A robot (AI) lawyer has been barred from court for “practicing without a license”.
The gene linked to human larger brains arose from seemingly useless DNA.
More than 360 new UFO cases have been reported to U.S. intelligence agencies since March, 2021.
Scientists say they’re now actively trying to build conscious robots.
Debra Rose Addressing the Source of All Health
Simplifying the Path to Wellbeing Saturday, February 18th, 9:00-5:00
in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia
or via LIVESTREAM!
Albert Einstein and many other physicists have stated simply that everything in our universe is energy…in fact, electrical energy. Because of that, all aspects of this reality respond (in some way) to the frequencies and intensity of the electrical signals within our bodies and those surrounding us in our environment.
Early in the last century, the extraordinary inventor and researcher, Royal Raymond Rife established conclusively that human cells – of all kinds – had unique energetic signatures. He went further to demonstrate that if one introduced enough energy into the body at the signature frequency of specific cells, say, cancer cells, the target organisms resonate and vibrate so greatly that that they destroy themselves.
Expanding on those profound discoveries, Quantum Biofeedback devices are now available to scan and assess the body for the underlying issues related to different imbalances and diseases, and to then respond with customized signals that target the area that is influencing the observed problem at the cellular level. The positive results of thousands of individuals speak to the efficacy of this approach.
Perhaps the most effective use of these principles involves focusing on the gut. Since all life begins in the gut, whether it’s overall health, inflammation, aging, memory, or movement, the desirable performance of each function of our bodies depends upon one’s absorption and digestion capabilities. Debra Rose specializes in relieving the stress associated with chronic or degenerative disease, thereby freeing up the body to heal itself as it was designed to do.
Many people’s lives have been profoundly changed after being exposed to these therapies.
In our February 18th TransitionTalk, Debra will discuss how to detoxify from the newer pharmaceutical products that have flooded the market, how to establish healthy gut function, and how to amplify both absorption and evacuation. Learn more about what “happens in the middle” between eating and elimination—and what we can do to supercharge our bodies.
Despite the modern challenges we face in an increasingly-polluted environment, attendees will learn how they can rid their bodies of harmful foreign material, reverse their declining health, slow the aging process, and get into peak metabolic performance.
Any acquired disease, i.e. hypertension, Type 2 Diabetes, high cholesterol, and more, can be turned around by the choices you make and the actions you take,” says Debra. She regularly advises her patients, “Your quality of life depends on you! YOU DECIDE BY THE ACTIONS YOU TAKE. The choice is always yours, and it is never too late.”
Debra Rose will clearly explain this powerful approach to the TransitionTalk audience and will perform a live demonstration of how this revolutionary technology works in real time! Attendees will learn the difference between biofeedback, neuro-feedback, and quantum bioresonance—and the differences are both fascinating and mind bending!
SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY: Audience members who attend Debra’s February TransitionTalk in person will have the opportunity to receive a complimentary quantum biofeedback scan and assessment on Saturday afternoon.
Listen to Debra Rose and John Petersen discuss her upcoming TransitionTALK!
Debra Rose, BCN, is one of the leading quantum biofeedback authorities the United States. She is both a quantum biofeedback specialist and also an instructor. Quantum biofeedback is a non-invasive therapeutic technology that energetically scans and harmonizes stress and imbalance and could certainly be a key component of the future of healthcare. Biofeedback and bioresonance are scientifically-proven methods for reducing stress in the entire body.
For nearly two decades, Debra has dramatically helped many thousands of patients as a holistic health practitioner using quantum biofeedback. She is a Board-certified naturopath through Trinity Schools and maintains practices on both coasts of the US.
She has seen many thousands of patients with chronic Lyme disease, various end-stage cancers, and severe brain issues completely turn their lives around with the help of the powerful tools she has in her arsenal. Debra is blessed to see many people turning their tragic situations into triumphant health opportunities and transformational, life changing events.
Always alert for the most effective way to address sickness, Debra focuses on cutting edge techniques to help her patients detoxify from the chemicals and popular pharmaceutical products that have been introduced to their bodies—these substances affect all of us no matter how clean we think we are living!
