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Dependency on oil will end by 2012
http://presscore.ca/2011/?p=2501
Driving LED, No Battery and No Transistor
http://pesn.com/2011/03/05/9501780_Stiffler_Frequency_Amplification_Effect_Replicated/
Spiritual Science: DNA is influenced by words and frequencies
By Grazyna Fosar and Franz Bludorf
DNA Can Be Influenced And Reprogrammed By Words And Frequencies Russian DNA Discoveries
http://twm.co.nz/spiscien.htm
The human DNA is a biological Internet and superior in many aspects to the artificial one. The latest Russian scientific research directly or indirectly explains phenomena such as clairvoyance, intuition, spontaneous and remote acts of healing, self healing, affirmation techniques, unusual light/auras around people (namely spiritual masters), the mind’s influence on weather patterns and much more.
In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine in which DNA can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies WITHOUT cutting out and replacing single genes.
Only 10% of our DNA is being used for building proteins. It is this subset of DNA that is of interest to western researchers and is being examined and categorized. The other 90% are considered "junk DNA. The Russian researchers, however, convinced that nature was not dumb, joined linguists and geneticists in a venture to explore those 90% of "junk DNA". Their results, findings and conclusions are simply revolutionary!
According to them, our DNA is not only responsible for the construction of our body but also serves as data storage and communication. The Russian linguists found that the genetic code, especially in the apparently useless 90%, follows the same rules as all our human languages. To this end they compared the rules of syntax (the way in which words are put together to form phrases and sentences), semantics (the study of meaning in language forms) and the basic rules of grammar.
They found that the alkalines of our DNA follow regular grammar and do have set rules just like our languages. So human languages did not appear coincidentally but are a reflection of our inherent DNA.
The Russian biophysicist and molecular biologist Pjotr Garjajev and his colleagues also explored the vibrational behavior of the DNA. [For the sake of brevity I will give only a summary here. For further exploration please refer to the appendix at the end of this article.]
The bottom line was:
"Living chromosomes function just like solitonic/holographic computers using the endogenous DNA laser radiation."
This means that they managed, for example, to modulate certain frequency patterns onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself. Since the basic structure of DNA-alkaline pairs and of language (as explained earlier) are of the same structure, no DNA decoding is necessary. One can simply use words and sentences of the human language!
This, too, was experimentally proven! Living DNA substance (in living tissue, not in vitro) will always react to language-modulated laser rays and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are being used. This finally and scientifically explains why affirmations, autogenous training, hypnosis and the like can have such strong effects on humans and their bodies. It is entirely normal and natural for our DNA to react to language. While western researcher cut single genes from the DNA strands and insert them elsewhere, the Russians enthusiastically worked on devices that can influence the cellular metabolism through suitable modulated radio and light frequencies and thus repair genetic defects.
Garjajevâ´s research group succeeded in proving that with this method chromosomes damaged by x-rays for example can be repaired. They even captured information patterns of a particular DNA and transmitted it onto another, thus reprogramming cells to another genome. So they successfully transformed, for example, frog embryos to salamander embryos simply by transmitting the DNA information patterns!
This way the entire information was transmitted without any of the side effects or disharmonies encountered when cutting out and re-introducing single genes from the DNA. This represents an unbelievable, world-transforming revolution and sensation! All this by simply applying vibration and language instead of the archaic cutting-out procedure! This experiment points to the immense power of wave genetics, which obviously has a greater influence on the formation of organisms than the biochemical processes of alkaline sequences.
Esoteric and spiritual teachers have known for ages that our body is programmable by language, words and thought. This has now been scientifically proven and explained. Of course the frequency has to be correct. And this is why not everybody is equally successful or can do it with always the same strength. The individual person must work on the inner processes and maturity in order to establish a conscious communication with the DNA. The Russian researchers work on a method that is not dependent on these factors but will ALWAYS work, provided one uses the correct frequency.
But the higher developed an individual’s consciousness is, the less need is there for any type of device! One can achieve these results by oneself, and science will finally stop laughing at such ideas and will confirm and explain the results. And it doesn’t end there. The Russian scientists also found out that our DNA can cause disturbing patterns in the vacuum, thus producing magnetized wormholes! Wormholes are the microscopic equivalents of the so-called Einstein-Rosen bridges in the vicinity of black holes (left by burned-out stars).
These are tunnel connections between entirely different areas in the universe through which information can be transmitted outside of space and time. The DNA attracts these bits of information and passes them on to our consciousness. This process of hypercommunication is most effective in a state of relaxation. Stress, worries or a hyperactive intellect prevent successful hypercommunication or the information will be totally distorted and useless. In nature, hypercommunication has been successfully applied for millions of years. The organized flow of life in insect states proves this dramatically. Modern man knows it only on a much more subtle level as "intuition". But we, too, can regain full use of it.
An example from Nature: When a queen ant is spatially separated from her colony, building still continues fervently and according to plan. If the queen is killed, however, all work in the colony stops. No ant knows what to do. Apparently the queen sends the "building plans" also from far away via the group consciousness of her subjects. She can be as far away as she wants, as long as she is alive. In man hypercommunication is most often encountered when one suddenly gains access to information that is outside one’s knowledge base.
Such hypercommunication is then experienced as inspiration or intuition. The Italian composer Giuseppe Tartini for instance dreamt one night that a devil sat at his bedside playing the violin. The next morning Tartini was able to note down the piece exactly from memory, he called it the Devil’s Trill Sonata.
For years, a 42-year old male nurse dreamt of a situation in which he was hooked up to a kind of knowledge CD-ROM. Verifiable knowledge from all imaginable fields was then transmitted to him that he was able to recall in the morning. There was such a flood of information that it seemed a whole encyclopedia was transmitted at night. The majority of facts were outside his personal knowledge base and reached technical details about which he knew absolutely nothing.
When hypercommunication occurs, one can observe in the DNA as well as in the human being special phenomena. The Russian scientists irradiated DNA samples with laser light. On screen a typical wave pattern was formed. When they removed the DNA sample, the wave pattern did not disappear, it remained. Many control experiments showed that the pattern still came from the removed sample, whose energy field apparently remained by itself. This effect is now called phantom DNA effect.
It is surmised that energy from outside of space and time still flows through the activated wormholes after the DNA was removed. The side effect encountered most often in hypercommunication also in human beings are inexplicable electromagnetic fields in the vicinity of the persons concerned.
Electronic devices like CD players and the like can be irritated and cease to function for hours. When the electromagnetic field slowly dissipates, the devices function normally again. Many healers and psychics know this effect from their work. The better the atmosphere and the energy, the more frustrating it is that the recording device stops functioning and recording exactly at that moment. And repeated switching on and off after the session does not restore function yet, but next morning all is back to normal. Perhaps this is reassuring to read for many, as it has nothing to do with them being technically inept, it means they are good at hypercommunication.
In their book "Vernetzte Intelligenz" (Networked Intelligence), Grazyna Fosar and Franz Bludorf explain these connections precisely and clearly.
The authors also quote sources presuming that in earlier times humanity had been, just like the animals, very strongly connected to the group consciousness and acted as a group. To develop and experience individuality we humans however had to forget hypercommunication almost completely.
Now that we are fairly stable in our individual consciousness, we can create a new form of group consciousness, namely one, in which we attain access to all information via our DNA without being forced or remotely controlled about what to do with that information. We now know that just as on the internet our DNA can feed its proper data into the network, can call up data from the network and can establish contact with other participants in the network.
Remote healing, telepathy or "remote sensing" about the state of relatives etc. can thus be explained. Some animals know also from afar when their owners plan to return home. That can be freshly interpreted and explained via the concepts of group consciousness and hypercommunication. Any collective consciousness cannot be sensibly used over any period of time without a distinctive individuality. Otherwise we would revert to a primitive herd instinct that is easily manipulated.
Hypercommunication in the new millennium means something quite different: Researchers think that if humans with full individuality would regain group consciousness, they would have a god-like power to create, alter and shape things on Earth! AND humanity is collectively moving toward such a group consciousness of the new kind. Fifty percent of today’s children will be problem children as soon as the go to school. The system lumps everyone together and demands adjustment. But the individuality of today’s children is so strong that that they refuse this adjustment and giving up their idiosyncrasies in the most diverse ways.
At the same time more and more clairvoyant children are born [see the book "China’s Indigo Children" by Paul Dong or the chapter about Indigos in my book "Nutze die taeglichen Wunder"(Make Use of the Daily Wonders)]. Something in those children is striving more and more towards the group consciousness of the new kind, and it will no longer be suppressed! . As a rule weather, for example, is rather difficult to influence by a single individual. But it may be influenced by a group consciousness (nothing new to some tribes doing it in their rain dances). Weather is strongly influenced by Earth resonance frequencies, the so-called Schumann frequencies. But those same frequencies are also produced in our brains, and when many people synchronize their thinking or individuals (spiritual masters, for instance) focus their thoughts in a laser-like fashion, then it is scientifically speaking not at all surprising if they can thus influence weather.
Researchers in group consciousness have formulated the theory of Type I civilizations. A humanity that developed a group consciousness of the new kind would have neither environmental problems nor scarcity of energy. For if it were to use its mental power as a unified civilization, it would have control of the energies of its home planet as a natural consequence. And that includes all natural catastrophes!!! A theoretical Type II civilization would even be able to control all energies of their home galaxy.
In my book "Nutze die taeglichen Wunder", I have described an example of this: Whenever a great many people focus their attention or consciousness on something similar like Christmas time, football world championship or the funeral of Lady Diana in England then certain random number generators in computers start to deliver ordered numbers instead of the random ones. An ordered group consciousness creates order in its whole surroundings!!!
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/fristwall2.html
When a great number of people get together very closely, potentials of violence also dissolve. It looks as if here, too, a kind of humanitarian consciousness of all humanity is created. At the Love Parade, for example, where every year about one million of young people congregate, there has never been any brutal riots as they occur for instance at sports events. The name of the event alone is not seen as the cause here. The result of an analysis indicated rather that the number of people was TOO GREAT to allow a tipping over to violence.
To come back to the DNA: It apparently is also an organic superconductor that can work at normal body temperature. Artificial superconductors require extremely low temperatures of between 200 and 140°C to function.
As one recently learned, all superconductors are able to store light and thus information. This is a further explanation of how the DNA can store information. There is another phenomenon linked to DNA and wormholes. Normally, these super small wormholes are highly unstable and are maintained only for the tiniest fractions of a second. Under certain conditions (read about it in the Fosar/Bludorf book above) stable wormholes can organize themselves which then form distinctive vacuum domains in which, for example, gravity can transform into electricity. Vacuum domains are self-radiant balls of ionized gas that contain considerable amounts of energy.
There are regions in Russia where such radiant balls appear very often. Following the ensuing confusion the Russians started massive research programs leading finally to some of the discoveries mentions above. Many people know vacuum domains as shiny balls in the sky. The attentive look at them in wonder and ask themselves, what they could be. I thought once: "Hello up there. If you happen to be a UFO, fly in a triangle." And suddenly, the light balls moved in a triangle. Or they shot across the sky like ice hockey pucks. They accelerated from zero to crazy speeds while sliding gently across the sky.
One is left gawking and I have, as many others, too, thought them to be UFOs. Friendly ones, apparently, as they flew in triangles just to please me. Now the Russians found in the regions where vacuum domains appear often that sometimes fly as balls of light from the ground upwards into the sky, that these balls can be guided by thought. One has found out since that vacuum domains emit waves of low frequency as they are also produced in our brains. And because of this similarity of waves they are able to react to our thoughts.
To run excitedly into one that is on ground level might not be such a great idea, because those balls of light can contain immense energies and are able to mutate our genes. They can, they don’t necessarily have to, one has to say. For many spiritual teachers also produce such visible balls or columns of light in deep meditation or during energy work which trigger decidedly pleasant feelings and do not cause any harm. Apparently this is also dependent on some inner order and on the quality and provenance of the vacuum domain.
There are some spiritual teachers (the young Englishman Ananda, for example) with whom nothing is seen at first, but when one tries to take a photograph while they sit and speak or meditate in hypercommunication, one gets only a picture of a white cloud on a chair. In some Earth healing projects such light effects also appear on photographs.
Simply put, these phenomena have to do with gravity and anti-gravity forces that are also exactly described in the book and with ever more stable wormholes and hyper-communication and thus with energies from outside our time and space structure. Earlier generations that got in contact with such hypercommunication experiences and visible vacuum domains were convinced that an angel had appeared before them.
And we cannot be too sure to what forms of consciousness we can get access when using hypercommunication. Not having scientific proof for their actual existence (people having had such experiences do NOT all suffer from hallucinations) does not mean that there is no metaphysical background to it. We have simply made another giant step towards understanding our reality.
Official science also knows of gravity anomalies on Earth (that contribute to the formation of vacuum domains), but only of ones of below one percent. But recently gravity anomalies have been found of between three and four percent. One of these places is Rocca di Papa, south of Rome (exact location in the book "Vernetzte Intelligenz" plus several others). Round objects of all kinds, from balls to full buses, roll uphill. But the stretch in Rocca di Papa is rather short, and defying logic sceptics still flee to the theory of optical illusion (which it cannot be due to several features of the location).
All informations are from the book "Vernetzte Intelligenz" von Grazyna Fosar und Franz Bludorf, ISBN 3930243237, summarized and commented by Baerbel. The book is unfortunately only available in German so far. You can reach the authors here:
[ www.fosar-bludorf.com ]
[2]; Transmitted by Vitae Bergman
[ www.ryze.com/view.php?who=vitaeb ]
[3]
===References:===
1. http://noosphere.princeton.edu/fristwall2.html
2. http://www.fosar-bludorf.com
3. http://www.ryze.com/view.php?who=vitaeb
Live baby dinosaur discovered in New Zealand
http://www.helium.com/items/2079800-live-baby-dinosaur-discovered-in-new-zealand
Harnessing 'hot' electrons could double efficiency of solar cells
http://www.gizmag.com/harnessing-hot-electons-could-double-efficiency-of-solar-cells/15677/
The future of refrigeration could be magnetic
http://www.gizmag.com/giant-magnetocaloric-effect-in-fridges/15624/
Cancer cells detected using $400 digital camera
http://www.gizmag.com/researchers-detect-cancer-cells-using-400-digital-camera/15564/
Ever seen a train lay its own track?
http://www.wimp.com/traintrack/
Video: Pentagon’s Shape-Shifting Bot Folds Into Boat, Plane
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/video-pentagon-shape-shifter-folds-itself-into-boat-plane/#more-26677
USC/DARPA LittleDog Robot
http://noworldsystem.com/2010/05/25/uscdarpa-littledog-robot/
Mystery Disease Linked to Missing Israeli Scientist
http://uruknet.info/?p=m65770&hd=&size=1&l=e
NEW WARNING INFO ON GMO FOODS
http://www.usnnm.com/wp/category/farming-plants/
March 17th, 2010 .
The Big GMO Cover-Up
GMOs, Health & Disease — by Jeffrey M. Smith February 22, 2010
Something doesn’t quite add up about genetically modified (GM) foods.
It looks the same—the bread, pies, sodas, even corn on the cob. So much of what we eat every day looks just like it did 20 years ago. But something profoundly different has happened without our knowledge or consent. And according to leading doctors, what we don’t know may already be hurting us big time.
