After over a decade of work, the so-called "RoboBee" has taken flight. Harvard University Researchers have been dedicated to creating an insect-sized robot for years and the work has finally paid off. According to the researchers, the robot half the size of a paperclip and weighing less than a tenth of gram, was able to hover for a few moments and then flew on a "preset route through the air." "This is what I have been trying to do for literally the last 12 years," Robert J. Wood, principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-supported RoboBee project, said in a statement. "It's really only because of this lab's recent breakthroughs in manufacturing, materials, and design that we have even been able to try this. And it just worked, spectacularly well." - CBSNews
0 Comments
The U.S. Federal Drug Administration in late April approved a study to examine whether the drug ecstasy could help autistic adults suffering from social anxiety. But the first-of-its-kind study still has some hurdles to jump over before it can begin.
“The study could start enrolling subjects in several months,” Brad Burge - Disclose.TV The Illinois Ag Dept. illegally seized privately owned bees from renowned naturalist, Terrence Ingram, without providing him with a search warrant and before the court hearing on the matter, reports Prairie Advocate News. Behind the obvious violations of his Constitutional rights is Monsanto. Ingram was researching Roundups effects on bees, which hes raised for 58 years. They ruined 15 years of my research, he told Prairie Advocate, by stealing most of his stock. A certified letter from the Ag Dept.s Apiary Inspection Supervisor, Steven D. Chard, stated: During a routine inspection of your honeybee colonies by Inspectors Susan Kivikko and Eleanor Balson on October 23, 2011, the bacterial disease American Foulbrood was detected in a number of colonies located behind your house. Presence of the disease in some of your colonies was confirmed via test results from the USDA Bee Research Laboratory inBeltsville, Maryland that analyzed samples collected from your apiary. Ingram can prove his bees did not have foulbrood, and planned to do so at a hearing set in April, but the state seized his bees at the end of March. They have not returned them and no one at the Ag Dept. seems to know where his bees are. The bees could have been destroyed, or they could have been turned over to Monsanto to ascertain why some of his bees are resistant to Roundup. Without the bees as evidence, Ingram simply cannot defend against the phony charges of foulbrood. Worse, all his queens died after Kivikko and Balson inspected his property, outside of his presence and without a warrant. Of note, Illinois beekeepers are going underground after Ingrams experience and refuse to register their hives, in case the state tries to steal their private property on phony claims. - Disclose.TV
New synthetic psychoactive substances are making their way into Europe where the Internet is becoming a big challenge in the fight against illicit drugs, the continent's drug agency warned Tuesday. Drug use in Europe remains high even though the consumption of cannabis and cocaine appears to be slowing, as is new heroin use, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) said in its annual report. "New synthetic drugs and patterns of use are appearing, both on the illicit drug market and in the context of non-controlled substances," the Lisbon-based centre said in its report. "The Internet presents growing challenges, both as a mechanism for rapid diffusion of new trends and as a burgeoning anonymous marketplace with global reach." - BreitBart
Being an atheist is fine, as long as you do good, Pope Francis said Wednesday, rocking the minds of less tolerant Catholics. In his homily at the morning Mass in Rome, the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics urged the faithfuls to broaden their horizon, following a principle Jesus taught his disciples. Citing the Gospel of Mark, he described how upset the disciples were at the news that someone outside their group was doing good. “They complained: If he is not one of us, he cannot do good. If he is not of our party, he cannot do good,” Francis said. “This was wrong,” he added, according to a report from Vatican Radio. Labeling the disciples as “a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good,” Francis remarked the importance of the “doing good” commandment. The principle, he said, unites all humanity, beyond religions and ideologies, creating a “culture of encounter” which is at the basis of peace. - News Discovery
PARIS (Reuters) - Close to half the staff managers at companies in French urban areas have seen problems arising from religious demands by employees and expect them to increase in future, according to a new study issued on Tuesday. Listing faith-related problems, the new study said some men refused to take orders from a woman boss or shake hands with women and some refused to handle alcohol or pork products. Other problems include employees wanting to pray or wear religious garb at work. Some employees try to impose their religious standards on colleagues, such as preventing non-observant Muslims from eating at work during Ramadan. Smaller towns and rural areas had far fewer problems, the study said. Fewer than five percent ofhuman resources managers in the western region of Brittany reported any difficulties. The survey, conducted by university researchers in Rennes and the international recruitment agency Randstad, was released as French lawmakers prepare new legislation extending strict public service bans on religious garb at work to some private firms.
