Day: 06/19/2015

New paper explains what REALLY happens if you touch a black hole

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They may not be as deadly as we’ve been led to believe.

 

There’s a common notion that at the edge of every black hole lies a back door to the Universe – an exit from reality into a new realm where fundamental laws of nature, like time, no longer behave the way that we understand them.

What happens once you cross this threshold is a long-standing mystery that the world’s leading scientists have been pondering for decades with little headway.

Now, a recent paper presented at a conference in Paris this week has proposed a solution by looking at black holes in a completely different way.

Taking a novel approach to this age-old problem, the theory proposes that there is no back door to the Universe in the first place. Instead, black holes are impenetrable bodies, called fuzzballs.

Fuzzballs (yes, fuzzballs) are the new black holes

Samir Mathur, a professor of physics at The Ohio State University and sole author of the paper, says as you approach the fuzzball, your body will be destroyed but, oddly enough, you will not die. Rather, you’ll be transformed into a copy of yourself, in the form of a hologram, that is forever embedded onto the surface of the fuzzball.

Blackhole5NASA

Mathur describes the surface as a thin fuzzy region of space instead of smooth, distinct feature, which is how he came up with the name ‘fuzzball’.

When he first announced his fuzzball theory in 2003, it excited the scientific community because it offered a resolution to an outstanding paradox about black holes.

This paradox was originally discovered by astrophysicist Stephen Hawking more than 40 years ago and scientists have been attempting to explain it ever since.

However, Mathur’s original calculations didn’t conform to other well-established theories that describe the nature of black holes. So, he’s spent over 15 years moulding and maturing his argument.

Now, his latest paper has taken a significant step forward, suggesting that his picture of black holes as the holographic copy machines of the Universe, while bizarre, could mean that fuzzballs truly are how scientists should be thinking about these mysterious cosmic beasts to better understand their behaviour.

But some scientists are sceptical of Mathur’s conclusions. Although they support his novel view of black holes, they suggest you won’t survive your encounter with a fuzzball, at all, but suffer a fiery death.

The most extreme environments in space

BlackHole4 webNASA

What makes black holes so exotic is their powerful gravitational grip, which acts like a deep well in space, warping the space and time around and within.

Moreover, this grip has the power to swallow everything that passes too close, including light. This means anything that falls into the well never returns, which makes it nearly impossible to determine what happens beyond the edge of a black hole.

That didn’t stop Hawking from first attempting to find some answers in the early ’70s.

Unlike Mathur, Hawking pictured black holes with back doors through which material was pulled by gravity. So, Hawking began to explore what happens just outside of that door, moments before crossing over to the dark side for eternity.

What he found in 1976 from following the well-established laws of physics originally set down by Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac and many others, was shocking: Black holes don’t just consume material through their back doors. They also emit it in the form of radiation.

A pesky paradox

While this was a momentous discovery – the radiation has since been named Hawking radiation – it generated a perplexing issue, called the black hole information paradox, that scientists have yet to resolve.

BlackHole3 webNASA/ESA

But Mathur thinks he’s done just that with his fuzzball theory.

Hawking radiation is generated from whatever falls first into a black hole, according to Hawking’s theory.

Some of what falls in gets spit back out while the rest is trapped inside of the black hole, where it’s eventually destroyed and lost forever. This is where the paradox arises: One of the most fundamental concepts in physics states that no material in the Universe can be completely lost or destroyed, which directly contradicts Hawking’s original assumption.

Other than that small problem, the famous astrophysicist’s logic was fool proof. And scientists today, including Mathur, still consider Hawking radiation a plausible component of black holes, although it has yet to be observed.

Nearly 30 years later, Hawking hasn’t offered a convincing solution to the paradox he discovered, but Mathur might have. What Mathur has done differently is to think of black holes as a solid surface that has no back door.

Solving the information paradox

The fuzzball black holes that Mathur pictures are impenetrable and, therefore, don’t have a region where material can fall into them. Rather, any object attracted by a fuzzball’s gravitational pull will fall onto the surface.

Blackhole2Zhaoyu Li/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Misti Mountain Observatory

When that happens, a near-perfect copy of the objects is created in the form of a hologram. That hologram goes on to live on the surface of the black hole, while the original copy feeds the fuzzball.

“The original copy is destroyed. More precisely, the data making up the original copy gets transformed to a new form, which is data on the surface of the fuzzball,” Mathur told Business Insider in an email. “When matter falls on the surface, this surface gets more energy, and it expands.”

