31st Jan2012

Horizon: Sexual Chemistry (Full Video)

by iSpit

Sexual Chemistry – programme summary

The drug Viagra revolutionised the treatment of sexual dysfunction in men on its launch five years ago. An accidental discovery, the tablet that gave impotent men the chance once more to have natural erections became the fastest selling pill in history and has earned its manufacturer, Pfizer, over $6bn.

“Results were astonishing… an increase in overall satisfaction”

Ian Russell, Dumfries & Galloway NHS Trust

The search is now on for a similar drug that could help women. Research is revealing that female sexuality is more complex than expected. For women suffering from a loss of desire many scientists believe that drugs acting on the brain may be the way forward. A pioneering Scottish study may have identified just such a drug and begun testing it scientifically.

A man thing

An erection is achieved by filling the erectile tissue of the penis with blood. Blood vessels widen to allow blood in and then constrict to maintain the pressure. Male impotence was long thought to be a psychiatric effect, a result of stress, anxiety or depression. Medical advice was that there was not much to be done. Some patients refused to take this message on board.

Geddings Osbon used his profession (working in a tyre workshop in Georgia, USA) as inspiration for one solution. Suffering from impotence himself, he designed a vacuum pump to create an erection by engorging his penis with blood and containing it with a rubber band. Despite its problems of discomfort, his vacuum device achieved popularity and is still recommended by medics to some men with erectile dysfunction.

“[Brindley] dropped his pants before the audience… a very respectable erection”

Prof Alvaro Morales, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario

The next leap forward came in 1983 when British urologist, Giles Brindley, gave an eye-opening presentation to colleagues in the field, gathered at Las Vegas. He told them he had just injected himself with phenoxybenzamine and then showed them the results, by dropping his trousers and displaying his erect organ.

Brindley had proved that a drug could be used to treat erection problems. Modern science accepts that impotence can be the result of a number of medical conditions: high blood pressure, furred arteries and some types of diabetes. Injecting phenoxybenzamine is relatively easy but an instant erection hardly fits into most people’s natural sexual practice. A pill would still be ideal.

Blues for the boys

In 1985, the drug company Pfizer was working on treatments for the heart complaint, angina. Dr Ian Osterloh and Dr Gill Samuels were using sildenafil citrate to relax blood vessels, in the hope of easing the pain of narrowed cardiac arteries. They were about to become unwitting sexual pioneers. Their drug did significantly increase blood flow, but not in the heart. It did so in the penis.

“[Without] erotic stimulation, the drug would have done little”

Dr Ian Osterloh, Pfizer Limited

With its side effect recognised, studies began to assess the compound’s ability to treat impotence. Researchers in Bristol assembled a library of explicit films in order to provide a controlled method of arousing the subjects. They thought the blue tablets wouldn’t cause an erection on their own, but could help lust to run its natural course.

The investigation pieced together how the compound – Viagra – was beating male impotence. When sexually excited, cells in the penis produce a chemical messenger known as cyclic GMP. Its effect is to allow more blood to enter the erectile tissue, making it more rigid. The level of cyclic GMP is continuously kept in check by an enzyme. Viagra acts to inhibit the enzyme, preserving cyclic GMP and enabling the man to achieve an erection at a time that fits into having sex.

Viagra for women

With an understanding of the chemical mechanism that allows Viagra to intervene in the physical process of male erections, it was natural for scientists to wonder what effect the drug would have for women. Female sexual problems were a field that had received far less attention than males’. Like in men, it was supposed to be primarily a psychological complaint.

Research showed that arousal chemicals in men and women are the same and also that the physiological similarities between the penis and clitoris are greater than many realised. However, a number of studies have revealed that for the vast majority of women with sexual problems, Viagra is little help. (Women with pelvic blood flow problems and some spinal injuries can benefit.)

“To know if a woman is aroused, ask if she wants sex”

Dr Ellen Laan, University of Amsterdam

More intelligent sex

The reason it seems is that for women, being turned on sexually is more to do with the brain than the pelvis. Dr Ellen Laan turned to erotic videos to try to understand the female sexual response. She showed women two films. One concentrated on the man‘s pleasure; one on the woman’s. Her subjects experienced increased vaginal blood flow with both films, but only reported being turned on by the film that was more focussed on female pleasure. Laan deduced that – unlike men – for women the genitals are not the best indicator of arousal.

