Lasers that put voices in your head

Via Physorg.com:

A recently unclassified report from the Pentagon from 1998 has revealed an investigation into using laser beams for a few intriguing potential methods of non-lethal torture. Some of the applications the report investigated include putting voices in people's heads, using lasers to trigger uncontrolled neuron firing, and slowly heating the human body to a point of feverish confusion - all from hundreds of meters away.

A US citizen requested access to the document, entitled "Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons," under the Freedom of Information Act a little over a year ago. There is no evidence that any of the technologies mentioned in the 10-year-old report have been developed since the time it was written.

The report explained several types of non-lethal laser applications, including microwave hearing, disrupted neural control, and microwave heating. For the first type, short pulses of RF energy (2450 MHz) can generate a pressure wave in solids and liquids. When exposed to pulsed RF energy, humans experience the immediate sensation of "microwave hearing" - sounds that may include buzzing, ticking, hissing, or knocking that originate within the head.

Studies with guinea pigs and cats suggest that the mechanism responsible for the phenomenon is thermoelastic expansion. Exposure to the RF pulses doesn´t cause any permanent effects, as all effects cease almost immediately after exposure ceases. As the report explains, tuning microwave hearing could enable communicating with individuals from a distance of up to several hundred meters.

"The phenomenon is tunable in that the characteristic sounds and intensities of those sounds depend on the characteristics of the RF energy as delivered," the report explains. "Because the frequency of the sound heard is dependent on the pulse characteristics of the RF energy, it seems possible that this technology could be developed to the point where words could be transmitted to be heard like the spoken word, except that it could only be heard within a person´s head. In one experiment, communication of the words from one to ten using ´speech modulated´ microwave energy was successfully demonstrated. Microphones next to the person experiencing the voice could not pick up these sounds. Additional development of this would open up a wide range of possibilities."

The report predicts that communicating at longer distances would be possible with larger equipment, while shorter range signals could be generated with portable equipment. Putting voices in people´s heads could cause what the report calls "psychologically devastating" effects. The technology might even allow for communicating with an individual hostage surrounded by captors, although this would require "extreme directional specificity."

With another weapon, electromagnetic pulses could be used to disrupt the brain´s functioning, although this technology was still in the theoretical stages at the time.

Under normal conditions, all brain structures function with specific rhythmic activity depending on incoming sensory information. Sometimes, the brain synchronizes neuronal activity in order to focus on a specific task, but the degree of neuronal synchronization is highly controlled. However, under certain conditions (such as physical stress or heat stroke), more areas of the brain can fire in a highly synchronized manner, and may begin firing uncontrollably.

The report describes a method for replicating this highly synchronized neuron firing across distances of several hundred meters. High-voltage (100 kV/m) electromagnetic pulses lasting for one nanosecond could trigger neurons to fire, disrupting the body´s controlled firing activity. Short-term effects may include loss of consciousness, muscle spasms, muscle weakness, and seizures lasting for a couple minutes. These high-voltage pulsed sources, which would require an estimated frequency of 15 Hz, exist today.

Another form of non-lethal torture described in the report is microwave heating. By raising the temperature of the body to 41°C (105.8°F), humans can experience sensations such as memory loss and disorientation, and exhibit reduced aggression. According to the report, humans can survive temperatures up to 42°C (107.6°F), at which time prolonged exposure can result in permanent brain damage or death.

The microwave heating technique was tested on a Rhesus monkey, where a 225 MHz beam caused an increase in the animal´s body temperature. Depending on the dosage level, the temperature increase occurred within a time of 15 to 30 minutes. After the beam was removed, the animal´s body temperature decreased back to normal. The report suggests the technique could be useful for controlling crowds or in negotiations.

While the investigations reveal intriguing techniques for non-lethal torture, the report does not mention plans for carrying out specific experiments or studies in the future.

The world's first time machine

From The Daily Mail:

They believe an experiment nuclear scientists plan to carry out in underground tunnels in Geneva in May could create a rift in the fabric of the universe.

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) hopes its "atom-smashing" tests - which aim to recreate the conditions in the first billionth of a second after the "Big Bang'" created everything - will shed invaluable light on the origins of the universe.

But Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich, of Moscow's Steklov Mathematical Institute, say the energy produced by forcing tiny particles to collide at close to the speed of light could open the door to visitors from the future.

According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, any large amounts of matter or energy will distort the space and time that surrounds it.

If the energy or mass is large enough, it is claimed that time can be distorted so much that it folds back on itself - creating a wormhole, or time tunnel, between the present and the future.

But Dr Brian Cox, a member of CERN and one of Britain's leading experts in particle physics, is highly sceptical about the Russian claims, calling them "nothing more than a good science fiction story".

He said: "Cosmic ray collisions in the upper atmosphere are far more energetic than anything we can produce.

"They have been occurring for five billion years, and no time travellers have appeared.

"Stephen Hawking has suggested that any future theory of quantum gravity will probably close this possibility off, not least because the universe usually proceeds in a sane way, and time travel into the past isn't sane."

Cynics often point out that if time travel was really possible, we would have been visited by people from the future.

However, Einstein's laws of physics suggest that time travel is only possible into the past as far as the point when the first time machine was invented.

Teen changes blood group, immune system

From the Toronto Star:

Jan 25, 2008 12:42 PM

Reuters

CANBERRA - An Australian teenage girl has become the world's first known transplant patient to change blood groups and take on the immune system of her organ donor, doctors said on Friday, calling her a "one-in-six-billion miracle."