In May, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) publicly condemned genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our food supply, saying they posed “a serious health risk.” They called on the US government to implement an immediate moratorium on all genetically modified (GM) foods, and urged physicians to prescribe non-GMO diets for all patients.
GM-What?
Genetic engineering is quite distinct from selective breeding because it involves taking genes from a completely different species and inserting them into the DNA of a plant or animal. The long term effects of this for our health and our planet’s biodiversity are unknown.
AAEM, an “Academy of Firsts,” was the first US medical organization to describe or acknowledge Gulf War Syndrome, chemical sensitivity, food allergy/addiction, and a host of other medical issues. But the potential for harm from GMOs dwarfs anything they have identified thus far. It can impact everyone who eats.
More than 70% of the foods on supermarket shelves contain derivatives of the eight GM foods on the market—soy, corn, oil from canola and cottonseed, sugar from sugar beets, Hawaiian papaya, and a small amount of zucchini and crook neck squash. The biotech industry hopes to genetically engineer virtually all remaining vegetables, fruits, grains, and beans (not to mention animals).
The two primary reasons why plants are engineered are to allow them to either drink poison, or produce poison. The poison drinkers are called herbicide tolerant. They’re inserted with bacterial genes that allow them to survive otherwise deadly doses of toxic herbicide. Biotech companies sell the seed and herbicide as a package deal, and US farmers use hundreds of millions of pounds more herbicide because of these types of GM crops. The poison producers are called Bt crops. Inserted genes from the soil bacterium Bacillus Thuringiensis produce an insect-killing pesticide called Bt-toxin in every cell of the plant. Both classes of GM crops are linked to dangerous side effects.
Doctors and Patients: Just Say No to GMOs
“Now that soy is genetically engineered,” warns Ohio allergist Dr. John Boyles, “it is so dangerous that I tell people never to eat it.” How dangerous are GM foods? World renowned biologist Pushpa M. Bhargava, PhD, believes they are the major reason for the recent rise in serious illnesses in the US.
The range of what GMOs might do to us is breathtaking. “Several animal studies,” according to the AAEM, reveal a long list of disorders, including: “infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, [faulty] insulin regulation, cell signaling, and protein formation, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system.”
“There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects,” says the AAEM position paper. Based on established scientific criteria, “there is causation.”
Difficult to Trace the Damage
Outside the carefully controlled laboratory setting, it is more difficult to confidently assign GMOs as the cause for a particular set of diseases, especially since there are no human clinical trials and no agency that even attempts to monitor GMO-related health problems among the population. “If there are problems,” says biologist David Schubert, PhD, of the Salk Institute, “we will probably never know because the cause will not be traceable and many diseases take a very long time to develop.”
GM crops were widely introduced in 1996. Within nine years, the incidence of people in the US with three or more chronic diseases nearly doubled—from 7% to 13%. Visits to the emergency room due to allergies doubled from 1997 to 2002. And overall food related illnesses doubled from 1994 to 2001, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Obesity, diabetes, gastrointestinal disorders, and autism are also among the conditions that are skyrocketing in the US.
The Lyme Induced Autism Foundation, a patient advocacy group, is not waiting for studies to prove that GMOs cause or worsen Lyme, autism, and the many other diseases on the rise since gene-spliced foods were introduced. Like AAEM, the LIA Foundation says there is more than enough evidence of harm in animal feeding studies for them to “urge doctors to prescribe non-GMO diets” and for “individuals, especially those with autism, Lyme disease, and associated conditions, to avoid” GM foods.
Another patient group, those suffering from eosinophilia myalgia syndrome (EMS), is more confident about the GMO origins of their particular disease. It was caused by a genetically engineered brand of a food supplement called L-tryptophan in the late 1980s. It killed about 100 Americans and caused 5,000-10,000 people to fall sick or become permanently disabled. The characteristics of EMS made it much easier for authorities to identify the epidemic and its cause. It only affected those who consumed the pills; symptoms came on almost immediately; and its effects were horrific—including unbearable pain and paralysis. There was even a unique, easy-to-measure change in the white blood cell count. But even though EMS was practically screaming to be discovered, it still took the medical community more than four years—and it was almost missed.
“The experiments simply haven’t been done and we now have become the guinea pigs.” David Suzuki, renowned Canadian geneticist.
What if the GMOs throughout our food supply are creating common diseases which come on slowly? It would be nearly impossible to confirm them as the cause. “Physicians are probably seeing the effects in their patients,” says AAEM president Dr. Jennifer Armstrong, “but need to know how to ask the right questions.” The patients at greatest risk are the very young. “Children are the most likely to be adversely effected by toxins and other dietary problems” related to GM foods, says Dr. Schubert. They become “the experimental animals,” our collective canaries in the coal mine.
Warnings by Government Scientists Ignored and Denied
Scientists at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had warned about all these problems back in the early 1990s. According to secret documents made public from a lawsuit, the scientific consensus at the agency was that GM foods were inherently dangerous, and might create hard-to-detect allergies, poisons, new “super” diseases, and nutritional problems. They urged their superiors to require rigorous long-term tests. But the White House had ordered the agency to promote biotechnology and the FDA responded by recruiting Michael Taylor, Monsanto’s former attorney, to head up the formation of GMO policy. That policy, which is in effect today, denies knowledge of the scientists’ concerns and declares that no safety studies on GMOs are required. It is up to Monsanto and the other biotech companies—who have a long history of lying about the toxicity of their earlier products—to determine if their own foods are safe.
After overseeing GMO policy at the FDA, Mr. Taylor worked on GMO issues at the USDA, and then later became Monsanto’s vice president. In the summer of 2009, he went through the revolving door again. Taylor was appointed by the Obama administration as the de facto US food safety czar at the FDA.
Dangerously Few Studies, Untraceable Diseases
“Where is the scientific evidence showing that GM plants/food are toxicologically safe, as assumed by the biotechnology companies?” This was the concluding question posed in a 2007 review of published scientific literature on the health risks of GM plants, showing that the number of studies and available data are “very scarce.”
“The experiments simply haven’t been done and we now have become the guinea pigs,” says renowned Canadian geneticist David Suzuki. He adds, “Anyone that says, ‘Oh, we know that this is perfectly safe,’ I say is either unbelievably stupid or deliberately lying.”
When consumers realize the dangers of GM foods and that the FDA has abdicated its responsibility to protect us, they usually want to opt out of this massive feeding experiment. In fact, most Americans already say they would avoid GMO brands if given a choice.
It wouldn’t take a majority of us to kick GMOs out of our food supply. Kraft and other food companies wouldn’t wait until half their market share is gone before telling their suppliers to switch to the non-GM corn, soy, etc. By using GM ingredients, they don’t offer customers a single advantage. The food doesn’t taste better, last longer, or have more nutrients. Thus, if even a tiny percentage of US consumers—say 5% or 15 million people—started avoiding GMO brands, the millions in lost sales revenue would likely force brands to remove all GM ingredients, like they already have in Europe.
But the FDA doesn’t want to give us the choice. They ignore the wishes of nine out of ten Americans for mandatory GMO labeling in order to promote the economic interests of just five biotech companies.
The Shocking Evidence of Harm from GMOs
Genetically modified (GM) foods have not been scientifically tested on human beings. (The only published human feeding study had ominous results – see later.) Instead, animals are used as our surrogates, but the few published animal safety studies are generally short-term and superficial. In fact, industry-funded research is widely criticized as designed to avoid finding problems. They’ve got bad science—down to a science. Even still, the accumulated evidence of harm is compelling people to read ingredient labels and avoid brands with genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Infant Mortality and Reproductive Disorders
When GM soy flour was added to the diets of female rats, most of their babies died within three weeks—compared to only a 10% death rate among mothers fed natural soy. The babies from the GM-fed group were also smaller and later had problems getting pregnant.
When male rats were fed GM soy, their testicles actually changed color—from the normal pink to dark blue. Mice testicles also showed changes, including damaged young sperm cells. And the DNA in mice embryos functioned differently when their parents ate GM soy. Mice fed GM corn had fewer babies, and their children were smaller than normal.
About two dozen US farmers say that thousands of their pigs became sterile after consuming certain GM corn varieties. Some had false pregnancies; others gave birth to bags of water. Cows and bulls also became infertile when fed the same corn. Investigators in the state of Haryana, India, report that most buffalo that ate GM cottonseed had reproductive complications such as premature deliveries, abortions, infertility, and prolapsed uteruses. Many calves died.
In the US population, the incidence of low birth weight babies, infertility, and infant mortality are all escalating.
Food, A Registered Pesticide?
When insects bite genetically modified Bt corn and cotton, they get a mouthful of a built-in toxin, produced by every cell of the plant. The poison splits open their stomach and kills them. The GM plants are registered as pesticides with the Environmental Protection Agency.
Biotech companies claim that Bt-toxin has a history of safe use, since organic farmers and others use Bt bacteria spray for natural insect control. Genetic engineers insert genes from the bacteria into the DNA of the corn and cotton, so the plants themselves do the killing.
They fail to point out that the Bt-toxin produced in GM plants:
•Is thousands of times more concentrated than natural Bt spray;
•Is designed to be more toxic;
•Has properties of an allergen; and
•Unlike the spray, cannot be washed off the plant.
But even the less toxic natural bacterial spray is harmful. When dispersed by plane to kill gypsy moths in the Pacific Northwest, about 500 people reported allergy or flu-like symptoms. Some had to go to the emergency room.
Those exact same symptoms are now being reported by farm workers handling Bt cotton grown in India. According to Sunday India, medical records confirm that “victims of itching have increased massively . . . related to Bt cotton farming.”
If GM Crops Kill Animals, How Safe Are They for Us to Eat?
When sheep grazed on Bt cotton plants after harvest, thousands died. Post mortems showed severe irritation and black patches in their intestines and livers. Investigators said preliminary evidence “strongly suggests that the sheep mortality was due to a toxin. . . . most probably Bt-toxin.” In a small feeding study, 100% of sheep fed Bt cotton died within 30 days, while those grazing on natural cotton plants in the adjoining field had no symptoms.
Similarly, buffalo that grazed on natural cotton plants for years without incident are reacting to the Bt variety. In one village, for example, they allowed their 13 buffalo to graze on Bt cotton plants for a single day in January 2008. All died within three days.
Bt corn was also implicated in the deaths of cows in Germany, and horses, buffaloes, and chickens in The Philippines. Even Monsanto’s own 90-day rat feeding study showed evidence of poisoning in major organs due to their Bt corn. And a 2008 Italian government study found that Bt corn provoked immune responses in mice.
GMOs Contain Allergens
Immune system problems in GMO-fed animals are “a consistent feature of all the studies,” according to GM food safety expert Dr. Arpad Pusztai. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine specifically notes an increase in cytokines, “associated with asthma, allergy, and inflammation.” While all three conditions are on the rise in the US, it is the upsurge in food allergies among children that has generated the most alarm nationwide.
There are many reasons why GMOs might be the cause:
•The GM proteins produced in GM soy, corn, and papayas have properties of known allergens. They actually fail the allergy screening protocol recommended by the World Health Organization.
•The process of creating a GMO can introduce new allergens or elevate existing ones. Both GM soy and corn contain new unintended allergenic proteins, and GM soy has as much as seven times higher levels of a natural soy allergen—trypsin inhibitor.
•Herbicide tolerant GM crops have considerably more residues of toxic herbicides, which may provoke reactions.
•Skin prick allergy tests confirm that some people react to GM, but not to non-GM soy.
Soon after GM soy was introduced to the UK, soy allergies skyrocketed by 50%. But there are other non-GM foods that are also provoking more allergic responses now than in the past. Research shows, however, that consuming GM foods may still be the culprit by provoking sensitivity to other foods.
Mice fed Bt-toxin, for example, not only reacted to the Bt itself, they started having immune reactions to foods that were formerly harmless. Similarly, after mice ate GM peas, they started to react to other foods that previously had no impact. In addition, GM soy drastically reduces digestive enzymes in mice. If our ability to breakdown proteins is impaired, we could become allergic to a wide variety of foods.
GMOs and Liver Problems
As a primary detoxifier, the condition of the liver can point to toxins in our diet. The livers of mice and rats fed GM feed had profound changes. Some were smaller and partially atrophied, others were significantly heavier, possibly inflamed, and some showed signs of a toxic insult from eating GM food.
The Worst Finding of All? GMOs Remain Inside Us!
The only published human feeding study revealed what many find to be the most disturbing discovery. The genes inserted into GM crops transfer into the DNA of bacteria living inside our intestines and continue to function. This means that long after we stop eating GMOs, we may still have potentially harmful GM proteins produced continuously inside of us. Although scientists only tested this on soy, if Bt genes from corn chips also transferred, they could transform our intestinal bacteria into living pesticide factories, possibly for the rest of our lives.
When doctors hear about this evidence, they often respond by citing the huge increase of gastrointestinal problems over the last decade. GM foods might be colonizing the gut flora of North Americans.
Even if GMOs helped combat global hunger, which they don’t, it would be hard to justify putting these high-risk organisms into the food supply in their current state. Especially since GM crops cross-pollinate and contaminate the environment. Their self-propagating genetic pollution may outlast the effects of global warming and nuclear waste.
Shhhh! Meet the Scientists Who Dared to Break the Silence on GMOs
Arpad Pusztai
Biologist Arpad Pusztai had more than 300 articles and 12 books to his credit and was the world’s top expert in his field. But when he accidentally discovered that genetically modified (GM) foods are dangerous, he became the biotech industry’s bad-boy poster child, setting an example for other scientists thinking about blowing the whistle.
In the early 1990s, Dr. Pusztai was awarded a $3 million grant by the UK government to design the system for safety testing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). His team included more than 20 scientists working at three facilities, including the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, the top nutritional research lab in the UK, and his employer for the previous 35 years. The results of Pusztai’s work were supposed to become the required testing protocols for all of Europe. But when he fed supposedly harmless GM potatoes to rats, things didn’t go as planned.
Within just 10 days, the animals developed potentially pre-cancerous cell growth, smaller brains, livers, and testicles, partially atrophied livers, and damaged immune systems. Moreover, the cause was almost certainly side effects from the process of genetic engineering itself. In other words, the GM foods on the market, which are created from the same process, might have similar affects on humans.
With permission from his Director, Pusztai was interviewed on TV and expressed his concerns about GM foods. He became a hero at his Institute—for two days. Then came the phone calls from the pro-GMO Prime Minister’s office to the Institute’s Director. The next morning, Pusztai was fired. He was silenced with threats of a lawsuit, his team was dismantled, and the protocols never implemented. His Institute, the biotech industry, and the UK government, together launched a smear campaign to destroy Pusztai’s reputation.
Eventually, an invitation to speak before Parliament lifted his gag order and his research was published in the prestigious Lancet. No similar in-depth studies have yet tested the GM foods eaten every day by Americans and Canadians.
Irina Ermakova
Dr. Ermatova reported her preliminary findings at a conference in October 2005, asking the scientific community to replicate her study. Instead, she was attacked and vilified. Her boss told her to stop doing anymore GM food research. Samples were stolen from her lab, and a paper was even set fire on her desk. One of her colleagues tried to comfort her by saying, “Maybe the GM soy will solve the overpopulation problem.”