The most common complaint of women who seek help for sexual problems is not a physical one but a loss of desire. Using the contraceptive pill or anti-depressants can prompt it, as can childbirth, the menopause or falling out of love. Sometimes it seems there is no reason. Finding a cure is much harder than helping men to bolster their equipment.

Sex on the brain

A Scottish nurse could yet become the pioneer for a drug treatment for women. Ian Russell specialises in helping people with sexual problems. In 2001, he started giving a new drug product – apomorphine hydrochloride – to men with impotence.

Apomorphine (licensed for men as Uprima and Ixense) is a drug designed to work in the brain itself. It mimics the brain signalling chemical, dopamine, and has been shown to act in the hypothalamus, an area known to control physical arousal. In men, apomorphine amplifies the signal to have an erection. But Ian Russell‘s trial participants reported that taking the drug regularly did more than overcome impotence; it raised their levels of desire.

This unexpected discovery made Russell realise the drug could be useful for his female patients as well. He approached Prof Jeremy Heaton from Ontario, Canada, who had developed apomorphine. Jeremy gave him the encouragement he needed to set up a small pilot study. He gave women varying doses of apomorphine for 18 weeks. Questionnaires at six week intervals assessed any change in their sexual function.

Eight out of the ten women reported an increase in sexual desire and in their overall sexual satisfaction. Russell was encouraged but well aware that one small uncontrolled study could yield unrepresentative results. He is now embarking on a larger, double blind study.

Meanwhile, research on rats has shown that dopamine’s role in the brain extends beyond the hypothalamus. It’s known to play a role in the limbic system, the part of the brain thought to control emotion. This could explain the connection with desire.

Drugs that aim to tackle female sexual problems are still years away from being licensed. However, as the differences – and similarities – between the sexes become clearer, the essence of male and female sexuality is opening up to scientific investigation.

Category : ::Drop Zone::, Documentary, Video
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0 Comm
04th Jan2012

Decoded DNA Reveals Details Of Black Death Germ

by iSpit

Scientists have used DNA lurking inside the teeth of medieval Black Death victims to figure out the entire genetic code of the deadly bacterium that swept across Europe more than 600 years ago, killing an estimated half of the population.

The researchers didn’t find any genetic feature that could explain why the plague was so virulent, according to a report just published in the journal Nature.

“There is no smoking gun, so to speak, to say, ‘Aha, we’ve found the one mutation which caused this tremendous virulence and now we know why it killed 50 million people.’ We don’t see that,” says biological anthropologist Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, who was on the research team.

He says the most likely explanation for the plague’s devastation is that this rodent-infecting bacterium changed and struck humans for the first time right when the population of Europe was dealing with a cooling climate, poor crop production and filthy, crowded conditions.

Plus, people back then had no access to modern antibiotics and were likely weakened by other infections as well.

Poinar says the ancient Black Death DNA looks so similar to Yersinia pestis that still infects people today that researchers believe the medieval strain must be the ancestor of all modern strains.

That suggests this particular disease probably wasn’t around centuries earlier and couldn’t have caused the Plague of Justinian, another famous epidemic that devastated the Eastern Roman Empire in 541-542.

“More likely is that it was caused by another pathogen altogether that we haven’t really considered yet,” says Poinar.

In the past, other research groups have produced conflicting results when they’ve tried to detect Black Death bacteria in skeletal remains using less sensitive genetic tools. Some experts have argued that the famous plague might have been caused by a different disease, such as an Ebola-like virus.

This study used a newer, more robust genetic technique to fish out small bits of the ancient DNA from the dried powdery pulp hidden inside teeth taken from a Black Death cemetery in London.

“This is really the first ancient complete genome from skeletonized remains,” says Poinar, who notes that scientists have sequenced the genes of the deadly 1918 flu virus, but that was from preserved tissue samples.

