U.K. to Begin Microchipping Prisoners

(NaturalNews) The British government is developing a plan to track current and former prisoners by means of microchips implanted under the skin, drawing intense criticism from probation officers and civil rights groups.

As a way to reduce prison crowding, many British prisoners are currently released under electronic monitoring, carried out by means of an ankle bracelet that transmits signals like those used by mobile phones.
(...)

more

Galaxy map hints at fractal universe

Is the matter in the universe arranged in a fractal pattern? A new study of nearly a million galaxies suggests it is – though there are no well-accepted theories to explain why that would be so.

Cosmologists trying to reconstruct the entire history of the universe have precious few clues from which to work. One key clue is the distribution of matter throughout space, which has been sculpted for nearly 14 billion years by the competing forces of gravity and cosmic expansion. If there is a pattern in the sky, it encodes the secrets of the universe.
(...)

more

Socialists made eugenics fashionable

An exhibition of the history of those scientific ideas that gave a grimy intellectual veneer to the Nazi genocide opened recently at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. The collection centres on eugenics, the notion that humanity can be improved and perfected by selective breeding and the elimination of individuals and groups considered to be undesirable. Entitled Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, it reveals how it was not thoughtless right-wing thugs as much as writers and scientists, the intellectual elite, who led the movement.
(...)

more

EU “Democracy” Unveiled *

When countries took the first step in what would expand in to the EU, the people and their political representatives never imagined their nation’s rights along with their culture would not be respected and undermined. The assumption was each nation would be treated how the law treats individuals. Just like how a young red haired woman is legally equal to a tall broad portly middle-aged man, they both have the same rights which are respected regardless of size or opinion. Unsurprisingly it is not legal even for two large men to intimidate a young lady to down a dark lane against her wishes. But psychologically things have changed in the EU. The unelected leadership are implanting their “imaginative” opinions around the union with their easy access to the media. Under the EU’s own rules if one nation rejects a treaty it does not get passed in to law. It is now EU psychologically acceptable, even if it’s against the rules, for large nations to drag smaller nations in to a treaty against their wishes. No will not be accepted, nations must be pressured in to giving the only answer, yes.
(...)

more

Smart binoculars tell soldiers where the danger lies

WHEN it comes to spotting signs of danger on the horizon, soldiers beat computers hands down. But soldiers with binoculars have only a limited field of view, so can easily miss events elsewhere.

Now the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency believes it can help by equipping soldiers with a wide-angle imaging system.
(...)

more

Wiltshire crop circle identified as symbolic code for first ten places of pi

Wroughton Mathematicians are perplexed after a highly complex crop circle appeared in a Wiltshire field - depicting a fundamental mathematical symbol.

The circle is, apparently, a coded image representing a complex mathematical number — the first ten digits of pi — and even astrophysicists admit they find it “mind-boggling”.
(...)

more

Oil companies given right to 'harass' polar bears

IT'S just over a month since the US government designated the polar bear as an endangered species. Now the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) stands accused of giving oil companies a "blank cheque to harass polar bears".
(...)

more

Sweden's new wiretapping law

With just a week to go before the Swedish parliament is expected to pass a controversial wiretapping law, Pirate Party leader Rickard Falkvinge urges people to do all they can to block the legislation.

On June 17th the Swedish parliament is set to vote on the introduction of a new "signal surveillance" law.

What the law means is that all telephone and internet operators will be forced to attach a large cable to the state's supercomputer, where the state will be able to keep a record of everything said in telephone conversations, surfed on the web or written on the internet.

The law can best be described by the more explanatory term "general surveillance". Instead of just criminal suspects having their phones tapped, now everyone will be tapped via their phones, emails, web surfing, faxes etc.

But the state won't keep a record of everything. First it will scan all phone calls, emails and so on, in real time. Anything that is "considered interesting" on the basis of 250,000 search criteria, will be saved for further investigation.
(...)

more

Who’s afraid of a synthetic human?

In the future there will be no more human beings. This is not something we should worry about.

Much of today’s scientific research may enable us eventually to repair the terrible vulnerability to which our present state of evolution has exposed us. It is widely thought inevitable that we will have to face the end of humanity as we know it. We will either have died out altogether, killed off by self-created global warming or disease, or, we may hope, we will have been replaced by our successors.
(...)

more

A computer that can 'read' your mind

For centuries, the concept of mind readers was strictly the domain of folklore and science fiction. But according to new research published today in the journal Science, scientists are closer to knowing how specific thoughts activate our brains. The findings demonstrate the power of computational modeling to improve our understanding of how the brain processes information and thoughts. The research was conducted by a computer scientist, Tom Mitchell, and a cognitive neuroscientist, Marcel Just, both of Carnegie Mellon University. Their previous research, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the W.M. Keck Foundation, had shown that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can detect and locate brain activity when a person thinks about a specific word. Using this data, the researchers developed a computational model that enabled a computer to correctly determine what word a research subject was thinking about by analyzing brain scan data.
(...)

more

How Food Riots, Pricey Gas and Home Foreclosures Point to a Better Future

Can anybody make sense of what the heck is going on today? A lead story in the news covers the rioting in Haiti and a half-dozen other nations as food prices soar. Another front-page column reports that the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis is seizing up credit markets worldwide and contributing to housing woes -- possibly even economic destabilization -- in Ireland, Spain, Britain and elsewhere. Other news reports the discovery of a huge fracture in Antarctica’s vast Wilkins ice shelf, drawing attention to the slow-motion crisis of climate change. And there are ongoing reports about water shortages in Africa and Asia, droughts in Australia, sky-rocketing oil costs, the razing of the Amazon and images of war and terror.