Irina Ermakova, a senior scientist at the Russian National Academy of Sciences, was shocked to discover that more than half of the baby rats in her experiment died within three weeks. She had fed the mothers GM soy flour purchased at a supermarket. The babies from mothers fed natural non-GMO soy, however, only suffered a 10% death rate. She repeated her experiment three times with similar results.Of the mostly spurious criticisms leveled at Ermakova, one was significant enough to raise doubts about the cause of the deaths. She did not conduct a biochemical analysis of the feed. Without it, we don’t know if some rogue toxin had contaminated the soy flour. But more recent events suggest that whatever caused the high infant mortality was not unique to her one bag of GM flour. In November 2005, the supplier of rat food to the laboratory where Ermakova worked began using GM soy in the formulation. All the rats were now eating it. After two months, Ermakova asked other scientists about the infant mortality rate in their experiments. It had skyrocketed to over 55%.
It’s been four years since these findings were reported. No one has yet repeated Ermakova’s study, even though it would cost just a few thousand dollars.
Andrés Carrasco
Embryologist Andrés Carrasco told a leading Buenos Aires newspaper about the results of his research into Roundup®, the herbicide sold in conjunction with Monsanto’s genetically engineered Roundup Ready® crops. Dr. Carrasco, who works in Argentina’s Ministry of Science, said his studies of amphibians suggest that the herbicide could cause defects in the brain, intestines, and hearts of fetuses. Moreover, the amount of Roundup® used on GM soy fields was as much as 1,500 times greater than that which created the defects. Tragically, his research had been inspired by the experience of desperate peasant and indigenous communities who were suffering from exposure to toxic herbicides used on the GM soy fields throughout Argentina.
According to an article in Grain, the biotech industry “mounted an unprecedented attack on Carrasco, ridiculing his research and even issuing personal threats.” In addition, four men arrived unannounced at his laboratory and were extremely aggressive, attempting to interrogate Carrasco and obtain details of his study. “It was a violent, disproportionate, dirty reaction,” he said. “I hadn’t even discovered anything new, only confirmed conclusions that others had reached.”
Argentina’s Association of Environmental Lawyers filed a petition calling for a ban on Roundup®, and the Ministry of Defense banned GM soy from its fields.
Terje Traavik
Prominent virologist Terje Traavik presented preliminary data at a February 2004 meeting at the UN Biosafety Protocol Conference, showing that:
•Filipinos living next to a GM cornfield developed serious symptoms while the corn was pollinating;
•Genetic material inserted into GM crops transferred to rat organs after a single meal; and
•Key safety assumptions about genetically engineered viruses were overturned, calling into question the safety of using these viruses in vaccines.
The biotech industry mercilessly attacked Dr. Traavik. Their excuse? He presented unpublished work. But presenting preliminary data at professional conferences is a long tradition in science, something that the biotech industry itself relied on in 1999 to try to counter the evidence that butterflies were endangered by GM corn.
Ironically, three years after attacking Traavik, the same biotech proponents sharply criticized a peer-reviewed publication for not citing unpublished data that had been presented at a conference. The paper shows how the runoff of GM Bt corn into streams can kill the “caddis fly,” which may seriously upset marine ecosystems. The study set off a storm of attacks against its author, ecologist Emma Rosi-Marshall, which Nature described in a September 2009 article as a “hail of abuse.”
Nothing to Hide?
When Ohio State University plant ecologist Allison Snow discovered problematic side effects in GM sunflowers, Pioneer Hi-Bred International and Dow AgroSciences blocked further research by withholding GM seeds and genes. After Marc Lappé and Britt Bailey found significant reductions in cancer-fighting isoflavones in Monsanto’s GM soybeans, the seed seller, Hartz, told them they could no longer provide samples. Research by a plant geneticist at a leading US university was also thwarted when two companies refused him GM corn. In fact, almost no independent studies are conducted that might find problems. According to a scathing opinion piece in an August 2009 Scientific American, “Agritech companies have given themselves veto power over the work of independent researchers. . . . Only studies that the seed companies have approved ever see the light of a peer-reviewed journal.”
Restricted access is not limited to the US. When a Japanese scientist wanted to conduct animal feeding studies on the GM soybeans under review in Japan, both the government and the bean’s maker DuPont refused to give him any samples. Hungarian Professor Bela Darvas discovered that Monsanto’s GM corn hurt endangered species in his country. Monsanto immediately shut off his supplies. Dr. Darvas later gave a speech on his preliminary findings and discovered that a false and incriminating report about his research was circulating. He traced it to a Monsanto public relations employee, who claimed it mysteriously appeared on her desk—so she faxed it out.
Why is Science and Debate Being Silenced?
The attacks on scientists have taken its toll. There appears to be a de facto ban on scientists asking certain questions and finding certain results.
New Zealand Parliament member Sue Kedgley told a Royal Commission in 2001: “Personally I have been contacted by telephone and e-mail by a number of scientists who have serious concerns about aspects of the research that is taking place . . . and the increasingly close ties that are developing between science and commerce, but who are convinced that if they express these fears publicly, … or even if they asked the awkward and difficult questions, they will be eased out of their institution.”
University of Minnesota biologist Phil Regal testified before the same Commission, “I think the people who boost genetic engineering are going to have to do a mea culpa and ask for forgiveness, like the Pope did on the inquisition.” Sue Kedgley has a different idea. She recommends we “set up human clinical trials using volunteers of genetic engineering scientists and their families, because I think they are so convinced of the safety of their products, I’m sure they would very readily volunteer to become part of a human clinical trial.”
Failing that, are you willing to continue your participation?
~~~~~~
International bestselling author and independent filmmaker Jeffrey M. Smith is the Executive Director of the Institute for Responsible Technology and the leading spokesperson on the health dangers of GMOs. His first book, Seeds of Deception, is the world’s bestselling book on the subject. His second, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, identifies 65 risks of GMOs and demonstrates how superficial government approvals are not competent to find most of them. Mr. Smith has pioneered the Campaign for Healthier Eating in America, designed to create the tipping point of consumer rejection against GMOs and force them out of the food supply.
To find out how to stop eating GMOs, visit: www.nongmoshoppingguide.com (USA) and www.truefood.org.au/truefoodguide (Australia)
Videos: The Future of Food, The World According to Monsanto
solutions for energy: A solar cell breakthrough claims to have achieved a 90 percent efficiency milestone -- at a fraction of the cost of current solar technology:
http://www.naturalnews.com/028691_solar_cells_efficiency.html
did you get some RHXI? thankx
Are they a public company?~
Battery Breakthrough Technology Could Power Homes for Pennies Per Kilowatt Hour
http://www.naturalnews.com/028557_batteries_home_power.html
Scientists with Ceramatec, the research and development arm of CoorsTek, say that they have developed a new kind of deep-storage battery that, when coupled with on-site power generation mechanisms like wind and solar electricity, could power an entire home for only pennies per kilowatt hour.
Most wind and solar-powered homes remain connected to the national electric grid, largely because it is difficult and expensive to install batteries large enough to keep the house powered through low wind or sun periods. Ceramatec's new battery, however, uses solid materials to store between 20 and 40 kilowatt hours of electricity at temperatures of only 90 degrees Celsius. In contrast, most high-density batteries use liquids heated to dangerous temperatures of roughly 600 degrees.
The batteries are currently being tested to see how many charge-discharge cycles they can support throughout their lifetimes. Currently the batteries have made it through 200 and are still going strong, and the scientists estimate a lifespan of 3,650 cycles -- or one cycle every day for 10 years. Since each battery costs approximately $2,000, this would translate into a cost of only three cents per kilowatt hour -- in contrast to the eight cents per kilowatt hour charged by the typical electric company.
The battery can release electricity at a continuous rate of five kilowatts for a period of four hours. This would be enough to power a vacuum cleaner, stereo, sewing machine, trash compactor, food processor, thirty-three 60-watt light bulbs and one electric stovetop burner.
Batteries such as these, matching high capacity with low cost, have the potential to revolutionize the field of home-generated electricity, perhaps even rendering centrally generated power obsolete.
"This changes the whole scope of things and would have a major impact on what we're trying to do," said Clyde Shepherd of Alpine, Utah, whose home is powered by two windmills. "Something that would provide 20 kilowatts would put us near 100 percent of what we would need to be completely independent. It would save literally thousands of dollars a year."
Sources for this story include: www.heraldextra.com.
Quantum Teleporting
http://www.khouse.org/articles/2002/388/
The first actual teleporting experiment has now been reported in the scientific journal, Nature , by Anton Zeilinger and colleagues at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.2?? (Another research team, based in Rome, has done similar work and submitted its report to another journal.)? The work is the first to demonstrate "quantum teleportation," a bizarre shifting of physical characteristics between nature's tiniest particles, no matter how far apart they are.
"Scientists might be able to achieve teleportation between complete atoms within a few years and molecules within a decade or so," Zeilinger has speculated.?
The technique is still a long way away from the Star Trek process of beaming people around, but it raises the question, "Could teleportation be used on people?"? Could scientists extract information from every tiny particle in a person, transfer it to a bunch of particles elsewhere, and then assemble those particles into an exact replica of the person? There's no theoretical problem with that, several experts have suggested.? But get real: "I think it's quite clear that anything approximating teleportation of complex living beings, even bacteria, is so far away technologically that it's not really worth thinking about it," claimed IBM physicist Charles H. Bennett. He and other physicists had proposed quantum teleportation as early as 1993. "There would just be too much information to assemble and transmit," he and others have said.?
Well, we'll see.? (Is it just a question of bandwidth?) But there are other applications.
Scientists Freeze Water with Heat
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/water-freeze-heat-100211.html
Japanese researchers develop see-through goldfish
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091229/wl_asia_afp/sciencejapanbiologyanimal_20091229094232
Tiny nano-electromagnets turn a cloak of invisibility into a possibility
http://www.physorg.com/news180724252.html
Army’s new bipedal robot walks, balances like a human
http://rawstory.com/2009/10/robot-walks-like-a-human/
Transparent aluminium is 'new state of matter'
http://www.physorg.com/news167925273.html/?
ORGONE
Wilhelm Reich,
| Biography | Chronology of Reich's Scientific Development | Glossary of Terms |
http://www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org/biography.html
“I am well aware of the fact that the human race has known about the existence of a universal energy related to life for many ages. However, the basic task of natural science consisted of making this energy usable. This is the sole difference between my work and all preceding knowledge.”
— Wilhelm Reich, Archives of the Orgone Institute
In the 1930s, Wilhelm Reich, M.D.—an Austrian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and scientist—discovered a powerful, new biological energy, and for the next two decades devoted his life to the investigation of its laws and properties. Reich confirmed the existence of this energy in the human body, verified its presence in the atmosphere, developed instrumentation to observe and collect it, and harnessed it for a variety of purposes from cancer treatment to motor power to weather experimentation.
Reich called his discovery “orgone energy.” But, sadly, it was a discovery that the world was not ready for.
REICH’S EARLY YEARS
(1897 – 1918)
“I was born in a small village as the first son of not unprosperous parents.”
— from Passion of Youth
Wilhelm Reich was born on March 24, 1897 in Galicia, in the easternmost part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Ukraine. He grew up in the Bukovina on a large farm operated by his father. His first language was German, and until 1938 he was an Austrian citizen.
According to The Bibliography of Orgonomy—prepared at Orgonon in 1953 under Reich’s supervision—his “interest in biology and natural science was stimulated early by the life on the farm, close to agriculture, cattle-farming, and breeding…Between his 8th and 12th years, he had his own collection and breeding laboratory of butterflies, insects and plants under the guidance of a private teacher. The natural life functions, including the sexual function, were familiar to him as far back as he could remember, and this may well have determined his strong later inclination as a bio-psychiatrist toward the biological foundation of the emotional life of man, as well as his biophysical discoveries in the fields of medicine, biology, and education.”
Until he was 13 years old, Reich was educated at home by tutors. His mother, to whom he was devoted, committed suicide in 1910 after his father discovered she had had a brief affair with one of the tutors. Reich’s father died four years later from tuberculosis, leaving seventeen-year old Reich to direct the farm work on his own without interrupting his studies at the German high school he was attending.
That same year, 1914, the first World War broke out. Soon Russian troops swept through the Bukovina. Reich narrowly escaped being sent to Russia as a hostage, and had to flee his home. Later he wrote, “I never saw either my homeland or my possessions again. Of a well-to-do past, nothing was left.” (Passion of Youth) He joined the Austrian Army in 1915, served as a lieutenant from 1916-1918, and was at the Italian front three times, experiencing what he called “the war as a machine.”
In 1918 the war finally ended. Germany and Austria were defeated, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up, and the Bukovina became part of Romania. Alone, homeless and intellectually starved after four years of war, Reich entered the Medical School at the University of Vienna.
REICH, FREUD, AND THE LIBIDO
(1918 – 1934)
“It is sexual energy which governs the structure of human feeling and thinking.”
— from The Sexual Revolution
As a war veteran, Reich was permitted to complete the six-year course in four years, and he passed the 18 Rigorosa in 18 medical subjects and received “excellent” (ausgezeichnet) in all the pre-medical subjects. He graduated and received his M.D. degree in July 1922.
During his last years of medical school, Reich did post-graduate work in Internal Medicine at the University Clinics of Ortner and Chvostek at University Hospital, Vienna. He continued his postgraduate education in neuro-psychiatry for two years (1922-24) at the Neurological and Psychiatric University Clinic under Professor Wagner-Jauregg (who would win the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1927). Reich also worked for one year in the disturbed wards under Paul Schilder. Additional postgraduate studies included attendance at polyclinic work in hypnosis and suggestive therapy at the same University Clinic and special courses and lectures in biology at the University of Vienna.
Most significantly, however, while still in medical school Reich attained membership in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association in October 1920. As an undergraduate, his recognition of the importance of sexuality had drawn him to the work of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was a new discipline which had emerged from Freud’s startling insights into the causes of mental illness. Reich soon became one of the most active younger members of Freud’s inner circle, and was considered one of Freud’s most promising students.
Reich began his private psychoanalytic and psychiatric practice in 1922. He was the First Clinical Assistant at Freud’s Psychoanalytic Polyclinic in Vienna (under the directorship of Dr. Edward Hitschmann) from its establishment in 1922 to 1928; Vice Director of the Polyclinic, 1928-1930; and Director of the Seminar for Psychoanalytic Therapy at the same institution. As a member of the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Institute in Vienna (1924-1930), he gave lectures on clinical subjects and bio-psychiatric theory. He conducted research on the social causation of the neurosis at the Polyclinic from 1924, and at mental hygiene consultation centers in various districts in Vienna (Sozialistiche Gesellschaft feur Sexualberatung und Sexualforschung), centers which he founded and led from 1928 to 1930. Reich’s extensive clinical work and research ultimately led to conflicts with Freud.
Freud had discovered that neuroses are caused by the conflict between natural sexual instincts and the social denial and frustration of those instincts. Freud had also hypothesized the existence of a biological sexual energy in the body. He called it “libido,” and described it as “something which is capable of increase, decrease, displacement and discharge, and which extends itself over the memory traces of an idea like an electric charge over the surface of the body.”
