Science

‘Mind-reading machine’ Converts Thoughts Into Speech

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A mind reading machine is a step closer to reality after scientists discovered a way of translating people’s thoughts into words.

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Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Researchers have been able to translate brain signals into speech using sensors attached to the surface of the brain for the first time.

The breakthrough, which is up to 90 per cent accurate, offers a way to communicate for paralysed patients who cannot speak and could eventually lead to being able to read anyone thoughts.

“We were beside ourselves with excitement when it started working,” said Professor Bradley Greger, a bioengineer at Utah University who led the team of researchers.

“It was just one of the moments when everything came together.

“We have been able to decode spoken words using only signals from the brain with a device that has promise for long-term use in paralysed patients who cannot now speak.

“I would call it brain reading and we hope that in two or three years it will be available for use for paralysed patients.”

Read more‘Mind-reading machine’ Converts Thoughts Into Speech

Scientists Move Objects 5 Feet Using Tractor Lasers

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Breakthrough: The machine used to create the tractor beam which brought the art of molecular transportation closer

Scientists have invented a tractor beam which is able to move large objects longer distances than ever before by using a laser light.

A team of researchers at the Australian National University in Canberra have brought the art of molecular transportation, made famous by the catchphrase ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ from the TV series Star Trek, a fraction closer.

Using what they call tractor beams – rays of energy that can move objects – they have managed to move tiny particles up to 59 inches from one place to another.

While physicists have been able to manipulate tiny particles over minuscule distances by using lasers for years, Andrei Rhode, one of the Canberra researchers, says his team’s technique can move objects one hundred times that size over a distance of almost five feet.

The method involves shining a hollow laser beam around tiny glass particles which heats up the air around them.

Read moreScientists Move Objects 5 Feet Using Tractor Lasers

Vitamin B Is Revolutionary New Weapon Against Alzheimer’s Disease, Halves The Rate of Brain Shrinkage

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To Infinite Unknown readers this is old news:

– High Doses of Vitamins Fight Alzheimer’s Disease (Dec. 2008):

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine gave the human dose equivalent of 2,000 to 3,000 mg of vitamin B3 to mice with Alzheimer’s. (2) It worked. Kim Green, one of the researchers, is quoted as saying, “Cognitively, they were cured. They performed as if they’d never developed the disease.”

Yes, this may sound revolutionary, BUT you will never see a revolution unless you start it, because Big Pharma is in control.

There are ‘revolutionary’ scientific tested, healthy, natural drugs that cure cancer and there is still no revolution.

Related article:

– B vitamins found to halve brain shrinkage in old (Reuters):

(Reuters) – Daily tablets of large doses of B vitamins can halve the rate of brain shrinkage in elderly people with memory problems and may slow their progression toward dementia, data from a British trial showed on Wednesday,

Vitamin B tablets could slow and even halt the devastating march of Alzheimer’s Disease in the elderly, a breakthrough British study suggests.

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Photo: GETTY IMAGES

The research showed that large doses of the supplement could halve the rate of brain shrinkage – a physical symptom associated memory loss and dementia in the elderly.

The effects were so dramatic that the scientists behind the work believe it could revolutionise the treatment of the disease.

Brain shrinkage or atrophy is a natural part of ageing but it is known to be accelerated in people with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) – a kind of memory loss and forgetfulness – and Alzheimer’s.

Scientists at the University of Oxford conducted a trial on 168 people and found that taking high doses of three vitamin B supplements every day reduced brain shrinkage associated with dementia by up to 53 per cent.

They said the results were so strong that it should open up a debate as to whether the tablets should be prescribed to everyone with MCI – half of whom develop Alzheimer’s disease.

MCI affects 16 per cent of people over 70 – 1.5 million people in the UK.

Professor David Smith, a pharmacologist who co-authored the study, said the results were “immensely promising”.

“It is a very simple solution: you give someone some vitamins and you protect the brain,” he said.

“This is the first trial that has shown a glimmer of hope and success. It is the first one of its kind that has worked so clearly. I think it will change the whole direction of Alzheimer’s research.

“500 people a day develop Alzheimer’s in the UK. If we can cut that down by just 10 per cent it will have a big impact. I personally believe that it will.”

The research, published in the journal Public Library of Science ONE, is controversial because it defies current scientific dogma about the way to tackle Alzheimer’s.

Read moreVitamin B Is Revolutionary New Weapon Against Alzheimer’s Disease, Halves The Rate of Brain Shrinkage

Japan confirms its first case of new superbug gene (NDM-1), resistant to nearly all known antibiotics

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Science has – intentionally – not developed a real new antibiotic for many, many years now and the ‘new’ antibiotics were only mixtures of the old ones.

Alternative medicine knows hundreds very effective drugs that work very well and have no side effects and there are no drug resistant superbugs to them..

Homeopathy and acupuncture are also extremely effective in dealing with bacterial and also with viral infections.

– Homeopathy Successfully Treated Flu Epidemic of 1918

– Homeopathic Alternatives to Antibiotics

TOKYO (AP) – Japan has confirmed the nation’s first case of a new gene in bacteria that allows the microorganisms to become drug-resistant superbugs, detected in a man who had medical treatment in India, a Health Ministry official said Tuesday.

The gene, known as NDM-1, was found in a Japanese man in his 50s, Kensuke Nakajima said.

Researchers say the gene – which appears to be circulating widely in India – alters bacteria, making them resistant to nearly all known antibiotics.

Drug-resistant bacteria are not new. Many bacteria are resistant to the world’s first antibiotic, penicillin, as well as successive generations of drugs. Excessive use and improper use of antibiotics have exacerbated the problem and led to the emergence of superbugs.

“The potential of NDM-1 to be a worldwide public health problem is great, and coordinated international surveillance is needed,” according to a widely publicized report in the British medical journal Lancet in August.

The gene has been seen largely in the deadly E. coli bacteria and on DNA structures that can be easily copied and passed onto other types of bacteria.

The man was hospitalized in April 2009 after returning from India where he had medical treatment. Nakajima declined to say what kind of treatment the man had received in India, citing the man’s privacy.

The man had a high fever while staying at a hospital in Tochigi, north of Tokyo. He was discharged in October last year.

The hospital – Dokkyo Medical University Hospital – kept a preserved sample of the suspected superbug from the man. The hospital examined the sample after the Lancet report.

