Science Special News

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Canadian coins bugged ?

They say money talks, and a new report suggests Canadian currency is indeed chatting, at least electronically, on behalf of shadowy spies. Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defence.Security experts believe the miniature devices could be used to track the movements of defence industry personnel dealing in sensitive military technology."You might want to know where the individual is going, what meetings the individual might be having and, above all, with whom," said David Harris, a former CSIS officer who consults on security matters.

"The more covert or clandestine the activity in which somebody might be involved, the more significant this kind of information could be."The counter-intelligence office of the U.S. Defence Security Service cites the currency caper as an example of the methods international spies have recently tried to illicitly acquire military technology.

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Campaign to pardon the last witch

Mary Martin was 11 years old when her father taught her to box. She would come home from school scratched and bruised, her ears ringing with abuse from the playground. Mary Martin had the unhappy distinction of being the granddaughter of Britain's last convicted witch. Mrs Martin knew her grandmother, Helen Duncan, as a comforting woman she could trust, the granny with a special gift: talking to spirits. But this was April 1944, at the height of the war with Germany. Mrs Duncan had just been branded by an Old Bailey jury as a witch and spy guilty of revealing wartime secrets.Some 50 years after Mrs Duncan's death, a fresh campaign has been launched to clear her name, with a petition calling on the home secretary, John Reid, to grant a posthumous pardon. Her conviction, said Mrs Martin, was simply "ludicrous".

The appeal is winning international support from experts in perhaps the world's most infamous witch trial: the conviction and execution of 20 girls, men and women at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. "Helen Duncan was very much victimised by her times, and she too suffered," said Alison D'Amario, education director at the Salem Witch Museum.

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Newspaper claims UFO was 'light display'

Sam Willey: On January 7th 2007 Alienationsam.com reported on an event which occurred in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire on Christmas Eve 2006. The key witness who wishes to remain un-named informed me that the a newspaper in the area has covered the story. I went over to the newspapers website and discovered an article which is explaining the UFO as being a "club lights display" however the witness told me on the phone on January 12th 2007 that it was absolutely not a lights display and I tend to agree. The following article is from the "Fenland Today" newspaper the article is quite bias but since Alienationsam.com is dedicated to the seeking of the truth i feel obligated to present the sceptical side of this event. I hope to get in touch with the newspaper shortly and hopefully get in touch with the eyewitnesses and hopefully get a wider view of the scale and magnitude of this event.

Fenland Today: Last week we reported how one couple had been left baffled after spotting a 'huge white light whirling in a clockwise rotation' above houses in the Fenland Road area late on December 24. They described how the mass of light had lingered for several hours before finally disappearing. There were various theories on just exactly what the phenomenon was, with some believing it truly was an alien visitor, other younger readers even thought it could be Father Christmas, and one man took it to be a religious sign or possibly the Aurora Borealis.

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Knots develop in String Theory

Ever since string theory was first proposed by Leonard Susskind in 1969 it has been plagued by ridicule and controversy, but the theory still continues to attract serious attention from prominent scientists. As with any theory amendments have to be made, and recently Susskind has come out and conceded that his initial model is likely only one small part of a much larger and more complex multifaceted megaverse. But many in the scientific community are resisting this revolutionary train of thought, and claim that Susskind has no evidence, and therefore no reason, to continue with this folly. But regardless of which camp you choose to side with, recent discoveries in astrophysics may soon put this little quandary to rest. The initial motivation behind introducing string theory was to amend the Standard Model so that its fundamental units would become one-dimensional, elongated objects, rather than zero-dimensional particles.

With such a model, string theorists hoped that a cogent and more consistent quantum theory of gravity would be revealed, in addition to a number of other fantastic consequences that would also follow. Some of these consequences may seem fairly mundane to the layperson, such as a unified theory of everything, which would amalgamate scientists' current understanding of the four basic forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetic, weak and strong). But some of these consequences, such as multiverses and other dimensions, seem more akin to science fiction.