Demi-Lee Brennan, now 15, received a donor liver when she was 9 years old and her own liver failed.

"It's like my second chance at life," Brennan told local media, recounting how her body achieved what doctors said was the holy grail of transplant surgery. "It's kind of hard to believe."

Brennan's body changed blood group from O negative to O positive when she became ill while on drugs to avoid rejection of the organ by her body's immune system.

Her new liver's blood stem cells then invaded her body's bone marrow to take over her entire immune system, meaning the teen no longer needs anti-rejection drugs.

Doctors from Sydney's Westmead Childrens' Hospital said they had no explanation for Brennan's recovery, detailed in the latest edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.

"There was no precedent for this having happened at any other time, so we were sort of flying by the seat of our pants," Michael Stormon, a pediatric hepatologist, told local radio.

Stuart Dorney, the hospital's former transplant unit head, said Brennan's treatment could lead to breakthroughs in organ transplant treatment, because normally the immune system of recipients attacked the transplanted tissue.

"We now need to go back over everything that happened to Demi-Lee and see why, and if it can be replicated," said Dorney.

"We think because we used a young person's liver and Demi-Lee had low white blood cells, that could have been a reason," he told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Rejection is normally treated with a combination of drugs, although chronic rejection is irreversible.

Only seven-in-10 transplant operations in Australia are successful after a five-year period due to rejection complications.

New sea life found near Phillipines

I particularly like the quote "We don't know what it is ... it might be something new."

From the Toronto Star:

Scientists discover rare species, including tentacled orange worm and black jellyfish, in the Celebes Sea

Oct 17, 2007 04:30 AM

Oliver Teves
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MANILA, Philippines–Scientists exploring a deep ocean basin in search of species isolated for millions of years found marine life believed to be previously undiscovered, including a tentacled orange worm and an unusual black jellyfish.

Project leader Dr. Larry Madin said yesterday that U.S. and Philippine scientists collected about 100 different specimens in a search in the Celebes Sea south of the Philippines.

Madin, of the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said the sea is at the heart of the "coral triangle" bordered by the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia: a region recognized by scientists as having a high degree of biological diversity.

The deepest part of the Celebes Sea is 5,000 metres. The team was able to explore to a depth of about 2,770 metres using a remotely operated camera.

"This is probably the centre where many of the species evolved and spread to other parts of the ocean, so it's going back to the source in many ways," Madin told a group of journalists, government officials, students and U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney and her staff.

The project involved the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and National Geographic magazine in co-operation with the Philippine government, which also provided the exploration ship.

The expedition was made up of more than two dozen scientists and a group from National Geographic, including Emory Kristof, the underwater photographer who was part of the team that found the wreckage of the Titanic in 1985.

The group returned to Manila yesterday after spending about two weeks in the Celebes Sea off Tawi-Tawi, the Philippines southernmost provincial archipelago nearly 1,130 kilometres south of Manila.

Madin said the specimens included several possibly newly discovered species. One was a sea cucumber that is nearly transparent which could swim by bending its elongated body. Another was a black jellyfish found near the sea floor.

The most striking creature found was a spiny orange-coloured worm that had 10 tentacles like a squid, Madin said. "We don't know what it is ... it might be something new."

He said it would take "a few more weeks" of research to determine whether the species are newly discovered.

Madin said the Celebes Sea, being surrounded by islands and shallow reefs, is partially isolated now and may have been more isolated millions of years ago, leading scientists to believe that "there may be groups of organisms that have been contained and kept within" the basin since then.

Brain-Eating Amoeba

Brain-Eating Amoeba Kills Arizona Boy

CDC: Cases Are Spiking In 2007

POSTED: 7:44 pm PDT September 26, 2007

UPDATED: 8:59 am PDT September 28, 2007

PHOENIX -- A 14-year-old Lake Havasu boy has become the sixth victim to die nationwide this year of a microscopic organism that attacks the body through the nasal cavity, quickly eating its way to the brain.Aaron Evans died Sept. 17 of Naegleria fowleri, an organism doctors said he probably picked up a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu.According to the Centers For Disease Control, Naegleria infected 23 people from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials said they've noticed a spike in cases, with six Naegleria-related cases so far -- all of them fatal.Such attacks are extremely rare, though some health officials have put their communities on high alert, telling people to stay away from warm, standing water.

"This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational water-born illnesses for the CDC."This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."

Organism Lives In Lake Bottoms

Though infections tend to be found in southern states, Naegleria has been found almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even some swimming pools. Still, the CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.The amoeba typically live in lake bottoms, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment. Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose -- say, by doing a cannonball off a cliff -- the amoeba can latch onto the person's olfactory nerve.The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up to the brain.People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers, Beach said. In the later stages, they'll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes.Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have been effective stopping the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said."Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," Beach said.Researchers still have much to learn about Naegleria, Beach said. For example, it seems that children are more likely to get infected, and boys are infected more often than girls. Experts don't know why."Boys tend to have more boisterous activities (in water), but we're not clear," he said.