HEADSCARF DEBATE Sociologists say most religious demands at work come from the large Muslim minority, with some also from orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians. These groups mostly live in or around big cities rather than the traditionally Catholic rural areas. Many demands concern Muslim women's headscarves, a sensitive issue in France where full-face veils are banned in public and women public servants and girls in state schools are not allowed to cover their hair. Reuters/Yahoo News ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A man arrested fleeing from an Anchorage home wearing boxer shortshas been charged with beating an elderly couple to death and sexually assaulting their 2-year-old great-granddaughter — a case that officials say has shaken investigators for its brutality Touch Chea, 71, and his wife, Sorn Sreap, 73, were found dead Saturday night from significant blunt force injuries. Police said Sreap and the toddler were raped. Officers arrested Jerry Andrew Active, 24, as he allegedly fled the east Anchorage homicide scene. He was later charged with first and second-degree murder, sexual assault and burglary. Investigators were affected by the brutality and the ages of the victims, police department spokeswoman Anita Shell said. "They said this was the worst thing they had ever seen in their lives, and these are seasoned detectives," Shell said. Police Sgt. Slawomir Markiewicz said Sunday that there are no indications that the victims were connected to the suspect. "It doesn't appear that he knew them," he said. "It looks like a totally random act." The victims were part of an extended family that lived in a ground-floor, east Anchorage apartment with their granddaughter and her husband, who are the parents of the toddler and her 4-year-old brother. The younger couple's 90-year-old great-grandmother also lives in the apartment and was at home during the incident. Police said the younger couple, who are in their 20s, went to a movie Saturday night with their son and left the 2-year-old in the care of Chea and Sreap. The parents of the child and their son returned shortly before 8 p.m. and found the door locked from the inside.They told police they forced their way in through a window and discovered the bodies of Chea and Sreap. A man in his 20s, they said, was naked in a bedroom with their daughter.The woman called 911and police dispatchers heard screaming over the phone. The woman reported a man had broken into her home and killed her grandmother, Sreap. The woman described the man as naked with several tattoos.The woman, who is pregnant, and her husband tried to keep the suspect from leaving and a struggle began, Markiewicz said. The suspect, by then wearing boxer shorts, was able to get away after a few minutes of fighting, Markiewicz said. Officers found Active about a block away.
Mount Etna is spitting lava more violently than it has in years, and scientists are baffled as to why. Despite being the world’s most-studied volcano, the Sicilian mountain is also its most unpredictable. The volcano is raging. Fountains of lava, some taller than the Eiffel Tower, shoot from its mouth every few weeks, flowing in red-hot streams into the surrounding valleys. There have been 13 eruptions since the beginning of February. Mount Etna, 3,329 meters (10,922 feet) high, towers majestically above the Sicilian city of Catania. In June, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will decide whether to list it as a World Heritage Site. Etna is considered the most heavily studied volcano in the world, and it is thoroughly wired with sensors. In addition to lava, Etna spits out vast amounts of data — several gigabytes a day, coming from magnetic field sensors, GPS altimeters and seismic sensors. Despite this wealth of data, Etna still poses a conundrum to scientists. “The eruptions in recent weeks have been unusually fierce and explosive,” reports German volcanologist Boris Behncke, who monitors the mountain together with a few hundred colleagues at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV). “There have been lava fountain events in the past, but rarely in such rapid succession.” Behncke has fallen under Etna’s spell. During the day, he maps the lava flows; at night, he hikes along its slopes. His Twitter hash tag is “@etnaboris.” The volcano is the first thing he sees when he looks out of his bedroom window every morning. “This time, the range of ash fall is much wider than usual,” says Behncke. A layer of black ash covers cars as far as 50 kilometers (31 miles) away. Even in ancient times, people marveled at the forces that were capable of shooting fountains of lava into the sky. In Greek and Roman mythology, the volcano is represented by a limping blacksmith swinging his hammer as sparks fly. Legend has it that the natural philosopher Empedocles jumped into the crater 2,500 years ago. What he found there remained his secret, because