand controlled by thought alone

A robotic hand controlled by the power of thought alone has been demonstrated by researchers in Japan. The robotic hand mimics the movements of a person's real hand, based on real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of their brain activity. It marks another landmark in the advance towards prosthetics and computers that can be operating by thought alone.The system was developed by Yukiyasu Kamitani and colleagues from the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, and researchers from the Honda Research Institute in Saitama.Subjects lay inside an MRI scanner and were asked to make "rock, paper, scissor" shapes with their right hand. As they did this, the MRI scanner recorded brain activity during the formation of each shape and fed this data to a connected computer. After a short training period, the computer was able to recognise the brain activity associated with each shape and command the robotic appendage do the same.An fMRI machine probes activity within the brain by monitoring blood flow to different regions. It uses a powerful magnetic field combined with radiofrequency pulses to probe the magnetic state of hydrogen atoms in water molecules within body tissue.

An alternative and more portable method is to measure electrical activity inside the brain using electrodes either implanted in brain tissue or attached to the scalp. US researchers have previously used brain implants to allow monkeys to remotely operate robotic arms.Electrodes attached to a person's skull can also be used to control the movement of a cursor across a computer screen. Klaus-Robert Mueller at the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin, Germany, has developed such a system. He says the fMRI technique is cumbersome and expensive but could help scientists better understand how the brain works because it provides higher resolution.

[Rasputin]

Alternative medicine and astrology

Fraudulent letters sent to newspapers, by a secret government think tank here in Britain, are designed to state the desirability of regulating alternative medicine, prior to a phase out, in favour of all allopathic treatments. This is backed up by anonymous “science correspondent” type articles in newspapers like the hard left British Guardian. This has been part of a concerted drug industry attack on complementary therapists. But these alternative Disciplines are flourishing because of the failure of allopathic medicine. One only has to look at such British cases as Dr. Rodney “butcher” ledward, the gynaecological surgeon who ruined hundreds of gynaecological operations yet was still working in the health industry, or the “angel of death” Beverly Allet, intentionally killing the patients, or Prof. Sir Roy Meadows who made the decisions that resulted in many mothers with cot deaths, being wrongly sent to prison for murdering their babies, and gave spurious advice to social workers on splitting parents from their children,but the classic must be the Shipman case, the best random killer of people since Ariel Sharon. One asks, how many have gone undetected ?

Doctors make so many mistakes that there is even a name for it, “Iatrogenic”. At medical school a few years ago if you could diagnose correctly in 50% of cases that would count as a pass, the other 50% does not bear thinking about.My own subject psychology is ridden with fraud and incompetence.Medical blunders kill more people a year in Britain, than alcoholism, road deaths and Gerry Adams put together.Your G.P. and his allopathic medicine is seen more and more as a failure, even the royal family will not use it.The idea that you are not an individual but an intestine, a colon or a heart is called “reductionism” and has been a damaging trend in medicine, and the upshot is the blossoming of person centred medicine, particularly supported by prince Charles.Fortunately we have common ground, today’s acupuncturists, osteopaths, homeopaths, nutritionists, hypno therapists etc cross over with well qualified spiritual healers mediums and fortune tellers, in looking at the whole person, and remember the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Most alternative healers and readers have a whole basket of skills, which like the royal family, the general public is turning to in ever greater numbers.We are constantly bombarded with data from special interest groups, with their own axes to grind.The alternatives clinic where I am associated has so much crap paperwork and red tape this year alone, that laid end to end it is bigger than Cherie Blair’s backside. The E.E.C are to ban the use of both vitamin supplements and herbal products, with data twisted by the multi national drug companies, in order to promote their own produce.The knowledge that every doctors surgery and every G.P. countrywide, is held in the grip of the drug companies, and all medical surveys are sponsored by them, is not reassuring.

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1970's UFO case solved ?

A spate of mysterious UFO and alien sightings which gripped a Welsh community 30 years ago may have finally been explained. A former US Navy sailor claims the furore gripping the Broad Haven area of Pembrokeshire in the late 1970s was caused by an officer in a special fireproof uniform, and new RAF jets.The sailor, who served in the area shortly after most of the sightings, says a fellow officer admitted he had been responsible.The clamour around the possibility of little green men visiting Pembrokeshire in the late 1970s led to numerous tabloid reports, including one of an entire class of schoolchildren claiming to have seen a UFO landing.Many others reported being petrified by a strange silver alien.It all happened in what became known as the Broad Haven Triangle, and canny tourist operators even started running UFO sighting weekends. However behind the hype, Government officials took some of the tales seriously, and it was revealed last year by UFO expert Dr David Clarke that a secret MoD investigation had been carried out.

