Archive
World’s First GM Babies Born
Friday, 29 June 2012
‘The world’s first geneticallymodified humans have been created, it was revealed last night.
The disclosure that 30 healthy babies were born after a series of experiments in the United States provoked another furious debate about ethics. So far, two of the babies have been tested and have been found to contain genes from three ‘parents’.
Evidence of Life On Mars Could Come from Martian Moon Phobos
ScienceDaily (June 29, 2012) — A mission to a Martian moon could return with alien life, according to experts at Purdue University, but don’t expect the invasion scenario presented by summer blockbusters like “Men in Black 3” or “Prometheus.”
“We are talking little green microbes, not little green men,” said Jay Melosh, a distinguished professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences and physics and aerospace engineering at Purdue. “A sample from the moon Phobos, which is much easier to reach than the Red Planet itself, would almost surely contain Martian material blasted off from large asteroid impacts. If life on Mars exists or existed within the last 10 million years, a mission to Phobos could yield our first evidence of life beyond Earth.”
Read more : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120629015408.htm
Army Demonstrates a Weapon That Shoots Laser-Guided Lightning Bolts
By Clay Dillow Posted 06.28.2012
Over at Picatinny Arsenal, the research and development facility and proving ground for the U.S. Army’s weaponry, engineers are developing a device that shoots lighting bolts along a laser beam to annihilate its target. That’s right: lighting bolts shot down laser beams. This story could easily end right here and still be the coolest thing we’ve written today, but for the scientifically curious we’ll continue.
Texas Students Hijack a U.S. Government Drone in Midair
By Colin Lecher Posted 06.28.2012
The U.S. government, understandably, doesn’t want its drone technology to fall out of the sky and into other peoples’ laps. But being able to hijack a drone and control it? That’s even worse. And a team of researchers has done it for 1,000 bucks.
The University of Texas at Austin team successfully nabbed the drone on a dare from the Department of Homeland Security. They managed to do it through spoofing, a technique where a signal from hackers pretends to be the same as one sent to the drone’s GPS.
A Step Toward Minute Factories That Produce Medicine Inside the Body
ScienceDaily (June 27, 2012) — Scientists are reporting an advance toward treating disease with minute capsules containing not drugs — but the DNA and other biological machinery for making the drug. In an article in ACS’ journal Nano Letters, they describe engineering micro- and nano-sized capsules that contain the genetically coded instructions, plus the read-out gear and assembly line for protein synthesis that can be switched on with an external signal.
Merck Vaccine Fraud Exposed by Two Merck Virologists; Company Faked Mumps Vaccine Efficacy Results for Over a Decade, says Lawsuit
Thursday, 28 June 2012 07:31
‘According to two Merck scientists who filed a False Claims Act complaint in 2010 — a complaint which has just now been unsealed — vaccine manufacturer Merck knowingly falsified its mumps vaccine test data, spiked blood samples with animal antibodies, sold a vaccine that actually promoted mumps and measles outbreaks, and ripped off governments and consumers who bought the vaccine thinking it was “95% effective.”‘
Barclays Settles Regulators’ Claims Over Manipulation of Key Rates
By BEN PROTESS and MARK SCOTT
Andy Rain/European Pressphoto AgencyA branch of Barclays in London.
Barclays has agreed to pay more than $450 million to resolve accusations that it attempted to manipulate key interest rates, the first settlement in a sprawling global investigation targeting many of the world’s biggest banks
The British bank struck a deal with regulators in Washington and London, as well as the Justice Department. The settlement is seen as the first in a series of potential cases against other major financial firms.
“When a bank acts in its own self-interest by attempting to manipulate these rates for profit, or by submitting false reports that result from senior management orders to lower submissions to guard the bank’s reputation, the integrity of benchmark interest rates is undermined,” said David Meister, the enforcement director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the American regulator involved in the Barclays case.
Quantum Researchers Able to Stop and Restart Light
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
‘In two independent experiments that defy the notions of Einstein, researchers have been able to stop, then restart a beam of light.
Ordinarily, light travels at the speed of 186,282 miles per second, but the research team of Lene Hau, a professor of physics at Harvard, who in 1999 was able to slow light down to 38 miles per hour, has been able to trap light in a cloud of sodium atoms super-cooled to near ‘absolute zero.’’
Read more: Quantum Researchers Able to Stop and Restart Light
The unidentified object at the Bottom of the Baltic Sea Cuts off Electrical Equipment when Divers Get Within 200 Metres
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
Related post reporting the discovery of the object (July 4, 2011): https://believenothing.net/2011/07/04/mysterious-disc-found-on-baltic-seabed/
‘The divers exploring a ‘UFO-shaped’ object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea say their equipment stops working when they approach within 200m.
Professional diver Stefan Hogerborn, part of the Ocean X team which is exploring the anomaly, said some of the team’s cameras and the team’s satellite phone would refuse to work when directly above the object, and would only work once they had sailed away.
He is quoted as saying: ‘Anything electric out there – and the satellite phone as well – stopped working when we were above the object.’
Scientists Find New Primitive Mineral in Meteorite
ScienceDaily (June 26, 2012) — In 1969, an exploding fireball tore through the sky over Mexico, scattering thousands of pieces of meteorite across the state of Chihuahua. More than 40 years later, the Allende meteorite is still serving the scientific community as a rich source of information about the early stages of our solar system’s evolution. Recently, scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) discovered a new mineral embedded in the space rock — one they believe to be among the oldest minerals formed in the solar system.
Dubbed panguite, the new titanium oxide is named after Pan Gu, the giant from ancient Chinese mythology who established the world by separating yin from yang to create the earth and the sky. The mineral and the mineral name have been approved by the International Mineralogical Association’s Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification. A paper outlining the discovery and the properties of this new mineral will be published in the July issue of the journal American Mineralogist, and is available online now.
“Panguite is an especially exciting discovery since it is not only a new mineral, but also a material previously unknown to science,” says Chi Ma, a senior scientist and director of the Geological and Planetary Sciences division’s Analytical Facility at Caltech and corresponding author on the paper.
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120626131907.htm#
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