Meditation found to increase brain size

Following on from a couple of recent posts in which increased thinking lowers the risk of dementia, and another detailing how the cranial vaults of humans have increased 20% in only 650 years, more data has become available, this time stating that meditation promotes brain growth.

But it's not merely the act of thinking that stimulates this growth - depending on the type of thinking that is input dictates the area of the brain that will respond - examples cited include musicians and jugglers. This also has relevance to ongoing neuroscience, also discussed here recently, where it will be worthwhile exposing selected young people to whatever it's desired for them to specialise in later in life.

image Rembrandt van Rijn Philosopher in Meditation 1632

Putin Touts Russia's Missile Capabilities

If true, the world has just become a much more dangerous place, in the face of weapons systems that cannot be intercepted. Although this is not to say that Russia has any has intention of unleashing them on the rest of us, once the technology becomes known, someone will be able to copy and manufacture them, and that someone won't necessarily be a friendly government or peaceful militia.

However, until such systems are demonstrated to be active and working, we won't know for sure if Putin's claims have a basis in fact, or whether it's a calculated announcement intended to give Russia greater bargaining power in an as yet unknown situation, isn't clear. Niether do we know whether the US or China have developed similar weapons, if indeed they exist, and are merely holding their cards close, and their enemies' intelligence agencies at arm's length.

image Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Weapon System

The future is all in your head

Informative article from the Telegraph, detailing the many and various ways in which our minds may soon not be our own any more, with unpleasant memories being over-written by others that are more to the liking of the individual concerned.

But part of the price of the promised improved mental and emotional well-being for all, may be too high for some, as neuro- science seems set to lay open our very thoughts and feelings that will be as easy to read as printed words on a page.

However, any disquieting news or anxious feelings can soon be allayed merely by pressing a button that causes an electrode in your brain to send happiness coursing through your system, enabling you to be cheerful no matter how dire a situation may be - funerals will likely become scenes of wild celebration, as the deceased lies there with a happy smile fixed forever on his or her frozen features.

image from daVinci Institute

Moon Is Dragging Continents West, Scientist Says

Article on research that seeks to prove that plate tectonics are are in part due to gravitational forces exerted on our world by the Moon, a theory that has unsurprisingly drawn criticsm from others in the field. The idea is apparently backed up by the fact that Venus and Mars, lacking moons of their own, do not show tectonic movement, although as I recall, Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos (meaning 'fear' and 'panic'), and there may in fact be some plate movement on the Red Planet.

South Pole Neutrino Detector Could Yield Evidences of String Theory

By the detection of high-energy neutrinos, researchers down at the South Pole are hoping to detect evidence of other dimensions, with the hope that quantum particles can be used to explore these thus far unseesn and unknown realms.

The problem they are trying to solve is how Einstein's general relativity describing gravity, equates with electromagentism, strong forces which hold atomic nuclei together, and weak forces arising from radioactivity.

To do so there is a need to study how matter interacts at extreme energy levels, far beyond any particle accelerator built by humans, but within the scope of a neutrino, a high energy particle travelling so fast that it passes straight through the Earth as if it wasn't there.

As with all similar experiments and research into poorly understood massive energy sources, we can only hope that the people involved know exactly what they're doing, and don't accidentally hit the Universe re-set button, or instantly shrink our planet to the size of a pea during the course of their work.

image cerenkov light cone

Blasts from the past could have kickstarted life

The quest to discover how life on this planet came into being continues with this latest research into phosphinates. These are formed out in space, and when the early solar system was forming, Earth could have been bombarded by all sorts of material, some of which would have contained these phosphinates, vital in pre-biotic chemistry.

The implication is that because it was so easy to replicate these exotic molecules in an 'extraterrestrial' experiment, the likelihood is that there may well be numerous other locations where life could have taken hold, so searching for planets with both water and phosphides present will help narrow down the hunt for other life around us.

image tree of life oaxaca

Iran 'must face Security Council'

Wars remind me of recessions - talk about the possibility of one arising for long enough, and before you know it, that's exactly what happens. For some time now there have been clear signs that the West wants to go to war with Iran, and probably Syria too, with demands being made of Iran that she stop pursuing her nuclear ambitions.