Now, following publicity about the investigation, James Carlson from Albuquerque, New Mexico, has written to the Fortean Times - a magazine about the supernatural - with what he believes are answers to West Wales' paranormal riddle.He was stationed at the US Naval Facility in Brawdy in the 1980s.In his letter Carlson tells how one of his supervisors, who is identified only by the name Steve, saw him reading a book about paranormal incidents around Brawdy, which was also an RAF base.The book quotes an RAF officer, who states the descriptions of "alien" suits were in no way similar to military uniforms at the time.However Carlson was told by Steve that the description was identical to firefighting gear used by American personnel.He said, "Steve told me that while serving on the fire team of his division, he would often don the asbestos suit and oxygen breathing apparatus provided.

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Hidden Da Vinci sketches revealed

Sketches hidden beneath one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous works have been revealed to the public for the first time after scientists discovered the provocative images under a thick layer of paint. A bloody s***mish between knights, a clutch of figures rebuilding a ruined temple and even an elephant were carefully laid out by Leonardo in the preparatory “under-drawing” for his Adoration of the Magi. In the version of the painting known to the world, in which much of the underdrawing is reproduced, these elements have been hidden. Parts of the original design were deliberately obscured — sometimes with swipes of charcoal — because in 15th century Florence they were deemed unsuitable for a picture of the infant Jesus and the wise men. Maurizio Seracini, an engineer who makes scientific investigations of artworks, discovered the discrepancies in 2002 using multispectrum imaging. His work helped to establish that the Adoration was only partly the work of the Renaissance genius.

Signor Seracini demonstrated that the brown monochrome painting on top of the drawing was carried out by an anonymous, minor artist about 20 years after Leonardo had finished and abandoned the preparatory work. Chiara Pagnini, an art historian based in Rome, agrees. “Someone like Leonardo would never do his preparatory drawing and then paint something different on top.The most plausible explanation is that the people who commissioned the work didn’t like it.”

[Rasputin]

Powerful "God Computer" will save mankind

Ken Korczak: In the the not-to-distant future, computers will become more intelligent than human beings, and eventually achieve god-like powers. Eventually, an all-powerful God Computer will emerge, which will be the savior of mankind. This God Computer will have the ability to reach into the past and resurrect dead human beings, and create a paradise for them to live in forever. If this sounds like science fiction or religious nonsense, many of our most advanced scientists today say that it is not nonsense, but is already starting to happen.Champions of the God Computer theory include mathematician Vernor Vinge and inventor Ray Kurzweil. But their theory is also heavily dependent upon some of the most brilliant minds of the century, especially physicists Freeman Dyson, Paul Dirac, John Bernal and J.B.S. Haldane. One more major proponent of the idea that a super God Computer will save mankind is Dr. Frank Tipler of Tulane University, who spells out his theory in painstaking details -- including mathematical proofs -- in his 500-page book, “The Physics of Immortality.”

It’s interesting to note that the great science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said: “If there is no God, mankind must invent him.” And that’s just what we have started to. With the invention of the computer, and the rapidly increasing advances in the intelligence of computers, we will soon reach what is known as a “technological singularity.”A technological singularity is "event horizon" in the predictability of human technological development. When this singularity is achieved, humans as we exist today will cease to be the top species on the planet, and the most intelligent. Computers will be many time smarter than man, and we will be like children to them, and they like gods to us. Eventually, computers will advance to the point where there is no difference between them and our current Judeo-Christian concept of an all-knowing and all-powerful God. Because the God Computer will be able to manipulate time, all energy and all matter, it will be able reach back to the very beginning of the universe and, basically, do whatever it wants.Tipler points out that all living beings, including humans, can be represented as information in the universe. He writes: “...all information contained in the whole of human history, including every detail of every human life, will be available for analysis by the collectivity of life in the far future ... in principle ... it is possible for life in the far future to construct, using this information, a perfectly accurate simulation of these past lives.”Tipler also states: “The dead will be raised when the computer capacity of the universe is so large that the amount of capacity required to store all possible human simulations is an insignificant fraction of the entire capacity.”

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Prehistoric ecosystem found in Israeli cave

Submitted by Rick Hamell: Israeli scientists said on Wednesday they had discovered a prehistoric ecosystem dating back millions of years. The discovery was made in a cave near the central Israeli city of Ramle during rock drilling at a quarry. Scientists were called in and soon found eight previously unknown species of crustaceans and invertebrates similar to scorpions."Until now eight species of animals were found in the cave, all of them unknown to science," said Dr Hanan Dimantman, a biologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.He said the cave's ecosystem probably dates back around five million years when the Mediterranean Sea covered parts of Israel. The cave was completely sealed off from the world, including from water and nutrients seeping through rock crevices above.