Here I (author of this article, Paul Craig Roberts) share thoughts on the use of orchestrated pandemics to destroy economic independence and civil liberty and to reduce the world population, a declared goal of Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab. Pfizer and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), charged with protecting public health, knew in February 2021 that the Covid “vaccine” that went into use in mid-December 2020 was deadly and under law should have been recalled. Pfizer’s own internal documents recorded 1,200 deaths from the vaccine and tens of thousands of adverse health effects including cardiac disorders and spontaneous abortions over a two month period. Understand, the report, which was to be locked up for 75 years, was a forced release resulting from a federal court order to the FDA. It is Pfizer’s own internal report. It is not a report by independent medical scientists that some pretend “fact checker” can label as “misinformation.” The report is now public. Under law, as Pfizer and the FDA knew the “vaccine” was dangerous to life and health and did not recall it, they committed murder. The issue before us is the missing indictments for murder of the Pfizer executives and FDA officials who are responsible for the deaths and injuries of millions of people. As the presstitutes are totally complicit in the mass murder, don’t expect any attention from the media to the released Pfizer report, backed up by the extraordinary increase in excess deaths in every vaccinated country following the vaccination campaign. Dr. Michael Yeadon, formerly Pfizer Vice President and Chief Science Officer has said that in addition to the deaths, infertility, and injuries from the “vaccine,” the effect of the “vaccine” is also to seriously impair the immune system, thereby making everyone injected susceptible to morbidity from diseases. Peter Koenig, formerly of the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO) concludes that we are faced with “a clear eugenics agenda, mass depopulation, unprecedented.” (Editor’s note: We believe that the Pfizer internal documents this article is referencing are the documents referred to in this article: FDA Begins Releasing Pfizer COVID Vax Documents. See also this article from Bloomberg Law: Why a Judge Ordered FDA to Release Covid-19 Vaccine Data Pronto. In addition, we direct your attention to this article, Covid-19: Researcher Blows the Whistle on Data Integrity Issues in Pfizer’s Vaccine Trial printed in the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) on November 2, 2021 which discusses issues of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal covid-19 vaccine trial which raise significant questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight.)
As Covid-19 was spreading fear and spurring lockdowns across the United States in early 2020, the scientific journal Nature Medicine published a paper on March 17 titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Written by five renowned academic scientists, it played an important early role in shaping the debate about a fiercely controversial topic: the origin of the virus that has killed millions since it emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. Drawing on “comparative analysis of genomic data,” the paper’s authors wrote that “our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated construct.” And now finally, here’s the backstory. Unredacted records obtained by The Nation and The Intercept offer detailed insights into the confidential deliberations that predated the article. The documents show that in the early days of the pandemic, Fauci and Collins took part in a series of email exchanges and telephone calls in which several leading virologists expressed concern that SARS-CoV-2 looked potentially “engineered.” The participants also contemplated the possibility that laboratory activities had inadvertently led to the creation and release of the virus. This article details those emails and the process that wound up with the published conclusion. The details are fascinating and the assemblage of facts here is probably as clean as we will ever get from the mainstream media. If you just want a cut-to-the-chase conclusion, it is this: Every possibility is still on the table. But even as the search for that origin continues both in Congress and in the scientific community, it is unclear whether dispositive evidence to support either the lab origin or natural origin theory will ever emerge. Georgetown’s Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, notes that the Chinese government has foreclosed the possibility of a rigorous, transparent, and independent investigation into the emergence of the virus in Wuhan. “I think it is extraordinarily sad for humankind that we probably will never know for sure,” he said. “But I lay much of that in the hands of China.”
We may have robot frycooks, robot bartenders, and even robot shoe-shiners, but robot lawyers are apparently where we draw the line. Human lawyers have prevented an artificial intelligence-equipped robot from appearing in court, where it was scheduled to fight a defendant’s speeding ticket.The “robot lawyer” is the latest creation from DoNotPay, a New York startup known for its AI chatbot of the same name. Last year our colleagues at PCMag reported that DoNotPay had successfully negotiated down people’s Comcast bills and canceled their forgotten free trials. Since then, the chatbot has expanded to help users block spam texts, file corporate complaints, renew their Florida driver’s licenses, and otherwise take care of tasks that would be annoying or burdensome without DoNotPay’s help. Shortly after the startup added legal capabilities to its chatbot’s feature set, a user “hired” the bot to fight their speeding ticket. On Feb. 22, the bot was scheduled to “appear” in court by way of smart glasses worn on the human defendant’s head. These glasses would record court proceedings while using text generators like ChatGPT and DaVinci to dictate responses into the defendant’s ear. According to NPR, the appearance was set to become the first-ever AI-powered legal defense. And then the attorneys got wind of this. Multiple state bar associations threatened the startup, even going so far as to mention a district attorney’s office referral, prosecution, and prison time. Such consequences would be made possible by rules prohibiting unauthorized law practice in the courtroom. Eventually, the threat of criminal charges forced the startup to wave a white flag. Unfortunately for Browder, this isn’t the end of DoNotPay’s legal scrutiny.