The Natural History Museum of Denmark’s Thomas Gilbert is one of the scientists who tried to find plague DNA in Black Death victims in the past without success. He says the new technique used in this study is exciting and the analysis is compelling. “It’s a great result. It looks very, very convincing,” Gilbert says. “There’s no reason why the data shouldn’t be real.”

But even if this has firmly established that plague bacteria caused the Black Death, Gilbert thinks the calculations that rule out its presence during the Justinian plague are open to question.

“I’m not completely convinced by that,” says Gilbert. “The only way to find out what caused the Justinian plague is to do the same analysis on the Justinian samples, and I guess that’s going to be the next attempt.”

He says other groups have been working to use this same technique to probe for other diseases of historical interest. “What was unique about this paper is that they basically finished first and they did it on plague,” says Gilbert. “But I know for example, people are doing it on tuberculosis, and people are doing it on all sorts of other things.”

He says the insights that come from these studies will be of interest not only from a historical perspective, but also to help scientists understand how deadly epidemics have emerged in the past so that they can get ready for what might come in the future.

 

Category : Health, News, World News
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5 Comm
27th Dec2011

International Test Scores, Irrelevant Policies

by iSpit

Perhaps no research finding has influenced education policy more, or been subject to greater misinterpretation, than our ranking on international mathematics and science tests.

Previous critiques of international comparisons have focused largely on flaws in sampling and the limitations of test scores as a measure of the quality of a nation‘s education system. These problems are still relevant. Equally important, however, are the conclusions drawn from the comparisons, even assuming their technical validity.

 

For decades, our rhetoric and education policies have been based on the premise that the ranking of U.S. students on international tests will lead to a decline in our nation‘s economic competitiveness and a shortage of American scientists and engineers.

 

It is ironic, then, that given the rhetoric and policies surrounding international test-score comparisons-much of it unsupported by evidence-little attention is paid to two of the most powerful findings of these comparisons: the strong negative effects on student performance of both family poverty and concentrations of poverty in schools.
Instead, we draw conclusions from the international studies that are not supported either by the findings of these studies or by research more generally.

 

“First, our rhetoric has assumed that test-score rankings are linked to a country’s economic competitiveness, yet the data for industrialized countries consistently show this assumption to be unwarranted. For example, the World Economic Forum’s 2010-2011 global-competitiveness report ranks the United States fourth, exceeded only by Switzerland, Sweden, and Singapore. Many of the countries that ranked high on test scores rank lower than the United States on competitiveness-for example, South Korea, No. 22, and Finland, No. 7.

 

Although we cannot predict future economic trends, we do know that test-score rankings are a poor basis upon which to understand these trends or to know what to do about them. The reason is clear: Other variables, such as outsourcing to gain access to lower-wage employees, the climate and incentives for innovation, tax rates, health-care and retirement costs, the extent of government subsidies or partnerships, protectionism, intellectual-property enforcement, natural resources, and exchange rates overwhelm mathematics and science scores in predicting economic competitiveness.
Second, we assume that U.S. students‘ performance on math and science tests is reflected in a shortage of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. The data, however, give a quite-different picture.

 

The fact is the United States has both a large pool of students with the academic credentials needed to enter science and engineering fields and an ample supply-and sometimes an oversupply (for example, of chemistry Ph.D.s)-to meet labor-market demand. That is the case even though slippage occurs between the number of graduates in science and engineering and the number who work in these fields, often because some graduates choose, for example, careers in finance, investment banking, management, or entrepreneurial activity. When companies claim that they need to hire from other countries because they cannot find qualified U.S. graduates, it is more likely that they cannot find them at the wages they would prefer to pay and find it cheaper to outsource. That is not the fault of our international test-score ranking or the training of U.S. scientists and engineers.

 

Moreover, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projections show large variations in job opportunities among science and engineering fields. For example, employment in computer-software engineering; biological science; and biomedical, civil, and environmental engineering is expected to grow faster than the average for all occupations, while growth in computer programming; chemical and materials science; and electrical, mechanical, and marine engineering is expected to be slow.