But as the years passed, Freud and his followers diluted much of this concept, reducing the libido to little more than a psychological energy or idea. By 1925, Freud had concluded that “the libido theory may therefore for the present be pursued only by the path of speculation.”
Reich’s clinical work convinced him otherwise. He devoted himself to matters of technique in an attempt to overcome the limitations of psychoanalysis in treating neuroses. And in doing so he observed that sexual energy is more than just an idea, and that sexual gratification, in fact, alleviated neurotic symptoms. He discovered that the function of the orgasm is to maintain an energy equilibrium by discharging excess biological energy that builds up naturally in the body. If that discharge function is disturbed—as it proved to be in all of his patients—this energy continues to build up without adequate release, stagnating and fueling neurotic disorders. Reich also discovered that in psychic disturbances, this biological energy is bound up not only in symptoms, but more importantly, in the individual’s characterological and muscular rigidities—what he called “armor.”
Reich’s orgasm theory set him apart from his colleagues, because it indicated that the libido was a real physical energy that possibly might be measured quantitatively. Reich’s clinical work also led him to develop new therapeutic techniques to eliminate the patient’s character and muscular armor and allow for the flow and discharge of this bio-energy to achieve what he called “orgastic potency,” the capacity for total discharge of sexual excitation in the genital embrace.
But the widespread existence of sexual misery forced Reich to conclude that the solution to the problem of neuroses wasn’t treatment, it was prevention. “You have to revamp your whole way of thinking,” Reich said, “so that you don’t think from the standpoint of the state and the culture, but from the standpoint of what people need and what they suffer from. Then you arrange your social institutions accordingly.” (Reich Speaks of Freud)
Freud, on the other hand, maintained that culture takes precedence, that sexual instincts must be adapted to the existing social structure. These conflicting positions would lead to an eventual break between Reich and Freud.
Reich also devoted much of his time and money educating working class people about the essential role of sexuality in their lives. “I had six clinics in Vienna where people came and received advice once or twice a week…To provide medical and educational help was its purpose.” (Reich Speaks of Freud) To reach the greatest number of people, he worked within the Socialist and Communist parties in Vienna, and later in Berlin, to promote sex education, birth control, divorce rights, and better housing. Reich recalled that in Berlin there were about fifty thousand people in his organization in the first year.
Reich was also very outspoken about Germany’s turbulent political climate. Unlike most members of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Association, Reich openly opposed the rise of the Nazi Party. But Reich’s activities exacted a high price. In 1933 he was denounced by the Communist Party, forced to flee from Germany when Hitler came to power, and expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1934. Reich called these events “catastrophes which threatened my personal, professional and social existence.”
BIO-ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTS, BIONS,
AND THE DISCOVERY OF ORGONE ENERGY
(1934 – 1939)
“The discovery of orgone energy was made through consistent, thorough study of energy functions, first in the realm of the psyche, and later in the realm of biological functioning.”
— from Ether, God and Devil
Reich traveled to Scandinavia where, despite incessant bureaucratic interferences, he managed to continue his research. In Oslo, while continuing to teach and develop his therapeutic techniques, Reich undertook a series of laboratory experiments to verify the existence of a physical biological energy expressed in the emotions.
Using human subjects, Reich was able to demonstrate a charge at the skin’s surface directly related to feelings of pleasure and anxiety. This charge would increase when a subject felt pleasure, and decrease during feelings of unpleasure. From this, Reich concluded that pleasure is the movement of biological energy toward the periphery of the organism, while anxiety is the movement of this energy toward the center. Reich initially assumed that biological excitation of living matter might be electrical, but the results of these experiments indicated otherwise. For example, the biological energy that Reich measured moved in a slow, wave-length fashion, in contrast to electromagnetic energy which moves much faster. Reich wondered if similar energy processes existed in more basic life forms.
This led Reich to conduct laboratory experiments in which he used time-lapse motion picture equipment affixed to microscopes with over 3000x magnification to record the development of protozoa. During these experiments Reich discovered that under certain conditions, sterilized and unsterilized substances—grass, blood, sand, charcoal and foodstuffs—disintegrate into pulsating vesicles that often exhibit a bluish color. Reich observed internal motility in these vesicles, an effect of energy. He called these vesicles “bions,” after the Greek word for “life.”
Reich’s research also revealed that certain bions exhibited a strong radiation phenomena, and that these bions could kill bacteria and cancer cells. This radiation confirmed the existence of an energy that did not obey any known laws of electricity or magnetism. Reich called this energy “orgone,” because its discovery had evolved from his investigation of the orgasm function, and because this energy could charge organic materials. When Reich published his findings, the scientific and psychiatric communities responded with a vicious year-long attack in the Norwegian press.
In the wake of this attack, and the inevitability of a second world war, Reich began to look to America as the future home for his work. Theodore Wolfe, M.D.—a representative of American psychosomatic medicine who had come to Oslo to study with Reich—was instrumental in arranging for Reich’s emigration. When Reich was invited to teach at the New School for Social Research in New York City, the U.S. State Department finally issued him a visa in the summer of 1939. On August 19, Reich sailed for America on the last ship to leave Norway before World War II broke out.
REICH’S FIRST YEARS IN AMERICA
(1939 – 1947)
“There was no doubt of the existence of an energy possessing extraordinarily high biological activity. It remained only to discover what its nature was and how it could be measured.”
— from The Cancer Biopathy
Reich settled in the Forest Hills section of New York City; taught courses at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan (“Character Formation: Biological and Sociological Aspects” and “Clinical Problems in Psychosomatic Medicine”); began publishing his books in English; trained American physicians in his therapeutic techniques; and pursued his investigations of orgone energy. This research included:
treating cancer mice with bion injections
developing a cancer serum from bion cultures
finding a way to isolate and collect orgone energy from bions in order to study its functions and make it more usable
And since orgone radiation from the bions seemed to permeate all substances, Reich was constantly confronting questions about the origins of this energy. Where did orgone energy come from?
The Orgone Energy Accumulator (1940)
To isolate and collect orgone from bion cultures, Reich relied on the results of several laboratory experiments. These experiments demonstrated that organic or non-metallic materials—such as cotton, wool or plastic—attract, absorb, and hold the energy. Metallic materials —like steel and iron—attract the energy and quickly reflect it in both directions. On the basis of these findings, Reich constructed small boxes with alternating layers of organic and metallic materials, with the inner walls lined with metal. By looking through a specially designed lens inserted into a wall of each box, one could observe orgone radiation from the bions within the enclosure. These “orgone energy accumulators” also revealed an unexpected phenomenon: the appearance of orgone radiation inside the enclosure even without the presence of bion cultures.
Reich now faced the daunting possibility of having discovered a biological energy that seemed to be everywhere, while still pondering the perplexing question of where orgone energy originated. In Maine, he would soon find the answers.
Reich and Rangeley, Maine (1940)
In the summer of 1940, during a camping trip to New England, Reich discovered the beautiful Rangeley Lakes region. While staying in a small cabin on Mooselookmeguntic Lake (the largest of the Rangeley Lakes), Reich’s observations of the night skies verified the existence of orgone energy in the atmosphere. This discovery of atmospheric orgone was a major thrust forward in Reich’s research. And with its low humidity and clean air, Reich realized that the Rangeley region provided an ideal environment for this work. (In contrast, since water and high humidity absorb and hold orgone energy, the summer weather in New York City made it difficult to carry out his experimentation.) Later that year, Reich purchased a cabin on Mooselookmeguntic Lake where he returned in the summers to continue his experiments.
The Accumulators and Medical Orgone Therapy
Meanwhile, back in New York, the accumulator quickly became an increasingly vital tool for Reich’s research. The accumulator’s organic layers attracted the atmospheric energy which was directed inward by the metal layers. Any energy reflected outward by the metal layers was immediately re-absorbed by the organic material, attracted back to the metal, and directed toward the inside of the box. The result was a higher concentration of orgone energy inside the box. The more layers, the stronger the concentration.
This accumulation of energy can be verified in a number of ways. For example, a constant temperature difference exists between the air above the box and the surrounding air, contradicting the Second Law of Thermodynamics. There also exists a slower electroscopic discharge rate in the higher orgone concentration inside the accumulator than is demonstrated by an electroscope outside the box.
The accumulator now allowed Reich to test the effects of orgone radiation on cancer mice without resorting to bion injections, by simply placing the mice inside the metal-lined enclosure. Because his results with cancer mice were so promising, Reich decided to test the effects of orgone radiation on humans. He constructed accumulators large enough for a person to sit in, and in 1941 began experimental treatments with cancer patients.
They were all terminal cases. Reich promised no cure nor charged any money, as shown by the affidavit that his patients and/or their family members were required to sign:
“I state herewith that I came to see Dr. Wilhelm Reich for possibly helping the case of my _____ who suffers from cancer. I came because I was told of the experiments that Dr. Reich has made with cancer mice and human beings. Dr. Reich did not promise me any cure, did not charge any money, and told me that only during the last few months has he tried the orgone radiation on human begins who suffer from cancer. Death or abscesses could occur as a consequence of the disease. I told Dr. Reich that the physicians have given up the case of my _____ as hopeless. Should death or abscesses occur during the time of the experiment, it will not be because of the treatment.” (The Cancer Biopathy)
Over a period of time, the patients showed marked improvement: relief of pain, healthier blood condition, weight gain, and the shrinkage and elimination of tumors. Despite these positive results, the patients died, reinforcing Reich’s conviction that cancer is a bio-energetic shrinking following emotional resignation, and that the tumors themselves are not the disease, but merely a local manifestation of a deeper systemic disorder. Once again, Reich’s focus became prevention.
Orgonon – A Permanent Home for Reich’s Work
In November 1942, Reich purchased an old farm a few miles from his cabin in Maine. The 160-acre property of fields, forests, and hills bordered a small lake known as Dodge Pond, and commanded stunning views in all directions. Reich called the property “Orgonon,” and envisioned it as a permanent home for his work.
In 1945, a Student Laboratory was built at Orgonon. Three years later, construction began on the Orgone Energy Observatory which included additional laboratory facilities, Reich’s library and study, and outdoor observation decks to observe and study atmospheric orgone energy phenomena. Funding for these buildings and for Reich’s research came exclusively from his own income as a physician and teacher, and from loans and contributions from students.
By 1947, after less than eight years in America, Reich’s work was attracting considerable interest as orgone research expanded into new areas of psychiatry, medicine and biophysics. One of Reich’s most significant new developments at Orgonon was the discovery of a motor force in orgone energy from the atmosphere, a scientific breakthrough with enormous practical implications.
As Orgonon continued to grow, Reich’s dream for a home for his work was slowly becoming a reality. Sadly, it was a dream that would not be fulfilled.
THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION’S
CAMPAIGN AGAINST REICH
(1947 – 1957)
“The more success I have, the more I sense that I am in mortal danger. And the more successful I become, the less they will be inclined to spare me. It can hit me at any place and at any time.”
— Diary entry (June 14, 1947), from American Odyssey
In 1947 an article entitled “The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich” appeared in New Republic magazine. Authored by freelance writer Mildred Edie Brady, it was filled with distortions and innuendos about Reich’s sexual theories and orgone research. Brady’s most inflammatory claim was that Reich was building accumulators of orgone energy “which are rented out to patients who presumably derived orgastic potency from it.”
Implying that Reich was a danger to the public, Brady challenged the medical authorities to take action against him. Two months later, the article was brought to the attention of the Food and Drug Administration. The result was a ten-year campaign by the FDA designed to destroy Reich’s work. The FDA focused on the orgone energy accumulator which Reich and his physicians were using experimentally with patients. Convinced that the accumulator was being fraudulently promoted as a sexual and medical device, FDA agents spent years interviewing Reich’s associates, physicians, students and patients, looking for dissatisfied users. None were ever found.
As the FDA’s investigation continued, so did Reich’s work.
Reich and the Cloudbuster
Reich continued to develop new ways to visualize, measure, and harness orgone energy from the atmosphere. The cloudbuster, for example, was an experimental instrument that could affect weather patterns by altering concentrations of orgone energy in the atmosphere. It comprised a set of hollow metal pipes and cables inserted into water, creating a stronger orgone energy system than that in the surrounding atmosphere. Water, which strongly attracts and absorbs orgone, draws the atmospheric orgone through the pipes. This movement of orgone from a lower to a higher energy system was used by Reich to create clouds and to dissipate them.
Reich used the cloudbuster to conduct dozens of experiments involving what he called “Cosmic Orgone Engineering (C.O.R.E.).” One of the most notable occurred in 1953. During a long drought that threatened the Maine blueberry crop, several farmers offered to pay Reich if he could bring rain to the parched region. The weather bureau had forecast no rain for several days when Reich began his cloudbusting operations. Ten hours later, a light rain began to fall. Over the next few days, close to two inches fell. The blueberry crop was saved, and in local newspaper articles the farmers credited Reich.
The Injunction
In February 1954, the FDA filed a Complaint for Injunction against Reich in the Federal Court in Portland, Maine. The Complaint declared that orgone energy does not exist, and asked the Court to prohibit the shipment of accumulators in interstate commerce and to ban Reich’s published literature which they claimed was labeling for the accumulators.
After considerable thought and discussion of this matter, Reich responded with a lengthy letter to Judge John Clifford, explaining that he could not appear in Court, since doing so would allow a Court of law to judge basic scientific research. He wrote:
“Scientific matters can only be clarified by prolonged, faithful bona fide observations in friendly exchange of opinion, never by litigation... Man’s right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan.
Furthermore, Reich asserted, if his painstakingly elaborated and published findings
“...over a period of 30 years could not convince this administration, or will not be able to convince any other administration of the true nature of the discovery of the Life Energy, no litigation in any court anywhere will ever help to do so. I, therefore, submit, in the name of truth and justice that I shall not appear in court as the ‘defendant’ against a plaintiff who by his mere complaint already has shown his ignorance in matters of natural science.”
Judge Clifford did not accept Reich’s letter as a valid legal response, and on March 19, 1954, a Decree of Injunction was issued on default as if Reich had never responded at all. But the Injunction itself was even more excessive than the initial Complaint:
it ordered orgone energy accumulators and their parts to be destroyed
it ordered all materials containing instructions for the use of the accumulator to be destroyed
it banned a list of Reich’s books containing statements about orgone energy, until such time that all references to orgone energy were deleted
After the initial shock, Reich continued his research, traveling to Arizona to experiment with the cloudbuster in the dry desert environment. While he was there, and without his knowledge, one of Reich’ students—Dr. Michael Silvert—moved a truckload of accumulators and books from Rangeley, Maine to New York City, a direct violation of the Injunction.
As a result, the FDA charged Reich and Silvert with criminal contempt of court. Following a jury trial, both men were found guilty on May 7, 1956. Reich was sentenced to two years in federal prison, Silvert was sentenced to a year and a day. The Wilhelm Reich Foundation—founded in Maine in 1949 by students and friends to preserve Reich’s Archives and to secure the future of his discovery of the Cosmic Life Energy—was fined $10,000.