Scientists who discovered the cave believe it has been intact for millions of years."Every species we examined had no eyes which means they lost their sight due to evolution," said Dimantman.Samples of the animals discovered in the cave were sent for DNA tests which found they were unique, he said. The cave has been closed off as scientists conduct a more detailed survey."This is a cave of fantastic biodiversity," Dimantman said.

[Rasputin]

The Park hypothesis

Bob Park will be remembered as a persistent human spaceflight critic, a leader of the anti-human-spaceflight movement. But he could also help solve one of the great space mysteries of all time: Do intelligent aliens exist, and if so, where are they?First, some background information. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is challenged by an idea called the Fermi Paradox. Enrico Fermi thought that if intelligent alien civilizations existed, they would inevitably colonize the galaxy. Travelling slower than the speed of light, they would still colonize the galaxy in a relatively short time. And if our galaxy was colonized, we would know all about it. Fermi concluded that intelligent aliens do not exist.The Fermi Paradox drew a wide range of speculative hypotheses. Maybe intelligent aliens did exist, but they became extinct before they reached us. Maybe they have isolated us for observation and study (the zoo hypothesis). Maybe they are waiting until our civilization reaches a certain developmental stage (the sentinel hypothesis). Or could there be another explanation?Since the only intelligent civilization that we know of is our own, our experiences may provide insights into how intelligent aliens behave. We regularly have a debate over what to send to space.

It is known as the humans versus robots debate, or the manned versus unmanned debate, or with a more accurate description it could be called the both-humans-and-robots versus robots-only debate. Now, if an intelligent civilization such as ours is having this debate, then it is possible that intelligent alien civilizations are doing the same thing. Of course, they wouldn’t call it a humans versus robots debate. From their perspective it would be an our-species versus robots debate, and from our perspective it would be an aliens versus robots debate. And like our intellectuals, their intellectuals may conclude that alien spaceflight is obsolete, and a robots-only space policy would be sensible, logical, and right. They would dismiss colonization as a hopeless fantasy.

[Rasputin]

"The Omen" remake uses Satanic '666' promo

With the clamor over religious thriller "The Da Vinci Code" barely fading, a major Hollywood studio is mining the same vein with a Satanic "666" marketing campaign for its new horror film. "The Omen", a remake of the 1976 horror classic, is the kind of film that routinely makes it big at the box office, appealing to the coveted demographic of young and predominantly male thrill-seekers.Twentieth Century Fox has banked "The Omen" on a promotional campaign based on "666", the number associated with Satan, based on Revelation, the last book in the Bible.Even the film's worldwide debut is set for June 6, 2006, or 06/06/06, which the studio conveniently has shortened to 666 in the film's logo.In the Christian culture, the number "666" is the symbol of the devil, as related by Revelation 13:18: "This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.""The Omen" is the story of a father who realizes his adopted infant son, Damien, who has a 666 birthmark on his skull, is a reincarnation of Satan. A maelstrom of death surrounds the boy."The prophecy is clear, the signs unmistakable: Armageddon is upon us. On 6/6/06, the omen is revealed...and our darkest fears are realized," says the 20th Century Fox website.

The use of a Satanic promotional campaign comes at a sensitive time, after this month's release of "The Da Vinci Code" provoked an outcry from religious groups protesting the film's controversial theme of a married Jesus Christ and a Top of Form 1Bottom of Form 1Vatican <http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=Vatican> cover-up."Normally, a marketer is going to be very, very wary about using the devil," said Robert Thompson, professor of television at Syracuse University in New York state."But 666 has really emerged in the popular culture as a funny thing you bring up when you're talking about a kid misbehaving on the playground, you say 'I bet this one has a 666 on his scalp'," he said.

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Satellite could open door on extra dimension

An exotic theory, which attempts to unify the laws of physics by proposing the existence of an extra fourth spatial dimension, could be tested using a satellite to be launched in 2007. Such theories are notoriously difficult to test. But a new study suggests that such hidden dimensions could give rise to thousands of mini-black holes within our own solar system – and the theory could be tested within Pluto’s orbit in just a few years.Black holes of various masses are thought to have sprung into existence within 1 second of the big bang, as elementary particles clumped together at extreme energies. But Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts the smallest of these "primordial" black holes should have already evaporated, through a quantum process called Hawking radiation. But according to some alternative theories that attempt to unify gravity with quantum mechanics, such as string theory, small black holes could still exist. That is because these theories propose extra spatial dimensions, which alter the way gravity behaves on small scales. The theory of general relativity holds that there are three spatial dimensions plus time.