Read moreJapan confirms its first case of new superbug gene (NDM-1), resistant to nearly all known antibiotics

Second Super-Fast Flip Of Earth’s Magnetic Poles Found

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Second super-fast flip of Earth’s poles found

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On the flip, in record time (Image: G.Glatzmaier/Los Alamos National Laboratory/P.Roberts/UCLA/SPL)

SOME 16 million years ago, north became south in a matter of years. Such fast flips are impossible, according to models of the Earth’s core, but this is now the second time that evidence has been found.

The magnetic poles swap every 300,000 years, a process that normally takes up to 5000 years. In 1995 an ancient lava flow with an unusual magnetic pattern was discovered in Oregon. It suggested that the field at the time was moving by 6 degrees a day – at least 10,000 times faster than usual. “Not many people believed it,” says Scott Bogue of Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Now Bogue and his colleague Jonathan Glen of the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, say they have found a second example in Nevada. The lava rock suggests that in one year, Earth’s magnetic field shifted by 53 degrees (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2010GL044286). At that rate, a full flip would take less than four years, but there could be another interpretation. “It may have been a burst of rapid acceleration that punctuated the steady movement of the field,” says Bogue.

Read moreSecond Super-Fast Flip Of Earth’s Magnetic Poles Found

US Veterans Get Ecstasy to Treat Their PTSD

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Ecstasy destroys the liver and the brain!

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A pair of psychiatric experts think they’ve got the answer to the soaring number of troops coming back from war with PTSD: have them undergo intensive psychotherapy – while they’re rolling on ecstasy.

Dr. Michael Mithoefer and Anne Mithoefer, a psychiatric nurse, are the South Carolina pair who’ve been spearheading research into ecstasy, known clinically as MDMA, since 2000. After one successful study on 21 PTSD patients between 2004 and 2008, they’ve now received the final okay from FDA and DEA officials to start a study entirely devoted to former military service members.

“My sense is that, especially after we published the results of the first study, these institutions are more open to the idea,” Dr. Michael Mithoefer tells Danger Room. “Obviously, this is still new and experimental, and it can take time to get through to big institutions.”

With $500,000 in funding from MAPS (the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), the two are recruiting 16 veterans – they’re hoping for a 50-50 split between men and women, and want most of the participants to have been diagnosed within the last 10 years.

“These will mostly be veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan, because longer duration of PTSD means more complicating factors,” Dr. Mithoefer says, adding that he does anticipate enrolling 4 vets from earlier wars and is still accepting applications.

Read moreUS Veterans Get Ecstasy to Treat Their PTSD

The Reason Hemp Is Illegal: The Marijuana Conspiracy

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Smoking it does destroy the brain, BUT …

(Watch the video “Hemp For Victory below.”)

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They say marijuana is dangerous. Pot is not harmful to the human body or mind. Marijuana does not pose a threat to the general public. Marijuana is very much a danger to the oil companies, alcohol, tobacco industries and a large number of chemical corporations. Big businesses, with plenty of dollars and influence, have suppressed the truth from the people. The truth is, if marijuana was utilized for its vast array of commercial products, it would create an industrial atomic bomb! The super rich have conspired to spread misinformation about the plant that, if used properly, would ruin their companies.

Where did the word ‘marijuana’ come from? In the mid 1930s, the M-word was created to tarnish the good image and phenomenal history of the hemp plant – as you will read. The facts cited here, with references, are generally verifiable in the Encyclopedia Britannica which was printed on hemp paper for 150 years :

1) All schoolbooks were made from hemp or flax paper until the 1880s. (Jack Frazier. Hemp Paper Reconsidered. 1974.)

2) It was legal to pay taxes with hemp in America from 1631 until the early 1800s. (LA Times. Aug. 12, 1981.)

3) Refusing to grow hemp in America during the 17th and 18th centuries was against the law! You could be jailed in Virginia for refusing to grow hemp from 1763 to 1769 (G. M. Herdon. Hemp in Colonial Virginia).

4) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers grew hemp. (Washington and Jefferson Diaries. Jefferson smuggled hemp seeds from China to France then to America.)

5) Benjamin Franklin owned one of the first paper mills in America, and it processed hemp. Also, the War of 1812 was fought over hemp. Napoleon wanted to cut off Moscow’s export to England. (Jack Herer. Emperor Wears No Clothes.)

6) For thousands of years, 90% of all ships’ sails and rope were made from hemp. The word ‘canvas’ is Dutch for cannabis. (Webster’s New World Dictionary.)

7) 80% of all textiles, fabrics, clothes, linen, drapes, bed sheets, etc., were made from hemp until the 1820s, with the introduction of the cotton gin.

8) The first Bibles, maps, charts, Betsy Ross’s flag, the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were made from hemp. (U.S. Government Archives.)

9) The first crop grown in many states was hemp. 1850 was a peak year for Kentucky producing 40,000 tons. Hemp was the largest cash crop until the 20th century. (State Archives.)

10) Oldest known records of hemp farming go back 5000 years in China, although hemp industrialization probably goes back to ancient Egypt.

Read moreThe Reason Hemp Is Illegal: The Marijuana Conspiracy

Solar Storm To Hit Earth With ‘Force Of 100 Million Hydrogen Bombs’

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The first solar storm of this cycle hit the Earth early this month, causing it to light up spectacularly / NASA Source: NASA

AFTER 10 years of comparative slumber, the sun is waking up – and it’s got astronomers on full alert.

This week several US media outlets reported that NASA was warning the massive flare that caused spectacular light shows on Earth earlier this month was just a precursor to a massive solar storm building that had the potential to wipe out the entire planet’s power grid.

NASA has since rebutted those reports, saying it could come “100 years away or just 100 days”, but an Australian astronomer says the space community is betting on the sooner scenario rather than the latter.

Despite its rebuttal, NASA’s been watching out for this storm since 2006 and reports from the US this week claim the storms could hit on that most Hollywood of disaster dates – 2012.

Similar storms back in 1859 and 1921 caused worldwide chaos, wiping out telegraph wires on a massive scale.

The 2012 storm has the potential to be even more disruptive.

“The general consensus among general astronomers (and certainly solar astronomers) is that this coming Solar maximum (2012 but possibly later into 2013) will be the most violent in 100 years,” astronomy lecturer and columnist Dave Reneke said.

“A bold statement and one taken seriously by those it will affect most, namely airline companies, communications companies and anyone working with modern GPS systems.