While Reich appealed his sentence, the government carried out the destruction of orgone accumulators and literature. In Maine, several boxes of literature were burned, and accumulators and accumulator materials either destroyed or dismantled. In New York City, on August 23, 1956, the FDA supervised the burning of several tons of Reich’s publications in one of the city’s garbage incinerators, including titles that were only to have been banned. Among the materials burned were:
Orgone Energy Bulletin (12,189 copies)
International Journal of Sex Economy and Orgone Research (6,261 copies)
Emotional Plague Versus Orgone Biophysics (2,900 copies)
Annals of the Orgone Institute (2976 copies)
The Oranur Experiment (872 copies)
Character Analysis
Cosmic Superimposition
Ether, God, and Devil
Listen, Little Man
People in Trouble
The Cancer Biopathy
The Function of the Orgasm
The Mass Psychology of Fascism
The Murder of Christ
The Sexual Revolution
This destruction of literature constitutes one of the most heinous examples of censorship in United States history.
On March 8, 1957, Reich signed his Last Will and Testament. Among its stipulations was the establishment of The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund as the legal entity charged with operating Orgonon as The Wilhelm Reich Museum; protecting, preserving, and transmitting his scientific legacy to future generations; and safeguarding Reich’s Archives.
All appeals denied, on March 12, 1957—two weeks shy of his 60th birthday—Wilhelm Reich was temporarily incarcerated at the Danbury Federal Penitentiary in Connecticut. On March 22, he was taken to the Federal Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. He died there of heart failure on November 3, 1957, and was buried at Orgonon.
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CHRONOLOGY OF THE SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT OF WILHELM REICH
1923-1934
Orgasm theory and technique of Character Analysis
1928-1934
Respiratory block and muscular armor
1923-1934
Sex-economic self-regulation of primary natural drives in their distinction from secondary, perverted drives
1930-1934
The role of irrationalism and human sex-economy in the origin of dictatorship of all political denominations
1934
The orgasm reflex
1935-1936
The bio-electrical nature of sexuality and anxiety
1936-1939
Orgone energy vesicles (bions)
1936-1939
Origin of the cancer cell from bionously disintegrated animal tissue, and the organization of protozoa from bionously disintegrated moss and grass
1937
T-bacilli in sarcoma
1939
Discovery of the bio-energy (Orgone Energy) in sand packet (SAPA) bions
1940
Discovery of Orgone Energy in the atmosphere
1940
Invention of the Orgone Energy Accumulator
1944
Invention of the Orgone Energy Field Meter
1940-1945
Experimental orgone therapy of the cancer biopathy
1945
Experimental investigation of primary biogenesis (Experiment XX)
1945
Method of Orgonomic Functionalism
1947
Emotional Plague of man as a disease of the bio-energetic equilibrium
1949-1950
Orgonometric equations
1951
Hypothesis of cosmic superimposition of two orgone energy streams as the basis of hurricanes and galaxy formation
1947-1951
Anti-nuclear radiation effects of Orgone Energy
1951-1952
Discovery of DOR (Deadly Orgone Energy) and identification of its properties, including a specific toxicity (DOR sickness)
1951-1954
Identification of Melanor, Orite, Brownite, Orene; and initial steps toward pre-atomic chemistry
1952-1955
Use of “reversed” orgonomic potential in removing DOR from the atmosphere in cloudbusting and weather control
1954-1955
Theory of desert formation in nature and in man (the emotional plague) and demonstration of reversibility (OROP Desert Ea and the Medical DOR-Buster)
1954-1955
Theory of disease based on DOR accumulation in the tissues
1950-1957
Equations of gravity and anti-gravity
1951-1957
Development and practical application of Social Psychiatry
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ORGONOMY - GLOSSARY OF TERMS
A new scientific discipline must employ new terms if old ones are inapplicable. Orgonomy introduced the following new terms:
ANORGONIA
The condition of diminished or lacking orgonity (q.v.).
ARMOR
See character armor, muscular armor
BIONS
Energy vesicles representing transitional stages between non-living and living substance. They constantly form in nature by a process of disintegration of inorganic and organic matter, which process it has been possible to reproduce experimentally. They are charged with orgone energy (q.v.), i.e. Life Energy, and may develop into protozoa and bacteria.
CHARACTER
An individual’s typical structure, his stereotype manner of acting and reacting. The orgonomic concept of character is functional and biological, and not a static, psychological or moralistic concept.
CHARACTER ANALYSIS
Originally a modification of the customary psychoanalyatic technique of symptom analysis, by the inclusion of the character and character resistance into the therapeutic process. However, the discovery of the muscular armor necessitated the development of a new technique, namely vegetotherapy. The later discovery of organismic orgone energy (bio-energy) and the concentration of atmospheric orgone energy with an orgone energy accumulator necessitated the further development of character-analytic vegetotherapy into an inclusive, biophysical orgone therapy. (See physical orgone therapy, psychiatric orgone therapy)
CHARACTER ARMOR
The sum total of typical character attitudes which an individual develops as a blocking against his emotional excitations, resulting in rigidity of the body, lack of emotional contact, and “deadness.” Functionally identical with the muscular armor.
CHARACTER, GENITAL
The un-neurotic character structure which does not suffer from sexual stasis, and therefore, is capable of natural self-regulation on the basis of orgastic potency.
CHARACTER, NEUROTIC
The character which, due to chronic bio-energetic stasis, operates according to the principle of compulsive moral regulation.
EMOTIONAL PLAGUE
The neurotic character in destructive action on the social scene.
MUSCULAR ARMOR
The sum total of the muscular attitudes (chronic muscular spasms) which an individual develops as a block against the breakthrough of emotions and organ sensations, in particular anxiety, rage, and sexual excitation.
ORGASM
The unitary involuntary convulsions of the total organism at the acme of the genital embrace. This reflex, because of its involuntary character and the prevailing orgasm anxiety, is blocked in most humans of civilizations which repress infantile and adolescent genitality.
ORGASTIC IMPOTENCE
The absence of orgastic potency. It is the most important characteristic of the average human of today, and—by damning up biological (orgone) energy in the organism—provides the source of energy for all kinds of biopathic symptoms and social irrationalism.
ORGASTIC POTENCY
Essentially the capacity for complete surrender to the involuntary convulsion of the organism and complete discharge of the excitation at the acme of the genital embrace. It is always lacking in neurotic individuals. It presupposes the presence or establishment of the genital character, i.e. absence of a pathological character armor and muscular armor. Orgastic potency is usually not distinguished from erective and ejaculative potency, both of which are only prerequisites of orgastic potency.
ORGONE ENERGY
Primordial Cosmic Energy, universally present and demonstrable visually, thermically, electroscopically, and by means of Geiger-Mueller counters. In the living organism: Bio-energy, Life Energy. Discovered by Wilhelm Reich between 1936 to 1940.
ORANUR (Orgone Energy Against Nuclear Radiation)
Denotes orgone energy in a state of excitation induced by nuclear energy (DOR denotes Deadly Orgone Energy).
ORGONE THERAPY
(See physical orgone therapy, psychiatric orgone therapy)
ORGONITY
The condition of containing orgone energy; the quantity of orgone energy contained.
ORGONOMETRY
Quantitative orgonomic research.
ORGONOMIC (‘ENERGETIC”) FUNCTIONALISM
The functional thought technique which guides clinical and experimental orgone research. The guiding principle is that of the identity of variations in their common functioning principle (CFP). This thought technique grew in the course of the study of human character formation and led to the discovery of the functional organismic and cosmic orgone energy, thereby proving itself to be the correct mirroring of both living and non-living basic natural processes.
ORGONOMY
The natural science of the cosmic orgone energy.
ORGONOTIC
Qualities concerning the orgonity of a system or a condition.
PHYSICAL ORGONE THERAPY
Application of physical orgone energy concentrated in an orgone energy accumulator to increase the natural bio-energetic resistance of the organism against disease.
PSYCHIATRIC ORGONE THERAPY
Mobilization of the orgone energy in the organism, i.e. the liberation of biophysical emotions from muscular and character armorings with the goal of establishing, if possible, orgastic potency.
SEX-ECONOMY
The body of knowledge within Orgonomy which deals with the economy of the biological (orgone) in the organism, with its energy household.
STASIS
The damming of Life Energy in the organism, thus the source of energy for biopathy and irrationalism.
STASIS ANXIETY
The anxiety caused by the stasis of sexual energy in the center of the organism when its peripheral orgastic discharge is inhibited.
STASIS NEUROSIS
All somatic disturbances which are the immediate result of the stasis of sexual energy, with stasis anxiety at its core.
WORK DEMOCRACY
The functioning of the natural and intrinsically rational work relationships between human beings. The concept of work democracy represents the established reality (not the ideology) of these relationships which, though usually distorted because of prevailing armoring and irrational political ideologies, are nevertheless at the basis of all social achievement.
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GOD EXSISTS HE SAVED ME HE IS HERE FOR YOU TOO,HE LOVES YOU
Amazon's #1 Atheist Book is ChristianLast update: 2/13/2009 12:23:00 PMLOS ANGELES, Feb 13, 2009 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The 200th birthday of Charles Darwin may have grabbed the headlines yesterday, but it was a new book by a Christian that stole the show. You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence but You Can't Make Him Think (WND Books, hardcover, ISBN 978-1935071068) by TV personality Ray Comfort soared to the top of the Amazon sales charts during its first day of release. Atheism, once confined to the margins of civilized debate, has grown militant and mocking - often characterizing Christianity as foolish, dangerous and evil. Nowhere is atheism's unprecedented recognition more evident than in yesterday's celebration of "Darwin Day," with 600 events held worldwide to honor Darwin's bicentennial birthday and the mainstream media lauding him like a saint. The NY Times proclaimed it was "A Bad Day for Darwin Haters," and an atheist foundation prepared for the event by erecting billboards across America with messages like "Imagine no Religion" and "Praise Darwin: Evolve Beyond Belief." But apparently God still has a loyal following, too. Comfort's book debuted in the top 50 overall on Amazon and climbed to the #1 ranking in the "Spirituality" category. The book also checked in at #1 in the "Apologetics" category, and ironically it claimed the top ranking in "Atheism," as well, dethroning Richard Dawkins from the top spot. "Ray Comfort has once again laid hold of the greatest power on earth, the power of the Gospel," proclaims author and theologian Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr. "You don't have to shut off your brain to have faith -- and Ray Comfort proves it," adds Joseph Farah, the CEO and editor-in-chief of WorldNetDaily, the parent company of WND Books. "He's taking on those who deny God and Creation, and he's making them look like the monkeys from whom we supposedly descended." About the Author: Ray Comfort is a leader in the evangelical Christian community. The head of Living Waters ministry, he is the author of more than 60 books, including The Atheist Bible and Evolution: The Fairy Tale for Grownups. Comfort co-hosts the award-winning television program "The Way of the Master" with Kirk Cameron, which airs in 70 countries. Media Contact: M. Sliwa Public Relations at 973-272-2861 or by email at media@msliwa.com. SOURCE WND Books
Copyright (C) 2009 PR Newswire. All rights reserved
President Obama Takes Bold Action on Global WarmingLast update: 1/26/2009 2:14:00 PMWASHINGTON, Jan 26, 2009 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Statement of Betsy Loyless, Senior Vice President, National Audubon Society After only a few days in the Oval Office, President Obama has sent a clear signal that the U.S. is ready to the lead the world toward a clean energy future. The President's decisive action puts our nation on a course that will repower America with clean sources of energy that reduce global warming, stimulate green jobs, and make us less dependent on fossil fuels. President Obama is quickly establishing himself as a champion of conservation who is mindful that to restore American prosperity, we must change the ways we produce, import and consume fuel. MORE INFORMATION In a White House ceremony today, President Obama ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider granting California a waiver allowing it to set an auto emissions standard, setting the stage for other states to follow suit. The President also called for the government to begin issuing regulations that will implement auto fuel efficiency standards enacted by Congress in 2007 and he directed the federal government to make its buildings more energy efficient and to find new ways for federal agencies to reduce energy consumption. SOURCE National Audubon Society
Copyright (C) 2009 PR Newswire
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Northern Lights Mystery Exposed By Scientists
MARCIA DUNN | July 24, 2008 11:47 PM EST |
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/24/northern-lights-mystery-e_n_114850.html
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Scientists have exposed some of the mystery behind the northern lights. On Thursday, NASA released findings that indicate magnetic explosions about one-third of the way to the moon cause the northern lights, or aurora borealis, to burst in spectacular shapes and colors, and dance across the sky.
The findings should help scientists better understand the more powerful but less common geomagnetic storms that can knock out satellites, harm astronauts in orbit and disrupt power and communications on Earth, scientists said.
A fleet of five small satellites, called Themis, observed the beginning of a geomagnetic storm in February, while ground observatories in Canada and Alaska recorded the brightening of the northern lights. The southern lights _ aurora australis _ also brightened and darted across the sky at the same time.
These auroral flare-ups occur every two or three days, on average.
A team led by University of California, Los Angeles, scientist Vassilis Angelopoulos confirmed that the observed storm about 80,000 miles from Earth was triggered by a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection. Every so often, the Earth's magnetic field lines are stretched like rubber bands by solar energy, snap, are thrown back to Earth and reconnect, in effect creating a short circuit.
It's this stored-up energy that powers the northern and southern lights or, in other words, causes them to dance, according to Angelopoulos.
An opposing theory has these geomagnetic events occurring much closer to Earth, about one-sixth of the way to the moon. More Themis observations are needed to resolve the debate, said David Sibeck, NASA's project scientist.
"Finally, we have the right instruments in the right place at the right time, and it's allowed scientists to be able to make the necessary observations to settle this heated debate once and for all," said Nicola Fox, a Johns Hopkins University scientist who was not involved in the study.
At present, about 20 of these geomagnetic storms are being analyzed. Scientists hope to eventually learn, via this project, more about the bigger solar storms that occur about 10 times a year and can lead to far more expansive and prolonged northern and southern lights.
The five Themis spacecraft _ a NASA acronym standing for Time History of Events and Macroscale Interations during Substorms _ were launched aboard a single rocket last year.
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Diamonds on Demand
Lab-grown gemstones are now practically indistinguishable from mined diamonds. Scientists and engineers see a world of possibilities; jewelers are less enthusiastic
By Ulrich Boser
Photographs by Max Aguilera-Hellweg
Smithsonian magazine, June 2008
I'm sitting in a fast-food restaurant outside Boston that, because of a nondisclosure agreement I had to sign, I am not allowed to name. I'm waiting to visit Apollo Diamond, a company about as secretive as a Soviet-era spy agency. Its address isn't published. The public relations staff wouldn't give me directions. Instead, an Apollo representative picks me up at this exurban strip mall and drives me in her black luxury car whose make I am not allowed to name along roads that I am not allowed to describe as twisty, not that they necessarily were.
"This is a virtual diamond mine," says Apollo CEO Bryant Linares when I arrive at the company's secret location, where diamonds are made. "If we were in Africa, we'd have barbed wire, security guards and watch towers. We can't do that in Massachusetts." Apollo's directors worry about theft, corporate spies and their own safety. When Linares was at a diamond conference a few years ago, he says, a man he declines to describe slipped behind him as he was walking out of a hotel meeting room and said someone from a natural diamond company just might put a bullet in his head. "It was a scary moment," Linares recalls.