However in a surprise move today, two of Iran's most powerful allies, Russia and China have backed a UN Security Council decision to take her to task over what is considers to be a potential security risk that could result in the outbreak of total war in the Middle East.

At present the International Atomic Energy Agency holds a dossier on Iran, which the UN want turned over to them - although it's been suggested that nothing happen until March, which given the current situation seems like a long time to wait.

Predictably Iran is furious at this latest development, claiming there is no basis in law for being held accountable to the UN for what it claims is a perfectly legal nuclear energy policy, thus setting the tone for future confrontations over the issue.

It remains unclear how the other members managed to persuade Russia and China to refer Iran to the Security Council, as the claim that they had to present a united front to Iran sounds extremely unconvincing, and we will have to wait for further developments to see if this front retains its unity or splits into factions of dispute - at the heart of which lies the very real concern that a nuclear armed Iran would further de-stabilize an already dangerous region.

image uranium enrichment

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him

Grim though the climate outlook may be, it's not as sinister as the attempts by NASA to censor James E. Hansen, their own top expert on the subject. He claimed in an interview that NASA had ordered a review on all his upcoming lectures, posting on the Goddard website and even which journalists he had selected for interviews.

Hansen deplores this censorship, stating the public not only has a right to know but also a need to know, as the coming changes will profoundly affect us and our descendants long into the future.

NASA has a mission statement to 'understand and protect our home planet', but according to Hansen the agency has been putting undue pressure on him through a series of phone calls, which angers him as he feels official written proceedures should be adhered to, rather than NASA making up the rules on an ad hoc basis.

Stark warning over climate change

More doom and gloom on the climate front, as sea levels look likely to rise by 7 metres as the Greenland Ice Sheet melts away, though this will be a gradual process over the next thousand years.

The trouble is nobody knows how to stop greenhouse emissions from rising, although this factor alone is unlikely to be the sole cause of thr warming weather - we might just be living through a natural ice age episode, in which the world freezes over for the next few thousand years.

For a clearer and more concise picture, there is a report titled 'Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change', and a Radio 4 interview with Margaret Beckett, who opines that many will be shocked about the speed and irreversibility of the changes now taking place in our biosphere.

Brief communication: arboreal bipedalism in Bwindi chimpanzees

Brief abstract that suggests early bipedalism in hominids may have arisen as a better means of foraging for fruit in trees, by standing on thick branches and reaching up above their heads for more support from higher branches, or standing while reaching for more distant fruit - such behaviour has been observed in the chimpanzees who live in Bwindi Inpenetrable National Park in Uganda.

This goes against a long held theory that bipedalism arose because patches of open savannah had appeared around the time of the first hominids, and it was thought bipedalism would have been crucial to survival this new environment.

image from skullsunlimited.com

binnall of america : audio, Season One

The latest audio interview is with Melinda Leslie, and is available for download in two parts. She specialises in the field of covert intelligence involvement in alien abductions. She appeared recently at the X Conference in Washington, and here discusses her own background, becoming involved in the UFO field, from having long been interested in the paranormal.

Time changes modern human's face

There's something mysterious going on inside our heads that is slowly changing the shape of our skulls. Over the last 650 years, our cranial vaults have grown by a staggering 20%, which means if we keep up this rate of expansion we'll end up looking like those ubiquitous grey aliens people seem to keep bumping into.

Indeed it has been suggested in the past that the greys are merely future versions of ourselves, visiting us from the future for reasons that can only be guessed at. This article suggests that the cranial morphing might be because we are becoming more intellectual, though there's plenty of evidence to suggest the opposite could just as well be true, and that as a species we are devolving backwards.

For the study, skulls were examined that had belonged to 14th century plague victims, while others were retrieved from the 1545 shipwreck of the Mary Rose, all of which were compared to skulls from the modern day.

There is no picture of projected change of skull shape, but the future looks alarming, as we humans slowly hybridise into yet another disguise - maybe this is evolution in express mode, so unless we want to end up looking like the greys, we'd better start dumbing down with immediate effect.