“They can even trip circuit breakers and knock out orbiting satellites, as has already been done this year.”

Regardless, the point astronomers are making is it doesn’t matter if the next Solar Max isn’t the worst in history, or even as bad as the 1859 storms.

It’s the fact that there hasn’t been one since the mid-80s. Commodore had just launched the Amiga and the only digital storm making the news was Tetris.

No one really knows what effect the 2012-2013 Solar Max will have on today’s digital-reliant society.

Dr Richard Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics division, told Mr Reneke the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning”, causing catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.

US government officials earlier this year took part in a “tabletop exercise” in Boulder, Colorado, to map out what might happen if the Earth was hit with a storm as intense as the 1859 and 1921 storms.

The 1859 storm was of a similar size to that predicted by NASA to hit within the next three years – one of decreased activity, but more powerful eruptions.

NASA said that a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause “$1 to 2 trillion in damages to society’s high-tech infrastructure and require four to 10 years for complete recovery”.

Staff at the Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado, which hosted the exercise, said with our reliance on satellite technology, such an event could hit the Earth with the magnitude of a global hurricane or earthquake.

The reason for the concern comes as the sun enters a phase known as Solar Cycle 24.

All the alarming news building around the event is being fuelled by two things.

The first is a book by disaster expert Lawrence E. Joseph, Guilty of Apocalypse: The Case Against 2012, in which he claims the “Hurricane Katrina for the Earth” may cause unprecedented planetwide upheaval.

The second is a theory that claims sunspots travel through the sun on a “conveyor belt” similar to the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt which controls weather on Earth.

The belt carries magnetic fields through the sun. When they hit the surface, they explode as sunspots.

Weakened, they then travel back through the sun’s core to recharge.

It all happens on a rough 40-50-year cycle, according to solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science and Technology Center in the US.

He says when the belt speeds up, lots of magnetic fields are collected, which points to more intense future activity.

“The belt was turning fast in 1986-1996,” Prof Hathaway said.

“Old magnetic fields swept up then should reappear as big sunspots in 2010-2011.”

Most experts agree, although those who put the date of Solar Max in 2012 are getting the most press.

They claim satellites will be aged by 50 years, rendering GPS even more useless than ever, and the blast will have the equivalent energy of 100 million hydrogen bombs.

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Fisher told Mr Reneke in the most recent issue of Australasian Science.

“Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the Earth and it’s rapid, just like a lightning bolt.

“That’s the solar effect.”

By Peter Farquhar, Technology Editor
August 25, 2010 3:40PM

Source: news.com.au

The New Phoenix Program – Deadly Microwave Weapons Used On The People

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The film about war crimes using microwave weapons to neutralize and kill political activists and whistleblowers.

The author has interviewed 200 targets who have been turned into human guinea pigs to perfect electromagnetic weapons and the science of behavior modification. ( 2hrs and 15 minutes.)

Welcome, Big Brother: Iris Scanners Create the Most Secure City in the World

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Welcome 1984! Welcome the New World Order! Welcome slavery!

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We’ve all seen and obsessively referenced Minority Report, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s dystopian future, where the public is tracked everywhere they go, from shopping malls to work to mass transit to the privacy of their own homes. The technology is here. I’ve seen it myself. It’s seen me, too, and scanned my irises.

Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls “the most secure city in the world.” In a partnership with Leon — one of the largest cities in Mexico, with a population of more than a million — GRI will fill the city with eye-scanners. That will help law enforcement revolutionize the way we live — not to mention marketers.

“In the future, whether it’s entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris,” says Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers. Before coming to GRI, Carter headed a think tank partnership between Bank of America, Harvard, and MIT. “Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years,” he says.

Leon is the first step. To implement the system, the city is creating a database of irises. Criminals will automatically be enrolled, their irises scanned once convicted. Law-abiding citizens will have the option to opt-in.

When these residents catch a train or bus, or take out money from an ATM, they will scan their irises, rather than swiping a metro or bank card. Police officers will monitor these scans and track the movements of watch-listed individuals. “Fraud, which is a $50 billion problem, will be completely eradicated,” says Carter. Not even the “dead eyeballs” seen in Minority Report could trick the system, he says. “If you’ve been convicted of a crime, in essence, this will act as a digital scarlet letter. If you’re a known shoplifter, for example, you won’t be able to go into a store without being flagged. For others, boarding a plane will be impossible.”

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GRI’s scanning devices are currently shipping to the city, where integration will begin with law enforcement facilities, security check-points, police stations, and detention areas. This first phase will cost less than $5 million. Phase II, which will roll out in the next three years, will focus more on commercial enterprises. Scanners will be placed in mass transit, medical centers and banks, among other public and private locations.

Read moreWelcome, Big Brother: Iris Scanners Create the Most Secure City in the World

Study: Light Therapy Clears Psoriasis And Boosts Vitamin D Levels

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See also:

– New Study: UV Light Dramatically Lessens Multiple Sclerose Symptoms

(NaturalNews) According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) about 7.5 million Americans suffer from the chronic, autoimmune skin disease called psoriasis that causes irritated, flaky and thick patches of red skin; some forms of psoriasis are also associated with joint pain. Most medical treatment for the often painful and quality-of-life robbing disease center around controlling symptoms with medications like cortisone. But now research just published in the August issue of the Archives of Dermatology indicates there’s a non-drug way to clear and maybe cure the disease naturally — exposure to vitamin D boosting UV-B light.

Comprising the “tanning rays” from the sun that are blocked by sunscreen and long feared for supposedly causing wrinkles and “age spots”, UV-B light, it turns out, actually promotes health by increasing levels of vitamin D. Now a team of scientists from St. Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, have found that treatment with narrow-band UV-B rays greatly increases serum levels of vitamin D in the wintertime. And they’ve shown how adequate exposure to UV-B light therapy can clear psoriasis. In fact, the new finding is powerful evidence that a lack of the “sunshine” vitamin is involved in the development and worsening of this skin condition.