Facebook is not an outlier. Plenty of companies make it impossible or at the very least very difficult for consumers to call. Frontier Airlines announced in November it was axing phone-based customer service. You can get through to Amazon if you absolutely have to, but you’ve got to go through multiple steps to find a little button to get them to call you. In the age of the internet, and with companies constantly looking to cut costs, businesses big and small are cutting off the option for consumers to get on the phone and talk to an actual human being to resolve their problems. The answer to why companies make it hard or impossible for people to call them is simple: It saves them money. It’s more expensive to hire a person in a call center — assuming they can find people who want to work there — than it is to engineer some chatbot that offers up canned answers on a website. The result is sort of a sliding scale of cost-saving terribleness. “There’s a straight-up clear hierarchy,” said Ryan Buell, a Harvard Business School professor who specializes in customer service interactions. “The cost to talk to a live person face-to-face is always going to be greater than the cost to talk to a live person on the phone, which is going to be greater than the cost to talk to a live person over chat, which is going to be greater than the cost to talk to some kind of automated solution. In the middle there is also email, and chat is more expensive than email, which is more expensive than non-human.” Cutting a call center obviously helps the bottom line. But businesses may be missing other, less obvious costs as well. Talking to customers about their products and services may lead businesses to discover deficiencies they might not otherwise notice. Not giving customers an option to speak to a person directly can also erode trust and lead those customers to go elsewhere, if they can. People Not giving customers an option to speak to a person directly can also erode trust and lead those customers to go elsewhere, if they can. Not giving customers an option to speak to a person directly can also erode trust and lead those customers to go elsewhere, if they can. People may try to take control by complaining on social media, hoping — often correctly — that an angry tweet will get them some attention. Companies don’t exactly love the social media complaining, but it’s also less expensive for them to deal with than, again, operating a call center. And companies sometimes look at how many followers a person has to see how they’ll respond. “If you have a lot of followers, you get better treatment.”
Imagine Earth’s inner core — the dense center of our planet — as a heavy, metal ballerina. This iron-rich dancer is capable of pirouetting at ever-changing speeds. That core may be on the cusp of a big shift. Seismologists reported in the journal Nature Geoscience that after brief but peculiar pauses, the inner core changes how it spins — relative to the motion of Earth’s surface — perhaps once every few decades. And, right now, one such reversal may be underway. But fret not: Precisely nothing apocalyptic will result from this planetary spin cycle, which may have been happening for eons. The researchers who propose this speculative model instead aim to advance understanding of Earth’s innermost sanctum and its relationship with the rest of the world. The inner core cannot be directly sampled, but energetic seismic waves emanating from potent earthquakes and Cold War-era nuclear weapon tests have ventured through the inner core, illuminating some of its properties. Scientists suspect this ball of mostly iron and nickel is 1,520 miles long and as about as hot as the sun’s surface. But these waves also created a conundrum. If the core was inert, the voyages of core-diving waves coming from near-identical quakes and nuclear explosions would never change — yet, over time, they do. By studying core-diving seismic waves recorded from the 1960s to the present day, Dr. Song and Yi Yang, Peking University seismologists and a co-authors of the study, posit that this tremendous tug of war causes the inner core to spin back and forth on a roughly 70-year cycle. (Paywall waived.)
Biologists have long known that new protein-coding genes can arise through the duplication and modification of existing ones. But some protein genes can also arise from stretches of the genome that once encoded aimless strands of RNA instead. How new protein genes surface this way has been a mystery, however. Now, a study identifies mutations that transform seemingly useless DNA sequences into potential genes by endowing their encoded RNA with the skill to escape the cell nucleus—a critical step toward becoming translated into a protein. The study’s authors highlight 74 human protein genes that appear to have arisen in this de novo way—more than half of which emerged after the human lineage branched off from chimpanzees. Some of these newcomer genes may have played a role in the evolution of our relatively large and complex brains. When added to mice, one made the rodent brains grow bigger and more humanlike, the authors reported in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Those mice also performed better on tests of cognitive function and memory.
In the latest work from the lab of Khalid Shah, MS, Ph.D., at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, investigators have developed a new cell therapy approach to eliminate established tumors and induce long-term immunity, training the immune system so that it can prevent cancer from recurring. The team tested their dual-action, cancer-killing vaccine in an advanced mouse model of the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma, with promising results. “Our team has pursued a simple idea: to take cancer cells and transform them into cancer killers and vaccines,” said Shah. “Using gene engineering, we are repurposing cancer cells to develop a therapeutic that kills tumor cells and stimulates the immune system to both destroy primary tumors and prevent cancer.” Cancer vaccines are an active area of research for many labs, but the approach that Shah and his colleagues have taken is distinct. Instead of using inactivated tumor cells, the team repurposes living tumor cells, which possess an unusual feature. Like homing pigeons returning to roost, living tumor cells will travel long distances across the brain to return to the site of their fellow tumor cells. Taking advantage of this unique property, Shah’s team engineered living tumor cells using the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 and repurposed them to release tumor cell killing agent. In addition, the engineered tumor cells were designed to express factors that would make them easy for the immune system to spot, tag and remember, priming the immune system for a long-term anti-tumor response.