Texas, Florida Report Cases

In addition to the Arizona case, health officials reported two cases in Texas and three more in central Florida this year. In response, central Florida authorities started an amoeba telephone hot line advising people to avoid warm, standing water, or any areas with obvious algae blooms.Texas health officials also have issued news releases about the dangers of amoeba attacks and to be cautious around water. People "seem to think that everything can be made safe, including any river, any creek, but that's just not the case," said Doug McBride, a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services.Lake Havasu City officials also are discussing how to deal with rare amoeba attacks in the wake of Aaron Evans' death. "Some folks think we should be putting up signs. Some people think we should close the lake," city spokesman Charlie Cassens said. City leaders haven't yet decided what to do.Beach warned that people shouldn't panic about the dangers of brain-eating amoeba. Infections are extremely rare when compared with the number of times a year people come into contact with water. And there have been occasional years during the past two decades that experts noticed a similar spike in infections.The easiest way to prevent infection, Beach said, is to simply plug your nose when swimming or diving in fresh water."You'd have to have water going way up in your nose to begin with" to be infected, he said.

Aaron's Infection Started With Headache

The Evans family lives within eyesight of Lake Havasu, a bulging strip of the Colorado River that separates Arizona from California. Temperatures hover in the triple digits all summer, and like almost everyone else, the Evans family looks to the lake to cool off.On Sept. 8, he brought Aaron, his two other children and his parents to Lake Havasu to celebrate his birthday. They ate sandwiches and spent a few hours splashing around one of the beaches."For a week, everything was fine," he said.Then Aaron got the headache that wouldn't go away. Evans took him to the hospital, and doctors thought his son was suffering from meningitis. Aaron was rushed to another hospital in Las Vegas.Evans tried to reassure his son, but he had no idea what was wrong. On Sept. 17, Aaron stopped breathing as David held him in his arms."He was brain dead," David said. Only later did doctors realize the boy had been infected with Naegleria."My kids won't ever swim on Lake Havasu again."

The CDC Fact Sheet on Naegleria

Climate Expert James Hansen Talks About the Brooklyn Tornado

From Wired News:

NASA scientist and Columbia University professor James Hansen is widely acknowledged as the godfather of global warming science, so it made sense to ask him whether climate change caused yesterday's tornado in Brooklyn. Responded Hansen,

No, you cannot blame individual events like that on climate change, as it was possible for them to occur even without the human-made changes to the atmosphere. However, it is fair to ask whether the human changes have altered the likelihood of such events. There the answer seems to be yes. Storms driven largely by latent heat, and that includes thunderstorms, are expected to become stronger as the air becomes warmer and contains more moisture. Global warming does cause just such a tendency.

Which is, roughly speaking, akin to what I said in my post, only less incendiary and much more scientifically informed.

In June, Hansen said a global warming tipping point is just a decade away. My fellow WiSci wordslave Steven Edwards wrote about that here. Hansen also comes up in this Wired News q-and-a with Elizabeth Kolbert, the New Yorker correspondent who two years ago wrote this soup-to-nuts series on climate change.

Freshwater dolphin possibly extinct

From the Toronto Star:

Intensive search of Yangtze River in China fails to find single member of species

Aug 08, 2007 04:30 AM

Michael Kahn
REUTERS NEWS AGENCY

LONDON–The long-threatened Yangtze River dolphin in China is probably extinct, according to an international team of researchers who said this would mark the first whale or dolphin to be wiped out due to human activity.

The freshwater dolphin, or baiji, was last spotted several years ago and an intensive six-week search late last year failed to find any evidence that one of the rarest species on Earth survives, said Samuel Turvey, a conservation biologist at the Zoological Society of London, who took part in the search.

He said the dolphin's demise, which resulted from overfishing, pollution and lack of intervention, might serve as a cautionary tale and should spur governments and scientists to act to save other species verging on extinction.

"Ours is the first scientific study which didn't find any," he said in a telephone interview. "Even if there are a few left we can't find them and we can't do anything to stop their extinction."

The team, which published its findings in the Journal of the Royal Society Biology Letters today, included researchers from the United States, Britain, Japan and China. The survey was also authorized by the Chinese government, Turvey said.

The last confirmed baiji sighting was 2002, although there have been a handful of unconfirmed sightings since then. The last baiji in captivity died in 2002, Turvey said.

The dolphins will now be classified as critically endangered and possibly extinct.

Incapacitating Flashlight

Via ABC News:

Soon cops' flashlights might not only temporarily blind bad guys: they might also stop them in their tracks by disorienting them and making them nauseatingly sick. When suspects turn away or reel, cops or border-security agents can nab and handcuff them.

The flashlight, which is being developed for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), uses a range finder to measure the distance to the target's eyes so that it can adjust the energy of the light to a level that won't cause permanent damage. Then it rapidly shoots out pulses of light from an array of ultrabright light emitting diodes (LEDs).

The flashes incapacitate a person in two different ways, says Robert Lieberman, CEO of Intelligent Optical Systems, based in Torrance, CA, which is making the device. The flashes temporarily blind a person, as any bright light would, and the light pulses, which quickly change both in color and duration, also cause what Lieberman calls psychophysical effects. These effects, whose effectiveness depends on the person, range from disorientation to vertigo to nausea, and they wear off in a few minutes.

It's not clear why the changing light pulses cause this effect, even though the effect has been well documented, Lieberman says. Helicopter pilots, for example, have been known to crash because they get disoriented by the choppy flashes of sunlight coming through the chopper's spinning blades.