But if this isn't evolution, and we are being changed by some external force, it might be a good idea to find out who or what is responsible, as a world wherein we all exactly resemble one another would be too poor to even contemplate.

Looking beyond Earth

Brief interview with former astronaut and Shuttle pilot Guy Gardner, who believes that space travel is just another expression of mankind's innate desire to explore,

Two Stars Kicked Out of the Milky Way

The way it's been written up makes it sound as if two celebs have just been booted out of the Big Brother house, but the truth lies somewhat more distant from these shores.

Two stars have been observed hurtling out of our Milky Way galaxy at a fairly determined 1 million mph, obviously with no intention of ever returning to our patch of the Universe - where they will end up or what will be their final fate is anyone's guess, but sooner or later they'll smack into something with a loud bang.

We can only hope there aren't similar stellar projectiles headed in the directon of Earth, but who knows what objects might be lurking out there in the depths of cold dark space, speeding towards us unnoticed, while an unseen clock is slowly ticking down our time.

Cracking the Neural Code, the Brain's Secret Language

There are efforts being made to crack the software, syntax and ruling systems that run the brain, with the ultimate aim of giving people the ability to upload their entire psyche into computer software thus allowing them to live eternally in cyberspace.

The search is on to discover how mere matter can be transformed into mind, though it may yet transpire that the brain and mind are two different things, albeit interdependent on one another while the brain is alive.

It's not yet known how such breakthroughs will affect us in the future, as our thoughts, feelings and dreams can be read and stored by those who seek to control others, meaning that a new and nearly unbreakable age of mind slavery might not be too far off in the future.

image neural network

US plans to 'fight the net' revealed

Article that reveals the US military regards the Internet as the equivalent of an enemy weapons system, and seeks the capability to take out every land and cell phone, every networked computer, as well as every radar system on the planet.

Worrying though that may be, if the US military are considering this, so will many others, which means that sooner or later we could lose the Internet, perhaps the last defining technological advance that has seen the birth of a sort of freedom never thought possible little more than a decade ago.

We almost take it for granted that we can get online 24/7, and access more or less everything we want to see (that's legal), and more of us derive a lot of our news and updates on the world via the Internet - to lose such an application now would be like sending humantiy to a kind of cyber stone age, where all communication over distance has to be carried out on a one to one basis.

NASA - SuitSat

Some of the Russian astronauts aboard the International Space Station have come up with the bright idea of using old space suits as satellites. Fitted with three batteries, a radio transmitter and some internal sensors, the hapless SuitSat will tumble helplessly in orbit round the planet for an unspecified period of time.

If you have an antenna and radio receiver, tune it to 145.990 Mhz FM, and you too will be able pick up its signal, though it doesn't seem as though there will be much apart form static to listen to, but it's the concept that counts.

Although they're claiming the space suit is empty, we can never know for sure that there really is no-one inside - gagged and desperately trying to yell into the microphone to alert someone down on Earth to come up and rescue him.

image man in an orlan suit

Pitt professor's theory of evolution gets boost from cell research

One of the main precepts of evolution has been the traditional view that living organisms change slowly over time, morphing slowly from one creature into the next in a continual process of adaptation.

This study on the other hand supposes that evolution is the result of sudden and as yet unexplained bursts of activity - it's noted that cells don't like to change, and only do so only in extreme situations - giving rise to the so-called Sudden Origins Theory.

image life in the precambrian

Neanderthals Hunted as Well as Humans, Study Says

Good article from National Geographic, although it may be a re-run of a story published earlier in the month. With each passing article relating the abundant similarities between early moderns and Neanderthals, the mystery of the latter's disappearance just keeps deepening - it's beginning to look as though they might all have been abducted and taken off world, or at the very least headed off to somewhere like the Americas - one of this blog's cherished dreams is to read the first article describing Nenaderthal remains recovered from somewhere way out west across the herring pond.

image man in a cave, georgia

Crocodile Ancestor Found in New York Museum Storage

Ghost Ranch Quarry has a nice ring to it, so it's only fitting that something spooky should be found there - in this instance, it's a two-legged crocodile with a beak, that walked upright, and no doubt terrorised it neighbours, some 210 million years ago.