Bryant's father, Robert Linares, working with a collaborator who became a co-founder of Apollo, invented the company's diamond-growing technique. Robert escorts me into one of the company's production rooms, a long hall filled with four refrigerator-size chambers bristling with tubes and gauges. As technicians walk past in scrubs and lab coats, I glance inside the porthole window of one of the machines. A kryptonite-green cloud fills the top of the chamber; at the bottom are 16 button-size disks, each one glowing a hazy pink. "Doesn't look like anything, right?" Robert says. "But they will be half-caraters in a few weeks."
In 1796, chemist Smithson Tennant discovered that diamond is made out of carbon. But only since the 1950s have scientists managed to produce diamonds, forging them out of graphite subjected to temperatures as high as 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit and pressures 55,000 times greater than that of earth's atmosphere. But the stones were small and impure. Only the grit was useful, mostly for industrial applications such as dental drills and hacksaw blades. Over the past decade, however, researchers such as Linares have perfected a chemical process that grows diamonds as pure and nearly as big as the finest specimens hauled out of the ground. The process, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), passes a carbon gas cloud over diamond seeds in a vacuum chamber heated to more than 1,800 degrees. A diamond grows as carbon crystallizes on top of the seed.
Robert Linares has been at the forefront of crystal synthesis research since he started working at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, in 1958. He went on to start a semiconductor company, Spectrum Technologies, which he later sold, using the proceeds to bankroll further research on diamonds. In 1996, after nearly a decade working in the garage of his Boston home—no kidding, in the garage, where he'd set up equipment he declines to describe—he discovered the precise mixture of gases and temperatures that allowed him to create large single-crystal diamonds, the kind that are cut into gemstones. "It was quite a thrill," he says. "Like looking into a diamond mine."
Seeking an unbiased assessment of the quality of these laboratory diamonds, I asked Bryant Linares to let me borrow an Apollo stone. The next day, I place the .38 carat, princess-cut stone in front of Virgil Ghita in Ghita's narrow jewelry store in downtown Boston. With a pair of tweezers, he brings the diamond up to his right eye and studies it with a jeweler's loupe, slowly turning the gem in the mote-filled afternoon sun. "Nice stone, excellent color. I don't see any imperfections," he says. "Where did you get it?"
"It was grown in a lab about 20 miles from here," I reply.
He lowers the loupe and looks at me for a moment. Then he studies the stone again, pursing his brow. He sighs. "There's no way to tell that it's lab-created."
More than one billion years ago, and at least 100 miles below the surface of the earth, a mix of tremendous heat and titanic pressure forged carbon into the diamonds that are mined today. The stones were brought toward the surface of the earth by ancient underground volcanoes. Each volcano left a carrot-shaped pipe of rock called kimberlite, which is studded with diamonds, garnets and other gems. The last known eruption of kimberlite to the surface of the earth happened 47 million years ago.
Diamonds have been extracted from almost every region of the world, from north of the Arctic Circle to the tropics of western Australia. Most diamond mines start with a wide pit; if the kimberlite pipe has a lot of diamonds, miners dig shafts 3,000 feet or more deep. In areas where rivers once ran over kimberlite seams, people sift diamonds from gravel. Loose diamonds used to turn up in fields in the Midwest in the 1800s; they were deposited there by glaciers. Most geologists believe that new diamonds continue to form in the earth's mantle—much too deep for miners to reach.
The word "diamond" comes from the ancient Greek adamas, meaning invincible. People in India have mined diamond gems for well over 2,000 years, and first-century Romans used the stones to carve cameos. Over the ages, diamonds acquired a mystique as symbols of wealth and power. During the 16th century, the Koh-i-Noor, a 109-carat diamond from the Kollur mine in southern India, was perhaps the most prized item on the Indian subcontinent. Legend held that whoever owned it would rule the globe. "It is so precious," noted a writer at the time, "that a judge of diamonds valued it at half the daily expense of the whole world." Great Britain got the stone in 1849 when Lahore and Punjab became part of the British Empire; the diamond now sits in the Tower of London, the centerpiece of a crown made for Queen Elizabeth in 1937.
And yet diamonds are simply crystallized pure carbon, just as rock candy is crystallized sugar—an ordered array of atoms or molecules. Another form of pure carbon is graphite, but its atoms are held together in sheets rather than rigidly attached in a crystal, so the carbon sloughs off easily, say, at the tip of a pencil. Thanks to the strength of the bonds between its carbon atoms, diamond has exceptional physical properties. It's the hardest known material, of course, and it doesn't react chemically with other substances. Moreover, it's fully transparent to many wavelengths of light, is an excellent electrical insulator and semiconductor, and can be tweaked to hold an electrical charge.
It's because of these admittedly unglamorous properties that lab-produced diamonds have the potential to dramatically change technology, perhaps becoming as significant as steel or silicon in electronics and computing. The stones are already being used in loudspeakers (their stiffness makes for an excellent tweeter), cosmetic skin exfoliants (tiny diamond grains act as very sharp scalpels) and in high-end cutting tools for granite and marble (a diamond can cut any other substance). With a cheap, ready supply of diamonds, engineers hope to make everything from higher-powered lasers to more durable power grids. They foresee razor-thin computers, wristwatch-size cellphones and digital recording devices that would let you hold thousands of movies in the palm of your hand. "People associate the word diamond with something singular, a stone or a gem," says Jim Davidson, an electrical engineering professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. "But the real utility is going to be the fact that you can deposit diamond as a layer, making possible mass production and having implications for every technology in electronics."
At the U.S. Naval Research Lab, a heavily guarded compound just south of the U.S. Capitol, James Butler leads the CVD program. He wears a gold pinky ring that sparkles with one white, one green and one red diamond gemstone, all of them either created or modified in a lab. "The technology is now at a point that we can grow a more perfect diamond than we can find in nature," he says.
Butler, a chemist, pulls from his desk a metal box that brims with diamonds. Some are small, square and yellowish; others are round and transparent disks. He removes one wafer the size of a tea saucer. It's no thicker than a potato chip and sparkles under the fluorescent light. "That's solid diamond," he says. "You could use something like this as a window in a space shuttle."
The military is interested in lab-grown diamonds for a number of applications, only some of which Butler is willing to discuss, such as lasers and wearproof coatings. Because diamond itself doesn't react with other substances, scientists think it's ideal for a biological weapons detector, in which a tiny, electrically charged diamond plate would hold receptor molecules that recognize particular pathogens such as anthrax; when a pathogen binds to a receptor, a signal is triggered. Butler, working with University of Wisconsin chemist Robert Hamers, has produced a prototype of the sensor that can detect DNA or proteins.
The largest single-crystal diamond ever grown in a lab is about .7 inches by .2 inches by .2 inches, or 15 carats. The stone isn't under military guard or at a hidden location. It's in a room crowded with gauges and microscopes, along with the odd bicycle and congo drum, on a leafy campus surrounded by Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek Park. Russell Hemley, director of the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Lab, started working on growing diamonds with CVD in 1995. He pulls a diamond out of his khakis. It would be hard to mistake this diamond for anything sold at Tiffany. The rectangular stone looks like a thick piece of tinted glass.
Hemley and other scientists are using laboratory and natural diamonds to understand what happens to materials under very high pressure—the type of pressure at the center of the earth. He conducts experiments by squeezing materials in a "diamond anvil cell," essentially a powerful vise with diamonds at both tips.
A few years ago, Hemley created one of the hardest known diamonds. He grew it in the lab and then placed it in a high-pressure, high-temperature furnace that changed the diamond's atomic structure. The stone was so hard that it broke Hemley's hardness gauge, which was itself made out of diamond. Using the super-hard diamond anvil, Hemley has increased the amount of pressure he can exert on materials in his experiments up to four million to five million times greater than atmospheric pressure at sea level.
"Under extreme conditions, the behavior of materials is very different," he explains. "Pressure makes all materials undergo transformations. It makes gases into superconductors, makes novel super-hard materials. You can change the nature of elements."
He discovered, for instance, that under pressure, hydrogen gas merges with iron crystals. Hemley believes that hydrogen might make up a portion of the earth's core, which is otherwise composed largely of iron and nickel. He has been studying the hydrogen-iron substance to understand the temperature and composition of the center of our planet.
In another surprising discovery, Hemley found that two common bacteria, including the intestinal microorganism E. coli, can survive under colossal pressure. He and his colleagues placed the organisms in water and then ratcheted up the diamond anvil. The water solution soon turned into a dense form of ice. Nevertheless, about 1 percent of the bacteria survived, with some bacteria even skittering around. Hemley says the research is more evidence that life as we know it may be capable of existing on other planets within our solar system, such as under the crust of one of Jupiter's moons. "Can there be life in deep oceans in outer satellites like Europa?" asks Hemley. "I don't know, but we might want to be looking."
Hemley hopes to soon surpass his own record for the largest lab-grown diamond crystal. It's not clear who has produced the largest multiple-crystal diamond, but a company called Element Six can make wafers up to eight inches wide. The largest mined diamond, called the Cullinan diamond, was more than 3,000 carats—about 1.3 pounds—before being cut. The largest diamond so far found in the universe is the size of a small planet and located 50 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus. Astronomers with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovered the gigantic stone a few years ago, and they believe the 2,500-mile-wide diamond once served as the heart of a star. It's ten billion trillion trillion carats. The astronomers named it Lucy in honor of the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."
Natural diamonds aren't particularly rare. In 2006, more than 75,000 pounds were produced worldwide. A diamond is a precious commodity because everyone thinks it's a precious commodity, the geological equivalent of a bouquet of red roses, elegant and alluring, a symbol of romance, but ultimately pretty ordinary.
Credit for the modern cult of the diamond goes primarily to South Africa-based De Beers, the world's largest diamond producer. Before the 1940s, diamond rings were rarely given as engagement gifts. But De Beers' marketing campaigns established the idea that the gems are the supreme token of love and affection. Their "A Diamond Is Forever" slogan, first deployed in 1948, is considered one of the most successful advertising campaigns of all time. Through a near total control of supply, De Beers held almost complete power over the diamond market for decades, carefully hoarding the gemstones to keep prices—and profits—high. While the company has lost some of its power to competitors in Canada and Australia over the past few years, it still controls almost two-thirds of the world's rough diamonds.
Diamond growers are proud of the challenge they pose to De Beers and the rest of the natural diamond industry. Apollo's slogan is "A Diamond Is for Everyone." So far, though, Apollo's colorless gems cost about the same as natural stones, while the company's pink, blue, champagne, mocha and brown diamonds retail for about 15 percent less than natural stones with such colors, which are very rare and more expensive than white diamonds. Meanwhile, consumers may well be receptive to high-quality, laboratory-produced diamonds. Like most open-pit mines, diamond mines cause erosion, water pollution and habitat loss for wildlife. Even more troubling, African warlords have used diamond caches to buy arms and fund rebel movements, as dramatized in the 2006 movie Blood Diamond. Actor Terrence Howard wears a diamond lapel pin with Apollo stones. He told reporters, "Nobody was harmed in the process of making it."
Half a dozen other companies have begun to manufacture gem-quality diamonds using not CVD but a process that more closely mimics the way diamonds are created in the earth. The method—basically an improvement on how scientists have been making diamonds since the 1950s—requires heat of more than 2,000 degrees and pressure 50 times greater than that at the surface of the earth. (Both the heat and pressure are more than what CVD requires.) The washing machine-size devices can't produce stones much larger than six carats. These HPHT diamonds—the initials stand for high pressure and high temperature—have more nitrogen in them than CVD diamonds do; the nitrogen turns the diamonds amber-colored. For now, though, the process has a significant benefit over CVD: it's less expensive. While a natural, one-carat amber-colored diamond might retail for $20,000 or more, the Florida-based manufacturer Gemesis sells a one-carat stone for about $6,000. But no one, Gemesis included, wants to sell diamonds too cheaply lest the market for them collapse.
Gemologists plying everyday tools can seldom distinguish between natural and lab-grown diamonds. (Fake diamonds such as cubic zirconia are easy to spot.) De Beers sells two machines that detect either chemical or structural characteristics that sometimes vary between the two types of stones, but neither machine can tell the difference all the time. Another way to identify a lab-produced diamond is to cool the stone in liquid nitrogen and then fire a laser at it and examine how the light passes through the stone. But equipment is expensive and the process can take hours.
Diamonds from Apollo and Gemesis, the two largest manufacturers, are marked with a laser-inscribed insignia visible with a jeweler's loupe. Last year, the Gemological Institute of America, an industry research group, began to grade lab-grown stones according to carat, cut, color and clarity—just as it does for natural stones—and it provides a certificate for each gem that identifies it as lab grown.
The diamond-mining companies have been fighting back, arguing that all that glitters is not diamond. De Beers' ads and its Web sites insist that diamonds should be natural, unprocessed and millions of years old. "Diamonds are rare and special things with an inherent value that does not exist in factory-made synthetics," says spokeswoman Lynette Gould. "When people want to celebrate a unique relationship they want a unique diamond, not a three-day-old factory-made stone." (De Beers does have an investment in Element Six, the company that makes thin industrial diamonds.)
The Jewelers Vigilance Committee (JVC), a trade group, has been lobbying the Federal Trade Commission to prevent diamond manufacturers from calling their stones "cultured," a term used for most of the pearls sold today. (People in the mined diamond business use less-flattering terms such as "synthetic.") The JVC filed a petition with the agency in 2006, claiming that consumers are often confused by the nomenclature surrounding lab-grown diamonds.
From the beginning of his research with CVD more than 20 years ago, Robert Linares hoped that diamonds would become the future of electronics. At the heart of almost every electrical device is a semiconductor, which transmits electricity only under certain conditions. For the past 50 years, the devices have been made almost exclusively from silicon, a metal-like substance extracted from sand. It has two significant drawbacks, however: it is fragile and overheats. By contrast, diamond is rugged, doesn't break down at high temperatures, and its electrons can be made to carry a current with minimal interference. At the moment, the biggest obstacle to diamond's overtaking silicon is money. Silicon is one of the most common materials on earth and the infrastructure for producing silicon chips is well established.
Apollo has used profits from its gemstones to underwrite its foray into the $250 billion semiconductor industry. The company has a partnership Bryant Linares declines to confirm to produce semiconductors specialized for purposes he declines to discuss. But he revealed to me that Apollo is beginning to sell one-inch diamond wafers. "We anticipate that these initial wafers will be used for research and development purposes in our clients' product development efforts," Linares says.
Before I leave the Apollo lab, Robert and Bryant Linares take me into a warehouse-like room about the size of a high-school gym. It's empty, except for large electrical cables snaking along the floor. The space will soon be filled with 30 diamond-making machines, the men say, nearly doubling Apollo's production capacity. It will be the world's first diamond factory, they say. "There was a copper age and a steel age," Bryant says. "Next will be diamond."
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/diamonds-on-demand.html
New Take on a Prostate Drug, and a New Debate
Published: June 15, 2008
For the first time, leading prostate cancer specialists say, they have a drug that can significantly cut men’s risk of developing the disease, dropping the incidence by 30 percent.
Prostate cancer is unlike any other because it is relatively slow-growing and while it can kill, it often is not lethal. In fact, most leading specialists say, a major problem is that men are getting screened, discovering they have cancers that may or may not be dangerous, and opting for treatments that can leave them impotent or incontinent.
