Posts Tagged ‘Emerging Issues’
Giant iceberg spotted off Australia
via Telegraph
The ice chunk, measuring some 2,300 feet long with an estimated depth of more than 1,000 feet, caused a stir when it was sighted by experts based on Australia’s remote Macquarie Island.
“I’ve never seen anything like it – we looked out to the horizon and just saw this huge floating island of ice,” said fur seal biologist Dean Miller.
Neal Young, an Australian Antarctic Division glaciologist, said the flat-topped slab could break into dozens of smaller icebergs as it moves in the direction of New Zealand, causing a possible shipping hazard.
“It’s rare to make a sighting like this – it’s certainly impressive-looking,” he said.
He said the iceberg had probably split from a major Antarctic ice shelf nine years ago, and said more could be expected in the area if global warming continues.
“If the current trends in global warming were to continue I would anticipate seeing more icebergs and the large ice shelves breaking up,” he added.
But Professor Jonathan Bamber, from Bristol University, said icebergs the size of Wales can break off the Antarctic and it is too early to say if it is caused by climate change.
Leading Experts Give Advice on How to Reduce Your EMF Risk
In the video below, ElectromagneticHealth.org founder Camilla Rees presents an overview of an emerging public health issue — excessive exposures to microwave radiation from wireless technologies.
Illness linked to electromagnetic radiation exposure include many cancers, neurological conditions, ADD, sleep disorders, depression, autism, cognitive problems, cardiovascular irregularities, hormone disruption, immune system disorders, metabolism changes, stress, fertility impairment, increased blood brain barrier permeability, mineral disruption, DNA damage and much, much more.
Multimedia Presentation on Wireless Health Hazards from ElectromagneticHealth.Org.
EyeWriter Source Code Released To The Public
This technology is pretty incredible. via wooster collective
The Eyewriter from Evan Roth on Vimeo.
Members of Free Art and Technology (FAT), OpenFrameworks, the Graffiti Research Lab, and The Ebeling Group communities have teamed-up with a legendary LA graffiti writer, publisher and activist, named Tony Quan, aka TEMPTONE. Tony was diagnosed with ALS in 2003, a disease which has left him almost completely physically paralyzed… except for his eyes. This international team is working together to create a low-cost, open source eye-tracking system that will allow ALS patients to draw using just their eyes. The long-term goal is to create a professional/social network of software developers, hardware hackers, urban projection artists and ALS patients from around the world who are using local materials and open source research to creatively connect and make eye art.
This week the team behind the EyeWriter project released all the Source code, free software, DIY instructions, and eye tags by Tempt1 to the public at eyewriter.org
Judge OKs Challenge to Human-Gene Patents
From Wired:
A federal judge ruled Monday that a lawsuit can move forward against the Patent and Trademark Office and the research company that was awarded exclusive rights to human genes known to detect early signs of breast and ovarian cancer.The first-of-its-kind lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law claims that the patents violate free speech by restricting research.
U.S. District Judge Robert W. Sweet of New York, in ruling that the case may proceed to trial, noted that the litigation might open the door to challenges of a host of other patented genes. About one-fifth of the human genome is covered under patent applications and claims.
[Read more at Wired]
Dollar Devaluation and the Working Class
From the World Socialist Web Site
There are growing signs of a major shift in world currency alignments. Since March, the US dollar has steadily declined, depreciating by 13.3 percent on a trade-weighted basis. Last week the decline accelerated, driving gold prices to record levels and prompting a number of Asian central banks to intervene on currency markets to slow the dollar’s fall.
Rather than warning of the implications of this erosion in the value of the world’s major trading and reserve currency, prominent financial publications and economic commentators are arguing that the trend should be welcomed and the long-term value of the dollar should be allowed to fall further.
Tamiflu In Rivers Could Breed Drug-Resistant Super-Flu Strain
Wired writes about a frightening discovery made by Japanese scientists: rivers around the world are being contaminated with Tamiflu, the premier flu-fighting medicine, as users excrete it in their urine.
What’s the big deal? Birds, who are carriers of influenza, are being exposed to the waterborne Tamiflu residues and might develop and spread drug-resistant trains of seasonal and avian flu.
If scientists’ measurements are right, concentrations of Tamiflu in natural bodies of water are now “high enough to lead to antiviral resistance in waterfowl.” And, Tamiflu contamination will only rise in the coming winter months, as seasonal and swine flu hit the population.
Will Tamiflu sow the seeds of the next great pandemic?