More than a decade ago, researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison developed a way to grow organized clusters of cells, called organoids, that resemble the retina, the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. “But after being grown in a laboratory dish for months as compact clusters, the question remained — will the cells behave appropriately after we tease them apart? Because that is key to introducing them into a patient’s eye.” Said David Gamm, the UW–Madison ophthalmology professor and director of the McPherson Eye Research Institute. During 2022, Gamm and UW–Madison collaborators published studies showing that dish-grown retinal cells called photoreceptors respond like those in a healthy retina to different wavelengths and intensities of light, and that once they are separated from adjacent cells in their organoid, they can reach out toward new neighbors with characteristic biological cords called axons. “The last piece of the puzzle was to see if these cords had the ability to plug into, or shake hands with, other retinal cell types in order to communicate,” added Gamm. To confirm that their lab-grown retinal cells have the capacity to replace diseased cells and carry sensory information like healthy ones, the researchers needed to show that they could make synapses. After they confirmed the presence of synaptic connections, the researchers analyzed the cells involved and found that the most common retinal cell types forming synapses were photoreceptors – rods and cones – which are lost in diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration, as well as in certain eye injuries. The next most common cell type, retinal ganglion cells, are degenerate in optic nerve disorders like glaucoma. “That was an important revelation for us,” Gamm concluded. “It really shows the potentially broad impact these retinal organoids could have.”
Research shows that a person’s brain age is a more useful and accurate predictor of health risks and future disease than their birthdate. Now, a new artificial intelligence (AI) model that analyzes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans developed by USC researchers could be used to accurately capture cognitive decline linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s much earlier than previous methods. Andrei Irimia, assistant professor of gerontology, biomedical engineering, quantitative & computational biology and neuroscience at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, and his team collated the brain MRIs of 4,681 cognitively normal participants, some of whom went on to develop cognitive decline or Alzheimer’s disease later in life. Using these data, they created an AI model called a neural network to predict participants’ ages from their brain MRIs. First, the researchers trained the network to produce detailed anatomic brain maps that reveal subject-specific patterns of aging. They then compared the perceived (biological) brain ages with the actual (chronological) ages of study participants. The greater the difference between the two, the worse the participants’ cognitive scores, which reflect Alzheimer’s risk. The new model also reveals sex-specific differences in how aging varies across brain regions. Certain parts of the brain age faster in males than in females, and vice versa. Males, who are at higher risk of motor impairment due to Parkinson’s disease, experience faster aging in the brain’s motor cortex, an area responsible for motor function. Findings also show that, among females, typical aging may be relatively slower in the right hemisphere of the brain. “One of the most important applications of our work is its potential to pave the way for tailored interventions that address the unique aging patterns of every individual,” Irimia said.
New medicines need not be tested in animals to receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval, according to legislation signed in late December 2022. The change—long sought by animal welfare organizations—could signal a major shift away from animal use after more than 80 years of drug safety regulation. In place of the 1938 stipulation that potential drugs be tested for safety and efficacy in animals, the law allows FDA to promote a drug or biologic—a larger molecule such as an antibody—to human trials after either animal or nonanimal tests. The Center for a Humane Economy, a nonprofit animal welfare organization and key driver of the legislation, and the nonprofit Animal Wellness Action, among others that pushed for changes, argue that in clearing drugs for human trials the agency should rely more heavily on computer modeling, “organ chips,” and other nonanimal methods that have been developed over the past 10 to 15 years. “Animal models are wrong more often than they are right,” says Don Ingber, a Harvard University bioengineer whose lab developed organ chip technology now being commercialized by the company Emulate, where he sits on the board and owns stock. Last month, Lorna Ewart, chief scientific officer at Emulate, Ingber, and colleagues published a study highlighting the potential of this technology. The company’s liver chips correctly identified 87% of a variety of drugs that were moved into human studies after animal studies, but then either failed in clinical trials because they were toxic to the liver or were approved for market but then withdrawn or scaled back because of liver damage. The chips didn’t falsely flag any nontoxic drugs. Article goes on to discuss new testing alternatives and the opposing viewpoint that animal testing is still necessary. It remains unclear just how much the new law will change things at FDA. Although the legislation allows the agency to clear a drug for human trials without animal testing, it doesn’t require that it do so. What’s more, FDA’s toxicologists are famously conservative, preferring animal tests in part because they allow examination of a potential drug’s toxic effects in every organ after the animal is euthanized.
Undergoing clinical trials around the world is a brain surgery that doesn’t need an incision or produce any blood yet drastically improves the lives of people with essential tremor, depression and more. The procedure, known as a focused ultrasound, aims sound waves at parts of the brain to disrupt faulty brain circuits causing symptoms. Dr. Neal Kassell, founder and chairman of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, describes the way it works as “analogous to using a magnifying glass to focus beams of light on a point and burn a hole in a leaf. With focused ultrasound, instead of using an optical lens to focus beams of light, an acoustic lens is used to focus multiple beams of ultrasound energy on targets deep in the body with a high degree of precision and accuracy, sparing the adjacent normal tissue.” Article explains the treatment procedure in detail. The procedure has been significantly beneficial for people with essential tremor, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary and rhythmic shaking. The disorder can affect almost any body part, but the tremors typically occur in hands — even during simple tasks such as eating, drinking or writing.