When Mathur was first exploring this theory at the turn of the century, his original calculations suggested that your holographic twin was a perfect copy of your original self. However, other scientists argued that a perfect copy was impossible becausethe universe tends to favour imperfection.

Mathur’s latest paper resolves this issue, showing how slightly altered copies could be possible.

From this, Mathur has managed to settle the black hole information paradox in two ways:

  1. By removing the exotic realm inside a black hole where information is mysteriously destroyed and lost forever.
  2. By explaining exactly what happens to material as it reaches a black hole and how all of it is preserved and none is lost.

“The fuzzball structure resolves this paradox; that is the reason I believe in it,” Mathur told Business Insider.

Strings of fuzzballs

To explain his assumptions mathematically, Mathur relies on a theoretical framework in physics called string theory, which suggests that all particles in the Universe are made of tiny, one-dimensional strings that vibrate and interact with one another to generate the Universe around us.

Blackhole1DrHitch/Shutterstock.com

(This idea is controversial since no one has ever observed a string. Still, string theory offers convincing solutions to some outstanding scientific mysteries likequantum gravity – also referred to as a ‘unified theory of everything’ – so physicists are reluctant to scrap it just yet.)

Mathur’s fuzzball black holes are actually giant, balled-up collections of strings. So, theoretically, when an object touches the surface of the fuzzball, its mass gets converted into light, generating a holographic copy of its former self. Other string theorists disagree, though.

Building upon Mathur’s logic, a team of physicists at the University of Californiaproposed in 2012 that anything falling onto the surface of a fuzzball would immediately be “burned to a crisp” and die. This group’s ‘firewall’ theory divided the scientific community into supporters of fuzzballs versus supporters of firewalls.

One way to resolve the issue would be a scientific experiment.

“It is hard to check the fuzzball structure explicitly by an experiment,” Mathur told Business Insider in an email. “One way would be if we could ever make tiny black hole in an accelerator like [those at] CERN.”

Particle accelerators slam particles together at near the speed of light, which can generate extreme environments that are similar to the early Universe. Whether the world most powerful accelerators at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) can produce tiny black holes this way is questionable.

Regardless, there is a growing group of scientists around the world in support of Mathur’s idea who are exploring different facets of the theory. The deeper they dig, the more likely they will discover the truth of fuzzballs.

Can yoga help you achieve work-life balance?

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As International Yoga Day nears, there is much discussion, debate, and even controversy about yoga. But what is yoga? First of all, it is far more nuanced than the typical image of a young lady sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, deep in meditation with a benign smile on her face.

Yoga is a Sanskrit word that means “union”. It simply means joining two things. For example, Rigveda Samhita 7.67.8 uses the word “yoga” when it refers to the yoking of the horses to the chariot.

The word yoga comes from the root word “yuj” which means “connection”. This connection is not just at a material level. What heightens yoga from a mere word to a spiritual discipline is the understanding of the word at a deeper level – the interconnectedness of everything in the universe. In other words, the purging of dichotomies is yoga. Bringing together body and mind, head and heart, ambition and satisfaction, or God and human is yoga.

Yoga is also a school of Indian philosophy, propagated by the great seer-sage Pantanjali in his work, the Yoga Sutras.

Therefore, it is beneficial to recognise that yoga as a word is different from yoga, the spiritual discipline is different from yoga, the school of philosophy – although they are related.

In today’s world, the physical aspect of the ancient spiritual discipline of yoga is often used as a quick-fix solution to achieve the elusive work-life balance. But let’s see what Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita about yoga: “Indeed yoga is not for one who eats too much or too little. It is also not for one who sleeps too much or stays awake for too long. Whereas, yoga destroys all sorrows for one who takes the right measure of food, is moderate in sleep and in staying awake, works in a disciplined manner, and enjoys moments of recreation.” (6.16-17)

Now this is confusing! If Krishna is to be believed, yoga is effective only after you have achieved work-life balance. But why is it that people around us who regularly do yoga, pranayama, or meditation seem to be calmer and more balanced? They seem to have hit upon this magic formula called yoga, and mental peace seems to be at their beck and call. If only we had those extra 20 minutes to try that meditation technique or join those yoga classes in the neighbourhood.

This notion falls under the cognitive bias known as “the swimmer’s body illusion”. (Of course, this is just a special case of “correlation is not causation”). According to this, we assume that an athlete’s body is muscular and strong because of her years of training. In fact, it is quite the opposite. She became an athlete precisely because of her naturally muscular and strong body, which only got better with the years of practice.

If a quick run-through of yogic postures or a meditation technique solved all our problems, then we would have more yogis around us than we could handle. One can do all the meditation he wants and yet be agitated (sometimes because he didn’t find the time to meditate).