 

Although mathematics and physics are expected to have faster-than-average growth, the size of the market for those who seek basic-research positions is quite small.
Of the 30 occupations in the United States with the fastest rate of growth, only nine are in science and engineering fields, and 16 of the 30 do not require a college degree, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics projections. More important, of the 30 occupations expected to provide the largest numerical growth in jobs, only two (both in computer fields) are in science and engineering, and 23 do not require a college degree.

 

If we consider only occupations requiring a college degree or above, 15 of the top 30 fastest-growing occupations are in science and engineering; however, only eight (six in computer fields) of the 30 occupations expected to provide the largest numerical growth in jobs are in science and engineering.

 

At the same time that our rhetoric has linked test scores, economic competitiveness, and shortages of scientists and engineers, our education policies have been dominated by test-based accountability, apparently with the expectation that accountability requirements would close the achievement gap, raise our ranking on international comparisons, and lead to a stronger economy and an increased supply of scientists and engineers. The assumption that accountability requirements are a solution to our education problems is as incongruous as our rhetoric about the economy and scientists and engineers.

 

Bob Dahm Research accumulated over the years, analyzed in a 2011 National Research Council report, shows that accountability policies have not resulted in meaningful improvements in student learning and, in many instances, have created perverse incentives that weaken it. Yet, we continue to mandate accountability requirements that are not used-and in some cases are specifically discouraged-by the very countries whose test scores we most admire, including Finland and Japan.

 

At the same time, we have ignored the strongest evidence emerging from the international tests: the adverse effects of poverty and concentrations of poverty in schools on student performance in all countries.

 

Although countries can exacerbate or mitigate the impact of poverty through their social, fiscal, and education policies, and although some students do overcome the odds, the fact is the gap between high-poverty and more-affluent students remains a fundamental problem in virtually every country.

 

The 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, findings for member-countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that, on average, close to 60 percent of the difference in reading performance between schools is accounted for by the socioeconomic status of the students attending the schools. In the United States, socioeconomic status accounts for close to 80 percent of the difference.

 

That gap is reflected throughout the students‘ lives. It is specifically the low-income populations and regions that are underrepresented in mathematics, science, and engineering fields, and in professions generally-and it is these populations that are at the most severe disadvantage in competing for jobs in a global economy. This is part of a much broader set of problems faced by high-poverty populations. We have one of the largest divides between rich and poor in the industrialized world. One-fifth of our children live in poverty; millions of these children are concentrated in high-poverty schools-a setting that greatly compounds the problems of poverty.

 

Our policy deliberations work at the fringes of these realities, with remedies that are not focused on the basic problem of poverty. The problem will not be addressed by implementing tougher accountability requirements. Nor will it be addressed by rhetoric about mathematics and science scores, economic competitiveness, and generic shortages of scientists and engineers.

 

Poverty, not international test-score comparisons, is the most critical problem to be addressed by our public policies. Unfortunately, our recent political polarization over budgetary priorities does not leave much room for optimism.
 
Iris C. Rotberg is a research professor of education policy at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development, in Washington. She is also the editor of Balancing Change and Tradition in Global Education Reform (Rowman & Littlefield Education, second edition, 2010), which describes education reforms in 16 countries.
Category : Politics As Usual, program, Stupititity All Stars, Technology, World News
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3 Comm
07th Dec2011

Moving a Robotic Arm With Just a Thought (Video)

by iSpit


Reaching for out cup of coffee or moving a computer mouse is easy for most of us. But for Tim Hemmes, who became paralyzed in a motorcycle accident, it was a heartfelt moment for him to be able to reach out to his girlfriend for the first time in 7 years through a thought-controlled robotic arm.

Scientists and doctors of University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine conducted the study with Hemmes to see if a person with spinal cord injury could move an external apparatus using their thoughts. The brain-controlled prosthetic arm system uses a brain-computer interface similar to the one we saw a few days ago with monkeys moving and feeling with virtual arms.

A postage stamp-sized electrocorticography grid, adapted from seizure-mapping brain electrode arrays, was surgically placed on the motor cortex of Hemmes’s brain. The surgeons ran wires from the chip under the skin of Hermes’s neck to exit at his upper chest so it could hook up with computer cables.