Read moreStudy: Light Therapy Clears Psoriasis And Boosts Vitamin D Levels

The Age of Treason: 1958 Book Exposes Current Chemical Attack on Humanity

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Dr. R. Swinburne Clymer was in many ways a man ahead of his time, and most certainly controversial. He was attacked by the medical establishment for connecting diet with disease and mental health in his 1917 book Dietetics. Dr. Clymer received his medical degree in 1902 from the College of Medicine and Surgery in Chicago and began practicing Osteopathy. Accusations of fraud surround Dr. Clymer’s career, including this 1923 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association which claims that, “Our records fail to show that this man was ever regularly graduated by any reputable medical college.” What Clymer had to say more than likely had something to do with the denouncement that he received from the medical establishment.

Though Dr. Clymer may be surrounded with controversy, his 1958 book Your Health and Sanity in the Age of Treason exposes toxic food additives and fluoride with documentation – the majority of which are mainstream scientific studies – that can be verified many times over. What makes this book unique is the fact that Dr. Clymer was one of the first to point out that statements by the elite indicated that these toxins were to be deliberately released “…for the mental deterioration and moral debasement of the mass…”

The book is appropriately subtitled; “Food and Liquids Used as a Medium in Deliberately and Carefully Planned Methods Developed by the Vicious Element of Humanity, for the Mental Deterioration and Moral Debasement of the Mass, as a Means Toward Their Enslavement.”

Dr. Clymer introduces readers with a stark warning for the future, writing, “Imagine yourself if you can, becoming conscious that you are gradually losing your manhood; that your mind is rapidly deteriorating so that you are no longer capable of thinking clearly; unable to plan your future actions. Your resistance is becoming so weakened that you are no longer master of yourself. In short, you are rapidly developing into a moron, a robot, a zombie, readily subject to the dictates of others…”

Bertrand Russell’s 1953 book The Impact of Science on Society is cited by Clymer as one example of the elite’s desire to dominate the masses. Russell stated that under scientific tyranny, “Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible.”

Diethylstilbestrol – Endocrine Disruption

Dr. Clymer identified the synthetic estrogen Diethylstilbestrol – developed in 1938 – as a means to achieve the aims of the elite. Clymer explains that some of the toxic additives discussed in the book may not have been employed for the express purpose outlined by the elite, but “…they served their purpose admirably…” Dr. Clymer elaborates,

“The employment of Stilbestrol by the laity with absolutely no knowledge of the dangerous agent they are employing, in conditioning chickens and meats, is mass medication without license, with a dangerous toxic drug that may have universal disastrous results on all who eat such adulterated foods. This is especially true as it concerns children, youths, young women and men, resulting as it may, in their sterilization or cancer – something fervently hoped for by the enemies of mankind.”

Because Stilbestrol is a synthetic chemical, “…the natural protective activity of the bodily organs are ineffective in prohibiting harmful results. Natural Estrogen, on the other hand, is decomposed, and any of its possible harmful effects may be more or less made ineffective,” writes Dr. Clymer. Stilbestrol was used as a treatment for various types of cancer and menopausal symptoms, but as Dr. Clymer states, “Physicians versed in the use of Endocrines agree generally that Stilbestrol is a dangerous drug in all except experienced hands.”

Dr. E. Malcolm Stokes, in an article published in the Western Journal of Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, September 1948, wrote: “Single large doses of [natural] estrogen substances are quickly excreted… long continued, repeated administration in relatively small doses [as in daily consumption of meats permeated with stilbestrol] may intensify tissue response to the hormone.”

Dr. Clymer warns that such chemicals are to feminize men,

“Every vigilant human being should be concerned with several important factors involved: The methods or means by which it is possible to change man’s characteristics as easily as the animal’s. Man is a warrior by nature, the protector of his family, and his own rights and privileges; an individual, a free man… A being who has wrought great things and who, if not interfered with, will do even greater things. This being is to be turned into a lesser female; unable, even unwilling, to defend himself, much less his family or country; becoming a slave…”

Read moreThe Age of Treason: 1958 Book Exposes Current Chemical Attack on Humanity

Scientists Map North Atlantic Garbage Patch For The First Time

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A huge garbage patch of floating plastic in the North Atlantic Ocean has been documented by scientists for the first time.

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Plastic accumulated in regions called gyres, where currents circle and push water toward the centre, trapping the floating bits. There are five major gyres in the world, one in each major ocean

Scientists have gathered data from 22 years of surface net tows to map the North Atlantic garbage patch, which lies to the east of Bermuda, and its change over time, creating the most accurate picture yet of any pelagic plastic patch on earth.

The data were gathered by thousands of undergraduates aboard the Sea Education Association (SEA) sailing semester, who hand-picked, counted and measured more than 64,000 pieces of plastic from 6,000 net tows between 1986 to 2008.

“The highest concentrations that we observe in the North Atlantic garbage patch are comparable to that of the North Pacific, but we don’t have enough data about the size of the North Pacific one to say whether they are comparable in size,” said oceanographer Kara Law of SEA, lead author of the study published August 19 in Science.

“As far as I’m aware this is the most complete and long term data set for little bits of trash floating in the ocean,” said oceanographer Miriam Goldstein of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The highest concentrations of plastic were found roughly from the latitude of Virginia to the latitude of Cuba. They estimate the average concentration of plastic in this area is about 4,000 pieces per square mile, though it is as high as 250,000 pieces per square mile in some places.

Read moreScientists Map North Atlantic Garbage Patch For The First Time

Scientists Find Giant 22-Mile Plume Of Oil Droplets From BP’s Deepwater Horizon Well ‘Missed’ By Official Account

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See also:

– Collapsing Marses Dwarf BP Oil Blowout as Ecological Disaster: ‘An International Economic And Ecological Calamity Unequaled In History’

– Bolivia: Over 1 Million of Dead Fish and Thousands of Alligators, Turtles, Dolphins and Other River Wildlife are Floating Dead in Rivers

A 22-mile plume of droplets from BP’s Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico undermines claim that oil has degraded

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Images taken during the descent of an underwater vehicle show oil droplets appearing at a depth of 1065-1300m. Photograph: Ho/AFP/Getty Images

Scientists have mapped a 22-mile plume of oil droplets from BP’s rogue well in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, providing the strongest evidence yet of the fate of the crude that spewed into the sea for months.

The report offers the most authoritative challenge to date to White House assertions that most of the 5m barrels of oil that spewed into the Gulf is gone.

“These results indicate that efforts to book-keep where the oil went must now include this plume,” said Christopher Reddy one of the members of the team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

The report, which is published in the journal Science, also said the plume was very slow to break down by natural forces, increasing the likelihood that oil could have travelled long distances in the Gulf before it was degraded.