This is why the Yoga Sutras clearly lay out an eightfold path for those who care to learn yoga. The very first step – yama – consists of following a few precepts like compassion, integrity, and keeping away from lust and greed. This creates the right mental attitude to start off with the next step – niyama – that includes rules like cleanliness, contentment, and devotion. Only then do we enter the third step – asana – which comprises various exercises to energise the body. The fourth step – pranayama – deals with various techniques of breathing. The fifth step – pratyahara – deals with controlling the sense organs and mastering desires. We are already deep into the inner journey as we go to the sixth step – dharana – which comprises concentration and the focussing of our cognitive energies towards one object. Only after assiduous practice of this single-minded focus can we move to the seventh step – dhyana – which refers to meditation. Then we go to the final step – samadhi – which is the perfectly balanced state. This is true “yoga” – union of the individual with the whole of creation.

Now this is not just confusing but also scary! The first step itself is so difficult to attain, so how can one go through this detailed eight-step process? In fact, Arjuna harbours a similar doubt in the Gita: “The mind is restless, Krishna. It is turbulent, powerful, and unyielding! Controlling the mind seems as difficult as controlling the wind.” (6.34)

Krishna replies: “Without doubt, O mighty one, the mind is restless and tough to restrain. But the mind can be controlled by practice and by detachment.” (6.35)

Arjuna persists. “What happens to him who is sincere but lacks self-control, when he strays from the right path and fails to attain perfection in yoga?” (6.37)

Krishna comforts him. “One who strives to do good never ends up in misery. Whether in this world or beyond, he never perishes, my son.” (6.40)

In sum, it’s great to see the enthusiasm around yoga and so many people attracted to this ancient discipline but one should be wary of thinking of it as an instant remedy to attain peace. While the popular aspects of yoga like asana and pranayama indeed play a role in invigorating the body and reducing stress, they will be short-lived unless we attain the right mindset to deal with the trials and tribulations of daily life.

That said, let Krishna’s comforting words stay with you as you move ahead in life. As long as you sincerely strive for that balance, you will attain it at some point. As long as you stay away from extremes, you always have a good shot at the centre, which is where you will find yoga.

References:

Iyengar, BKS. Light on Yoga. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966.

Sreekrishna, Koti and Ravikumar, Hari. The New Bhagavad-Gita. Mason: WISE Words, 2011.

Can fasting help you lose weight and live for longer?

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New research suggests that fasting could slow down ageing and extend people’s lives. What fasting diets are there – are are they a good idea?
The 5:2 diet could help against diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's, a new study has found

Fasting: celebrities do it to stay in shape

Fasting is in fashion. The 5:2 diet is now so mainstream that several restaurants offer special 500-calorie, three-course menus making it easier for those on the plan to eat out, and everyone from Benedict Cumberbatch to Miranda Kerr has used it to keep in shape.

But the 5:2 is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to intermittent fasting (IF) diets. There are all sorts of ratios and variants on core idea of dramatically restricting calories for a few days each week while eating normally on other days. And while this approach seems totally at odds with the traditional health advice we’ve always been given about eating balanced, regular meals, a growing number of scientists are saying IF diets can reduce our chances of developing some chronic diseases and may even add years our lives.

The most recent evidence comes from the University of South California,where researchers found that 34 people on a low-calorie, low-protein diet had a decrease in risk factors associated with chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

The new research suggests fasting can decrease your chances of chronic disease

This builds on a number of earlier findings that suggest fasting reduces blood pressure, increases cellular repair and metabolic rate, and protects against conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. And while it is not be a step towards eternal life, a 2015 study at the University of Florida revealed that fasting on alternate days increased the gene related to anti-ageing in human cells.

Short periods of starvation effectively mimic the eating habits of our ancestors, who did not have access to grocery stores or food around the clock.

It’s not without its risks and downsides, though. Dieticians warn that skipping meals can cause dizziness, difficulties sleeping, dehydration and headaches. Others are concerned it reinforces poor eating habits. “These diets can encourage a ‘scrimp and splurge’ approach to eating,” says British nutritionist Julia Harding. “They don’t necessarily promote a good understanding of food. People need to make sure they’re eating nutritious, balanced meals on their ‘off days’ and think beyond calories.”