The DHS is funding research on the new nonlethal weapon. According to a DHS press release, cops, border-security agents, and the National Guard could be armed with the new flashlight by 2010. The device is part of a larger effort to develop nonlethal weapons that can help law-enforcement and military personnel control crowds and riots, both in antiterrorist actions and in hostage situations.

The LED flashlight comes with a few caveats. The person being targeted could easily look away, or he or she might be wearing heavily tinted glasses. And the device would not be useful to, say, a security agent who is chasing a suspected attacker. "It is designed to be used on someone coming at you," Lieberman says. Also, the flashlight's effects are less during the day. But Lieberman notes that security agents will more likely face situations in which they need the device at night.

Glenn Shwaery, who researches nonlethal technology at the University of New Hampshire, says that authorities would use the flashlight, and other light-based "dazzler" technologies, to distract a suspect so that they can close in on him or her. "If you disorient or distract somebody and cause them to look away, then they can't focus on their task, which could be aiming a weapon at someone, or looking at a screen with sensitive information, or dialing a phone," he says.

There have been efforts to make dazzlers using lasers, but LEDs could be a safer choice. "Getting an eye-safe wavelength with a laser has been very difficult," Shwaery says. Because laser beams are energetic and focused, they could cause permanent damage to the eye. Shwaery adds that the new LED flashlight would be safe because it uses a range finder and adjusts the energy it throws out. "The ideal goal for nonlethal technologies is that they be scalable."

Researchers at Intelligent Optical Systems are now analyzing combinations of wavelengths and light intensities that have the strongest effect on people while remaining safe. They also need to make the device smaller and easier to carry. Right now, it's about 15 inches long and 4 inches wide. This fall, the team plans to test the flashlight extensively on people at Penn State University's Institute of Non-Lethal Defense Technology.

Holy batcapes! The age of the superhero suit is upon us

From The Sunday Herald:

ITS ROCK-HARD surface can take a full- on assault from a baseball bat, yet remains flexible enough to allow you to kick, leap and roll with perfect ease. Crafted from cutting-edge science, its unique molecular structure means that while providing armoured protection against crude concrete and even barbed wire, it remains light enough to allow you to run at high speed.

It sounds like the stuff of Batman comics - but the superhero suit is here.

Identified as a major breakthrough that could impact on every sector from the military to motor sports, the revolutionary shock-absorbent material d3o is taking the world by storm. Blessed with the kind of properties your average costumed crime fighter would kill for, it is being hailed as an invention with the potential to change entire industries and save real lives.

"It has been a battle against the odds to get this far. I've had to struggle against ignorance of the major players, work out of a back bedroom and beg, borrow and steal to keep development going, but I never doubted that it could be done," said inventor Richard Palmer.

"What we've developed is already being incorporated into everything from police body armour to protective sportswear, and the number of applications is almost infinite.

"At the moment a complete superhero suit made of our material would be a bit too heavy and far too expensive, but those challenges should be overcome within the next few years."

Speaking at an awards ceremony in London last week, where he was named the O2 X Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 in recognition of his achievement, Palmer told the Sunday Herald of a torturous invention process which saw him laughed at and driven to the edge of ruin.

In a nutshell, d3o is an advanced polymer with an intelligent molecular structure that flows with you as you move but, when shocked, locks together to become rigid enough to absorb impact energy. In its simplest form, it is like an automatic knee-pad that can be sown seamlessly into a pair of jeans.

Yet when former DuPont scientist Palmer approached the world's largest polymer companies with his invention, they said it was impossible. Despite his evidence, several key industry boffins refused to believe such a fabric could ever be successfully manufactured.

"I stood there telling them that I'd already done this, but they outright refused to entertain the possibility. Were they calling me a liar? A fool? I really don't know, but I was frustrated, furious and appalled by the lack of imagination that commercial science exhibited."

In 1999 Palmer sold his house and car, moved into a friend's spare bedroom and did it himself. Providing funding out of his own pocket, he kick-started the process in a garage lab, calling in academic help from friends where needed and pushing d3o to the point where it was ready for production.

Today the material they said couldn't happen is fast becoming a common component of cutting-edge protective equipment, with the d3o brand beginning to feature in a range of winter and motor sports products worldwide. It has been adopted enthusiastically by the likes of US Olympic ski team, the four-times Everest climber Kenton Cool and Olympic cyclist Craig McClean. Industry observers predict the miracle cloth could be earning annual global revenues of $2 billion within five years.

"The hardest part now is keeping focused. Every day brings fresh enquiries about potential new applications for d3o from airlines, police forces, and car manufacturers," said Palmer.

Presenting his award on Thursday, O2 director Simon Devonshire said: "Richard is an inspiration to anyone with a dream and the drive to realise it."

While he intends to continue developing and enhancing his revolutionary new material, Palmer's Brighton-based development lab team has already produced a range of other products. They include a rigid Frisbee that folds like a soft handkerchief when you catch it, and the world's first bullet-proof wallpaper, a lightweight protective covering that absorbs and contains the deadly shrapnel generated when a projectile pierces most buildings.

"I know it must sound like we're trying to build a Batlab here, but I make no apology for that," said Palmer. "This is what science is supposed to be; something that excites the imagination and inspires the mind."

Arctic thawing faster than forecast

From the Toronto Star:


Melting of ice cap is three decades ahead of international science panel's gloomiest prediction with experts saying the problem could further accelerate global warming

May 02, 2007 04:30 AM

Deborah Zabarenko
Reuters

WASHINGTON–The Arctic ice cap is melting much faster than expected and is now about 30 years ahead of predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.S. ice expert said yesterday.