“Many people speculated that subsurface oil droplets were being easily degraded,” said Richard Camilli, the lead author of the paper. “Well we didn’t find that. We found it was still there.”

Read moreScientists Find Giant 22-Mile Plume Of Oil Droplets From BP’s Deepwater Horizon Well ‘Missed’ By Official Account

Junk Food-Addicted Rats Chose To Starve Themselves Rather Than Eat Healthy Food

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(NaturalNews) A diet including unlimited amounts of junk food can cause rats to become so addicted to the unhealthy diet that they will starve themselves rather than go back to eating healthy food, researchers have discovered.

In a series of studies conducted over the course of three years and published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Scripps Florida scientists Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny have shown that rats’ response to unlimited junk food closely parallels well-known patterns of drug addiction — even down to the changes in brain chemistry.

“What we have are these core features of addiction, and these animals are hitting each one of these features,” Kenny said.

In their first study, the researchers fed rats on either a balanced diet or on the same diet plus unlimited access to junk foods purchased at a local supermarket, including processed meats and cakes. Within a short time period, the rats on the junk food diet began to eat compulsively and quickly became overweight.

“They’re taking in twice the amount of calories as the control rats,” Kenny said.

The researchers hypothesized that the rats were eating compulsively because, like drug addicts, they had become desensitized to smaller amounts and needed more and more for the same rush of pleasure.

Many recreational drugs work by directly stimulating the brain’s pleasure centers, particularly the dopamine receptor known as D2. Overstimulation of this receptor causes the body to start producing less dopamine, leading the addict to compensate by taking more of the drug.

Since dopamine can also be released by pleasurable activities such as food or sex, Kenny and Johnson speculated that food addiction could develop in the same way. To test whether the rats had, in fact, become habituated to dopamine, the researchers took the rats from the first experiment and hooked their brains up to a device that would directly stimulate their D2 receptors when they ran on a wheel.

Read moreJunk Food-Addicted Rats Chose To Starve Themselves Rather Than Eat Healthy Food

Magnetic Mega-Star Discovery Challenges Black Hole Theory

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A neutron star with a mighty magnetic field has thrown down the gauntlet to theories about stellar evolution and the birth of black holes, astronomers said today.

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This artist’s impression of a magnetar contains hundreds of very massive stars, some shining with a brilliance of almost one million suns Photo: ESO

The “magnetar” lies in a cluster of stars known as Westerlund 1, located 16,000 light years away in the constellation of Ara, the Altar.

Westerlund 1, discovered in 1961 by a Swedish astronomer, is a favoured observation site in stellar physics. It is one of the biggest cluster of superstars in the Milky Way, comprising hundreds of very massive stars, some shining with a brilliance of almost a million Suns and some two thousand times the Sun’s diameter.

The cluster is also, by the standards of the Universe, very young.

The stars were all born from a single event just three and a half to five million years ago.

Within Westerlund 1 is the remains of one of galaxy’s few magnetars – a particular kind of neutron star, formed from the explosion of a supernova, that can exert a magnetic field a million, billion times strong than Earth’s.

The Westerlund star which eventually became the magnetar must have been at least 40 times the mass of the Sun, according to the study, which appears in the research journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. If so, intriguing questions are raised.

The mainstream assumption is that stars of between 10 and 25 solar masses go on to form neutron stars. But those above 25 solar masses produce black holes — the light-gobbling gravitational monsters that are formed when a massive, dying star collapses in on itself.

In that case, the magnetar’s mother should have become a black hole because it was so big.

But another alternative, say the authors, is that the star “slimmed” to a lower mass, enabling it to become a neutron star.

How did this happen? The answer, says the paper, could lie in a binary system: the star that became the magnetar was born with a stellar companion.

As the stars evolved, they began to interact, and the companion star, like a demonic twin, began to steal mass from the progenitor star.

Eventually the progenitor exploded, becoming a supernova.

Read moreMagnetic Mega-Star Discovery Challenges Black Hole Theory

Russia and Pakistan: ‘Blocked’ jetstream to blame for freak weather, say scientists

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H.A.A.R.P.?

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A satellite map which shows the intense heat that has built up over Russia after the jetstream has been held up due to Rossby waves

A massive heatwave in Russia and the current devastating floods in Pakistan could be linked by the unusual behaviour of the jetstream, scientists believe.

The jetstream is the high-altitude wind that circles the globe from west to east and normally pushes a series of wet but mild Atlantic lows across Britain.

But meteorologists who study the phenomenon say that it is producing unusual holding patterns which keep weather systems in one place and produce freak conditions.

The jetstream is being held by the Rossby waves that normally produce its distinctive wave-like pattern.

These powerful spinning wind currents are caused by the Earth’s shape and rotation and push the jet stream from east to west at high altitudes.

Now scientists believe that Rossby waves are acting against the jetstream’s usual pattern, holding it in place, according to a report in New Scientist.

Since mid-July, when it would normally be moving eastwards the jetstream has been held in one place as strong Rossby waves push against it.

When the jet stream is held in one place it traps the weather systems that are caught between its meanders. Warm air is sucked north to the ‘peaks’ while cold air travels to the ‘troughs’.

Professor Mike Blackburn of the University of Reading believes that a blocked jetstream could be behind a heatwave in Japan which killed 60 and the sudden end to warm weather in the UK.

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A satellite image from this afternoon shows smoke from wildfires burning in Russia. The red dots indicate active fires. Scientists believe the jetstream could be to blame

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Pakistani flood survivors evacuate a flooded area in Bssera village near Muzaffargarh today

In Pakistan, the blocking event took place at the same time as the summer monsoon, with tragic consequences.

Floods triggered by heavy monsoon rain over much of Pakistan began nearly two weeks ago and have killed around 1,600 people and forced more than two million from their homes.

Read moreRussia and Pakistan: ‘Blocked’ jetstream to blame for freak weather, say scientists

Scientists: Car fuel ‘could be made from thin air’

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Car fuel could be created from thin air using an enzyme from a common soil bacterium, say scientists.

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Cars could one day create their own fuel out of thin air, according to scientists. Photo: BLOOMBERG

It is hoped that this will lead to a cheap way of making environmentally friendly, carbon-neutral ‘green’ fuel that can be used without major redesigns of car engines.