As fasting continues to win new fans, the array of variations is about as dizzying as a day on zero calories. So here’s a round up of the key ones to know about…

The Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD)

In the latest take on fasting (and one of the few using human subjects), academics at University of Southern California have developed calorie-controlled plan that dieters follow for five days per month, eating what they like for the rest of the time. Consisting mainly of vegetable broths and herbal tea, the plan restricts calories to between one third and a half of normal intake (1,090 calories in day one then 725 calories for days two to five), which its creators claim makes it easier and safer than total fasting. The result? After three months participants had reduced biomarkers linked to ageing, diabetes, cancer and heart disease as well as cutting overall body fat.

The diet consists mainly of vegetable broth and herbal tea (REBECCA GRAY)

The 5:2

The best known of the bunch, 5:2 means consuming just 500 calories (or 600 for men) two days each week. You can spend your calories on one big meal, two medium meals (recommended) or three small meals. A 2012 study suggested that the 5:2 model may help to lower the risk of certain obesity-related cancers, such as breast cancer.

The 4:3 – aka the Every Other Day Diet

An update on the 5:2, coming from the doctor whose clinical trials sparked the craze a couple of years ago. Fasts are instead done on alternate days each week, omitting breakfast on fast days.

Juice Fasts

Swapping solid food for fresh pressed fruit or vegetable juices for anything from one day to a fortnight. Some are evangelical about it as a detox and weight loss solution, though many dieticians point out the body doesn’t need any help getting rid of toxins and criticize the lack of fibre and protein it provides. One of the most controversial and extreme forms is Master Cleanse, where a mixture of lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper is drunk six to 12 times daily, sometimes with the addition of a laxative tea.

Some doctors are very critical of the juicing fad (ALAMY)

 

Day On / Day Off – aka the DODO Diet

This diet demands three (non-consecutive) days a week almost completely without food. The night before a fast day your dinner must be protein and vegetables, then on a fast day you don’t eat at all until the evening when you have another protein and vegetable-based meal. Its inventor, nutritionist Drew Price, says cutting out calorie counting on fast days makes it easier to follow, and suggests dieters can expect results of up to 7lbs of weight loss in the first week and 1lb to 3lbs in subsequent weeks.

The 16:8 – aka the Wolverine Diet

So named because actor Hugh Jackman used it to get into shape for the eponymous 2013 film, it involves not eating for 16 hours a day – for example, from 8pm until noon the next day, or from 4pm until 8am the next day. Two healthy meals are eaten in the other eight hours.

Hugh Jackman as Wolverine 

Sixth mass extinction is here, researcher declares

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There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity’s existence.

That is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened , populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.

“[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great ,” Ehrlich said.

Although most well known for his positions on human population, Ehrlich has done extensive work on extinctions going back to his 1981 book, Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species. He has long tied his work on coevolution, on racial, gender and economic justice, and on nuclear winter with the issue of wildlife populations and .

There is general agreement among scientists that rates have reached levels unparalleled since the dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago. However, some have challenged the theory, believing earlier estimates rested on assumptions that overestimated the crisis.

The new study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that even with extremely conservative estimates, species are disappearing up to about 100 times faster than the normal rate between mass extinctions, known as the background rate.

“If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on,” said lead author Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autónoma de México.

Conservative approach

Using fossil records and extinction counts from a range of records, the researchers compared a highly conservative estimate of current extinctions with a background rate estimate twice as high as those widely used in previous analyses. This way, they brought the two estimates – current extinction rate and average background or going-on-all-the-time extinction rate – as close to each other as possible.

Focusing on vertebrates, the group for which the most reliable modern and fossil data exist, the researchers asked whether even the lowest estimates of the difference between background and contemporary still justify the conclusion that people are precipitating “a global spasm of biodiversity loss.” The answer: a definitive yes.

“We emphasize that our calculations very likely underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis, because our aim was to place a realistic lower bound on humanity’s impact on biodiversity,” the researchers write.

To history’s steady drumbeat, a human population growing in numbers, per capita consumption and economic inequity has altered or destroyed natural habitats. The long list of impacts includes:

  • Land clearing for farming, logging and settlement
  • Introduction of invasive species
  • Carbon emissions that drive climate change and ocean acidification
  • Toxins that alter and poison ecosystems

Now, the specter of extinction hangs over about 41 percent of all amphibian species and 26 percent of all mammals, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which maintains an authoritative list of threatened and extinct species.

“There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead,” Ehrlich said.

As species disappear, so do crucial ecosystem services such as honeybees’ crop pollination and wetlands’ water purification. At the current rate of species loss, people will lose many biodiversity benefits within three generations, the study’s authors write. “We are sawing off the limb that we are sitting on,” Ehrlich said.

Hope for the future

Despite the gloomy outlook, there is a meaningful way forward, according to Ehrlich and his colleagues. “Avoiding a true sixth will require rapid, greatly intensified efforts to conserve already , and to alleviate pressures on their populations – notably habitat loss, over-exploitation for economic gain and climate change,” the study’s authors write.