For the next four weeks Hemmes would connect the neurons of his motor cortex to a computer that would learn to recognize motion from his thought patterns. To do this, Hemmes was given test to move a ball to a zone on a 2D plane and eventually moved up to interacting in a 3D space. At first, Hemmes would think of body motions to move the ball; for example, bending his elbow to move right or wiggling his thumb to go left.

Later, Hemmes was able to just mentally visualize where he wanted the ball to go and complete the tasks without any computer assistance. This ability for “100 percent brain control” eventually allowed Hemmes to complete the same tasks with the robotic arm.

The team is gearing up for the next step of its research by recruiting people for a trial of a new electrode grid that can listen to individual neurons. They also plan to use two grids so that the patient can control arm movements and fine hand motions. The team also hopes that the technology could go wireless or even have brain-computer interfaces connect with muscle stimulating devices attached the paralyzed person’s own limbs.

[University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine via New Scientist]

Category : Health, News, Stranger than fiction, Video, World News
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2 Comm
24th Aug2011

SIDS Prevention System Detects Fatal Threat, Wakes Infants

by iSpit

Sudden Infant Death Syndome (SIDS) is the leading cause of death of babies aged one-month to one-year-old. And no one knows exactly what causes it. But two Israeli students from Ben Gurion University have an automated prevention system that eradicates it.

The system detects bodily changes known to precede SIDS and sets off an alarm to jolt a sleeping baby into a less susceptible awakened state. As part of their final research project, Tomer Apel and Anava Finesilver developed a novel algorithm to read skin temperature and heart rate from video footage.

“This is such a minor change that it’s not visible to the human eye, but it’s still there. We have developed algorithms to interpret the discoloration recorded by the camera and translate them into pulses. It’s widely assumed that baby’s pulses slow down before SIDS, and this system could help prevent this,” said Apel.

To date, scientists are unsure of what causes SIDS. Like Apel and Finesilver’s technology, modern prevention simply attempts to avoid situations known to be associated with SIDS. The Mayo Clinc website advises parents to put babies to sleep on their backs, use firm mattresses, keep the room cool, and, on occasion, use a pacifier. Other tech solutions include an automatic monitoring system, Hisense, which reads breathing patterns and alerts parents to threatening situations.

Telepresence technology is a growing medical industry, with big players like General Electric using behavior tracking of senior citizens inside their homes to pre-empt serious illness.

Apel and Finesilver hope to commercialize their product if tests continue to perform well.

Category : Health, News, Video
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0 Comm
02nd Aug2011

CERN Scientists Gagged On ‘Politically Incorrect’ Global Warming Data

by iSpit

In a shocking illustration of how the man-made climate change establishment has seized control of the scientific process, physicists at the CERN lab in Geneva were gagged from drawing conclusions about data that seeks to replicate studies which prove the sun is the main driver of climate change, after their boss told them that such heresy was politically incorrect.

“The chief of the world’s leading physics lab at CERN in Geneva has prohibited scientists from drawing conclusions from a major experiment. The CLOUD (“Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets”) experiment examines the role that energetic particles from deep space play in cloud formation. CLOUD uses CERN’s proton synchrotron to examine nucleation,” reports the Register.

The experiment is likely to confirm data from earlier studies which found cosmic rays are pivotal in the formation of clouds and that, “Tiny changes in the earth’s cloud cover could account for variations in temperature of several degrees,” an impact massively more significant than the comparatively minor level of warming caused by man-made CO2 emissions.

Suggesting that the data in the yet to be published study has validated this hypothesis, physicists involved in the project were gagged from making any interpretations of the data by their boss, not because of problems with accuracy, but because such a conclusion was not politically correct as it did not fit with the “consensus” that man is the main culprit behind climate change.

In an interview with Welt Online, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN, stated, “I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them.”

Heuer’s reason for gagging his own scientists is that their conclusions would enter, “Immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate.”

In other words, Heuer doesn’t want the data to circulate freely in the public domain because it presumably contradicts the notion that man is the main driver of climate change.

It goes without saying that Heuer’s approach represents the antithesis of what science is supposed to be all about, impartial observation and following where the data leads, not following an artificial “consensus” manufactured by politicians for the purpose of legitimizing a global carbon tax system.