So should healthy men take a drug for the rest of their lives to avoid getting and being treated for a cancer that, most often, would be better off undiscovered and untreated? Is it worth risking a chance that unanticipated side effects may emerge years later if millions of men with no prostate problems take the drug?
Some prostate cancer experts say the answer is yes. Any man worried enough about prostate cancer to be screened might consider it, they say.
The drug, finasteride, is available as a generic for about $2.00 a day, and millions of men safely take it now to shrink their prostates, its approved use.
With finasteride, as many as 100,000 cases of prostate cancer a year could be prevented, said Dr. Eric Klein, director of the Center for Urologic Oncology at the Cleveland Clinic.
Dr. Howard Parnes, chief of the prostate cancer group at the National Cancer Institute’s division of cancer prevention, also is convinced. “There is a tremendous public health benefit for the use of this agent,” he said.
While it might seem convoluted to offer a drug to prevent the consequences of overtreatment, that is the situation in the country today, others say. Preventing the cancer can prevent treatments that can be debilitating, even if the cancers were never lethal to start with.
“That’s the bind we’re in right now,” said Dr. Christopher Logothetis, professor and chairman of genitourinary medical oncology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. “Most of the time, treatment wouldn’t help and may not be necessary. But the reality is that people are being operated on.”
“We are trying to avoid a diagnosis to avoid a prevention whose value is disputed,” he said. With finasteride, Dr. Logothetis added, “we’re trying to overcome our other sins.”
Other experts say, Not so fast. Finasteride might not make much of a difference in the death rate because so few men die from prostate cancer. What the drug’s proponents are advocating is taking a drug to somehow compensate for what many believe is the nation’s overzealous diagnosis and treatment of the disease.
Dr. Peter Albertsen, a prostate cancer specialist at the University of Connecticut, explains: While 10 percent of men 55 and older find out they have prostate cancer, the cancer is lethal in no more than 25 percent of them. So if finasteride reduced the prostate cancer’s incidence by 30 percent, about 7 percent of men would get a cancer diagnosis and approximately 1.8 percent instead of 2.5 percent would have a lethal cancer.
“Finasteride might make a difference but only in a very small subset of men,” Dr. Albertsen said.
And, he adds, the study did not look for a decline in death rates, and it is unlikely that any study ever will — it would take too long and be too expensive. Yet the ultimate goal of prevention is to save lives. It remains an assumption that finasteride would have much impact on the minority of prostate cancers that, despite early detection and treatment, still kill.
Finasteride blocks the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, a hormone active mostly in the prostate and the scalp, and that all prostate cancers need to grow.
The drug is available from Merck & Company, as Proscar, and from six companies as a generic to shrink the prostate in older men whose prostates can enlarge, making urination difficult.
Researchers say it turns out that shrinking the prostate also may be good for cancer detection by making it easier to find all tumors, including the most aggressive.
“The data are compelling,” said Dr. Peter Scardino, chairman of the department of surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a convert who originally thought the drug was dangerous. “Finasteride has to be recognized as the first clearly demonstrated way to prevent prostate cancer with any medication or any oral agent at all.”
Finasteride has had its ups and downs. Its chronicle began in 1993, with the start of a study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and involving 19,000 men. Half took finasteride pills; the rest a placebo. In March 2003, 15 months before the study’s scheduled end, its directors halted it abruptly. The reason was that the results were overwhelmingly compelling — men taking the drug were not getting prostate cancer.
Yet despite that note of triumph, a troubling finding emerged. The study was designed to look for a reduction in the overall prostate cancer rate. And that is what it found. But, as Dr. Scardino pointed out in an editorial five years ago in The New England Journal of Medicine that accompanied the study, it appeared that 6.4 percent of the men who took the drug got fast growing, ominous-looking tumors. In contrast, such tumors were found in 5.1 percent, of men who took the placebo.
The concern was that the drug might be preventing cancers that never spread. At the same time, finasteride might actually be causing aggressive cancers that can kill.
It would, of course, be the worse possible outcome. Dr. Scardino’s editorial warned healthy men not to take finasteride.
That seemed to leave the drug dead. The study researchers, though, wondered if that conclusion was correct. Maybe, they thought, by shrinking the prostate, the drug was just making it easier to find aggressive tumors.
When doctors do a biopsy for prostate cancer, they probe the gland with a needle, hoping to find cancer cells. But prostate cancer grows as little nests and an aggressive cancer will appear as dangerous-looking cells in some clusters and less dangerous in others. A smaller prostate means a doctor is more likely to hit upon cancer nests and more likely to find aggressive-looking cells.
The researchers had a way to learn if they were correct. Most of the men in the study who had cancer — aggressive or not — chose to be treated and many had their prostates removed. A pathologist could carefully examine every one of those 500 prostates and compare the kinds of cancers found at surgery to those initially diagnosed at biopsy.
It took years, but the analysis showed the hypothesis was right. Now, two groups of independent researchers conclude, in papers in the current issue of Cancer Prevention Research, that finasteride decreases the risk of having any tumor at all — large or small, fast growing or slow growing, by the same amount — nearly 30 percent.
With this new analysis, many prostate cancer specialists, including Dr. Scardino, say their view of the drug has completely changed. The study actually found that finasteride protects against both lethal and less dangerous tumors and could cut prostate cancer risk by nearly a third.
Even the effect on smaller tumors has important implications, said Dr. Ian M. Thompson, Jr., the study’s principal researcher and a urologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.
“The cancers that were prevented were the ones men are having surgery and radiation for today,” Dr. Thompson said.
Now, though, prostate cancer specialists have a new problem: How can they change the drug’s image?
Drug companies are unlikely to be instrumental, Dr. Thompson and others say, because finasteride’s patent has expired, giving companies little incentive to apply to the Food and Drug Administration to market it as a cancer preventative. Without F.D.A. approval, finasteride cannot be advertised as preventing cancer and insurers may not pay for it.
But doctors can prescribe drugs for other purposes at their discretion and Dr. Parnes said that men and their doctors may be persuaded to try it.
In the meantime, GlaxoSmithKline, which has a patented drug, Avodart, to reduce the size of men’s prostates, has a study asking whether its drug can prevent prostate cancer. If it can, and the drug agency approves Avodart for cancer prevention, doctors and patients may have to decide between a generic drug used off-label or a more expensive brand-name drug that does much the same thing.
Some leading prostate specialists, like Dr. Scardino, say they are recommending that men who worry about prostate cancer take finasteride.
He also ponders taking it himself. “I regularly think, Why don’t I take it? Why wouldn’t every man take it?” Dr. Scardino said. He hasn’t done so yet, partly because those years of concern about the drug took a toll.
“I think it’s the difficulty of adjusting to something that originally had a bad reputation,” Dr. Scardino explained.
Dr. Thompson has no such fears.
He is at no particular risk for prostate cancer, but, he reasons, taking finasteride is not that different than taking a statin for a slightly elevated cholesterol level.
“Imagine the marathoner with no family history of heart disease, who’s skinny, doesn’t smoke and has normal blood pressure,” Dr. Thompson says. “Should he take a statin? The amount of benefit he’ll get is not much, but his risk reduction still is 25 or 30 percent.”
Dr. Thompson knows what he will do about finasteride.
“I’m 54,” he said. “The men in the study were 55 and older. So I’ll start taking it next year.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/health/15prostate.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all
2,000-year-old seed grows into 'tree of life' for scientists
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Friday, 13 June 2008
Photo by Guy Eisner / Courtesy of Science Magazine]
The date palm plant was grown from a seed that was excavated from the site of the ancient Jewish fortress of Masada
A 2,000-year-old seed recovered from the ancient Jewish fortress of Masada near the Dead Sea has become the oldest seed in the world to have germinated successfully, scientists said yesterday.
The seed, which grew into a date palm plant, was one of three recovered during archaeological excavations in the early 1960s, but it was only planted two years ago as part of an experiment to see if it could germinate and grow after such a long time.
Scientists chipped off small fragments from two of the seeds for radiocarbon dating, which showed they were formed between 206BC and AD24, shortly before the Romans laid siege to Masada AD72.
The third seed was planted without being damaged and scientists managed to date that seed when they recovered tiny fragments of the shell clinging to the roots of the plant when it was being transplanted to a bigger pot.
The date came out as between AD205 and AD392. But when scientists adjusted the age for changes resulting from it having germinated, which resulted in it absorbing "modern" carbon that would have biased the dating technique, they found that it, too, belonged to the period just prior to Masada's siege and destruction.
"We have successfully germinated an ancient date seed that was some 2,000 years old and is the oldest seed ever grown," said Sarah Sallon of Hadassah Medical Organisation in Jerusalem, who led the research team.
"The ability of seeds to remain viable over prolonged periods of time is important in preserving plant genetic resources," Dr Sallon and her colleagues said in their study published in the journal Science.
Masada was fortified by King Herod about 2,044 years ago as a refuge and pleasure palace and lies on a flat-topped mountain overlooking the Dead Sea. It became famous for the Roman siege of AD72 which is said to have culminated in a mass suicide by the rebellious Jewish sect who had taken control of the fortress.
The date palm seeds recovered from the 1960 excavations had been kept at room temperature for the past 40 years but, for centuries, they had been buried along with the rest of the Masada ruins. "The Dead Sea is the lowest terrestrial point on Earth and it's extremely hot and dry. So one of the things that probably helped to preserve the seed is the extreme dryness and heat of this area," Dr Sallon said.
When the seed germinated, the first leaves to sprout had white spots on them because of a lack of chlorophyll, which may have been due to mineral deficiencies immediately after germination. However, at 26 months, the plant showed normal development and a preliminary genetic analysis has revealed it shares about half its DNA with three modern varieties of the date palm from Morocco, Egypt and Iraq.
The oldest seed known to have germinated prior to the Masada date palm was a 1,300-year-old lotus seed. Judean date palms are known as the "tree of life", partly because of their supposed medicinal properties, and once formed thick forests throughout the Jordan river valley. They were highly prized for their fruit.
Date palms are either male or female but Dr Sallon said that she will not be able to determine the gender for two more years.. If it bears fruit it will be called "Mrs Methuselah", she said
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/2000yearold-seed-grows-into-tree-of-life-for-scientists-846247.html
Wildflower Extracts Easily Kill MRSA Superbug
http://www.naturalnews.com/023373.html
Big fat lie
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 27/01/2008
For years doctors have held that the only way to lose weight is to eat less fat and take more exercise. But now an eminent science writer says they've got it wrong. So, asks Melissa Whitworth, could Atkins have been right all along?
As you pound the treadmill in the gym, trying to sweat off the Christmas pudding and wind back the dial on the bathroom scales, consider this: what if someone told you it was all in vain? What if no amount of exercise will make you thinner, and everything we've been led to believe about exercise, diet and obesity is wrong?
This intriguing possibility has been raised by Gary Taubes, America's most controversial science writer and the author of a book called The Diet Delusion: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Loss and Disease. The book, out this month, tackles what Taubes says are the myths surrounding these issues. Taubes, 51, believes that, since the obesity epidemic began, back in the late 1970s, scientists have been working with faulty - or at the very least too little - data. After conducting his own research for 13 years he has some shocking conclusions: exercise won't make us thin; carbohydrates are what cause obesity; eating fat doesn't cause heart disease.
We meet in Taubes's office in the New York flat he shares with his wife, who is an artist, and their two-year-old son. One of America's most respected science writers, Taubes has contributed to the prestigious magazine Science for 16 years, writes for the New York Times and the Atlantic and has won the National Association of Science Writers award three times. At 6ft 4in with salt-and-pepper hair and more than a passing resemblance to a young Kirk Douglas, Taubes is more jock than science nerd and says he spent a lot of his time at university - Harvard, Stanford, then Columbia - playing sport.
One of the central arguments in Taubes's book is that some people are genetically predisposed to be overweight and that no amount of exercise will change this. Some of us have bodies that want to burn calories; others store them as fat. Taubes believes the all-important relationship between carbohydrates and insulin and the way they affect fat tissue and obesity have been forgotten - or conveniently ignored - in scientific debates about obesity. According to him, carbs are indeed the enemy.
'The natural question is, "What regulates fat accumulation?"' he begins, swivelling gently in his office chair. 'That was actually worked out 50 years ago. We know that the hormone insulin is what puts fat in fat tissue. Raise insulin levels and you accumulate fat; lower insulin levels and you lose fat. And we secrete insulin as a response to carbohydrates in the diet.
'We have screwed up the causality of obesity,' he continues. 'Fat people are predisposed to be fat. Genetics determines how we respond to the carbohydrates. Healthy people exercise more than unhealthy people, and we know that lean people exercise more than heavy people - but that doesn't tell us that exercise will make a heavy person lean or an unhealthy person healthy.'
Taubes's defence of a high-fat, low-carb regime sounds suspiciously like the Atkins diet, which proposed that a hefty slab of steak followed by cheese was less fattening than a bagel or a bowl of pasta. The Atkins diet still has many fans, but recently seemed to have been consigned to the reject bin among health warnings and heart-attack alerts (and the news that when Dr Atkins died in 2003 he was a hefty 18½ stone).
But in his book Taubes puts forward a compelling case for avoiding a high-carb, low-fat diet. 'I have this problem when I talk to physicians and biologists, ' he says. ' They will say, "OK, I can see that obesity is a disorder of fat accumulation. I acknowledge insulin makes us store fat." Then I say, "Well, that implicates carbohydrates," and they go, "Oh, that's that Atkins crap. It's old news." They shut down and that's the end of the discussion.' In fact, he says there are many respected scientists who do agree with him, but who are reluctant to support him openly.
In 2002 Taubes wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine called 'What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?' The article made him famous for making Dr Atkins popular again, and caused uproar in the medical community. Not only did Taubes's research seem to show that the controversial diet was best for losing weight, it also showed that the diet improved cholesterol profiles, too - the exact opposite of what its critics said it would do. The Atkins diet book jumped from number 178 to number five on Amazon's bestseller list.
'I got actively attacked, but I guess I had to be,' Taubes says. 'What are the chances of writing an article that says the entire medical establishment is wrong, and them going, " Good point, thank you, Gary. Can we give you an award?" When people challenge the establishment, 99.9 per cent of the time they are wrong. If I was writing about me, I'd begin from the assumption that I am both wrong and a quack.'
So why should we listen to him? Taubes is not a scientist, so rather than conducting his own trials, he has re-examined existing research with fresh eyes. His conclusions are therefore based on information that was already out there but was being ignored. ' I bought the conference proceedings for every obesity conference held prior to the late 1980s - at which point they happen so frequently it's overwhelming. ' Reading these papers, he noticed discussions of an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase (LPL), a subject dealt with in his book.
'The job of determining how fuels will be used - whether we will store them as fat or burn them for energy - is carried out by the hormone insulin with LPL,' says Taubes. 'Because insulin determines fat accumulation, it's quite possible that we get fat not because we eat too much or exercise too little, but because we secrete too much insulin. As it turns out, it's carbohydrates that primarily stimulate insulin secretion.'
Taubes has also looked again at how LPL behaves during exercise. Once we finish our workout, LPL goes to work sucking calories back into fat tissue to recoup lost energy. And we feel hungry. This is one reason Taubes believes exercise can never be that effective in helping us lose weight. 'The feeling of hunger is the brain's way of trying to satisfy the body's demands. ' The insignificant energy we might expend at the gym, Taubes says, has a negligible impact on weight and is easily undone by small changes in what we eat. Strenuous exercise only makes us hungrier.