Going by the somewhat incongruous soubriquet of Effigia okeeffeae, it was originally discovered in the fateful year of 1947, along with hundreds of other skeletons of other pre-dinosaur creatures that presumably all died together at a single instant in time, overcome by a namelessly complete and sudden disaster - it causes us to wonder what sort of creatures will be around 210 million years in the future - other humans digging up our fossil remains, or some as yet undreamed of fauna that will not see the light of day while humans are present on the planet.

image 'manhattan' georgia o'keefe

Research Finds Magnetic Bacteria Misfits

Another pillar of knowledge comes crashing to the ground, and this time it's magnet carrying bacteria that are to blame. It had been thought they used their magnetotactic attributes to discern between up and down, but now it's known they do not, although no-one knows why, or what they use them for at all.

image cryoelectron tomography of a magnetotactic bacterium

Use your brain, halve your risk of dementia

If you think you might be coming down with a case of heads-down, no-nonsense dementia, it might be a good idea to spend lots of time thinking very hard about its various aspects - in so doing you should be able to avoid going totally doolalley, at least according to the linked story.

image 'crazy alien' daveallsop.co.uk

Political bias affects brain activity

Leaving aside political bias, this article makes the point that people enjoy arguing, and the more so when the facts don't accord with their own point of view - hardly news, hardly worth reading, except for the knowledge that every day we learn about which areas of the brain activate under interpersonal duress.

image via optics.org

Sex before public speaking calms nerves

Completely pointless article that exhorts people like newsreaders to engage in sex with one or other partners before going out live on air - such activity is meant to have a calming effect on stage fright, but maybe they'd be better off rehearsing their lines and concentrating on the job in hand - we'll just leave it at that for now.

image from stage fright dir. alfred hitchcock

Britons unconvinced on evolution

Quite surprising to learn that only 48% of we Brits believe evolution should be taught in preference to other models that explain lfe on Earth, especially given the amount of evolutionary theory that's propagated all across the media - Richard Dawkins for one will be choking into his cornflakes at this latest rebuttal of his pet theories.

As for creationism, a high 22% of support was polled, which just outdid intelligent design at 17%, while a whopping 13% seem to have no idea at all, presumably of the opinion that everyone would be better off avoiding the topics altogether.

image 'don't know' from doublevision.com

Smallest Earth-like planet found

Using the technique of microlensing, astronomers have discovered a planet that's only about 5 times bigger than Earth - and it is now believed there may be many more such rocky planets, ensuring the search for an alternative place for us to live continues apace.

It lies 25,000 light years away in the constellation of Saggitarius, and goes by the name of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, but with a surface temperature of -220c, humans won't be colonising it anytime soon. The star it orbits is a comparatively cool red dwarf, which is about a fifth of the mass of our own Sun.

Lost treasures of Constantinople test Turkey's 21st-century ambition

Should you ever visit Istanbul, be sure to stop a cab driver and ask him to take you to Constantinople, it should be well worth the ride.

On a more serious note, it strikes one as incredible that not only is an underground rail system being constructed in one of the world's most active earthquake zones, but there are also plans to trash the old and recently re-discovered port that served the city from the the 4th to 7th century, in the quest to build a new station. However we are assured that the tunnel will stand up to a 9.0 quake, so no need to worry about being so close to the North Anatolian Fault.

Teams of archaeologists are frantically working away to recover as much as they can before construction brings their efforts to a halt - although there's an outside chance that the ruins could be considered as having World Heritage status, meaning that no modern building could be undertaken on that site.

So far at the site of Yenikapi, seven ships have come to light, including the first Byzantine naval vessel ever recovered, all apparently having been wrecked in a storm - in other parts of the dig, mosaics and ceramics as well as some human remains have been found.

Eating Ourselves to Death

Much has been written about the burgeoning problem of obesity in the western world, and this article makes for some pretty grim reading. The situation, according to the linked story, is particularly bad in the US, where freedom of speech laws allow the population to be bombarded with advertising for bad quality food from as soon as they are old enough to sit in front of a TV screen.