As physicist Nigel Calder writes, “The once illustrious CERN laboratory ceases to be a truly scientific institute when its Director General forbids its physicists and visiting experimenters to draw the obvious scientific conclusions from their results.”

Despite the fact that global warming alarmists have claimed there is no link between the huge raging fireball in space that is over 100 times bigger than the earth, drives the seasons and causes ice ages, and climate change, the data produced by Henrik Svensmark’s studies shows a clear historical correlation between cosmic ray penetration and temperature, as can be seen from the graph below.

Despite the sun’s obvious and significant impact on climate change, the IPCC refuses to include cosmic ray penetration as a factor in temperature change.

“CERN has joined a long line of lesser institutions obliged to remain politically correct about the man-made global warming hypothesis,” writes Calder. “It’s OK to enter ‘the highly political arena of the climate change debate’ provided your results endorse man-made warming, but not if they support Svensmark’s heresy that the Sun alters the climate by influencing the cosmic ray influx and cloud formation.”

As we reported in September last year, increasing public skepticism over claims that man significantly drives climate change has prompted alarmists to re-brand global warming as overpopulation.

A leaked UN blueprint for establishing global governance emphasized the need to adopt this new public relations ploy to combat the increasingly discredited foundation of the anthropogenic climate change myth in the aftermath of the 2009 Climategate scandal.

Efforts to cement a carbon tax in Australia are a litmus test for its planned global implementation, so the fact that a sizeable majority of the Australian electorate has vehemently rejected the proposals is a clear indication that the global warming hoax has largely failed.

“Political experts believe the battle to sell the carbon tax to the Australian public has been lost and the Prime Minister can do nothing to change voters’ minds on the issue,” reports the Brisbane Times.

That’s why the establishment is keen to use the threat of overpopulation, which amounts to little more than unscientific quackery, in addition to isolated weather events such as this year’s drought, as a means of forcing through a carbon tax via the backdoor.

Category : Health, News, Technology, World News
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1 Comm
23rd Jun2011

Researchers Inject Nanofiber Spheres Carrying Cells Into Wounds To Grow Tissue

by iSpit

For the first time, scientists have made star-shaped, biodegradable polymers that can self-assemble into hollow, nanofiber spheres, and when the spheres are injected with cells into wounds, these spheres biodegrade, but the cells live on to form new tissue.

Developing this nanofiber sphere as a cell carrier that simulates the natural growing environment of the cell is a very significant advance in tissue repair, says Peter Ma, professor at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry and lead author of a paper about the research scheduled for advanced online publication in Nature Materials. Co-authors are Xiaohua Liu and Xiaobing Jin.

Repairing tissue is very difficult and success is extremely limited by a shortage of donor tissue, says Ma, who also has an appointment at the U-M College of Engineering. The procedure gives hope to people with certain types of cartilage injuries for which there aren’t good treatments now. It also provides a better alternative to ACI, which is a clinical method of treating cartilage injuries where the patient’s own cells are directly injected into the patient’s body. The quality of the tissue repair by the ACI technique isn’t (more…)

Category : News, Technology, World News
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0 Comm
22nd Jun2011

A Microscope Could Detect Cancer By Scanning Skin

by iSpit

Instead of taking a biopsy and waiting on the results to come back, doctors could someday use a special, flat microscope to scan the skin to check for skin cancer right there in their office.

German researchers have developed a microscope that can scan large areas. The team of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF in Jena developed a flat, ultrathin microscope that records all of the image slices at the same time and compiles all of the slices into one image using a computer.

“Essentially, we can examine a field as large as we want. At five micrometers, the resolution is (more…)

Category : News, Technology, World News
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0 Comm
04th Jun2011

Google Helps Scientists Give Computers “Hindsight” to Anticipate the Future

by iSpit

Human beings are well aware that hindsight is 20/20 — and the product of this awareness is often what we call “regret.” Could this hindsight be programmed into a computer to more accurately predict the future? Tel Aviv University computer researchers think so — and the Internet giant Google is anxious to know the answer, too.