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Sleep paralysis happens all the time

Imagine waking up in the night and being unable to move. So you lie there for what seems like hours, trying to wiggle your fingers or toes, but you are paralyzed.You want to call out for help, but you can't draw a deep enough breath to make a loud sound.Eventually, you're able to move a little, and then your whole body begins to respond again. Scary, huh? Weird, too.But it happens to people all the time.It's called sleep paralysis, and it typically occurs at the very beginning or end of sleep. The experience lasts only a few minutes at the most, and there's no harm done -- aside from the fright."It's terrifying the first time it happens," said Dr. Barbara Phillips, director of the Samaritan Sleep Center and chairwoman of the board of the National Sleep Foundation.Phillips said in an e-mail interview that sleep paralysis happens as the body is coming out of REM -- or rapid-eye-movement -- sleep."During non-REM sleep, our brains are 'turned off' but our bodies can be active," she said. This is when people experience sleep disturbances such as tooth-grinding or sleepwalking."In contrast, our brains are very active (probably as active as when we are awake) during REM sleep, but we are actually paralyzed," she said. Researchers think that's what keeps us from acting out our dreams.

"With sleep paralysis, the paralysis that is normal during REM sleep intrudes into the waking state for one reason or another," she said.Kathryn Hansen, director of the St. Joseph Hospital Sleep Wellness Center, put it this way: "The brain wakes up before the body wakes up."Sometimes, sleep paralysis is accompanied by hypnagogic hallucinations, or "waking dreams," Phillips said.In many such cases, people think they see a dark or menacing figure in the room with them, or they hear a strange sound but can't pinpoint the source. Some researchers have hypothesized that people who report alien abductions are experiencing sleep paralysis in conjunction with such a hallucination.

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Man's phone spontaneously combusts

A cell phone in the front pocket of a Vallejo man's pants spontaneously combusted, quickly ignited his clothes and left the man with second- and third-degree burns across at least half his body, according to investigators. Luis Picaso, 59, was apparently sleeping on a white, all-plastic lawn chair in his room late Saturday night and was awakened as he was ablaze, said Vallejo Fire Department investigator and spokesman Bill Tweedy. By the time authorities arrived shortly before midnight, Picaso was on the floor of the bathroom. He was in stable condition Sunday, Tweedy said Monday night. The plastic lawn chair -- a petroleum product causing a high-heat fire -- had melted. Picaso's soccer jersey -- made of quick-burning nylon -- was almost completely burned away. "I did find one scrap on the floor," said Tweedy. "Cotton holds up the best," said Tweedy. "The only thing he had on that was cotton was his underwear. Everywhere the nylon was, that's where he got burns." Tweedy said that from the burn patterns on Picaso's clothes and body, it was clear the fire began in the right front pocket of his polyester-blend slacks. "There were no matches," Tweedy said.

"There were no lighters. He wasn't smoking. The only source was the phone that was in his pocket. I know he didn't spontaneously combust." Tweedy declined to name the manufacturer or model of the phone. "I don't believe it's a problem with any particular cell phone maker," said Tweedy. "It's a piece of electrical equipment. All electrical equipment can have a malfunction. This is a freak accident. ... It could be any brand of phone that could do that."

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Leopard sighted near Arlington, UK

A Langney man spotted a large black cat 'the size of a labrador' near his home on Monday night. John Hescott was exercising his two Yorkshire terriers at 10.30pm when he saw the animal 100 yards from where he was standing.This follows a sighting of a creature believed to be a black leopard near Arlington last week, as reported in the Gazette on Wednesday.Mr Hescott was with his dogs on an area of verge near his house when he saw the big cat walk from a play area in Faversham Road into a service road.He said, "We've also got a labrador cross Alsatian and it was the size of that. It just looked around but didn't seem in any hurry."Mr Hescott has reported the sighting to the police.Sussex Police can confirm they received a report of a possible sighting of a big cat in the Langney area of Eastbourne on Monday January 8, around 7pm.