ChatGPT is already causing problems. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people have already found uses for the tool that are less than ideal. Anything that can create content out of whole cloth can likely create something dangerous. It’s just a matter of time. We’ve collected six of the scarier — or at least questionable — uses that folks have already found for the app. And, keep in mind, this is all before the app goes fully mainstream and while it’s still in its infancy. Creating malware and cheating in school are just the beginning. For example, a consultancy firm reportedly found that applications written by ChatGPT beat out 80% of humans.
This headline shouldn’t surprise anyone. In fact, it would be surprising if ChatGPT couldn’t pass and an old style MBA exam. Professor Christian Terwiesch, who authored the research paper “Would Chat GPT3 Get a Wharton MBA? A Prediction Based on Its Performance in the Operations Management Course,” said that the bot scored between a B- and B on the exam. The bot’s score, Terwiesch wrote, shows its “remarkable ability to automate some of the skills of highly compensated knowledge workers in general and specifically the knowledge workers in the jobs held by MBA graduates including analysts, managers, and consultants.” Terwiesch’s findings come as educators become increasingly concerned that AI chatbots could inspire cheating. Earlier this month, New York City’s Department of Education announced a ban on ChatGPT from its schools’ devices and networks. (That may be silly – workarounds are easy.) Terwiesch said ChatGPT3’s performance on the test has “important implications for business school education, including the need for exam policies, curriculum design focusing on collaboration between human and AI, opportunities to simulate real world decision making processes, the need to teach creative problem solving, improved teaching productivity, and more.” He believes there’s a way to marry education and AI to enhance learning for his students. “I think the technology can engage students in other forms others than the good old, ‘write a five-page essay,'” he said. “But that is up to us as educators to reimagine education and find other ways of engaging the students.
Automakers and franchised dealers have a complex relationship that is backed, in many states, by laws that make it difficult, if not illegal, to bypass franchised dealers and sell new vehicles directly to consumers. (Tesla and other newer EV startups have worked around such regulations to cut costs.) Both automakers and franchised dealers want to maximize profits, but they’re separate businesses that heavily rely on one another to succeed. Dealers rely on automakers for product to fill and move off lots, and the carmakers in turn rely on dealers to sell and service vehicles as well as serve as concierges for customers. As automakers chase Tesla-like profits on new electric vehicles, they face an existential question: how best to bring franchised auto dealers along with them as they transition to EVs. Some, such as General Motors, are asking luxury dealers to go all-in on EVs or get out of the business. Others like Ford Motor are offering dealers different “EV-certification” levels, while most other carmakers, or OEMs, know they need to change the sales process to fit the evolving industry, but are still try to figure out how to do it. As more automakers introduce EVs, they’re rethinking the sales process, including selling new vehicles largely, if not fully, online. A greater shift online may limit the role of dealers to strictly processing, maintenance and as delivery centers going forward and eliminate the need for large lots of cars that they then sell to consumers. For dealers — from mom-and-pop shops to large publicly traded chains — EVs will mean new employee training, infrastructure and substantial investments in their stores to be able to service, sell and charge the vehicles. Depending on the size of the dealer, those upgrades could easily cost hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars. And dealers need to make sure their investments will pay off.
New research by top US government scientists has found that people exposed to the widely used weed killing chemical glyphosate have biomarkers in their urine linked to the development of cancer and other diseases. The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, measured glyphosate levels in the urine of farmers and other study participants and determined that the presence of high levels of the pesticide were associated with signs of a reaction in the body called oxidative stress, a condition that causes damage to DNA. Oxidative stress is considered by health experts as a key characteristic of carcinogens. The authors of the paper – 10 scientists with the National Institutes of Health and two from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – concluded that their study “contributes to the weight of evidence supporting an association between glyphosate exposure and oxidative stress in humans.” They also noted that “accumulating evidence supports the role of oxidative stress in the pathogenesis of hematologic cancers,” such as lymphoma, myeloma and leukemia. The study findings come after the CDC reported last year that more than 80% of urine samples drawn from children and adults contained glyphosate. The CDC reported that out of 2,310 urine samples taken from a group of Americans intended to be representative of the US population, 1,885 were laced with detectable traces of glyphosate. Glyphosate is the most heavily applied herbicide in history, both in the US and globally. One of the best-known glyphosate-based products is Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller. Roundup has been used by farmers as well as consumers for more than 40 years. Notably, in the paper, the NIH and CDC scientists said that while their study focused on farmers who were exposed to glyphosate when they sprayed it on fields, they saw similar results in “non-farmers.” The findings suggest “these effects may apply more broadly to the general population who are primarily exposed through ingestion of contaminated food and water or residential applications,” the study authors wrote. Officials with Monsanto and its German owner Bayer AG dispute the findings of the research. (Editor’s note: This is probably the biggest reason you may wish to avoid GMO foods; they are all grown using toxic herbicides.)