Machines Can Be Conscious in the Same Sense as Humans
Ben Goertzel, H+
This is a separate question from whether machines can be intelligent, or whether they can act like they feel. The question is whether machines — if suitably constructed and programmed — can have awareness, passion, subjective experience … consciousness?
I certainly think so, but generally speaking there is no consensus among experts. It’s fair to say that — even without introducing machines into the picture — consciousness is without doubt one of the most confused notions in the lexicon of modern science and philosophy.
Given the thorny and contentious nature of the subject, I’m not quite sure why I took it upon myself to organize a workshop on Machine Consciousness… but earlier this year, that’s exactly what I did. The Machine Consciousness Workshop was held on June 14, in Hong Kong,…
Brain Scans Will Reveal What You’ve Seen
Brandon Keim writes in Wired Science:
Scientists are one step closer to knowing what you’ve seen by reading your mind.
Having modeled how images are represented in the brain, the researchers translated recorded patterns of neural activity into pictures of what test subjects had seen.
Though practical applications are decades away, the research could someday lead to dream-readers and thought-controlled computers.
“It’s what you would actually use if you were going to build a functional brain-reading device,” said Jack Gallant, a University of California, Berkeley neuroscientist.
The research, led by Gallant and Berkeley postdoctoral researcher Thomas Naselaris, builds on earlier work in which they used neural patterns to identify pictures from within a limited set of options.
The current approach, described Wednesday in Neuron, uses a more complete view of the brain’s visual centers. Its results are…
Great power conflicts overhang G20 summit in Pittsburgh
As political leaders and central bankers gather for the Group of 20 summit of major economies, to be held today and Friday in Pittsburgh, they face the task of papering over increasingly open and embittered conflicts over policies to revive the world economy and prevent another financial disaster.
One year after the near-collapse of the global financial system, mutual pledges of multi-lateral coordination and rejection of protectionist policies proclaimed at last November’s G20 summit in Washington and the April summit in London are being overshadowed by divisions over economic policy. These differences correspond to the national interests of the ruling elites of the US, Europe and rising economic powers in Asia and Latin America—above all, China.
Russell Simmons: Twenty-Seven Million Slaves
Human trafficking, otherwise known as child labor, migrant smuggling, sex worker trafficking, debt bondage, or good old fashioned slavery, adds up to one inescapable reality. An estimated 27 million human beings worldwide today are living lives of exploitation and humanity stripped bare beyond the bone of basic human rights. This is a bigger number than at any point in documented history.
They are objects of ownership, forgotten as children in need of love, nurturing and protection; forgotten as flesh and blood creatures that bruise and bleed and are more than vessels for sex; forgotten as individuals with the desire for purpose and peace and protection from the violence and intimidation they face every day. If they are not a source of revenue for those who own them, they are a useless,…
Verner Vinge Again Says: ‘A.I. Will Surpass Human Intelligence By 2020′
Luke McKinney, Daily Galaxy: “It seems plausible that with technology we can, in the fairly near future,” says scifi legend Vernor Vinge, “create (or become) creatures who surpass humans in every intellectual and creative dimension. Events beyond such an event — such a singularity — are as unimaginable to us as opera is to a flatworm.”
“The Singularity” is seen by some as the end point of our current culture, when the ever-accelerating evolution of technology finally overtakes us and changes everything. It’s been represented as everything from the end of all life to the beginning of a utopian age, which you might recognize as the endgames of most other religious beliefs.
While the definitions of the Singularity are as varied as people’s fantasies of the future, with a very obvious reason,…
Should We Bank the Genes of ‘Extraordinary’ People for Cloning?
Robert Lamb, HowStuffWorks: Our genes provide a partial blueprint for who we are. Should we save the genes of great scholars, artists, leaders and athletes for future cloning?
Fictional characters have a habit of popping up again after unpopular deaths. From comic book superheroes to sultry soap opera stars, you just can’t keep a good hero down. Leaf through history books and you’ll find any number of legendary kings and saviors slated for an eventual return as well.
But what if death weren’t the end in real life, too? What if we could bring back some of the world’s most extraordinary figures? Could Albert Einstein help us to solve the energy crisis? What kind of album could Ludwig van Beethoven produce in a modern recording studio?
While such notions were previously the domain…
Profiting on Death
Investment banks are planning ways to bet on the life and death of individuals with life insurance policies, as described in an article published in the New York Times on Sunday.
“The bankers plan to buy ‘life settlements,’ life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person,” Times correspondent Jenny Anderson reports. “Then they plan to ‘securitize’ these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds,” to be sold to investors.
