Ultrasound may improve sensory perception, according to a new study in humans.
By directing ultrasound to a specific brain area, researchers were able to improve people's ability to discriminate between sensory inputs. Ultrasound is sound far above the upper limit of what humans can hear. It's useful in medical imaging. Doctors and technicians send bursts of ultrasound through tissue and record the echoes, creating a picture of what's inside — whether it's an injured knee or a fetus in utero.
Ultrasound also has potential for mapping the connectivity of the brain. Neuroscientists are particularly interested in understanding how brain areas chat with one another; in fact, a new federal project, the BRAIN Initiative, has the goal of mapping the healthy human brain.
‘In December 2010, UK UFO website 'Cosmic Conspiracies' was contacted by a lady who claimed she had been abducted by aliens. But what was even more incredible was that she had footage to prove it.’
It’s not every day that you come across some footage as impressive as this, to me it is just incredible. To sum up the whole story as to why these people were recoding themselves sleeping is basically this. A woman was convinced she was being abducted by aliens, so her husband took it upon himself to find out what was really going on. He set up a camera at the foot of their bed just before they went to sleep, and hit the record button. The events that unfolded next confirmed that their wildest fears were in fact true.
I won’t get too deep, and hit you with the full analysis of the tape (I’ll let you watch and judge for yourself) but I did want to bring up one key thing on how it doesn’t relate to the majority of the other abduction cases I have done research on in the past. Now with every abduction case I have checked out, each abductee has always claimed to have been gone for a large chunk of time, stretching from a few hours at the lowest end of the scale, to 5 days at the highest. Never before have I heard of an abduction case spanning out for just 10 minutes. This is the one thing that makes me feel a bit dubious about the whole video (if you look at the bottom right of the video, you can count the minutes for yourself). Now I may be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure that this is the shortest abduction in the history of abductions. Not saying that makes this video fake, but for me, it just adds that little bit more of doubt to it. If I’m wrong about the abduction being too short let me know. Videos below Enjoy!
Over half a century ago, deep in the jungles of Guatemala, a gigantic stone head was uncovered. The face had fine features, thin lips and large nose and its face was directed up at the sky. Unusually, the face demonstrated Caucasian features which were not consistent with any of the pre-Hispanic races of America. The discovery rapidly attracted attention, but just as quickly it slipped away into the pages of forgotten history. News of the discovery first emerged when Dr Oscar Rafael Padilla Lara, a doctor of philosophy, lawyer and notary, received a photograph of the head in 1987 along with a description that the photograph was taken in the 1950s by the owner of the land where the head was found and that it was located “somewhere in the jungles of Guatemala.” The photograph and story was printed in a small article in the newsletter ‘Ancient Skies’, which was picked up and read by well-known explorer and author David Hatcher Childress, one of our guest authors at Ancient-Origins.net, who sought out to discover more about the mysterious stone head. He tracked down Dr Padilla who reported that he found the owners of the property, the Biener family, on which the monolith was found. The site was 10 kilometres from a small village in La Democracia in the south of Guatemala. However, Dr Padilla said that he was in despair when he reached the site and found that the site had been obliterated: “It was destroyed by revolutionaries about ten years ago. We had located the statue too late. It was used as target practice by anti-government rebels. This totally disfigured it, sort of like the way the Sphinx in Egypt had its nose shot off by the Turks, only worse,” he said. The eyes, nose and mouth had completely gone. Padilla was able to measure its height as between 4 and 6 metres, with the head resting on a neck. Padilla did not return again to the site due to armed attacks between government forces and rebel forces in the area. The destruction of the head meant the story died a rapid death until it was picked up again a few years ago by filmmakers behind “Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond” who used the photograph to claim that extra-terrestrials have had contact with past civilisations. The producer published a document written by Guatemalan archaeologist Hector E Majia who wrote: "I certify that this monument presents no characteristics of Maya, Nahuatl, Olmec or any other pre-Hispanic civilization. It was created by an extraordinary and superior civilization with awesome knowledge of which there is no record of existence on this planet." However, far from helping the cause and the investigation into the monolith, this publication only served to have the opposite effect, throwing the whole story into the hands of a justifiably sceptical audience who thought that it was all just a publicity stunt. Even the letter itself