The Edelman Trust Barometer is an annual gauge of the international population’s trust in business organizations, governments, and the media. It is prominent among a number of similar annual research studies published by public relations agencies. The Edelman’s Trust Barometer data on which countries are the most polarized comes from survey results asking respondents two very simple questions: How divided is their country? and How entrenched is the divide? The questions help bring to light the social issues a particular country is facing and the lack of consensus on those issues. Plotted against each other, a chart emerges, shown in the article. In the report, Edelman identifies four metrics to watch for and measure which help quantify polarization: economic anxieties, institutional imbalance, class divide, and battle for truth (trust in media). Aside from those four metrics, concerns about the erosion of civility and weakening social fabric also lead to polarization The 2023 Edelman poll found that 6 countries are now considered to be severely polarized: Argentina, Columbia, the U.S., South Africa, Spain, and Sweden. The largest cluster of 15 countries are in the “moderately polarized” section of the chart, with all continents represented. Some are on the cusp of being severely polarized, including economic heavyweights like Japan, the UK, France, and Germany. Countries with fair economic outlook and high trust in institutions include China, Singapore, and India. It’s interesting to note that of the seven countries in that sector, three are not democracies. Edelman notes that polarization is both “cause and consequence of distrust,” creating a self-fulfilling cycle. (Editor’s note: We particularly recommend the complete report of the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer from which this data was derived.) See also: Richest 1% took 2/3rds of global wealth since 2020 – twice as much as 99% of population earned.
The animal health-care sector is experiencing stunning growth. Veterinarians are busting down walls or breaking ground to make room for new clients clamoring for boarding, day care and grooming. Their balance sheets are getting more complicated, too. In the first nine months of 2022, small-business loans to vet offices spiked 23% at PNC Bank, a spokesman said. At Huntington National Bank, vet credit requests have quadrupled in the past four years. That’s fueled by a surge of pet adoptions, experts say. More than 23 million U.S. households — nearly 1 in 5 — took in a pet during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The share of households with at least one dog jumped from 38% in 2016 to 45% in 2020, before leveling off last year. Cat ownership went from 25% in 2016 to 29% in 2022. “The door stayed open for veterinarians the entire pandemic,” said Brandy Keck, head of veterinary lending at Live Oak Bank. “It became very quickly incredibly evident that the veterinary industry was going to be one of the winners.” Researchers frequently track consumer expenditures on pet food, toys, training and even surgeries to gauge consumer confidence. But in the years leading up to the pandemic, loan underwriters began to sense that classification was increasingly unreliable. People no longer view their pets as property, said Ed Nunes, a senior manager at TD Bank who oversees veterinary lending. They see them as family. The pandemic accelerated two other dynamics: Not only did people adopt more pets, they got stuck at home together. When humans are more attentive to their animal companions, they spend more money on them, veterinarians say. In other words, said veterinarian Becka Byrd in San Antonio, we spoiled our pets. And since pets don’t pay for their own care, veterinarians cater their businesses to attract human clients. So boarding facilities start to look like resort hotels, and day-care centers start to look like kindergartens instead of kennels. “Anthropomorphism is everything,” Byrd said. “I think that’s true even of myself.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts strong demand for practitioners, with veterinarian jobs climbing 19% over the next decade, compared with 3% for human doctors and 5% for the rest of the U.S. workforce. (Paywall waived.)
Ms. Chung Hyun-back, who was tasked by the previous South Korean government with reversing the country’s plummeting birthrate, knows firsthand how tough it is to be a woman in South Korea. She chose her career over nuptials and children. Like her, millions of young women have been collectively spurning motherhood in a so-called birth strike. After trying for over a year to persuade more South Korean women to have babies, she says one reason stands out for her failure: “Our patriarchal culture.” A 2022 survey found that more women than men — 65% versus 48% — don’t want children. They’re doubling down by avoiding matrimony (and its conventional pressures) altogether. The other term in South Korea for birth strike is “marriage strike.” For three years in a row, the country has recorded the lowest fertility rate in the world, with women of reproductive age having fewer than one child on average. It reached the “dead cross,” when deaths outnumbered births, in 2020, nearly a decade earlier than expected. Young Koreans have well-documented reasons not to start a family, including the staggering costs of raising children, unaffordable homes, lousy job prospects and soul-crushing work hours. But women in particular are fed up with this traditionalist society’s impossible expectations of mothers. President Yoon Suk-yeol has suggested feminism is to blame for blocking “healthy relationships” between men and women. But he’s got it backward — gender equality is the solution to falling birthrates. Over 16 years, 280 trillion won ($210 billion) has been poured into programs encouraging procreation, such as a monthly allowance for parents of newborns. Many women are still saying “no”. No wonder. Even in dual-income households, wives daily spend more than three hours on these tasks versus their husband’s 54 minutes. Discrimination against working mothers by employers is also common. In one notorious case, the country’s top baby formula maker was accused of pressuring female employees to quit after getting pregnant. (Editor’s note: The primary issue is neither infertility nor feminism; it’s hundreds of thousands of individual women saying “no – because I don’t want the life that would leave me with.” The same reasons are driving the population decline in China. See the article below in the Statistics section.)