This means the Arctic Ocean could be free or nearly free of summer ice by 2020 – three decades sooner than the global science panel's gloomiest forecast of 2050.

No summer ice on the northern ocean would further accelerate global warming, said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Center in Colorado.

"Right now ... the Arctic helps keep the Earth cool," Scambos said in a telephone interview. "Without that Arctic ice, or with much less of it, the Earth will warm much faster."

That is because the ice reflects light and heat back into space; without it, the much darker land or sea absorbs more light and heat, making it more difficult for the planet to cool down, even in winter, he said.

Scambos and co-authors of the study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, used satellite data and visual confirmation of Arctic ice to reach their conclusions. They present a far different picture than that obtained from computer models used by the scientists of the United Nations-backed intergovernmental panel.

"The IPCC report was very careful, very thorough and cautious, so they erred on the side of what would certainly occur as opposed to what might occur," Scambos said.

The range of what might occur included a much later melt up north, or a much earlier one, Scambos said.

"It appears we're on pace about 30 years earlier than expected to reach a state where we don't have sea ice, or at least not very much, in late summer in the Arctic Ocean," he said.

Scambos discounted the notion that the sharp warming trend in the Arctic might be due to natural climate cycles, adding: "There aren't many periods in history that are this dramatic in terms of natural variability."

He said he had no doubt that this was caused in large part by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which he said was the only thing capable of changing Earth on such a large scale over so many latitudes.

Asked what it would take to fix the problem – the topic of a new report by the intergovernmental panel to be released on Friday in Bangkok – Scambos said a large volcanic eruption might hold Arctic ice melting at bay for a few years.

But he sees continued warming as inevitable in the coming decades.

"Long-term and for the next 50 years, I think even the new report will agree that we're in for quite a bit of warming," Scambos said.

"We just barely now, I think, have enough time and enough collective will to be able to get through this century in good shape.

"But it means we have to start acting now and in a big way," he added.

Experts may have found what's bugging the bees

From the LA Times:

A fungus that hit hives in Europe and Asia may be partly to blame for wiping out colonies across the U.S.

By Jia-Rui Chong and Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writers
April 26, 2007

A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States, UC San Francisco researchers said Wednesday.

Researchers have been struggling for months to explain the disorder, and the new findings provide the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause.

But the results are "highly preliminary" and are from only a few hives from Le Grand in Merced County, UCSF biochemist Joe DeRisi said. "We don't want to give anybody the impression that this thing has been solved."

Other researchers said Wednesday that they too had found the fungus, a single-celled parasite called Nosema ceranae, in affected hives from around the country — as well as in some hives where bees had survived. Those researchers have also found two other fungi and half a dozen viruses in the dead bees.

N. ceranae is "one of many pathogens" in the bees, said entomologist Diana Cox-Foster of Pennsylvania State University. "By itself, it is probably not the culprit … but it may be one of the key players."

Cox-Foster was one of the organizers of a meeting in Washington, D.C., on Monday and Tuesday where about 60 bee researchers gathered to discuss Colony Collapse Disorder.

"We still haven't ruled out other factors, such as pesticides or inadequate food resources following a drought," she said. "There are lots of stresses that these bees are experiencing," and it may be a combination of factors that is responsible.

Historically, bee losses are not unusual. Weather, pesticide exposures and infestations by pests, such as the Varroa mite, have wiped out significant numbers of colonies in the past, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s.

But the current loss appears unprecedented. Beekeepers in 28 states, Canada and Britain have reported large losses. About a quarter of the estimated 2.4 million commercial colonies across the United States have been lost since fall, said Jerry Hayes of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in Gainesville.

"These are remarkable and dramatic losses," said Hayes, who is also president of the Apiary Inspectors of America.

Besides producing honey, commercial beehives are used to pollinate a third of the country's agricultural crops, including apples, peaches, pears, nectarines, cherries, strawberries and pumpkins. Ninety percent of California's almond crop is dependent on bees, and a loss of commercial hives could be devastating.

"For the most part, they just disappeared," said Florida beekeeper Dave Hackenberg, who was among the first to note the losses. "The boxes were full of honey. That was the mysterious thing. Usually other bees will rob those hives out. But nothing had happened."

Researchers now think the foraging bees are too weak to return to their hives.

DeRisi and UCSF's Don Ganem, who normally look for the causes of human diseases, were brought into the bee search by virologist Evan W. Skowronski of the U.S. Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland.

Dr. Charles Wick of the center had used a new system of genetic analysis to identify pathogens in ground-up bee samples from California. He found several viruses, including members of a recently identified genus called iflaviruses.

It is not known whether these small, RNA-containing viruses, which infect the Varroa mite, are pathogenic to bees.

Skowronski forwarded the samples to DeRisi, who also found evidence of the viruses, along with genetic material from N. ceranae.

"There was a lot of stuff from Nosema, about 25% of the total," Skowronski said. "That meant there was more than there was bee RNA. That leads me to believe that the bee died from that particular pathogen."

If N. ceranae does play a role in Colony Collapse Disorder, there may be some hope for beekeepers.

A closely related parasite called Nosema apis, which also affects bees, can be controlled by the antibiotic fumagillin, and there is some evidence that it will work on N. ceranae as well.