has been drawn into question with some saying that it is not genuine. Nevertheless, it appears the giant head did exist and there is no evidence to suggest the original photograph is not authentic or that Dr Padilla’s account was false. So assuming it was real, the questions remain: Where did it come from? Who made it? And why? The region where the stone head was reported to have been found, La Democracia, is actually already famous for stone heads which, like the stone head found in the jungle, also face skyward. These are known to have been created by the Olmec civilisation, which flourished between 1400 and 400 BC. The Olmec heartland was the area in the Gulf of Mexico lowlands, however, Olmec-style artefacts, designs, monuments and iconography have been found in sites hundreds of kilometres outside the Olmec heartland, including La Democracia. Nevertheless, the stone head depicted in the 1950s photograph does not share the same features or style as the Olmec heads. The late Phillip Coppens, Belgian author, radio host and TV commentator on matters of alternative history raised the question of whether the head “is an anomaly of the Olmec period, or whether it is part of another – unknown – culture that predated or post-dated the Olmecs, and whose only artefact identified so far is the Padilla head.” Other questions that have been posed include whether the structure was just a head, or whether there was a body underneath, like the Easter Island statues, and whether the stone head is linked to any other structures in the region. It would be nice to know the answers to these questions but sadly it appears the publicity surrounding the film “Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond” only served to bury the story deeper into the pages of history. Hopefully an ambitious explorer will pick up the story once again and investigate further to find the truth regarding this enigmatic monument. Source: Ancient Origins;
Clouds of alien life forms are sweeping through outer space and infecting planets with life. The idea that life on Earth came from another planet has been around as a modern scientific theory since the 1960s when it was proposed by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe. At the time they were ridiculed for their idea — known as panspermia. But now, with growing evidence, it’s back in vogue and even being studied by NASA.
In late December, more than 1,000 people got notice that they were a little closer to a one-way trip to Mars in 2025, as Dutch outfit Mars One made its first round of cuts among the more than 200,000 people who applied to become Red Planet pioneers.
But is it really plausible that men and women could be living on Mars in just over 10 years? It’s one of the longest of long shots, and there’s plenty of engineering hurdles to be surmounted. But there are plenty of true believers – from businessmen to artists to scientists – willing to stake their futures on it.
So A Martian Walks Into A Bar…
“I think the thing that separates me from the other people applying is that I already have a helmet,” New York City resident Lauren Reeves says in her application video. “I wear my helmet everywhere I go and I expect to wear that helmet in space.”
In case you couldn’t tell, Reeves is a comedian. In her video, she says the first thing she’d do on Mars is find a rover and give it a hug, and that she’d be “so pissed” if she got sucked into a black hole. So Reeves was as surprised as anyone when she got an email saying she’d made the cut as one of the 1,058 candidates advancing to the second round of selections.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Reeves said in a phone interview. “I just wanted to make something entertaining.”
Despite the jokey video, Reeves says she’s serious about making the trip in 2025. She thinks she'd make a good Martian colonist.
“I’m a natural athlete,” Reeves says. “And I think I have a pretty good personality. I’m someone who you’d want to live with and not want to kill.”
Reeves and the other 1,057 people vying for a one-way ticket to Mars hail from 107 countries. They include NASA engineers, medical students, sculptors and, yes, an entertainer or two.
“Creativity and humor are very important abilities,” Mars One chief medical officer Norbert Kraft, who leads the team that vets the applicants, wrote in an email. “Without them teams will not be able to function well over an extended period of time.”
“Is It A Pyramid Scheme?”
Skepticism has dogged Mars One since its inception. Founder Bas Lansdorp ventured into severalquestion-and-answer sessions about the project on Reddit, which were overrun with users deriding the lack of available technical specifics and accusing the Mars One team of being unprepared or running a scam operation. China’s state-run People’s Daily called Mars One a scam last May after investigating the company’s offices and finding just a few tables in a large open office area.
When David King, a Brooklyn-based sculptor and furniture maker, called his mother to tell her about the program, "the first thing she asked was, ‘Is it a pyramid scheme?’” he says. But he’s convinced the team is sincere.
“It’s easy to be skeptical,” King – another candidate who made the cut to the second round -- says. “There’s still technical challenges, but the first crew is slated to leave in 11 years. That’s awhile to figure out the details.”