The 366 newly added reports join a catalog of 144 cases that were documented over the previous 17 years. The total record of bizarre aerial activity now sits at 510. The Office of Director of National Intelligence wrote in an unclassified 11-page report that multiple agencies found that the flying objects “demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities.” The classified version of the report, which is required by the National Defense Authorization Act for the fiscal year 2022, was submitted to Congress. The majority of the reports originated from U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force aviators and operators who witnessed the unidentified aerial phenomena during the course of their service duties.
A NASA mission has spotted an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting a small star about 100 light-years away. The planet, named TOI 700 e, is likely rocky and 95% the size of our world. The celestial body is the fourth planet to be detected orbiting the small, cool M dwarf star TOI 700. All of the exoplanets were found by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS mission. Another planet in the system, discovered in 2020 and named TOI 700 d, is also the size of Earth. Both of these exoplanets exist in their star’s habitable zone, or just the right distance from the star that liquid water might potentially exist on their surfaces. The potential for liquid water suggests that the planets themselves could be, or might once have been, habitable for life. “This is one of only a few systems with multiple, small, habitable-zone planets that we know of,” said lead study author Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “That makes the TOI 700 system an exciting prospect for additional follow-up. Planet e is about 10% smaller than planet d, so the system also shows how additional TESS observations help us find smaller and smaller worlds.”
Is the Milky Way special, or, at least, is it in a special place in the universe? An international team of astronomers has found that the answer to that question is yes, in a way not previously appreciated. A new study shows that the Milky Way is too big for its “cosmological wall,” something yet to be seen in other galaxies. A cosmological wall is a flattened arrangement of galaxies found surrounding other galaxies, characterized by particularly empty regions called “voids” on either side of it. These voids seem to squash the galaxies together into a pancake-like shape to make the flattened arrangement. This wall environment, in this case called the Local Sheet, influences how the Milky Way and nearby galaxies rotate around their axes, in a more organized way than if we were in a random place in the universe, without a wall. Typically, galaxies tend to be significantly smaller than this so-called wall. The Milky Way is found to be surprisingly massive in comparison to its cosmological wall, a rare cosmic occurrence. Article explains the research published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
NASA has unveiled plans to test nuclear-powered rockets that would fly astronauts to Mars in ultra-fast time. The agency has partnered with the US government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to demonstrate a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space as soon as 2027. The project is intended to develop a pioneering propulsion system for space travel far different from the chemical systems prevalent since the modern era of rocketry dawned almost a century ago. Nasa said in a press release, “Reducing transit time is a key component for human missions to Mars, as longer trips require more supplies and more robust systems.” An additional benefit would be increased science payload capacity, and higher power for instrumentation and communication, according to the agency. NASA, which successfully tested its new-era Artemis spacecraft last year as a springboard back to the moon and on to Mars, has hopes of landing humans on the red planet sometime in the 2030s as part of its Moon to Mars program.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics has confirmed what researchers have long suspected – that 2022 was the year China’s population turned down, for the first time since the great famine brought on by Chinese leader Mao Zedong in 1959-1961. The National Bureau of Statistics reported that China’s population fell to 1.412 billion in 2022 from 1.413 billion in 2021, a decrease of 850,000. China’s total fertility rate, the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime, was fairly flat at an average about 1.66 between 1991 and 2017 under the influence of China’s one-child policy, but then fell to 1.28 in 2020 and 1.15 in 2021. The 2021 rate of 1.15 is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 generally thought necessary to sustain a population, also well below the US and Australian rates of 1.7 and 1.6, and even below ageing Japan’s unusually low rate of 1.3. And bringing fertility back to 2.1 is most unlikely. Evidence from European countries, which were the first to experience fertility declines and ageing, shows that once fertility falls below replacement it is very hard to return it to 2.1. China accounts for more than one sixth of global population. This means that even as it shrinks, how fast it shrinks has implications for when the globe’s population starts to shrink. In 2022 the United Nations brought forward its estimate of when the world’s population will peak by 20 years to 2086. The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences forecasts for China would mean an earlier peak, in 2084. India is likely to have overtaken China as the world’s biggest nation in 2022. The UN expects it to have 1.7 billion people to China’s 1.4 billion in 2050.