In the meantime, the researchers hope their work will inform conservation efforts, the maintenance of ecosystem services and public policy.

The Fukushima Cover-Up .

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Fukushima will likely go down in history as the biggest cover-up of the 21st Century. Governments and corporations are not leveling with citizens about the risks and dangers; similarly, truth itself, as an ethical standard, is at risk of going to shambles as the glue that holds together the trust and belief in society’s institutions. Ultimately, this is an example of how societies fail.

Tens of thousands of Fukushima residents remain in temporary housing more than four years after the horrific disaster of March 2011. Some areas on the outskirts of Fukushima have officially reopened to former residents, but many of those former residents are reluctant to return home because of widespread distrust of government claims that it is okay and safe.

Part of this reluctance has to do with radiation’s symptoms. It is insidious because it cannot be detected by human senses. People are not biologically equipped to feel its power, or see, or hear, touch or smell it (Caldicott). Not only that, it slowly accumulates over time in a dastardly fashion that serves to hide its effects until it is too late.

In late 2014, Helen Caldicott, M.D. gave a speech about Fukushima at Seattle Town Hall (9/28/14). Pirate Television recorded her speech; here’s the link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qX-YU4nq-g

Dr. Helen Caldicott is co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and she is author/editor of Crisis Without End: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe, The New Press, September 2014. For over four decades Dr. Caldicott has been the embodiment of the anti-nuclear banner, and as such, many people around the world classify her as a “national treasure”. She’s truthful and honest and knowledgeable.

Fukushima is literally a time bomb in quiescence. Another powerful quake and all hell could break loose. Also, it is not even close to being under control. Rather, it is totally out of control. According to Dr. Caldicott, “It’s still possible that Tokyo may have to be evacuated, depending upon how things go.” Imagine that!

According to Japan Times as of March 11, 2015: “There have been quite a few accidents and problems at the Fukushima plant in the past year, and we need to face the reality that they are causing anxiety and anger among people in Fukushima, as explained by Shunichi Tanaka at the Nuclear Regulation Authority. Furthermore, Mr. Tanaka said, there are numerous risks that could cause various accidents and problems.”

Even more ominously, Seiichi Mizuno, a former member of Japan’s House of Councillors (Upper House of Parliament, 1995-2001) in March 2015 said: “The biggest problem is the melt-through of reactor cores… We have groundwater contamination… The idea that the contaminated water is somehow blocked in the harbor is especially absurd. It is leaking directly into the ocean. There’s evidence of more than 40 known hotspot areas where extremely contaminated water is flowing directly into the ocean… We face huge problems with no prospect of solution.” (Source: Nuclear Hotseat #194: Fukushima 4thAnniversary – Voices from Japan, March 10, 2015, http://www.nuclearhotseat.com/2468/)

At Fukushima, each reactor required one million gallons of water per minute for cooling, but when the tsunami hit, the backup diesel generators were drowned. Units 1, 2, and 3 had meltdowns within days. There were four hydrogen explosions. Thereafter, the melting cores burrowed into the container vessels, maybe into the earth.

According to Dr. Caldicott, “One hundred tons of terribly hot radioactive lava has already gone into the earth or somewhere within the container vessels, which are all cracked and broken.” Nobody really knows for sure where the hot radioactive lava resides. The scary unanswered question: Is it the China Syndrome?

Following the meltdown, the Japanese government did not inform people of the ambient levels of radiation that blew back onto the island. Unfortunately and mistakenly, people fled away from the reactors to the highest radiation levels on the island at the time.

As the disaster happened, enormous levels of radiation hit Tokyo. The highest radiation detected in the Tokyo Metro area was in Saitama with cesium radiation levels detected at 919,000 becquerel (Bq) per square meter, a level almost twice as high as Chernobyl’s “permanent dead zone evacuation limit of 500,000 Bq” (source: Radiation Defense Project). For that reason, Dr. Caldicott strongly advises against travel to Japan and recommends avoiding Japanese food.

Even so, post the Fukushima disaster, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed an agreement with Japan that the U.S. would continue importing Japanese foodstuff. Therefore, Dr. Caldicott suggests people not vote for Hillary Clinton. One reckless dangerous precedent is enough for her.

According to Arnie Gundersen, an energy advisor with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, as reported in The Canadian on August 15, 2011: “The US government has come up with a decision at the highest levels of the State Department, as well as other departments who made a decision to downplay Fukushima. In April, the month after the powerful tsunami and earthquake crippled Japan including its nuclear power plant, Hillary Clinton signed a pact with Japan that she agreed there is no problem with Japanese food supply and we will continue to buy them. So, we are not sampling food coming in from Japan.”