FMARS

"This is the blog for members of the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) 2007 field season crew and support teams. Scientific reports, observations, and commentary will be posted here, covering mission preparation, the actual expedition itself, and followup after the crew returns in August of 2007."

They're blogging here.

Cellphone radiation killing honeybees?

From the Toronto Star:

Apr 16, 2007 06:15 PM

Canadian Press

A mysterious malady that is causing honeybees to disappear en masse from their hives in parts of North America and Europe may be linked to radiation from cellphones and other high-tech communications devices, a study by German researchers suggests.

While the theory has created a lot of buzz in the beekeeping world, apiarists say there could be any number of reasons why the bees are deserting their hives and presumably dying off in large numbers, including changing weather patterns and mite or other kinds of infestations.

What they do agree on is that whatever is causing the phenomenon, known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), it is playing havoc with the production of honey and other products from the hive – and threatening the growing of fruit and vegetable crops, which depend on bees for pollination.

The small study, led by Prof. Jochen Kuhn of Landau University, suggests that radiation from widely used cellphones may mess up the bees' homing abilities by interfering with the neurological mechanisms that govern learning and memory. It also appears to disrupt the insects' ability to communicate with each other.

To conduct the study, Kuhn placed cellphone handsets near hives and observed that radiation in the frequency range of 900 to 1800 megahertz caused the bees to avoid their homes.

But Brent Halsall, president of the Ontario Beekeepers' Association, said there are a lot of notions about what's causing bee colonies to dissolve like honey in a hot cup of tea.

High-frequency electromagnetic radiation from cellphones could be a factor, he acknowledged, but so could many other influences.

"Everybody's got their own little pet theory, but it's really hard to say," Halsall said from his home just south of Ottawa, where he keeps about 200 hives. "The bottom line for us as beekeepers is the industry in Ontario is already under a lot of stress because the bulk wholesale price of honey is below the cost of production."

There are about 10,000 beekeepers in Canada, operating a total of 600,000 honeybee colonies, says the Canadian Honey Council on its website. The majority are commercially operated, with Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba producing 80 per cent of Canada's 154 million kilograms of honey annually.

It's been a tough winter for Ontario's 150 to 250 commercial apiarists, who have lost about 23,000 of their 76,000 hives. Those lost hives, which at full capacity in summer house about 60,000 bees apiece, represent the loss of about $5 million worth of the industrious insects, he said.

"I think weather might be one of the big factors this year," Halsall said. "We had a very warm winter until mid-January and then, bang, it got cold."

From what he's observed so far in his hives, Halsall believes he's lost about half of his bees.

In some of his colonies, eggs had been laid and it appeared adult bees had been trying to keep the new brood alive in the face of the sudden drop in temperature. "There was honey inches away, but they probably starved to death as they tried to protect the brood."

Still, he thinks that whatever the causes of honeybee deaths in Ontario, and likely in the rest of Canada, they are different from those decimating hives in the United States.

In at least 24 states, bees have been dying in droves, with some commercial apiarists reporting huge losses, the American Beekeeping Federation reports on its website. "One lost 11,000 of his 13,000 colonies; another 700 of 900, another 2,500 of 3,500, another virtually all of his 10,000."

U.S. beekeepers estimate that more than one-quarter of their 2.4 billion colonies have been affected by CCD.

The American bee population had already been under threat in recent years from the varroa mite, a tiny parasite that devastated many keepers' hives and destroyed most wild honey bee populations.

While the varroa mite is also a problem in Canada, treatments to rid it from hives differ here compared with south of the border, and Halsall said his hives were virtually mite-free by the time winter arrived. Still, he and some other keepers have had huge losses in their hives.

"The bottom line is: We've got a problem in Ontario. There's a lot less bees than we used to have and we don't know why."

"It could be many different factors that are causing the bees to die or all of them together are enough to cause the problem and we just have the right set of wrong circumstances coming together."

Scientists Discover "Shadow Person"

From Cosmos Magazine:

by Erica Harrison

SYDNEY: Ever feel as though you're being followed? As if someone is behind you, shadowing your every move? It might be your ‘shadow person', created by unusual activity in a specific brain region, a new study shows.

The paper, published in the British journal Nature, describes the case of a 22-year-old woman with no history of psychiatric problems who was being evaluated for treatment of epilepsy. When a region of her brain called the left temporoparietal junction was electrically stimulated, the woman described encounters with a ‘shadow person' who mimicked her bodily movements.

"Electrical stimulation repeatedly produced a feeling of the presence of another person in her extra-personal space," said Olaf Blanke, co-author of the study conducted by a team of researchers from University Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland.

When the patient was lying down, stimulation of this brain region caused her to feel that someone was behind her. She described the person as young, of indeterminate sex, "a shadow who did not speak or move, and whose position beneath her back was identical to her own", according to the researchers.

When the patient sat up, leaned forward and clasped her knees, she felt that the figure was also sitting, embracing her in its arms - a feeling she described as "unpleasant".

During a language task, in which the seated patient held a card in her right hand, she described the person sitting next to her and trying to interfere with the task. "He wants to take the card … he doesn't want me to read," she said.

Because it was possible to induce the sensation repeatedly, and because the ‘shadow person' closely mimicked the patient's posture and movements, the researchers conclude that the patient was experiencing a perception of her own body.