Is the conjunction of these various crises simply a coincidence? The answer is no. From a historical perspective it is possible to see an overall pattern that connects the dots. What is unfolding today is a systemic crisis, heralding the beginning of a large-scale shift at the deepest levels of cultural organization. We are in transition -- for the first time in history -- to a tightly interconnected global system. We have entered the planetary phase of civilization, in a passage that may prove as significant as the advent of agriculture or the Industrial Revolution.
(...)

more

Scientists build a better DNA molecule

Building faultless objects from faulty components may seem like alchemy. Yet scientists from the Weizmann Institute’s Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, and Biological Chemistry Departments have achieved just that, using a mathematical concept called recursion.
(...)

more

Moving Mountains With the Brain, Not a Joystick

STILL using a mouse, keyboard, joystick or motion sensor to control the action in a video game? It may be time to try brain power instead.

A new headset system picks up electrical activity from the brain, as well as from facial muscles and other spots, and translates it into on-screen commands. This lets players vanquish villains not with a click, but with a thought.

Put on the headset, made by Emotiv Systems in San Francisco, and when a giant boulder blocks the path in a game you are playing, you can levitate it — not by something as crude as a keystroke, but just by concentrating on raising it, said Tan Le, Emotiv’s president. The headset captures electrical signals when you concentrate; then the computer processes these signals and pairs a screen action with them, like lifting a stone or repairing a falling bridge.
(...)

more

Nuclear Explosion Occurred Near Epicenter of the Sichuan Earthquake, Expert Says

Boxun News, a Chinese-language Web site based outside China, reported that an unnamed expert has claimed that there was a nuclear explosion near the epicenter of the Sichuan earthquake, based on witness reports and the discovery of concrete rubble believed to have come from an underground military installation. The news of this nuclear explosion has raised questions about the cause of the earthquake.

Mr. He, a local resident, stated that when the earthquake occurred on May 12, people saw something erupt from the top of a mountain next to the valley, "It looked like toothpaste being squeezed out," said He. "No, it wasn't [magma]. It was these concrete pieces. The eruption lasted about three minutes."
(...)

more

Big Brother Is Watching as He's Never Watched Before

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently installed millimeter-wave scanners at checkpoints in Los Angeles International Airport and New York's JFK. It already uses the technology at Sky Harbor in Phoenix, and it’s threatening to add more machines not only in these terminals but in others, too.

Millimeter waves bombard passengers with beams that penetrate clothing to show the body beneath. Victims don’t undress: the rays do it for them so screeners can find the weapons so many of us tape to our torsos. Never mind that no TSA employee anywhere has discovered a single terrorist, despite wandings, pat-downs, and the agency’s foot-fetish. Passengers now may have to perform a virtual strip-tease, too.
(...)

more

Isolated tribe spotted in Brazil

One of South America's few remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes has been spotted and photographed on the border between Brazil and Peru.
The Brazilian government says it took the images to prove the tribe exists and help protect its land.
The pictures, taken from an aeroplane, show red-painted tribe members brandishing bows and arrows.
(...)

more

Brain downloads 'will make lessons pointless'

Children will learn by downloading information directly into their brains within 30 years, the head of Britain's top private schools organisation has predicted.

Chris Parry, the new chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, said "Matrix-style" technology would render traditional lessons obsolete.

He told the Times Educational Supplement: "It's a very short route from wireless technology to actually getting the electrical connections in your brain to absorb that knowledge."
(...)

more

Is sex necessary for reproduction?

Dr. Mark Hughes likes to startle audiences by declaring that sex may become outdated as a means of human reproduction. His field will replace it with technology, he submits.
"It is going to be, 'Sex is just for fun,' " Hughes will tell a crowd. "In vitro fertilization is going to be for making your children."
Hughes is joking - for the most part. But as head of a major embryo-screening company, Genesis Genetics Institute in Detroit, he also makes a compelling business argument that sex is in for some serious competition from assisted reproductive techniques.
(...)

more

Have we begun to crack the brain's code?

A new computer program can accurately predict how our brains respond to any noun, whether "celery", "airplane", or "kumquat".

The program guesses a word's meaning from its occurrence in a huge volume of internet text, and then builds a mental picture of the word based on the brain's reaction to other words.

"I think of it as us beginning to break the brain's code," says Marcel Just, a neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, US, who led the study along with colleague Tom Mitchell.
(...)

more

Why our brains are so clumsy

In his new book, Kluge: The haphazard construction of the human mind, Gary Marcus aims to take the human species down a peg or two. We might like to think of ourselves as sleek and perfectly-adapted products of evolution, but Marcus instead describes the brain as a clumsy collection of spare parts. If evolution is so powerful, he asks, how did we end up so flawed?

more

Tropical forests axed in favour of palm oil

INDONESIA and Malaysia have long denied that their tropical forests are being burned to make way for lucrative palm oil plantations. It seems they've been lying through their teeth.
(...)

more

Drugs to Grow Your Brain

Drugs that encourage the growth of new neurons in the brain are now headed for clinical trials. The drugs, which have already shown success in alleviating symptoms of depression and boosting memory in animal models, are being developed by BrainCells, a San Diego-based start-up that screens drugs for their brain-growing power
(...)

more