Those details are many. The rocket and primary transit vehicle Mars One expects to carry its crew to Mars – SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and a manned variant of the company’s Dragon capsule, respectively -- are still in their testing phases. Initial signs are positive, though. SpaceX’s unmanned Dragon capsule has ferried supplies to the International Space Station, and the company’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched a Thai satellite into orbit this week. But even once the main transportation problem is solved, there’s also life-support systems, habitats, rovers, spacesuits, power supplies and thousands of other components to consider.
The Mars One model is entirely different from any kind of space mission that’s come before. The company isn’t building the components itself; virtually everything will be contracted out. The first two big partnershipswere announced in early December: Lockheed Martin and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. are working on mission concept studies for a robotic lander (based on NASA’s 2007 Mars Phoenix Lander) to be launched in 2018 and a communications satellite, respectively.
“Like with every space mission, we start with a mission concept study, where the framework for mission is laid out,” Lansdorp said in a phone interview.
Mars One’s claim that we can get to Mars with existing technology might seem like a stretch, but some scientists say that it’s not a total pipe dream.
“I wouldn’t throw my hat into the ring if I didn’t think it was possible,” says another second-rounder, Brent Bos, a research physicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Bos has the résumé that you might expect of a would-be Martian explorer. He’s worked on the James Webb space telescope and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which aims to return a sample from an asteroid to Earth in 2023. In 2001, he spent four weeks up in the Arctic taking part in the Mars Society’s first Mars habitat simulation experiment.
“Definitely there are challenges, but they are engineering ones that can be overcome,” Bos says. “It mainly comes down to the will and the finances.”
George Hatcher is another candidate who seems like an ideal fit. He’s been an aerospace engineer at NASA since 2004, working on the guidance, navigation and flight controls for space shuttle missions. He’s currently in his fourth year of a Ph.D. in planetary science at the University of Central Florida, and still works part-time with NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on various projects, including consulting with SpaceX. Even though he knows going to Mars is significantly harder than going to the moon, Hatcher holds out hope that the combination of private industry, current technology and innovations on the near horizon can get us there.
“I've heard stories that Werner von Braun and many engineers at NASA were ready to go to Mars in the '70s with Apollo technology, and I feel pretty certain that they would have solved all the major technological hurdles the same way they did for going to the moon,” Hatcher wrote in an email. “That is, if they had been given the budget to do so.”
Needed: Green To Get To Red Planet
NASA’s budget has taken a nosedive from the highs of shooting for the moon in the 1960s. In 1966, NASA was funded to the tune of almost 4.5 percent of the federal budget and nearly .8 percent of U.S. gross domestic product [PDF]; today the space agency commands just around .5 percent of the federal budget and .1 percent of GDP.
Estimates for a manned Mars mission usually balloon into the hundreds of billions of dollars, sometimes as high as $500 billion. For comparison, NASA’s Curiosity rover came with a price tag of $2.5 billion.
But maybe a leaner organization, free from federal bureaucracy, can do it for less. Mars One thinks that getting its first four colonists to their new home will take about $6 billion, with an additional $4 billion for every subsequent manned mission. The company hopes to fund the mission through a combination ofsponsorships, crowdfunding (an IndieGoGo campaign is currently under way, seeking $400,000 to pay for the SSTL and Lockheed Martin mission concept studies), exclusive partnerships and broadcasting rights. Lansdorp has frequently talked of turning the mission – from candidate selection to landing, and beyond – into a reality television show.
“This will be one of the biggest events in human history,” Lansdorp told the New York Times last March. “We are talking about creating a major media spectacle, much bigger than the moon landings or the Olympics, and with huge potential for revenues coming from TV rights and sponsorships.”
Even just $6 billion might be a bit of a tall order for a media event. Lansdorp has pointed to reports from the International Olympic Committee showing that the winter and summer Olympics brought in $3.9 billion in revenue from broadcast rights alone from 2009 to 2012. In 2008, “American Idol,” the most profitable show of the past several years, generated $903 million in advertising revenue for Fox Broadcasting, according to the New York Times. One of the highest-grossing concert series in history, the Rolling Stones’ 2005–2007 “A Bigger Bang” tour, raked in just over $558 million in box office gross. The 2013 Super Bowl raked in around $976 million in advertising revenue.
Can a Mars reality show be bigger than the Super Bowl, the Olympics and “American Idol” combined? In that light, more than a few comedian Marstronaut candidates might come in handy.