"The strange sensation that somebody is nearby when no one is actually present has been described by psychiatric and neurological patients, as well as by healthy subjects," said Blanke. Until now, however, it was not understood how the illusion was triggered in the brain.

The temporoparietal junction is known to be involved in creating the concept of ‘self', and the distinction between ‘self' and ‘other'. According to the researchers, stimulation of this region interfered with the patient's ability to integrate information about her own body, leading to her experience of a ‘shadow person'.

Although the woman was aware of the similarity between her own movements and those of her doppelganger, she didn't recognise the experience as an illusion of her own body.

Similar shadowy encounters have been described by people with schizophrenia, as well as by healthy subjects, leading the researchers to believe that: "Our findings may be a step towards understanding the mechanisms behind psychiatric manifestations such as paranoia, persecution and alien control."

Shark disappearance threatens sea life

From the Toronto Star:

Mar 29, 2007 03:24 PM

Canadian Press

HALIFAX – The near extinction of several species of sharks is causing a dangerous ripple effect through the marine food chain, according to a new study that links their virtual disappearance to depletions of other sea life.

The report by a team of researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax has found that species that were once the primary food source for certain types of large sharks are undergoing a population boom because there aren't as many sharks to prey on them.

The scientists contend that the explosive increase in about a dozen types of smaller sharks, rays and skates has caused a cascading effect throughout the ecosystem as they begin to deplete limited nutrient sources and alter nature's complex food web.

"It's incredibly serious," said Julia Baum, who co-wrote the report to be released Friday in the journal Science. "Everyone knows that the oceans are being overfished and it's the top predators that are being disproportionately hit by overfishing.

"Because they structure everything underneath them in the food web, we may be drastically changing and restructuring how the oceanic food web functions and operates."

The report states that shark populations off the eastern United States are in an even steeper decline that originally thought. Using data from fisheries logs and research surveys from 1970 to 2005, the team discovered that the abundance of several types of so-called great sharks has dropped by more than 99 per cent.

The bull and dusty sharks are verging on extinction, while hammerheads and great white sharks are in dangerously low numbers, Baum said, due largely to overfishing.

The controversial practice of finning – slicing the shark's fin off and then tossing the carcass overboard – has led to precipitous drops in most strains of the large predators globally, the report said.

"What we're seeing is a higher risk of extinction of these species in these areas, and the term we use as ecologists is functional elimination," Baum said, adding that finning kills as many as 73 million sharks a year worldwide for an industry that supplies fins for soups and other uses.

"It means that these great predators can no longer play their roles in the ecosystem as top predators. So they're no longer controlling the species in the food web below them."

The researchers, including the late Ransom Myers who passed away Tuesday, cited a specific example of how the removal of sharks is affecting other species.

Baum, a marine biologist, said they have for the first time linked the decimation of bay scallops in waters off North Carolina to an increase in cownose rays, which eat the delicacy. Sharks feed on the rays, but because there are now so few sharks, the ray population has been allowed to grow to more than 10 times what it was a decade ago.

Cownose rays have wiped out scallop beds to the point that the fishery has been closed every year off North Carolina since 2004.

"This ecological event is having a large impact on local communities that depend so much on healthy fisheries," said Charles Peterson, a professor of marine sciences and biology at the University of North Carolina and co-author of the report.

Baum said it's not clear what the increase in the other species will mean for the food chain and the wider ecosystem, but it's likely skates, rays and smaller sharks are disrupting the wider natural order in oceans around the world.

The loss of the bay scallop has already caused disruptions to seagrass, an important habitat for other marine life, because rays plow through the growth in search of scallops. Rays may also be inhibiting the recovery of oysters, hard clams and soft-shell clams.

Ken Frank, a fisheries scientist with the federal Fisheries Department, said the findings add to what he had discovered in an earlier research paper that looked at how the disappearance of cod affected the food chain.

Frank, whose study was published in Science in 2005, found that the collapse of cod and other large species led to a cascade effect. As the number of large predators declined dramatically, the fish they preyed on – herring, capelin, shrimp and snow crab – experienced a population explosion.

"There are interdependencies among the species, and when you cause these imbalances, you're going to get some effect elsewhere," he said from his office in Halifax.

"For many decades, it was thought this type of cascade effect was possible only in simplified systems like ponds, so seeing this occur in the marine system is alarming. It means we're modifying the way energy is flowing through these systems."

This latest scientific paper follows groundbreaking research Myers and Baum did in 2003 that found shark populations in the Atlantic had plunged dramatically since the mid-1980s.

"We know better now why sharks matter," Baum said. "Keeping top predators is critical for sustaining the health of the ocean."

Mystery illness devastates honeybee colonies

From New Scientist:

• 12:31 14 February 2007
• NewScientist.com news service
• Roxanne Khamsi

A mysterious illness is devastating honeybee populations across the US from California to Florida, claiming up to 80% of colonies in some areas. The losses of honeybees could disrupt the pollination of food crops, researchers warn.

Beekeepers are finding once-healthy colonies abandoned just a few days later, says Jerry Bromenshank, at the University of Montana at Missoula and Bee Alert Technology, a company monitoring the problem: “In most cases the only one left is the queen, along with a few young bees.”

The absence of dead bees makes it difficult to know what ails them and where they have gone. Furthermore, experts cannot track the spread of the mysterious illness. “The problem is that it strikes out of the blue,” says Bromenshank.