Prof. Yishay Mansour of Tel Aviv University‘s Blavatnik School of Computer Science launched his new project at the International Conference on Learning Theory in Haifa, Israel, earlier this year. His research will help computers minimize what Prof. Mansour calls “regret.” Google recently announced that it will fund Tel Aviv University computer scientists and economists to develop this foundational research, a nexus on the cutting edge of computer science and game theory.

“If the servers and routing systems of the Internet could see and evaluate all the relevant variables in advance, they could more efficiently prioritize server resource requests, load documents and route visitors to an Internet site, for instance,” Prof. Mansour says — an efficiency that Google finds very attractive.

Helping computers think better

Of course computers can’t “feel” regret — but they can measure the distance between a desired outcome and the actual outcome. Prof. Mansour recently developed an algorithm based on machine learning, or “artificial intelligence,” to minimize the amount of virtual regret a computer program might experience.

“We are able to change and influence the decision-making of computers in real-time. Compared to human beings, help systems can much more quickly process all the available information to estimate the future as events unfold — whether it’s a bidding war on an online auction site, a sudden spike of traffic to a media (more…)

Category : mac, News, program, twitter, World News
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0 Comm
13th Mar2011

NASA Scientist Claims Evidence of Alien Life on Meteorite

by iSpit

We are not alone in the universe — and alien life forms may have a lot more in common with life on Earth than we had previously thought.

That’s the stunning conclusion one NASA scientist has come to, releasing his groundbreaking revelations in a new study in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology.

Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, has traveled to remote areas in Antarctica, Siberia, and Alaska, amongst others, for over ten years now, collecting and studying meteorites. He gave FoxNews.com early access to the out-of-this-world research, published late Friday evening in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology. In it, Hoover describes the latest findings in his study of an extremely rare class of meteorites, called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites — only nine such meteorites are known to exist on Earth.

Though it may be hard to swallow, Hoover is convinced that his findings reveal fossil evidence of bacterial life within such meteorites, the remains of living organisms from their parent bodies — comets, moons and other astral bodies. By extension, the (more…)

Category : Space: The Final Frontier, Technology, World News
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0 Comm
19th Jan2011

The Truth About Aids By William Cooper

by iSpit

http://www.straightdope.com/images/art/1993/930604.gif

To All,
During my talks in Las Vegas last weekend I revealed a few things about
aids that I have been keeping close to my chest. I have already
revealed that I saw that AIDS was man made to eleminate the undesirable
elements of society while I was attached to Naval Security and
Intelligence. I stated this fact in my paper "The Secret Government."
Now for the rest of the story.
The first study was made in 1957 by scientists meeting in Huntsville
Alabama. That study resulted in "Alternative 3." Another study was made
 by the Club of Rome in 1968 to determine the limits to growth. The
result of the study was that civilization as we know it would collapse
shortly after the year 2000 unless the population was seriously
curtailed. Several Top Secret recommendations were made to the ruling
elite by Dr. Aurelio Peccei of the Club of Rome. The chief
recommendation was to develop a microbe which would attack the auto
immune system and thus render the development of a vaccine impossible.
 The orders were given to develop the microbe and to also develop a
cure and a prophylactic. The microbe would be used against the general
 population and would be introduced by vaccine administered by the
World Health Organization. The prophylactic was to be used by the
ruling elite. The cure will be administered to the survivors when they
decide that enough people have died. It will be announced as newly
developed. This plan was called Global 2000. The cure and the
prophylactic are suppressed. Funding was obtained from the U.S.
Congress under H.B. 15090 where $10 million was given to the Department
 of Defense to produce "a synthetic biological agent, an agent that
does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have
been acquired." "Within the next 5 to 10 years it would probably be
possible to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in
certain important aspects from any known disease causing organisms.

(more…)

Category : mac, News, World News
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5 Comm
13th Dec2010

Mobiles Warning For Mums-To-Be: Using Phone While Pregnant ‘Can Lead To Behavioural Problems In Children

by iSpit

Pregnant women who regularly use mobile phones could increase the risk of their children behaving badly, claims a startling survey.