he never returned. All that remained of him were his iron shoes, which the mountain later spat out. For many geologists today, Etna is still the most inscrutable volcano in the world. The mountain is located at precisely the spot where the African and European tectonic plates rub against each other like two giant ice floes. At this plate margin, lava with low viscosity flows upward from a depth of 30 kilometers into a reservoir of magma two kilometers beneath the summit. “The stream of magma doesn’t move uniformly, but in spurts, vibrating as if it were in a hydraulic pump,” explains Stuttgart geophysicist Rolf Schick. “This makes Etna so unpredictable.” Schick has been a star among volcanologists since 1972, when he caused a stir with his new discoveries about Etna. Using seismic sensors, he discovered a “pulse rate” of sorts in the stream of magma, which is forced through the vent at a rate of 72 beats per minute — coincidentally, at a rate similar to that of the human heartbeat. –ABC News
What is life going to look like as our precious water resources become increasingly strained and the western half of the United States becomes bone dry? Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century in the western half of the country in 1000 years, and now things appear to be reverting to their normal historical patterns. But we have built teeming cities in the desert such as Phoenix and Las Vegas that support millions of people. Cities all over the Southwest continue to grow even as the Colorado River, Lake Mead and the High Plains Aquifer system run dry. So what are we going to do when there isn’t enough water to irrigate our crops or run through our water systems? Already we are seeing some ominous signs that Dust Bowl conditions are starting to return to the region. In the past couple of years we have seen giant dust storms known as “haboobs” roll through Phoenix, and 6 of the 10 worst years for wildfires ever recorded in the United States have all come since the year 2000. In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, “the average number of fires larger than 1,000 acres in a year has nearly quadrupled in Arizona and Idaho and has doubled in every other Western state” since the 1970s. But scientists are warning that they expect the western United States to become much drier than it is now. What will the western half of the country look like once that happens? In a recent National Geographic article contained the following chilling statement…The wet 20th century, the wettest of the past millennium, the century when Americans built an incredible civilization in the desert, is over. Much of the western half of the country has historically been a desolate wasteland. We were very blessed to enjoy very wet conditions for most of the last century, but now that era appears to be over. To compensate, we are putting a tremendous burden on our fresh water resources. In particular, the Colorado River is becoming increasingly strained.
Dust in the wind: Building unsustainable mega-cities in the western U.S., where water supplies were already scarce and now rapidly dwindling, just as demand is growing may be one of the greatest ecological blunders of the 20th century.Ecosystem crash: Without the Colorado River, many of our largest cities simply would not be able to function. The following is from a recent Stratfor article: “The Colorado River provides water for irrigation of roughly 15 percent of the crops in the United States, including vegetables, fruits, cotton, alfalfa and hay. It also provides municipal water supplies for large cities, such as Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas, accounting for more than half of the water supply in many of these areas.” In particular, water levels in Lake Mead (which supplies most of the water for Las Vegas) have fallen dramatically over the past decade or so. The following is an excerpt from an article posted on Smithsonian: “And boaters still roar across Nevada and Arizona’s Lake Mead, 110 miles long and formed by the Hoover Dam. But at the lake’s edge they can see lines in the rock walls, distinct as bathtub rings, showing the water level far lower than it once was—some 130 feet lower, as it happens, since 2000. Water resource officials say some of the reservoirs fed by the river will never be full again.” Today, Lake Mead supplies approximately 85 percent of the water that Las Vegas uses, and since 1998 the water level in Lake Mead has dropped by about 5.6 trillion gallons. -TECB James Kaleda of the New Jersey Second Amendment Society, has been attending hearings and rallies in New Jersey in regard to myriad proposed gun control laws. In the wake of the Newtown Connecticutmass murder by a deranged killer in a "Gun Free Zone"- states have been feverishly writing laws that are allegedly supposed to stop gun violence- but in reality, are designed to disarm law abiding citizens. - Examiner
|
Daughters of Tsiyon |
|