Expectations Of Radiation
One of the great dangers of space exploration is radiation emanating from the sun and other sources. Radiation can shred DNA molecules and lead to a variety of diseases, including cancers. Sudden, intense radiation exposure could poison a space traveler.
Last September, NASA Chief Astronaut Robert Behnken told a National Academy of Sciences committee that the problem of potentially lethal levels of space radiation was “the elephant in the room” for any manned Mars mission, according to USA Today.
“We were very surprised to see this was one of the messages of NASA,” Lansdorp says. “Radiation is not one of main issues for human missions to Mars.”
Lansdorp argued as much in an op-ed piece for Space.com last July. A recent analysis of radiation measurements by the Curiosity rover published in the journal Science bolsters Lansdorp’s case: In that paper, researchers estimated that a two-way journey to Mars, coupled with a 500-day stay on the planet, would expose astronauts to just over 1,000 millisieverts of radiation. That’s slightly higher than the current recommended limits, but more manageable, the authors say. And it may be that a certain elevated amount of danger will just have to be expected for a Mars mission.
“Certainly, interplanetary travel is going to knock some years off of the life expectancy of any crew we send there, but there are some countermeasures available,” Bos says.
Astronauts might be able to take supplements to minimize the effects of radiation exposure, and the transit vehicle may be designed to shield the astronauts as best as possible. During solar flares and other cosmic events when the danger for radiation exposure is highest, the crew may retreat to a special inner component of the spacecraft, inside a hollow water tank, designed for maximum protection. And once on Mars, the colonists would be protected partially by the Martian atmosphere but mostly by their habitats, which would be covered by a protective layer of soil.
Hatcher points out that Mars One estimates a 210-day trip to Mars will expose the astronauts to a maximum of about 450 millisieverts of radiation. NASA limits its astronauts to a career radiation exposure associated with a 3 percent increase in the risk for fatal cancer; this can correspond to anything between 1,000 millisieverts for a 25-year-old female to 4,000 millisieverts for a 55-year-old male. [PDF]
“Admittedly, data is lacking on a human taking that kind of dose in that amount of time, so Mars One astronauts will be pioneers in more ways than one,” Hatcher says.
Adjusting To A New Life On Mars
The would-be Mars One colonists think that they’ll be too busy to have time for boredom or cabin fever.
“With the constant repairs, maintenance, exercise, communication, scheduled experiments and window-gazing, I've never met an astronaut who undertook an expedition on the ISS that claimed to have been bored for a single moment,” Hatcher says. “I can imagine a Mars colony would be much the same.”
The list of things that potential colonists would miss is long: friends and family; fresh fruits and vegetables; eating in a restaurant; traveling to new cities and camping in new wildernesses; concerts; and more. Even just the ability to walk outside and breathe deeply without the aid of a life support system.
“As often as we forget it, we already live in paradise,” Hatcher says. “Such a realization could only grow greater with each passing day on Mars. My hope is that appreciation for the rare privilege of a life on Mars would grow to match any remorse for leaving Earth.”
A major technology company is claiming responsibility for sightings of an unidentified flying object in Eastern Kentucky.
Dozens of people in the region reported a strange object in the sky in October 2012.
But Google officials now say they were simply test-flying a new piece of technology.
It's called Project Loon, a Google initiative aimed at providing wireless internet access from a balloon 65,000 feet above the Earth.
Google officials told Wired magazine the mysterious object seen by folks in Eastern Kentucky is actually one of their balloons.
"Project Loon works by putting up a whole bunch of small, relatively inexpensive balloons that circle the earth in a band and beam the internet to the ground," the project's chief technical architect, Richard DeVaul, said in a video interview provided by the company.
But astronomer Allen Epling, whose photographs and videos of the UFO floating in the sky have garnered worldwide fame, is skeptical about Google's story.
"My reports that I've received of this object being seen more than a year ago doesn't fit with Google's press release that they began that project this year," said Epling, who lives in the Pike County community of Virgie. "I have reports of people who saw something similar to this two years ago."
The image Epling photographed and Google's image of the Project Loon balloon also look nothing alike, Epling said.
"It's still an unidentified flying object," he said. "That doesn't mean it's from space or aliens or anything else. It just means it's something that's unidentified."