Diabetes statisitcs are soaring, with an estimated 21 million Americans suffering from it, with estimates that one in three children born there are likely to contract this highly preventable disease.

The problem is hardly helped by the fact that there are millions of people across the whole western world who have no idea how to cook, which means that many miss out on eating fresh vegetable or fruit foods - coupled with this is the sedentary nature of large swathes of populations, with little or no useful daily exercise being undertaken.

As we know, large amounts of ill people equate to big bucks for pharmaceutical companies, whilst there is little profit to be made if most people are healthy and well, so if you want to support these companies, keep scoffing the chips and slurping the shakes, as you snap up their shares.

Lots of skulls, no bones

In this re-run from 1995, Philip Coppens relates the mysterious story and background of the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull, which according to official sources was discovered in 1927 at the Mayan ruins of Lubantuum in Belize. Since that time there have been endless rumours regarding its true origin, manufacture and purpose.

It is by no means certain how and when it was made, although tests in 1970 suggested that with polishing techniques known at that time, it would have taken 300 years to achieve the finish of the crystal skull - for their part, the British Museum considered they had found signs that a wheel technology had been used to shape the teeth, suggesting to some a European hand at work.

There are many claims as to the supernatural powers that have long been associated with the Mitchell-Hedges skull, including a great deal of 'channelled' information that has apparently been obtained by several individuals.

Baffled Scientists Say Less Sunlight Reaching Earth

There are two types of cloud - high and thin, which makes for warmer weather, and low and dense, which leads to cooling. Up until now there had been a 7-8% difference between the two, but that figure has now jumped to 13% - high warming clouds have increased at the expense of the cooling, lower cloud cover.

This means Earth's albedo, the amount of eneergy reflected back into space has increased for the second time in 20 years - but the temperatures down here have not cooled as expected, leading those boffins in the headlines wondering what new properties of clouds they have yet to discern and understand.

image by nasa

Closer to man than ape

Chimps and humans have similar genomes and generation rates, leading to calls for chimps to be re-classified, moving them from the Pan genus to Homo. Objections have been raised, with enquiries about whether chimps would then become accountable to the laws of humans, with jails being filled with chimp malcontents.

In Will Hart's book 'The Genesis Race', it is suggested that humans may be some sort of hybrid, created from mixed alien and ape genes, many thousands of years ago and for reasons that are far from clear. However, he contends that humans today are the end result of numerous breeding experiments in the past - on a comparable scale, we can see today from the amount of different cat, dog and other domestic animals, how they have changed shape and form to a bewildering extent. The suggested parallel is that it is only with extensive and external influences that we are able to see such a wide variey of Homo species over a geologically tiny amount of time.

The fact that the chimp has essentially remained the same animal over the course of the last 5-7 million years might be a clue to ourselves as to how we as a species have undergone so many changes when parallel species have remained relatively or completely unchanged. It has been written elsewhere that if we do have an alien or extraterrestrial component to ourselves, the place we might find clues or a message is in the code our very own genome.

Old spying lives on in new ways

It's not often we stroll down the darkened corridors of espionage, but it's Monday and there's hardly anything in the news. It seems that a fake rock in Moscow was being used by British Intelligence as a dead letter drop, which was going fine until the computer inside went wrong.

It's not clear from the article exactly what happened, but one way or the other, Russian Intelligence found out, and created a suitable amount of indignant fuss over nothing.

Spying is one of mankind's most natural and favourite activities, no matter what scale of life is considered - as long as people attempt to keep secrets, rest assured there will be another bunch of people, who while trying to discover yours, are also covering up their own.

Indeed, a quick visit to the MI6 website suggests that although spying is not for the faint hearted, it is at the same time a goodly career any good citizen would be proud to pursue, and doubtless it's the same message with other intelligence agencies across the world.

Higher Education Fuels Stronger Belief in Ghosts

It would seem that the more informed and learned we become, so our belief in the paranormal increases - which will bring dismay to the hearts of 'skeptics' who argue that the more informed the person, the more likely they are to disbelieve in anything that cannot be explained by logic alone.