Azotobacter vinelandii, a microbe found around the roots of various food plants, creates an enzyme – vanadium nitrogenase – which in nature produces ammonia from nitrogen gas. But now it has been shown that it can also create propane, the fuel commonly used in camping gas stoves, out of carbon monoxide – a common byproduct of industrial processes.

Read moreScientists: Car fuel ‘could be made from thin air’

Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico Has Stalled From BP Oil Disaster!

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Update:

– Life on this Earth Just Changed: The North Atlantic Current is Gone

Global Consequences if Current Fails to Reorganize

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This could be the most significant man-caused Earth Changes news thus far in my lifetime.  This morning, Lesie Pastor informed the New Energy Congress of a report by Your Own World USA that as of July 28,

Oceanographic satellite data now shows that the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico has stalled as a consequence of the BP oil spill [volcano] disaster. This according to Dr. Gianluigi Zangari, an Italian theoretical physicist, and major complex and chaotic systems analyst at the Frascati National Laboratories in Italy.

He further notes that the effects of this stall have also begun to spread to the Gulf Stream. This is because the Loop Current is a crucial element of the Gulf Stream itself and why it is commonly referred to as the “main engine” of the Stream.

The concern now, is whether or not natural processes can re-establish the stalled Loop Current. If not, we could begin to see global crop failures as early as 2011.

Read moreLoop Current in the Gulf of Mexico Has Stalled From BP Oil Disaster!

Dr Robert Sapolsky’s Stress Vaccine: A ‘Herpes Virus To Carry Engineered ‘Neuroprotective’ Genes Deep Into The Brain To Neutralize The Rogue Hormones Before They Can Cause Damage

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Vaccines and also drugs like Ritalin (Concerta, Strattera) are all designed to cause a partial lobotomy.

This sounds like a improved partial lobotomy, with a chronical disease guarantee (cancer, multiple sclerosis etc..).

No more stress, but you are brain-dead.

What could possibly go wrong?

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Dr. Robert Sapolsky spent years studying stress in baboons. (Presonal Photo/Dr. Robert Sapolsky)

(CBS) Stressed out? There’s no app for that, but soon enough there might be a vaccine.

Dr Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscience professor at Stanford, says after 30 years of studying stress, his team might be on the verge of a novel cure.

“To be honest, I’m still amazed that it works,” Sapolsky told Wired in an August profile.

Sapolsky has long theorized that, unlike some animals, humans are unable to turn off stress chemicals used for the fight-or-flight mechanism. A class of hormone called glucocorticoids are one of the chief offenders, according to Sapolsky.

So his team has pioneered a way to bootstrap a “herpes virus to carry engineered ‘neuroprotective’ genes deep into the brain to neutralize the rogue hormones before they can cause damage,” according to the Daily Mail.

Read moreDr Robert Sapolsky’s Stress Vaccine: A ‘Herpes Virus To Carry Engineered ‘Neuroprotective’ Genes Deep Into The Brain To Neutralize The Rogue Hormones Before They Can Cause Damage

Genetic Apocalypse: The Genetic Integrity of The Human Race is Collapsing

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(NaturalNews) The day will soon come that informed women will refuse to date, marry or have children with men who follow poor nutritional habits. “You eat junk foods? Put your pants back on and get out!”

You see, scientific evidence is mounting on the relationship between food choice and genetic integrity. Men who eat a lot of processed meats, fast foods and junk foods have low sperm quality. But it’s more than just an infertility question… it’s also a question of the transgenerational genetic integrity of his offspring.

A man who pursues an unhealthy diet, it turns out, not only increases the risk of numerous diseases in his direct offspring (cancer, diabetes, infertility, etc.), he also increases that risk for multiple generations of offspring.

This was recently demonstrates in a laboratory study conducted by Georgetown University Medical Center and presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (http://www.naturalnews.com/029198_c…) which showed that cancer risk attributable to the junk food fed to parent rats was passed through two generations even if the direct offspring ate a healthy diet.

In other words, for all you women out there, if you choose to have children with a man who’s eating junk foods, not only will your children have an increased risk of disease, but their children will, too! And that’s true even if your children follow a healthy lifestyle!

Now sure, if you’re not concerned about your family line, then just mate with anybody who can produce sperm — and there are a lot of those to choose from. But two, three or four generations from now, the sperm that you chose to combine with your own eggs may turn out to be a ticking genetic time bomb that ends your family line forever through DNA mutations leading to disease and infertility.

The genopocalypse

I call this coming wave of global infertility the “genopocalypse,” which of course means the “genetic apocalypse.” This is all explained in a video I recently posted on www.NaturalNews.TV which you can view at: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=0985D…

The genetic integrity of the human race is collapsing due to exposure to DNA-altering toxic chemicals in foods, medicines, household products and personal care products. The cumulative toxic burden in first-world citizens has now reached such a high level of toxicity that genetic integrity may no longer be guaranteed from one generation to the next. Infertility rates are skyrocketing, and even when babies are born through infertility intervention clinics, they suffer far higher rates of genetic mutations and abnormalities than babies conceived naturally.

We are now watching the genetic migration of the human race. It is slowly transitioning to a race of infertile mutants who express very high rates of diseases like cancer and health conditions like infertility. No one knows whether genetic integrity can be recovered once it compromised. The very nature of gene inheritance leaves that doubtful.

The upshot of all this is that people who want a family future must be careful to choose healthy reproductive partners. Beyond the quality of the person you are deciding to have children with, you need to consider the quality of their eggs and sperm.

Watch out for damaged eggs

So far, we’ve talked about how women need to watch out for damaged sperm. But the good news for men is that sperm regenerates every few days, so by simply changing your diet right now, you can begin to produce healthier sperm a few days later. Switching to a healthy diet for 3 – 6 months can result in radically improved sperm quality.

For women, it’s a whole different story. Women, you see, are born with all the eggs they’ll ever have in their lives. Those eggs were formed as a fetus, and the health of those eggs is largely determined by the diet of the pregnant mom carrying the female fetus.

Read moreGenetic Apocalypse: The Genetic Integrity of The Human Race is Collapsing

First batch of untested (!) flu vaccines approved by the FDA causes seizures in children

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U.S. children are being used as guinea pigs. Your children are the experiment!

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(NaturalNews) As ridiculous as it seems, retailers across the U.S. are already stocking their stores with Christmas goods. It’s all about the big commercial push, of course, since retailers make about 50 percent of their profits during the Christmas season.

