Who will control this digital space merged with our brain? – Slavoj Zizek on Elon Musk’s AI venture
Friday, March 31, 2017
Saturday, March 25, 2017
Did You Know? Soviet Scientists Developed Secret Plans to Control the Climate
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Researchers at a St. Petersburg archive have discovered never-before-seen and never-implemented plans by Soviet engineers to change the climate across vast areas of the Soviet Union.
The plans, found in the archive of Gosplan, the agency responsible for central economic planning in the Soviet Union, include proposals to divert the channels of the mighty Ob and Amur rivers, with the goal of transforming the climate of the Arctic and the Soviet Far East.
According to Pavel Filin, a representative of the Russian Military Historical Society, it was theorized that the river diversion efforts would mitigate the harsh climate in each region, warming the Kara Sea (north of Siberia) and reducing the ice flow, and warming the Chukotka region (the vast, sparsely populated territory in Russia's northeast) through the diversion of the Amur River to its older, more southerly route.
Plans included the construction of a dam across the Gulf of Ob, a bay in the Arctic Ocean at the mouth of the Ob River, moving its estuary to neighboring Baydaratskaya Bay, 200 km to its west. The warm water flowing through the Ob would have the effect of improving ice conditions in the Kara Sea, thus making it more accessible for navigation by ship, or so engineers theorized.
As for the Amur, its diversion was intended to bring water from the warm Kuroshio Current closer to the mainland, leading to the warming of Chukotka and the Soviet Far East in general.
These plans were developed in the 1930s and 1940s, while the Soviet Union was carrying out its vast industrialization campaign, and shortly before reconstruction efforts began after the Second World War.
At the time, planners and engineers imagined a variety of grand projects which would transform human life and the surrounding environment. The implementation of the ambitious river diversion plans was expected to lead to a change in the climate across vast areas of the USSR.
Researchers also found a series of drafts on other inventions meant for Arctic use, including an all-terrain vehicle capable of maneuvering through ice drifts, mechanical walkers, and a project to generate energy from cold. They now intend to publish the recently discovered plans in a book, titled 'The Arctic on the Verge of Fantasy'. The book will be released in time for the 80th anniversary of North Pole-1, the world's first manned drifting station in the Arctic Ocean, established by the Soviet Union on May 21, 1937.
Thankfully, the ambitious climate-altering plans were never realized. As Russia's Rossiyskaya Gazeta pointed out, most scientists today agree that such vast attempts to redraw established climatic and environmental patterns would have had the effect of making entire regions unfit for human life, not to mention their environmental impact.https://sputniknews.com/society/201703251051964664-soviet-plans-climate-control/
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Garlic: Roto-Rooter for the Arteries?
Garlic: Roto-Rooter for the Arteries?
Mon, 03/20/2017 - 17:52
One
of the most common kitchen staples could prove to also be one of the most
effective natural treatments for heart disease.
Heart disease is the #1 killer in the modern world. It’s the reason why millions pop aspirin,
blood pressure, or statin drugs daily in the hopes that they might reduce the
risk of a sudden and premature death. But pharmaceutical approaches to
prevention carry with them such profound health risks that, in most cases, the
jury is still out as to whether they do more good
than harm.
Here at GreenMedInfo.com, we have a strong belief (and therefore bias) that
natural substances are superior to synthetic ones in preventing and treating
health problems. We also focus on bringing to light research on the unintended,
adverse effects of these commonly employed pharmaceutical interventions, as
they are underreported in popular media. That said, as an “evidence-based”
platform we make a concerted effort to defer to the authority of peer-reviewed
and published scientific literature, which when closely inspected, lends
remarkably consistent support to our core advocacies. You can view literally
thousands of studies we have gathered on natural ways to prevent and
sometimes reverse heart disease via our newly redesigned Research Dashboard by searching any number of over 10,000
categories, from arterial calcification to high blood pressure to heart attack.
Why The Drugs (Patented Chemicals) Won’t Work
A quick word about commonly ingested and putatively
heart-friendly drugs for the primary prevention of heart disease…
First, let’s acknowledge that heart disease is not
caused by a lack of a drug. This point is so obvious that it often seems to
escape the attention it deserves. To the contrary, it is exposure to tens of
thousands of chemicals (many of them drugs) that did not pre-exist the
industrial revolution in the late 19th century that is one of the major, if not
the primary reason why we have a heart disease epidemic. Of course, nutritional
and lifestyle factors (e.g. smoking) play a huge role, but being exposed to chemicals
and drugs that shouldn’t be in the body (outside their occasional use in
emergency medicine where they can be life-saving) is a sorely underreported
part of the puzzle.
Aspirin, for instance, has been linked to over 50 serious side effects, the top 7 of which we documented in our previous
report, The Evidence
Against Aspirin and For Natural Alternatives. Statin drugs are even worse. Not only are the statistics
manipulated to
make them seem far more effective than they actually are, but we have
identified over 300 adverse
health effects linked to their use. Should we be surprised? The body is comprised,
molecule by molecule, cell by cell, of natural substances not synthetic ones.
Therefore what’s not natural is perceived by the body as xenobiotic (“foreign
to life”), rejected if possible, but almost always leadsing to a wide range of
adverse effects that are at the root of many health conditions that are, in
turn, treated with more chemicals to suppress or mask the symptoms of chemical
poisoning. It’s a truly vicious cycle. Some call it the medical merry-go-round.