What the study doesn't show is how well educated the average ghost is - would this mean for instance, that the ghost of someone with less education would be less likely to believe in their own phantom existence - or can only those well educated enough in this life aspire to be ghosts in the next? Nobody knows.

Police, Army Robots to Debut in 10 Years

Despite the 10 years announced in the headline, the Age of Robocop is set to dawn in South Korea as early as next year, with police robots beginning to patrol the streets. The robots will be hooked into the mobile phone network, which apparently will reduce operating costs sufficiently to allow the mass production of this new menace on the streets.

Those Sophisticated Cave Men - Gobekli, Turkey

This link provides more background to the post below, and tells us that the recent findings aren't really a new discovery, but part of a wider context of artifacts that point to surprisingly old constructions, including the previously mentioned temple and a 13,500 year-old statue, which themselves tell a different story to the traditional view that civilisation sprang up in the Mesopotamian region several thousand years later than these sites.

German paper reports world's oldest temple is in Sanliurfa

News fom Anatolia, where German archaeologists claim to have found the world's oldest temple, supposedly dating back some 12,000 years, which they have provisionally named the Holy Hill of the Hunters. This is taken from Die Welt, a German language publication, has yet to be written up by English sources, and as such is lacking much in the way of detailed description or analysis.

Myth of the Lost Ark fuels pride of a nation on brink of war

For some years there has been a theory that the lost Ark of the Covenant is shacked up in a church building down in Ethiopia, and among those who have propounded the idea is author Graham Hancock.

However, a brief moment of re-appraisal should disabuse the casual enquirer of the veracity or otherwise of this unusual claim. For a start, there's no way that the various armed forces and gangs of the world would allow such a powerful super-weapon to be in anyone's hands but their own. Indeed if this were the case, the US and United Nations would not hesitate for a single nano-second in declaring Ethiopia to be in the possession of Ancient Weapons of Mass Destruction, with the result that an all-out invasion of Axum would quickly follow.

In fairness to Hancock and others there is a real mystery that appears to track the journey of an object of significance to Ethiopia, though what that will turn out to be remains to be seen - no visitors are allowed in to view whatever it is they have down there, and there is no immediate prospect of that situation changing in the foreseeable future.

None of which leaves us any the nearer to knowing the true fate of the Ark, or even whether it still exists - perhaps it was concealed or destroyed in antiquity by people who decided that such a powerful application could not be entrusted to the care of mere mortals.

UFO Sightings on Tenerife

Although ufology isn't very well represented on this blog, this caught my eye as I've recently posted something on the lost, or rather forgotten, pyramids that are to be found on the island of Tenerife.

This article mentions a mini flap caused by a few ufos that appeared in photographs taken there - in each of the three instances, the photographer only noticed what appear to be flying discs after the films were developed, but as with all such images, it's difficult to know for sure exactly what the anomalous images are.

The story also includes comments on the mysterious case of German psychologist Dr. Heide Fittkau-Garthe, who according to official reports had planned, with a quasi ufo cult, to climb to the summit of Mount Teide, in a bid to keep an appointment with a spacecraft and creatures of unknown origins. That meeting never happened as Fittkau-Garthe was arrested, and has since apparently vanished off the face of the Earth - maybe literally, if she somehow managed to make contact with those she had been hoping to meet.

image by nasa

Ancient lakes of the Sahara

The Sahara as we know it today consists largely of arid sandscapes interepsersed with the occasional oasis, but this has not always been the case. By using imagery gathered from satellites, arhaeologists have been able to discern ancient river channels, along with dried up springs and lakes, and in so doing have identified locations where humans gathered to sate their daily thirst for water.

They look in particular at a people known as the Garamantes, who for long periods managed to stave off the drying conditions around them by creating ingenious irrigation works that kept them supplied with water, until about 500 AD when their civilisation finally collapsed.

The Garamantes are also credited with a large volume of exquisite rock art, dating back to perhaps 10,000 years, which depicted scenes from many aspects of daily life, including more enigmatic work, as shown in the accompanying engraving.

image by acacus.it