'Reading the research was a reawakening for me,' he says. 'I did all the things that the rest of us did. I ate a low-fat diet, went to the gym and was getting heavier anyway. But once you flip your way of thinking about it, it seems so absurd: the idea that what you put in minus what you expend equals how fat you are. Our bodies don't work like a car. We are not thermodynamic black boxes; we are biological organisms and we have evolved complex systems of hormones and enzymes and proteins. That's how we are regulated.'
The obesity epidemic began in America during the late 1970s, which is also when the low-fat, high-carb diet-and-exercise revolution began. 'You have a starting point,' says Taubes. 'The question is what is causing it? Then I realised that we were first told to eat less fat in the late 1970s, and, if you eat less fat, you start to eat more carbohydrates - it's a trade-off.'
Before that point, the medical profession's attitude to obesity was more in line with Taubes's thinking. In 1932 Russell Wilder, an obesity specialist at the Mayo Clinic, said his patients lost more weight with bed rest than with exercise. In 1942 Louis Newburgh of the University of Michigan calculated that a 17½-stone man would have to climb 20 flights of stairs to rid himself of the energy contained in one slice of bread.
'Pasta, bread, potatoes, rice, beer - these were the foods my mother's generation believed were fattening. If you went on a diet 50 years ago, that's what you gave up. '
So, I ask Taubes, I eat tons of carbohydrates, how come I'm not fat? 'Well, the world is full of people like that,' he replies. 'A good metaphor is cigarettes and lung cancer - 95 per cent of people who get lung cancer get it because they smoke. Not all people who smoke get lung cancer. The other fact is you are not fat yet.'
For all the controversy, Taubes remains jocular. He says he's been 'an athlete and a chronic exerciser my whole life', does yoga twice a week and visits the gym. But does he ever worry about being wrong? Taubes says he is more worried about being ignored or having his arguments dismissed as unworthy of public debate.
But then he admits, 'I have a friend who says that, if I'm wrong, I will have to live in Argentina with all the other mass murderers. Though there is good meat in Argentina. Look,' he continues. ' All I did was follow the data. It boggles my mind that it brought me to this place where I am trying to convince the medical establishment they screwed up the biggest health issue of this half-century.'
Weight-loss the Taubes way
Expending more energy than we consume – exercising more or eating less – does not make us lose weight. It makes us hungry
Dietary fat is not a cause of obesity or heart disease. The problem is the carbohydrates in our diet, and their effect on the hormone insulin
Insulin makes us store calories as fat. Simple carbohydrates – starches and sugars – raise insulin levels and so lead to excessive fat storage
The smaller the amount of fattening carbs you eat, the leaner you’ll be
Obseity is not a disorder of overeating – it’s a disorder of excess fat accumulation. We overeat because we are hormonally driven to grow fat; we don’t grow fat because we overeat
'The Diet Delusion' (Vermilion, £17.99), by Gary Taubes, is available from Telegraph Books (0870 428 4115; books.telegraph.co.uk) at £15.99 plus £1.25 p&p
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2008/01/27/st_diet127.xml&page=2
FDA Probing Possible Link Between Asthma Drug and Suicide Risk
Singulair, top-selling drug for teens, under review by U.S. agency and manufacturer Merck
By Amanda Gardner
Posted 3/27/08
THURSDAY, March 27 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it was investigating the possibility of an increased risk of mood changes and suicidal behavior among those who take the highly popular asthma drug Singulair.
Singulair is the number one-selling drug among people aged 17 and younger. Last year, it posted sales of $4.3 billion, making it Merck & Co.'s top-selling product, according to the Associated Press.
In issuing its statement, the FDA stressed that asthma patients should not stop taking Singulair without talking to their doctor first.
Both Merck and the FDA noted that the two have been working together over the past year to determine the scope of the problem and to make appropriate labeling changes to reflect the potential risk of mood changes and suicidal behavior among Singulair users.
"Suicide has been reported to us only in post-marketing experience in anecdotal reports that come to the company," George Philip, head of Merck's Singulair development program, told Bloomberg News. The company declined to say how many suicides have been reported, saying only that it is a "very small number" relative to the amount of people taking the drug.
The company also released a statement Thursday that detailed the ongoing review.
"Merck voluntarily updated the worldwide product label for Singulair in October 2007 to include 'suicidal thinking and behavior' and included similar changes to the patient product information," the company said in its statement. "These actions were based on a very limited number of post-marketing adverse event reports that Merck has received. Since that time, Merck has worked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to provide further clarity in the product label as well as to further communicate this information to physicians."
Over the past year, Merck has updated prescribing information for the drug to include information on several adverse events including tremor, depression, suicidality (suicidal thinking and behavior) and anxiousness, according to the FDA. And Merck plans to convey recent labeling changes in face-to-face meetings with prescribers and also in patient leaflets.
The FDA has asked Merck to look at Singulair study data for more information about suicidality and suicide. The agency itself is reviewing post-marketing reports of adverse events.
In its statement, Merck detailed the nature of those adverse events. "In a cumulative analysis recently provided to the FDA of Merck's randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials -- which included over 11,000 adults and children in over 40 studies who were treated with Singulair -- there were no reports of suicidal thoughts or actions and no completed suicides in the patients who received Singulair," the statement read. "Additionally, in a cumulative analysis recently provided to the FDA of Merck's randomized, double-blind, clinical trials that compared Singulair with other active agents to treat asthma [which included over 3,900 adults and children who were treated with Singulair and over 3,400 who were treated with other asthma therapies], there was one patient who attempted suicide who received Singulair, and there were three patients who attempted suicide who received other asthma therapies [including inhaled corticosteroids and long-acting beta-agonists]."
The FDA noted it was also looking into whether other related drugs, such as Accolate, Zyflo and Zyflo CR need to be investigated as well.
"Due to the complexity of the analyses," the FDA said, it anticipates that it may take up to nine months to complete the ongoing evaluations.
Experts pointed out that, in the meantime, asthma sufferers need to determine with their doctors whether Singulair is the best choice of treatment for them.
"[Patients need] to define what they're taking it for," said Dr. David Weldon, director of the Allergy and Pulmonary Lab Services at Scott & White in College Station, Texas. "In some instances, patients may be prescribed Singulair by itself for management of their asthma, and the expert panel guidelines recommend inhaled steroids as the drug of choice for management of asthma as the first line. So if they're still having problems with asthma, they should check with their prescribing physician regarding this."
Weldon said that he has not seen any increase in psychiatric problems with the drug, but that some patients had complained of nightmares after starting on Singulair.
"The physician really needs to review whether there are symptoms that have developed since patients started taking the medication, if there's an underlying depression that was there before medication started," added Dr. Rauno Joks, chief of the division of allergy and immunology at SUNY (State University of New York) Downstate in New York City. "Also, seasonal allergies in and of themselves can cause fatigue and lethargy, which makes it harder to assess, because those are some of the symptoms you have with depression."
Joks said he had seen headaches develop as a side effect of Singulair, but not psychiatric problems.
The drug, a leukotriene receptor antagonist that targets part of the body's inflammatory process, is prescribed to treat asthma and the symptoms of allergic rhinitis, as well as to prevent exercise-induced asthma.
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Study Reveals Doubt on Drug for Cholesterol
By ALEX BERENSON
A clinical trial of a widely used cholesterol drug has raised questions both about the medicine’s effectiveness and about the behavior of the pharmaceutical companies that conducted the study, cardiologists said Monday.
Merck and Schering-Plough, which make the drug, Zetia, and a pill that contains it, Vytorin, said Monday morning that Zetia had failed to benefit patients in a two-year trial that ended in April 2006.
Merck and Schering repeatedly missed their own deadlines for reporting the results, leading cardiologists around the world to wonder what the study would show. At the same time, millions of patients have continued taking Zetia and Vytorin.
The drug companies blamed the complexity of the data for the delay. Now, barely a month after news articles noted the delay and Congress pressured the companies to disclose the study’s findings, the results are out.
In a press release, Merck and Schering said that not only did Zetia fail to slow the accumulation of fatty plaque in the arteries, it actually seemed to contribute to plaque formation — although by such a small amount that the finding could have been a result of chance.
Dr. Steven E. Nissen, the chairman of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, said the results were “shocking.”
“This is as bad a result for the drug as anybody could have feared,” said Dr. Nissen, a widely published researcher and senior consulting editor to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Millions of patients may be taking a drug that does not benefit them, raising their risk of heart attacks and exposing them to potential side effects, he said. Patients should not be given prescriptions for Zetia unless all other cholesterol drugs have failed, he said.
Both companies’ shares fell Monday. Sales of the two drugs were $5 billion in 2007, and they are important contributors to Merck’s and Schering’s profits.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating the delay, said in a statement Monday that the negative results added to suspicions that the companies had deliberately sat on their findings from the study, which was known as Enhance.
“In light of today’s results, which were released nearly two years after the Enhance trial ended, it is easy to conclude that Merck and Schering-Plough intentionally sought to delay the release of this data,” Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, said in the statement. Mr. Stupak is chairman of the committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
Dr. Harlan M. Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale, said drug companies had a responsibility to release all their trial findings, positive or negative, as quickly as possible — even if the results might hurt sales.
“People may have been on this drug without the ability to know that there was additional data that may have thrown into question its effectiveness,” Dr. Krumholz said. “That’s extremely unfortunate, and that’s an understatement.”
Lee Davies, a spokesman for Schering, said the delay was unrelated to the negative findings and that the companies had not known the results until two weeks ago.
Dr. John Kastelein, a Dutch cardiologist who had conducted the Enhance trial for Merck and Schering, did not return calls or reply to an e-mail message seeking comment. Mr. Davies said that Dr. Kastelein would not comment until he formally presented the results at a cardiology conference in March.
In the trial, patients received either Zocor — an older cholesterol drug — or a combination of Zocor and Zetia, in the pill form known as Vytorin. About 60 percent of patients who take Zetia do so in the Vytorin form, which like Zetia is jointly marketed by Merck and Schering.
Worldwide, about one million prescriptions are written for Zetia and Vytorin each week, and about five million people are now taking the drugs worldwide.
The trial covered 720 patients and lasted two years. While it was relatively small, cardiologists have been were eager to see its results because they have far less data on Zetia than on other cholesterol-lowering medicines.
Statins like Zocor and Lipitor have been shown to lower cholesterol by 35 to 60 percent in most patients and have also been proved to reduce heart attacks. Zetia, which works by a different mechanism, reduces cholesterol 15 to 20 percent, but it has never been proved to reduce heart attacks.
The Enhance trial was meant to prove that Vytorin’s combination of Zetia and Zocor would reduce the growth of fatty plaque in the arteries more than Zocor alone. Instead, the plaque actually grew almost twice as fast in patients taking the combination.
Reducing plaque growth is crucial, because plaque formation — known as atherosclerosis — can lead to the blockages and blood clots that cause heart attacks and strokes, said Dr. Howard N. Hodis, a cardiologist at the University of Southern California. That is why the trial’s finding is worrisome, Dr. Hodis said.
“Clearly, progression of atherosclerosis is the only way you get events,” Dr. Hodis said. “If you don’t treat progression, then you get events.”
The results of the trial require further investigation, Dr. Hodis said. “That just can’t be ignored.”
Dr. Michael Davidson, a cardiologist in Chicago who has conducted clinical trials of Zetia for Merck and Schering, said the Enhance results did not necessarily mean the drug did not work. Many of the patients in the trial may have been on statins for many years before the trial began, so adding Zetia may have had only marginal benefits compared with its use in a population not as extensively treated for cholesterol, he said.
Still, he said, patients should generally receive a statin before getting Zetia.
Beyond the Enhance trials, Merck and Schering recently began two large clinical trials intended to test whether the combination of Zetia and statin drugs actually reduces heart attacks and strokes when compared with statins alone. But the data from those trials will not be available until at least 2011.
Merck and Schering share profits from their joint marketing of Zetia and Vytorin. The drugs are important contributors to both companies’ profits, but more so to Schering, which is smaller and less profitable than Merck. Analysts estimate that about 70 percent of Schering’s earnings depend on Zetia and Vytorin .
Merrill Lynch on Monday reduced its rating on Schering’s stock from buy to neutral, warning that some doctors might move away from Zetia. Schering’s share price fell 8 percent , while Merck’s dipped 1.3 percent.
Because Zetia reduces cholesterol in a different way from statins like Lipitor and Zocor, doctors often prescribe it as an additional therapy for patients whose cholesterol remains high even after they are already taking statins.
But even before Zetia was introduced in 2002, some cardiologists argued that statins have positive cardiovascular effects that go beyond their ability to reduce cholesterol, and that Zetia lacks those effects.
The Enhance trial covered patients who have a gene that causes them to produce high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, commonly called LDL or bad cholesterol. Patients in the trial had LDL levels of about 320 milligrams per deciliter at the beginning of the trial, about three times the level cardiologists deem acceptable.
Over the two years of the trial, patients who took Zocor alone reduced their LDL by 41 percent on average, while patients who took Vytorin reduced their cholesterol by 58 percent. Yet despite the larger cholesterol reduction, patients taking Vytorin actually had more growth of fatty plaque in their carotid arteries than those on Zocor.
Spy planes to recharge by clinging to power lines
11:08 18 December 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Paul Marks
The next time you see something flapping in the breeze on an overhead power line, squint a little harder. It may not be a plastic bag or the remnants of a party balloon, but a tiny spy plane stealing power from the line to recharge its batteries.
The idea comes from the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in Dayton, Ohio, US, which wants to operate extended surveillance missions using remote-controlled planes with a wingspan of about a metre, but has been struggling to find a way to refuel to extend the plane's limited flight duration.
So the AFRL is developing an electric motor-powered micro air vehicle (MAV) that can "harvest" energy when needed by attaching itself to a power line. It could even temporarily change its shape to look more like innocuous piece of trash hanging from the cable.
Hanging aboutAFRL's initial aim is to work out how to make a MAV flying at 74 kilometres per hour latch onto a power line without destroying itself or the line.
In addition, so as not to arouse suspicion, AFRL says the spy plane will need to collapse its wings and hang limply on the cable like a piece of wind-blown detritus. Much of the "morphing" technology to perform this has already been developed by DARPA, the Pentagon's research division. Technologies developed in that program include carbon composite "sliding skins", which allow fuselages to change shape, and telescopic wings that allow lift to be boosted in seconds by boosting a wing's surface area.
Challenges abound, though. Zac Richardson, a power-line engineer with National Grid in the UK, warns that if the MAV contacts an 11-kilovolt local power line, it could short circuit two conductors, causing an automatic disconnection of the very power the plane seeks.
And, on a 400 kilovolt inter-city power line, it risks discharging sparks. "It will hang there fizzing and banging and giving its position away anyway," says Richardson.
"Even kites falling across power lines cause breakdowns," adds Ian Fells, an expert in electricity transmission based in Newcastle, UK. "It's an utterly bizarre idea to try to land a plane on one."
Regardless of the challenges faced, AFRL plans test flights in 2008.
http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn13093-spy-planes-to-recharge-by-clinging-to-power-lines.html
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