Similarly, flu vaccine manufacturers generate huge profits during the Christmas season, too, and they’ve already begun shipping this year’s winter season flu vaccines to U.S. pharmacies and hospitals. Never mind the fact that the actual flu strain in the vaccine is little more than a hodgepodge collection of last year’s flu strains. Each year’s flu vaccines are technically only applicable to last year’s flu season, making them perfect for time travelers but useless for everybody else.

Along with the big vaccine push comes the inevitable vaccine propaganda. It’s all so predictable: First there’s the announcement that “everybody should get vaccinated.” This is followed by some later announcement in the pre-Christmas season of “how bad” this year’s flu season is getting. This is followed yet again by another urgent bulletin by health authorities urging everyone to get vaccinated.

The big vaccine push only quiets down when vaccine supplies dwindle. But as long as vaccines remain in inventory, the big vaccine push will stay aggressive, and during this annual charade, there won’t be a word mentioned about vitamin D and how it is far more effective than any vaccine at protecting people from seasonal flu.

Reading between the vaccine lines

This year’s vaccine push has begun with some curious admissions by the vaccine industry, reflected in a Reuters story (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS…). After the usual explanatory text about how flu vaccine manufacturers have started shipping their largest quantity of vaccines ever produced for flu season, the story prints this curious text:

“And U.S. officials said they were changing the labeling on a vaccine made by Australia’s CSL Ltd (CSL.AX) because it appears to have caused a higher than usual rate of seizures in children.”

Now hold on a second.

If you read between the lines here, this statement implies that: 1) Vaccines cause seizures in children. And then 2) This particular vaccines causes a higher rate of seizures in children than the usual rate of seizures in children.

Why is this curious? First off, because vaccine pushers have always sworn their vaccines caused no seizures whatsoever. No neurological problems. No spontaneous abortions in pregnant women. No increased rates of autism. Vaccines are all perfectly safe, they say, and no children are ever harmed by them.

That’s the mythology, at least, behind vaccines. But the reality is far different: Vaccines do cause seizures in children, and this year’s vaccines look like they’re going to cause a significantly higher rate of seizures than usual.

Note, by the way, that this was not the headline of the story. This admission was tucked away in the text of a Reuters story, without any real emphasis. If Reuters was really interested in reporting the truth about vaccines, the story headline would have been, “Flu vaccines cause seizures in children.”

Line up, sheeple!

The story goes on to say, “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone be vaccinated against seasonal flu this year.”

Yep, everyone. That means one-month old infants. Pregnant women. Children with seizure disorders. Immune suppressed seniors. Everyone!

You see, in years past, vaccines were never recommended for everyone due to well-founded safety concerns. In some people, you see, the nearly-dead viral strains used in vaccines can actually cause the very flu they claim to prevent. So the CDC has, for as long as anyone can remember, always warned certain groups to be excluded from vaccines for their own safety.

Well not anymore. Any safety concerns have been thrown out the window in the quest to push more vaccines onto more people. Billions of dollars in pharmaceutical profits are at stake here, and health officials can’t afford to let a little safety get in the way.

This Reuters story continues:

“Most years, seasonal influenza infects between 5 percent and 20 percent of the U.S. population and kills 36,000 people. It puts about 200,000 into the hospital.”

Well, not really. The 36,000 figure often quoted from the CDC is wildly inaccurate (http://www.naturalnews.com/026169_m…). It’s a statistical guess based on such outdated data that to quote it as fact is laughable. Besides, it’s technically wrong to say that influenza kills anyone. The real killer here is vitamin D deficiency which causes a stalled out immune system. If people had sufficient levels of vitamin D circulating in their blood, the flu virus would be powerless to harm them. And since there are viruses everywhere in the world around us every single day, isn’t it more accurate to say that the “flu season” is actually the “vitamin D deficiency season?”

Think about it: Why does the flu circulate in the winter months in North America, but the summer months (June – August) in Australia? It’s because those are the times of weaker sunlight exposure resulting in widespread vitamin D deficiencies. The flu is always around, living amongst us, just waiting for weakened immune systems so it can strike. To say that “the flu” kills people in the winter is factually wrong. It’s the vitamin D deficiency that kills people by giving the flu an opportunity to attack a weakened immune system.

This is a simple factual point that the entire system of western medicine, with all its high-IQ doctors, has so far failed to realize. Sometimes it feels like we’re still living in the Dark Ages of medicine, I swear…

Where are the clinical trials?

Anyway, this Reuters story continues with one more whopper of a statement:

“The labeling for one vaccine, CSL Limited’s Afluria, has undergone changes this season to inform health care providers about an increased incidence of fever and febrile seizure… The FDA said it was asking CSL to conduct a study of its vaccine in children.”

Read between the lines on this one: This Afluria vaccine causes an increased risk of seizures, it’s being imported into the USA to be injected in children this flu season, and the FDA is just now asking for a study? That means, of course, that no study has been conducted on this vaccine yet.

In other words, this vaccine which causes seizures in children has never actually been properly tested in children according to FDA guidelines, so the FDA wants a test to be done but the vaccine will be injected into children in the USA anyway, even before the testing is likely to be completed.

And that means, of course, that U.S. children are being used as guinea pigs to see what happens to them following this vaccine injection. If enough children have seizures or end up paralyzed or dead, the FDA will probably pull the vaccine off the market. But that only happens after the fact and after the damage has already been done.

Don’t you get it? Your children are the experiment! The American People are the guinea pigs for every vaccine these companies come up with, and it doesn’t matter if the vaccine causes seizures, brain damage or even death… American children are going to be injected by the millions in order to find out what happens.

Read moreFirst batch of untested (!) flu vaccines approved by the FDA causes seizures in children

Scientists: Evidence Of Gulf Oil And Dispersant Mix Making Its Way Into The Foodchain

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Every poison you pour into the oceans will make its way into the food chain. It takes no rocket science to know that.

It also takes no genius to know that huge amounts of Corexit will accumulate if you look at the ingredients, …

– The Growing Health Crisis in the Gulf of Mexico:

Corexit also contain arsenic, cadmium, chromium, mercury, cyanide, and other heavy metals. Dispersing oil with it increases toxicity 11-fold ….