If their offspring then start using the devices at an early age, the chance of problems climbs to 50 per cent, according to researchers.

They found those exposed to mobile phones in the womb had a 30 per cent rise in behavioural difficulties at the age of seven.

But those exposed before birth and in their childhood, were 50 per cent more likely to have behavioural problems than those exposed to neither.

Children who used mobiles, but were not exposed in the womb, were 20 per cent more likely to display abnormal behaviour.

The findings by researchers in California are likely to reinforce warnings that children should not use mobile phones.

However, some British scientists were sceptical, saying the findings may be due to lifestyle factors rather than mobiles.

In the study of 29,000 youngsters, mothers provided details of their lifestyle, diet and environment during and after pregnancy.

(more…)

Category : Health, mobile, News, World News
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13th Sep2010

Rockefeller Foundation Conceptualized “Anti-Hormone” Vaccine in the 1920s and 30s, Reports Reveal

by iSpit

Rockefeller Foundation minion Max Mason, who acted as president in the mid-1930s, on multiple occasions expressed his master’s desire for an “anti-hormone” that would reduce fertility worldwide. Now keep in mind, this is more than 35 years before the Foundation actually mentioned funding “anti-fertility vaccines” in subsequent annual reports from 1969 onward.

Having traveled far beyond the realm of rumor and speculation, research into the admitted funding of anti-fertility vaccines has uncovered more and more sinister revelations along the way.

By the mid-1930s, Mason of the Rockefeller Foundation thought that “the ultimate solution of the problem [of birth control] may well lie in the studies of endocrinology, particularly antihormones.” The Foundation’s 1934 annual report states:

“The Rockefeller Foundation has decided to concentrate its present effort in the natural sciences on the field of modern experimental biology, with special interest in such topics as endocrinology, nutrition, genetics, embryology, problems centering about the reproductive process, psychobiology, general and cellular physiology, biophysics, and biochemistry.”

(more…)

Category : General
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27th Jul2010

Scientists Find Most Massive Star Ever Discovered

by iSpit

Astronomers say they have discovered the most colossal star on record, in a region of space known as the Tarantula nebula in a neighbouring galaxy to our own.

The record-breaking star weighs 265 times as much as the sun and is millions of times brighter, they said.

The discovery has astonished scientists who thought it was impossible for stars to exceed more than 150 times the mass of the sun.

When the star was born it could have been more than twice as heavy.

Because it is so far away – about 165,000 light-years – it can only be seen with the use of powerful telescopes in the southern hemisphere. If the star, known as R136a1, took the place of the sun in our solar system, its gravitational attraction would pull our planet in so close that the length of an “Earth year” would shrink to three weeks.

(more…)

Category : News, program, Space: The Final Frontier, World News
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04th Jul2010

Scientists Admit Chemtrails Are Creating Artificial Clouds

by iSpit

Scientists now admit that emissions from aircraft are forming artificial clouds that block out the sun, precisely what geoengineering advocates like top eugenicist and White House science advisor John P. Holdren have called for, but the article tries to insinuate that the effect is caused by natural “vapours,” when in reality it can be attributed to chemtrails that contain substances harmful to humans.

“The phenomenon occurs when aircraft fly above 25,000ft, where the air temperature is around minus 30C. This causes water vapour emitted by the engines to crystallise and form the familiar white streaks across the sky, known as contrails,” writes Oliver Tree for the Daily Mail.

“Reading University’s Professor Keith Shine, an expert in clouds, said that those formed by aircraft fumes could linger ‘for hours’, depriving those areas under busy flight paths, such as London and the Home Counties, of summer sunshine.”

“Experts have warned that, as a result, the amount of sunlight hitting the ground could be reduced by as much as ten per cent. Professor Shine added: “Over the busiest areas in London and the South of England, this high-level cloud could cover the sky, turning bright sunshine into hazy conditions for the entire area. I expect the effects will get worse as the volume of air traffic increases.”

The report also makes reference to a 2009 Met Office study which found that high-level winds did not disperse contrails that later formed into clouds which covered an astonishing 20,000 miles.

(more…)

Category : Do The Knowledge, Dont Believe The Hype, mac, News, program, World News
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