However, in stark contrast to the United States, in Europe Angela Merkel, PhD physics, University of Leipzig and current chancellor of Germany is shutting down all nuclear reactors because of Fukushima.

Maybe an advanced degree in physics makes the difference in how a leader approaches the nuclear power issue. It certainly looks that way when comparing/contrasting the two pantsuit-wearing leaders, Chancellor Merkel and former secretary of state Clinton.

After the Fukushima blow up, ambient levels of radiation in Washington State went up 40,000 times above normal, but according to Dr. Caldicott, the U.S. media does not cover the “ongoing Fukushima mess.” So, who would really know?

Dr. Caldicott ended her speech on Sept. 2014 by saying: “In Fukushima, it is not over. Everyday, four hundred tons of highly radioactive water pours into the Pacific and heads towards the U.S. Because the radiation accumulates in fish, we get that too. The U.S. government is not testing the water, not testing the fish, and not testing the ambient air. Also, people in Japan are eating radiation every day.”

Furthermore, according to Dr. Caldicott: “Rainwater washes over the nuclear cores into the Pacific. There is no way they can get to those cores, men die, robots get fried. Fukushima will never be solved. Meanwhile, people are still living in highly radioactive areas.”

Fukushima will never be solved because “men die” and “robots get fried.” By the sounds of it, Fukushima is a perpetual radiation meltdown scenario that literally sets on the edge of a bottomless doomsday pit, in waiting to be nudged over.

UN All-Clear Report

A UN (UNSCEAR) report on April 2, 2014 on health impacts of the Fukushima accident concluded that any radiation-induced effects would be too small to identify. People were well protected and received “low or very low” radiation doses. UNSCEAR gave an all-clear report.

Rebuttal of the UNSCEAR report by the German affiliate of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War d/d July 18, 2014 takes a defiant stance in opposition to the UN report, to wit: “The Fukushima nuclear disaster is far from over. Despite the declaration of ‘cold shutdown’ by the Japanese government in December 2011, the crippled reactors have not yet achieved a stable status and even UNSCEAR admits that emissions of radioisotopes are continuing unabated. 188 TEPCO is struggling with an enormous amount of contaminated water, which continues to leak into the surrounding soil and sea. Large quantities of contaminated cooling water are accumulating at the site. Failures in the makeshift cooling systems are occurring repeatedly. The discharge of radioactive waste will most likely continue for a long time.”

“Both the damaged nuclear reactors and the spent fuel ponds contain vast amounts of radioactivity and are highly vulnerable to further earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons and human error. Catastrophic releases of radioactivity could occur at any time and eliminating this risk will take many decades… It is impossible at this point in time to come up with an exact prognosis of the effects that the Fukushima nuclear disaster will have on the population in Japan… the UNSCEAR report represents a systematic underestimation and conjures up an illusion of scientific certainty that obscures the true impact of the nuclear catastrophe on health and the environment.”

Eastern Puma Declared Extinct, Removed From Endangered Species List « Planet Experts

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http://www.planetexperts.com/eastern-puma-declared-extinct-removed-from-endangered-species-list/

Many of Earth’s groundwater basins run deficits .

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Consumption exceeds replenishment for majority of largest aquifers

DRYING OUT  Twenty-one of Earth’s 37 largest aquifers are dwindling, satellite data show. Redder regions represent overstressed aquifers that lose more water each year than they take in.

Climate and human consumption are parching Earth’s groundwater basins at an alarming rate, a new study finds. Of Earth’s 37 biggest groundwater basins, 21 now lose more water annually than they take in, researchers report in a paper to be published in Water Resources Research.

That’s troubling, says study coauthor Sasha Richey, a hydrologist at Washington State University in Pullman. Groundwater quenches the thirst of about 2 billion people, provides irrigation for crops and helps keep wetlands wet.

“People need to think about groundwater as an important resource,” Richey says. “We’re not managing that resource adequately, or even at all, in most of the world.”

 

How Often Do You Really Need a Mammogram?

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How much is too much? Many disagree, but with women’s best interests at heart.

A doctor checks a mammography machine scan with a patient.

Annual mammograms starting at age 40 may not be the norm anymore.

By June 18, 2015 | 9:00 a.m. EDT+ More

Nobody enjoys getting a mammogram, but it is an essential prevention measure against breast cancer deaths. Some experts, however, are questioning how often women really need mammograms to detect cancer and ultimately save lives.