A police spokesperson said, "It's important to note that this report is of a possible sighting."There have been countless similar reports in the local media over the years."Many 'big cat' theories have been put forward but none, to my knowledge, have been substantiated by firm evidence."

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Human/neanderthal skull found

A 40,000-year-old skull found in a Romanian cave shows traits of both modern humans and Neanderthals and might prove the two interbred, researchers reported on Monday. If the findings are confirmed, the skull would represent the oldest modern human remains yet found in Europe. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will add to the debate over whether modern Homo sapiens simply killed off their Neanderthal cousins, or had some intimate interactions with them first. DNA samples taken from Neanderthal bones suggest there was no mixing, or at least that any Neanderthal genetic contribution did not make it to the modern DNA pool.

But Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis has in the past found bones that he believes show both modern human and Neanderthal traits, and now he and colleagues have found a skull. The skull, probably that of a teenager, has been dated to 40,000 years ago and shows many modern traits. But it also is a little flatter than most modern Homo sapiens, and exceptionally large upper molars more associated with Neanderthals.

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A crowded womb

A twin leans over and kisses the cheek of her sister in a heart-warming picture that would not be out of place in any family home. Yet these siblings are a not even born and the astonishing images have been captured on a new 'four-dimensional' ultrasound scan of the womb. The scans are a highly developed form of traditional ultrasound where very high frequency sound waves are used to produce images of what is inside the body. As with older forms of ultra-sound, sound waves a emitted from a transducer, or probe, which is placed on the mother's abdomen and then moved to 'look at' areas in the uterus. These sound waves bounce back off the foetus, helping to create a 'picture' of the child on a screen. The new 4D scan us ses the same frequency of sound waves w as in a normal ultrasound. But the sound waves are directed from many more angles, producing a 'real-time' video of the foetus as it moves and allowing scientists to say the images are in four dimensions.

This advanced technology has allowed scientists to capture the development of foetuses like never before, including twins and triplets jostling for space in the womb while grasping each other's hands and even faces. The images have also allowed scientists to create life-size silicone models and astonishing computer-generated images of the multiple foetuses, some of which are seen in the pictures shown here. For the first time, it has also been possible to see detailed pictures of 'vanishing twin syndrome' - where a foetus dies and is re-absorbed into the womb, often in the early stages of pregnancy.

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Aliens welcome in Rachel, Nevada

It would be logical for this town to consider sisterhoodwith Loch Ness, Scotland, home to a putative aquatic monster whose reported "sightings" have fired up imaginations for decades. Rachel, population about 100, also has a lake, a mystery at the bottom of it and the business savvy to turn it into a lucrative enterprise. Groom Lake, about 25 miles southwest of here, has not held any water since probably the last ice age, but even an attempt to sneak a peak from one of the surrounding mountaintops will bring out the authorities. Pat Travis has seen many a truth seeker ending up in handcuffs. "Remember, if even as much as your toe gets inside the restricted area, they'll grab you, and you'll end up paying a $600 fine," Mrs. Travis said. She is the owner of Little A'Le'Inn, Rachel's only restaurant, bar and motel, which is booming with curious visitors. Mrs. Travis tells the story about a man who set off a major security alert as he stretched his hand across the boundary to grab a rock as a souvenir. Sirens blared, she recalls, searchlights pierced the dark and black helicopters swooped down from out of nowhere to nab the intruder. Bone-dry Groom Lake and its immediate surroundings are known as Area 51, the U.S. government's single most closely guarded facility. It is so secret that Pentagon officials are not authorized even to acknowledge its existence.

It is protected by somber-looking camouflage-clad men who careen around the ridges in sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, backed up by a network of cameras, motion sensors and listening devices. For local residents, what could be better for business than a good secret next door? A dusty gravel road runs through a picturesque Joshua tree grove, then veers to the right before revealing a slew of red-and-white warnings not to proceed any further. The camouflage men are parked on the hill above -- engine running, ready to pounce.