At a loss for an explanation, researchers have referred to the honeybee decline as “colony collapse disorder”. Reports of the problem have intensified in recent weeks and spanned 22 states, but some beekeepers say that they began seeing their colonies decline almost two years ago.

Almonds and apples

Researchers say colony collapse disorder might be a re-emergence of a similarly mysterious illness that struck US honeybees in the 1960s. Experts never pinpointed the cause behind that previous bee crisis, according to Bromenshank. He notes that in light of this some people have jokingly termed the problem the “disappearing-disappearing illness”.

But beekeepers and farmers see no humour in the potential economic costs of drastic honeybee decline. Almond crops are immediately vulnerable because they rely on honeybee pollination at this time of year. And the insect decline could potentially affect other crops later in the year, such as apples and blueberries.

Bromenshank speculates that dry conditions in the autumn reduced the natural food supply of the honeybees, making them more vulnerable to some sort of virus – such as deformed wing virus – or fungal infection. He notes that the abandoned colonies are not repopulated by other honeybees or insects for at least a few weeks. This, he says, is consistent with the presence of toxic fungal residues from the dying bees that repel other insects from re-inhabiting the colony.

Other scientists have tentatively blamed the problem on pesticides or chemicals specifically designed to control mites in bee colonies.

--

This seems related to colony collapse disorder, which has struck before.

The phrase of the day is "Feraliminal Lycanthropizer"

Great article on the Fortean Times website about sonic weapons -- loads of interesting material pertaining to military applications, ghost hunting and behavior modification, but I was struck by this passage in particular:

"The link between periods of insanity and exposure to specific infrasound frequencies forms the basis for the ‘Feraliminal Lycanthropizer’, a device claimed to stimulate atavistic animality, sexual excitement, and a loss of inhibitions in its target. As described in an essay published in Dainty Viscera magazine, the Feraliminal Lycanthropizer creates two infrasound frequencies – 3Hz and 9Hz – which, combined, generate a lower, third frequency of 0.56Hz. The machine also uses a combination of four subliminal, looped, audio tape recordings – playing both forwards and backwards – outside the normal audible pitch."

Freaky.

Soft Body Armour

From Wired News:

Think of things that can protect you against knives and bullets. Kevlar? Yes. Steel plates? Sure. Pancake syrup?! Probably not high on your list. Well, prison guards and other uniformed types may soon be armored with viscous stuff that would make Mrs. Butterworth proud.

The material, a mix of liquid polymers and silica (tiny sandlike particles), is called shear thickening fluid. Left alone, it’s a free-flowing goo; when something hits it at high velocity, the bits cluster into a rigid barrier. After the force of impact dissipates, it reverts to a gel. Protective-gear maker Armor Holdings is integrating STF into bullet-proof vests. That means fewer layers of anti-ballistic fabric, making them lighter, more comfortable, and cheaper. The company aims to start selling to prisons later this year. Other perilous pursuits will soon benefit as well: British startup d3o Lab is rolling out STF-enhanced ski wear, skateboard shoes, and goalie gloves. Whether you’re in Sun Valley or San Quentin, Mrs. Butterworth’s got your back.

Depatterning

From the Toronto Star:

Brainwashed `guinea pig' seeks more damages
Canadian victim of CIA experiment in '50s tries to launch class-action suit against Ottawa

January 08, 2007

Dene Moore
CANADIAN PRESS

MONTREAL–Janine Huard says she was a young mother of four with mild post-partum depression when she checked herself in for psychiatric treatment at a Montreal hospital more than five decades ago.

Huard says what happened after that still haunts her today and she will be in a federal courtroom this week seeking to launch a class-action lawsuit against the Canadian government for Cold War-era brainwashing experiments carried out on her and hundreds of other patients.

"I was a guinea pig," she said.

On and off for more than a decade at McGill University's renowned Allan Memorial Institute, Huard says she received massive electroshocks and was fed more than 40 experimental pills a day.

Huard, who will be 79 at the end of the month, says she was drugged and subjected to so-called "depatterning," during which repetitive recordings were played in her ear for weeks on end, one of them telling her she was of no use to her family.

"I came out of there so sick that my mother had to live with me for 10 years," Huard says. She says she lost memories and suffered from migraines.

The ordeal came at the hands of Dr. Ewan Cameron, an Edinburgh-educated, New York-based doctor who pioneered "psychic driving," by which he believed he could erase the memories of patients and rebuild their psyches without psychiatric defect.

The idea intrigued the CIA, which recruited Cameron to experiment with mind control techniques beginning in 1950. The McGill experiments were jointly funded by the CIA and the Canadian government.

Cameron gave patients LSD and subjected them to the massive and multiple electroshock treatments. Some underwent sleep deprivation or total sensory deprivation. Others were kept in drug-induced comas for months while speakers under their pillows broadcast messages for up to 16 hours a day.

The CIA eventually settled a class-action lawsuit by test subjects, including Huard.

The allegations have not been proven in court. A federal court hearing is scheduled to begin Wednesday to decide whether to approve a class-action suit.

In 1994, 77 of the mostly unwitting Canadian patients were awarded $100,000 each from the federal government, but only those who suffered "total depatterning," meaning they were rendered to a childlike state.

More than 250 others were denied compensation. In 2004, a federal appeal court overruled that decision and awarded a former patient the $100,000.

Federal lawyers have argued that too much time has passed for patients to appeal a federal panel decision.

Have to look up more about this "depatterning".