Most women are used to hearing that they should get a mammogram every year starting at age 40. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in April issued a draft of mammography recommendations that greatly reduces that frequency, saying evidence to support annual mammograms for women in their 40s is weak. The USPSTF recommends women get mammograms every two years once they turn 50.

The USPSTF is a panel of independent experts that advises Congress, and should its guidelines be adopted, insurers would no longer be required to cover annual mammograms unless Congress mandates they do so. Since releasing the draft of recommendations, several groups have called the guidelines into question.

Traditional Wisdom

The American College of Radiology is one such group, standing firm on yearly mammography starting at 40. “Every major group with expertise in breast cancer care and the USPSTF agree that annual mammography saves the most lives,” says Dr. Debra Monticciolo, chair of the ACR’s Breast Imaging Commission. “From a woman’s perspective, this is the most important reason to have a mammogram – to decrease the chance that she will die of breast cancer.”

Screening mammography became widespread in the mid-1980s, Monticciolo says. According to National Cancer Institute data, the five-year survival rate of breast cancer was 78.4 percent in 1985. In 2007 it was 91 percent, an increase that is credited to annual screening mammography by experts like Monticciolo.

According to Monticciolo, the USPSTF has “no breast cancer experts on their panel – not one. This is a major failing of the task force.” She goes on to say the task force claims to be eliminating bias “but what they have eliminated is knowledge.” Even though the panel consists of medical experts, breast imaging experts are the best to assess breast imaging studies, she adds.

“I wouldn’t presume to review a brain study and give neurology guidance,” Monticciolo says. “Without proper expertise, they have been unable to accurately and completely assess the scientific literature.”

The New Analysis

To be clear, the USPSTF’s new guidelines don’t recommend against annual screening mammography for women in their 40s. “It’s clear that the value of mammography increases with age,” says Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, vice chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. “But women between the ages of 50 and 74 are the most likely to achieve the benefits of mammography with the fewest harms,” she adds, saying that screening visits every other year will still yield the same benefits.

That’s for most women – those with an average risk of developing cancer. “The decision to start screening mammography in women prior to age 50 years should be an individual one,” reads the draft. The expert panel also found adequate evidence that annual mammography results “in harms for women aged 40 to 74.” Those harms include stress and psychological strife from extra procedures due to false positives, such as biopsies or more imaging studies. The USPSTF says false positives are “common” in mammography.

“Our goal is to give women and their doctors advice for what frequency gives you the greatest chance of preventing death by breast cancer, while keeping negative effects and false positives minimal,” Bibbins-Domingo says. Women who are at a higher risk of breast cancer, including those with a strong family history, should consult with their doctors about more frequent screening, the USPSTF advises.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that exposure to radiation is also one of the main harms, but it isn’t. According to the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, dosages of radiation below 50 to 100 mSv are “too low to be detectable and may be nonexistent.” An average bilateral mammogram delivers only 0.5 mSv, or 1 percent of the minimum dosage for risk.

The Fight

One of the dangers outlined in the task force’s analysis is the sticky subject of overdiagnosis. “Some mammograms are going to detect a cancer that wouldn’t have caused a problem for a woman in her lifetime,” Bibbins-Domingo says. For example, a cancerous tissue detected by mammography that never would have spread, or at least not before something else took the patient’s life first.

“If that cancer is treated, then you have all the harms that come along with overtreatment,” Bibbins-Domingo says. That includes the often devastating side effects of chemotherapy, which is also expensive at an average of $80,000 to $100,000 a year.

Since it’s often difficult to predict the impact of cancer down the road, the prudent thing to do is treat it, or so many believe. “When we’re screening, we’re looking for very early stage cancer,” Monticciolo says, and the earlier cancer is detected, the better survival rates are.

Trying to estimate the percentage of cases that are overdiagnosed, or present no harm, is difficult without a crystal ball. The USPSTF calculated a rate of 19 percent – that is 19 percent of breast cancer cases posed no threat, but it notes that some literature suggests a rate as high as 54 percent.

Monticciolo says that estimate is “markedly exaggerated, which a proper assessment of the literature will uncover.” According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, overdiagnosis is somewhere in the 1 to 10 percent range, with a summary estimate of 6.5 percent. The ACR agrees with that number based on its evaluation of the evidence, Monticciolo says.

Despite that lower estimate, the agency agreed with the USPSTF that evidence that annual mammograms reduce mortality for women in their 40s is “limited.” The IARC is part of the World Health Organization, which released the same findings in 2002.