… which make Corexit lethal stuff:

– EPA Whistleblower On Gulf Health Risk Cover-Up: ‘People Who Work Near Corexit Are Hemorrhaging Internally.’:

People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that’s what dispersants are supposed to do.EPA now is taking the position that they really don’t know how dangerous it is, even though if you read the label, it tells you how dangerous it is. And, for example, in the Exxon Valdez case, people who worked with dispersants, most of them are dead now. The average death age is around fifty. It’s very dangerous, and it’s an economic-it’s an economic protector of BP, not an environmental protector of the public.

*BREAKING* Tulane researchers indicate COREXIT now in blue crab larvae from Florida to Texas; Bio-accumulation fears (VIDEO)

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Harriet Perry, Gulf Coast Research Laboratory: Yellow oil droplets can been seen in a post-larval blue crab.

A  report today from Fox 8 in New Orleans reveals that the “orange blobs found lodged in the bodies of tiny blue crab larvae collected from marshes that stretch from Texas to Florida” appear to contain Corexit, according to preliminary results from researchers at Tulane University.

The report says BP’s dispersant “may do more harm than the oil itself.”

University of New Orleans’ Martin O’Connell, Ph.D said, “No one really knows” if Corexit will bio-accumulate. “If you’re a small fish and you eat 1,000 of these small crab larvae and all of them have oil or Corexit droplets in them they could get into the fish — that little fish could be eaten and so on and so on.”

Pondering the future of the Gulf, O’Connell said, “I think they should be more concerned that we might be losing whole cohorts of these animals when they’re very small, and we won’t see the impact in the adults but three or four years from now.”

Florida toxicologist Dr. William Sawyer, who has been hired on behalf of sickened fishermen and cleanup workers, says “some of these chemicals are in great excess — of risk-based lethal levels — that the current hydrocarbon levels are capable of sterilizing our fisheries and estuary production zones.”

The Fox 8 report concludes, “Since so many fish and crabs feed on crab larvae, some scientists fear the oil and dispersant droplets threaten to kill critical areas in the Gulf of Mexico food web.”

Please read the full report here: http://www.fox8live.com/news/local/story/Blobs-in-crab-larvae-characteristic-of-dispersant/IJoKO4b-W0GsfjK1L_SkAQ.cspx

July 31st, 2010 at 04:05 AM

Source: Florida Oil Spill Law

Scientists Find Evidence That Oil And Dispersant Mix Is Making Its Way Into The Foodchain

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Scientists have found signs of an oil-and-dispersant mix under the shells of tiny blue crab larvae in the Gulf of Mexico, the first clear indication that the unprecedented use of dispersants in the BP oil spill has broken up the oil into toxic droplets so tiny that they can easily enter the foodchain.

Marine biologists started finding orange blobs under the translucent shells of crab larvae in May, and have continued to find them “in almost all” of the larvae they collect, all the way from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Fla. — more than 300 miles of coastline — said Harriet Perry, a biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.

And now, a team of researchers from Tulane University using infrared spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of the blobs has detected the signature for Corexit, the dispersant BP used so widely in the Deepwater Horizon

“It does appear that there is a Corexit sort of fingerprint in the blob samples that we ran,” Erin Gray, a Tulane biologist, told the Huffington Post Thursday. Two independent tests are being run to confirm those findings, “so don’t say that we’re 100 percent sure yet,” Gray said.

“The chemistry test is still not completely conclusive,” said Tulane biology professor Caz Taylor, the team’s leader. “But that seems the most likely thing.”

Read moreScientists: Evidence Of Gulf Oil And Dispersant Mix Making Its Way Into The Foodchain

Study: Phytoplankton, The Foundation Of The Oceanic Food Chain, Producing 50% Of The World’s Oxygen, In Sharp Decline

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Phytoplankton are the foundation of the oceanic food chain.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite their tiny size, plant plankton found in the world’s oceans are crucial to much of life on Earth. They are the foundation of the bountiful marine food web, produce half the world’s oxygen and suck up harmful carbon dioxide.

And they are declining sharply.

Worldwide phytoplankton levels are down 40 percent since the 1950s, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The likely cause is global warming (Since 1998 the world is cooling.), which makes it hard for the plant plankton to get vital nutrients, researchers say.

The numbers are both staggering and disturbing, say the Canadian scientists who did the study and a top U.S. government scientist.

“It’s concerning because phytoplankton is the basic currency for everything going on in the ocean,” said Dalhousie University biology professor Boris Worm, a study co-author. “It’s almost like a recession … that has been going on for decades.”

Half a million datapoints dating to 1899 show that plant plankton levels in nearly all of the world’s oceans started to drop in the 1950s. The biggest changes are in the Arctic, southern and equatorial Atlantic and equatorial Pacific oceans. Only the Indian Ocean is not showing a decline. The study’s authors said it’s too early to say that plant plankton is on the verge of vanishing.

Virginia Burkett, the chief climate change scientist for U.S. Geological Survey, said the plankton numbers are worrisome and show problems that can’t be seen just by watching bigger more charismatic species like dolphins or whales.

“These tiny species are indicating that large-scale changes in the ocean are affecting the primary productivity of the planet,” said Burkett, who wasn’t involved in the study.

When plant plankton plummet — like they do during El Nino climate cycles— sea birds and marine mammals starve and die in huge numbers, experts said.

Read moreStudy: Phytoplankton, The Foundation Of The Oceanic Food Chain, Producing 50% Of The World’s Oxygen, In Sharp Decline

Desperate Days For Warmists

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Don’t miss: Al Gore’s Enormous Carbon Footprint

Warmists may be winning the big grants, but they’re not winning the argument

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Herding cattle in Chile as South America suffers one of its coldest winters for years (Reuters)

Ever more risibly desperate become the efforts of the believers in global warming to hold the line for their religion, after the battering it was given last winter by all those scandals surrounding the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

One familiar technique they use is to attribute to global warming almost any unusual weather event anywhere in the world. Last week, for instance, it was reported that Russia has recently been experiencing its hottest temperatures and longest drought for 130 years. The head of the Russian branch of WWF, the environmental pressure group, was inevitably quick to cite this as evidence of climate change, claiming that in future “such climate abnormalities will only become more frequent”. He didn’t explain what might have caused the similar hot weather 130 years ago.

Meanwhile, notably little attention has been paid to the disastrous chill which has been sweeping South America thanks to an inrush of air from the Antarctic, killing hundreds in the continent’s coldest winter for years.

Read moreDesperate Days For Warmists