"That [extra spatial dimension] changes the rate at which black holes radiate, so you can slow down the evaporation quite substantially," says Charles Keeton, a physicist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US.Now, Keeton and colleague Arlie Petters at Duke University in North Carolina, US, have calculated how many of these tiny black holes should exist – and how they might be detected – according to an offshoot of string theory.

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Top scientist gives up on creationists

A leading British scientist said yesterday that he had given up trying to persuade creationists that Darwin's theory is correct after repeatedly being misrepresented and, he said, branded a liar. Speaking at the Guardian Hay festival at Hay-on-Wye, the evolutionary biologist Steve Jones spoke of his frustrations when trying to debate with religious opponents. "I don't engage with creationists directly," he said, saying that, when he had, they had frequently quoted him out of context or accused him of lying. "If somebody has decided to believe something - whatever the evidence - then there is nothing you can do about it." The University College London professor spoke to the provocative title, Why Creationism is Wrong and Evolution is Right. He pointed out that acceptance of Darwin's theory on a global scale was a "minority belief". According to polls, 100 million Americans believe in creationism. His talk laid out some of the evidence for evolution, such as that of changes in the HIV virus after infecting people. He also hinted at a puzzle thrown up by the human genome project. Far from the hundreds of thousands of genes many geneticists expected, there seem to be around 30,000.

Another revelation was the notion that the chimpanzee genome project has shown that women are closer to chimps then men. Prof Jones explained that is because the X chromosome has changed less than the Y chromosome since we split from a common ancestor with chimps. Women have two X chromosomes compared with XY in men. The most important difference between evolutionists and creationists, Prof Jones concluded, is that scientists are always prepared to say, "I don't know". "If there weren't any unknown parts of evolution, bits we don't understand, it wouldn't be a science," he said, "That's one thing that believers never say, because it's all written down in a big book." In 1997, Prof Jones was awarded the Royal Society's Michael Faraday prize, the UK's foremost award for communicating science to the public.

[Rasputin]

Black cats played many roles

Oct.31 is Samheim, the New Year's Eve of the Wiccan year. Most of us know the holiday as Halloween, a time of ghosts, goblins, spirits and black cat silhouettes clinging to our windows of cats and witches, and children waiting to get into their costumes. We have made Halloween a fun, social time for children and our neighbors. But you must remember while we find this whole costume thing nostalgic, and a reminder of what we did as children, the animals often find these same sights frightening. Please remember your cats and dogs should be indoors during the trick or treating times and also kept away from Halloween candy. Chocolate especially, is quite dangerous to animals. One could not have the mystery of Halloween without including the superstitions of the black cat.

We often see the cat with arched back, glowing eyes, curled lips, claws drawn, ready to pounce. The black cat has consistently been blamed for the ills of the world, and so becomes an important part of the world of witches during Samheim.For thousands of years, black cats have been regarded as mysterious creatures with supernatural power. It is believed witches can turn into cats and they could make the change nine times -- hence, the belief cats have nine lives. Since the black cat was once considered a witch in disguise, and is still viewed as a witch's familiar, history has given this animal many special powers.

[Rasputin]

Giant crater found under antarctic ice

An apparent crater as big as Ohio has been found in Antarctica. Scientists think it was carved by a space rock that caused the greatest mass extinction on Earth, 250 million years ago.The crater, buried beneath a half-mile of ice and discovered by some serious airborne and satellite sleuthing, is more than twice as big as the one involved in the demise of the dinosaurs.The crater's location, in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia, suggests it might have instigated the breakup of the so-called Gondwana supercontinent, which pushed Australia northward, the researchers said."This Wilkes Land impact is much bigger than the impact that killed the dinosaurs, and probably would have caused catastrophic damage at the time," said Ralph von Frese, a professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University.The crater is about 300 miles wide. It was found by looking at differences in density that show up in gravity measurements taken with NASA's GRACE satellites.

Researchers spotted a mass concentration, which they call a mascon—dense stuff that welled up from the mantle, likely in an impact."If I saw this same mascon signal on the Moon, I'd expect to see a crater around it," Frese said. (The Moon, with no atmosphere, retains a record of ancient impacts in the visible craters there.)So Frese and colleagues overlaid data from airborne radar images that showed a 300-mile wide sub-surface, circular ridge. The mascon fit neatly inside the circle."And when we looked at the ice-probing airborne radar, there it was," he said today.