The USPSTF draft was open to public comment until May 18. After the panel carefully reviewed public comment, according to its websites, it is in the process of finalizing the recommendations. Once the final recommendations are released, many women could lose annual screening mammography coverage because the Affordable Care Act uses USPSTF guidelines to determine qualifying preventive care, according to the ACR.

There is one thing all experts agree on: Breast cancer is a highly individual disease, influenced by genes, family history and unknown factors. Talking with your doctor openly about the risks and benefits of mammography is the best guidance you can get, and annual exams are still covered as free preventive care – for now. “Women should always be aware of their bodies, and changes in their bodies,” Bibbins-Domingo says. And if something changes, make an appointment.

 

N Korea says has ‘cure for MERS, AIDS’

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North Korea claims it has produced a single miracle drug that can prevent and cure the deadly diseases of MERS, AIDS, Ebola, and SARS.

This undated image shows a website for Kumdang-2, a drug North Korea claims can cure a range of deadly diseases.

The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Friday that scientists have developed the drug, Kumdang-2, from ginseng and rare-earth elements mixed with very small amounts of gold and platinum.

A South Korean health worker sprays antiseptic solution in a village in Sunchang County, south of Seoul, on June 19, 2015 after the village was opened following two weeks of isolation for quarantine in South Korea’s MERS outbreak. (© AFP)

 

MERS stands for the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

Back in 2006 and 2013, North Korea claimed the same drug could cure deadly bird flu outbreaks. According to the pro-North Korea website Minjok Tongshin, the drug was originally developed in 1996.

The report comes as South Korea is battling a MERS outbreak, which has killed two dozen people so far.

Meanwhile, South Korean President Park Geun-hye has held a meeting with World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan on Seoul’s measures aimed at containing MERS and related cooperation between South Korea and the UN health agency.

MERS, a variant of the SARS virus, causes coughing, fever, pneumonia and kidney failure, but it does not appear to be as contagious as SARS, which swept the Far East and killed some 800 people in a 2003 epidemic.

The vast majority of MERS infections and deaths have been reported in Saudi Arabia, where more than 950 people have been infected and 412 have died of the illness.

There is no vaccine for MERS, which has a mortality rate of 35 percent, according to the WHO.

A deep learning machine just beat humans in an IQ test .

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I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.

 

For the first time ever, a computer has outperformed humans in the verbal reasoning portion of an IQ test.

The machine was programmed by researchers in China using a technique known as deep learning, which involves converting data into a set of algorithms that a computer can make sense of.

Until now, computers have been pretty successful at beating humans in two out of the three parts of a standard intelligence quotient test, or IQ test – the mathematical questions and the logic question – but they’d struggled to master the verbal reasoning portion, which looks at things like analogies and classifications. You know, those questions that ask you to find the word that doesn’t fit in with the others, or “Which of these words is the opposite of ubiquitous?”

This is where the deep learning comes in. In the past, the furthest programmers had gotten was to build machines that were capable of analysing millions of millions of texts to figure out which words are often associated with each other, essentially turning words into vectors that could be compared, added and subtracted.

“But this approach has a well-known shortcoming: it assumes that each word has a single meaning represented by a single vector. Not only is that often not the case, verbal tests tend to focus on words with more than one meaning as a way of making questions harder,” writes MIT Technology Review about the research.

The researchers, from the University of Science and Technology of China and Microsoft Research in Beijing, tried a different tack – they looked at words and the words that often appeared nearby in big bodies of text. Using an algorithm, they worked out how the words are clustered, and they then looked up the different definitions of each word in a dictionary. This allowed them to match each cluster to a meaning.

As MIT Technology Review explains:

“This can be done automatically because the dictionary definition includes sample sentences in which the word is used in each different way. So by calculating the vector representation of these sentences and comparing them to the vector representation in each cluster, it is possible to match them.”

This means that the machine is able to recognise the different meanings of words for the first time.

The team helped the computers out further by feeding them multiple examples of questions so that they were able to recognise the question type and match it to the appropriate answering strategy.

They then tested the computer against 200 human participants of various ages and educational backgrounds.

“To our surprise, the average performance of human beings is a little lower than that of our proposed method,” the team writes in arXiv.org, where the results were published. “Our model can reach the competitive performance between [participants] with the bachelor degrees and those with the master degrees.”

This is a big step forward for artificial intelligence, and shows just how powerful deep learning can be. The strategy has also been used to teach computers how to beat us at 49 old-school Atari games, recognise food calories from a photo and even cook by watching YouTube videos.

“With appropriate uses of the deep learning technologies, we could be a further step closer to the true human intelligence,” the authors write.