Why Garlic May Save Your Heart (And Your Life)
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Massive Ancient Statue Discovered Submerged In Mud In Cairo
Massive Ancient Statue
Discovered Submerged In Mud In Cairo
March 9, 20175:31 PM ET
A quartzite colossus
possibly of Ramses II and limestone bust of Seti II have been discovered at the
ancient Heliopolis archaeological site in the Matariya area of Cairo.
Anadolu Agency/Getty
Images
Archaeologists working
under difficult conditions in Cairo have discovered an ancient statue submerged
in mud.
A joint German-Egyptian
research team found the 8-meter (26-foot) quartzite statue beneath the water
level in a Cairo slum and suggests that it depicts Ramses II, according to Reuters.
The team was working at
what was once Heliopolis, one of the oldest cities in ancient Egypt and the
cult center for the sun god.
Khaled al-Anani, Egypt's
antiquities minister, posted on Facebook that one of the researchers who found the statue
called it "one of the most important archaeological discoveries."
Anani also spoke to
Reuters at the site of the statue's unveiling. Here's more from the wire
service:
"The most powerful
and celebrated ruler of ancient Egypt, the pharaoh also known as Ramses the
Great was the third of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt and ruled from 1279 to
1213 BCE. ... His successors called him the 'Great Ancestor.'
" 'We found the bust
of the statue and the lower part of the head and now we removed the head and we
found the crown and the right ear and a fragment of the right eye,' Anani said.
"On Thursday,
archaeologists, officials, local residents, and members of the news media
looked on as a massive forklift pulled the statue's head out of the
water."
In addition to the
massive statue, researchers also found part of a life-size limestone statue of
Ramses II's grandson, Pharaoh Seti II, Reuters says.
Egyptian workers look at
the site of a new discovery by a team of German-Egyptian archaeologists in
Cairo's Matariya District on Thursday.
Khaled Desouki /AFP/Getty
Images
The identification of the
newly discovered colossus as the famous Ramses II is not yet confirmed, as
Anani explained on Facebook:
"Dr. Ayman Ashmawy,
the head of the Egyptian team, indicated that they are going now to complete
the research and excavation work of the remaining sections of the statue to
confirm the identity of its owner. On the discovered portions there is no
inscription found that would make it possible to determine which king it is.
But its discovery in front of the gate of the temple of Pharaoh Ramses II
suggests that it is likely him."
Ashmawy and Dietrich
Raue, of the University of Leipzig, have been working in ancient Heliopolis for
more than a decade under trying conditions, as the American Research Center in
Egypt explained in 2015:
"Heliopolis once
stood at the centre of the ancient Egyptian sun-cult, a core element of ancient
Egyptian religion for more than three millennia. Today the site is seriously
threatened by new construction and a rapidly rising water table. Eight meters
of domestic and industrial waste as well as building rubble have been dumped on
the site in the past four years. Added to this bleak scenario is the fact that
the level of the water table on the site has risen alarmingly, and continues to
do so."
As of 2015, ARCE
explained, the archaeological items in Heliopolis were submerged in 1 1/2 to 3
feet of water — a "most challenging environment" for archaeologists
to work in, ARCE writes.
The discovery of a
forgotten, submerged statue of Ramses II brings to mind one of the most famous
poems in English literature — albeit substituting muck for desert sands.
An Egyptian worker stands
next to the head of a statue at the site of a new discovery by a team of
German-Egyptian archaeologists in Cairo's Matariya District.
Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty
Images
Ramses II was known to
the Greeks as Ozymandias. Today, that name is most familiar thanks to a sonnet
on hubris and the implacable passage of time, by Romantic poet Percy Bysshe
Shelley:
I met a traveller from an
antique land,
Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
That poem is widely
believed to have been inspired by a broken statue of Ramses II that is now,
like many priceless Egyptian artifacts, in the possession of the British Museum.
The newly discovered
statue won't be traveling nearly so far. Once restored and its identity
confirmed, it may be placed at the entrance of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which
is expected to open in Cairo in 2018.
NPR's Merrit Kennedy
contributed to this report
Monday, March 6, 2017
Researchers Say It’s Possible to Build a Self-Replicating DNA Supercomputer
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A team of computer scientists from the University of Manchester has suggested that it is possible to build a DNA-based computer that can replicate itself to store and process unimaginable quantities of information. A single such machine 'could potentially utilize more processors than all the electronic computers in the world combined.'
All existing computers, from the building-sized Sunway Taihulight supercomputer in China to the device you are using to read this article, are based on the principles of a Turing machine. Named for Manchester's own Dr. Alan Turing, Turing machines are theoretical devices that run on a set of strict instructions. A typical deterministic Turing machine (DTM) might have a direction: "If my state is A, then perform task 1."
Astronomers: Volcanoes Can Make Frozen Alien Worlds Habitable for Humans
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Life can evolve, even on icy alien worlds, according to a new study from Cornell University. If a planet has hydrogen-spewing volcanoes to warm the atmosphere, the study posits, it could have the right conditions to become habitable for life, even if it is outside the ‘habitable zone’ of its star.
The habitable zone is the distance from a star required by a planet to support liquid water. Too close to a star and the heat will only allow water to exist as vapor (such is the case for Mercury and Venus) while too far away and the water will freeze (Jupiter and the other gas giants are in this category, although without a rocky surface they are not thought to be able to support Earth-like life.) For celestial bodies orbiting our Sun, Earth, Mars, and the dwarf planet Ceres are in the habitable zone.