The human cerebral cortex is made up of six cellular layers, but at Precision Neuroscience, a team of scientists and engineers is working to build a device that’s reminiscent of a seventh. The device is called the Layer 7 Cortical Interface, and it’s a brain implant that aims to help patients with paralysis operate digital devices using only neural signals. This means patients with severe degenerative diseases like ALS will regain their ability to communicate with loved ones by moving cursors, typing and even accessing social media with their minds. The Layer 7 is an electrode array that resembles a piece of scotch tape and is thinner than a human hair, which helps it conform to the brain’s surface without damaging any tissue. Precision was co-founded by Benjamin Rapoport, who also co-founded Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface (BCI) company, Neuralink, and Michael Mager. But while Neuralink’s BCI is designed to be implanted directly into the brain tissue, Precision relies on a surgical technique that is designed to be less invasive. In order to implant the Layer 7 array, a surgeon makes a very thin slit into the skull and slides in the device like a letter into a letter box. The slit is less than a millimeter thick – so small that patients do not even need their hair shaved for the procedure. The nature of the procedure allows Precision to easily scale up the number of electrodes on the array, which Mager said will eventually allow the device to be used for neurological applications beyond paralysis. The procedure is also reversible if patients decide they no longer want the implant or want newer versions in the future.
This tiny robot can melt, escape from a prison by sliding through secure bars, and then reform into a solid and complete tasks. The metal microbot, made out of liquid metal microparticles that can be steered and reshaped by external magnetic fields, has been widely compared to the character T-1000 in The Terminator movie franchise, a cyborg assassin played by Robert Patrick that could morph his way around solid objects before embarking on a murderous rampage. But, in contrast with the film, the inventors of this robot believe their discovery can be used for good — particularly in clinical and mechanical settings — by reaching hard-to-reach spaces. The robot was presented as part of a study into the metal microparticles, known as a type of magnetoactive phase transitional matter, that can morph shape, move quickly, be controlled easily and carry many times its own body weight. By blasting the robot with magnetic fields at alternating currents, scientists increased its temperature to 95 Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) and caused it to morph from a solid into a liquid state in 1 minute 20 seconds. Once transformed into liquid metal, the figurine could be steered through the narrow gaps of its locked cage by more magnets — demonstrating its morphability. It is the first time a material capable of both shifting shape and carrying heavy loads has been identified for use in microbots, according to scientists at the Chinese, Hong Kong and American universities who worked on the study — solving a riddle that has confounded miniature robot makers who previously struggled to achieve both morphability and strength in their designs. (Paywall waived.)
When it is completed in 2040, the Tuas Mega Port complex will be the largest container port on Earth, boasts PSA International, its Singaporean owner. Tuas is a vision of the future on two fronts. It illustrates how port operators the world over are deploying clever technologies to meet the demand for their services in the face of obstacles to the development of new facilities, from lack of space to environmental concerns. More fundamentally, the city-state’s investment, with construction costs estimated at $15bn, is part of a wave of huge bets by the broader logistics industry on the rising importance of Asia, and South-East Asia in particular. The IMF expects the region’s five largest economies—Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand—to be the fastest-growing bloc in the world by trade volumes between 2022 and 2027. The result is that the map of global commerce and the blueprints for its critical nodes are being simultaneously redrawn. For decades Asian trade has tended to be one-way. Containers loaded with goods manufactured by the continent’s cheap labor sailed to advanced economies and came back largely empty. In the late 1990s more than 70% of Asian exports by value went to other parts of the world. A quarter of a century on, thanks in part to those trade flows and more complex supply chains, Asian economies have become big markets. Today nearly 60% of Asia’s exports flow within the region.
Consciousness is one of the longest standing, and most divisive, questions in the field of artificial intelligence. And while to some it’s science fiction — and indeed has been the plot of countless sci-fi books, comics, and films — to others, like Hod Lipson, the mechanical engineer in charge of the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University, it’s a goal, one that would undoubtedly change human life as we know it for good. “This is not just another research question that we’re working on — this is the question,” the researcher continued. “This is bigger than curing cancer. If we can create a machine that will have consciousness on par with a human, this will eclipse everything else we’ve done,” he added. “That machine itself can cure cancer.” Of course, the biggest issue that the industry runs into with the question of consciousness — other than the technological challenge — is the fact that consciousness itself doesn’t really have a firm definition, in the field or beyond it. Philosophically, consciousness is vague and debatable. And scientifically, efforts to tidily nail consciousness down to specific brain functions or otherwise signifiers tends to fall flat. There are also a number of deeply ethical questions that arise with just the concept of machine consciousness, particularly related to machine labor. Lipson has his own definition of consciousness, that being the capacity to “imagine yourself in the future,” In other words: a machine with the ability to not only learn more and correct responsively, as machines do now, but a machine with the ability to imagine how it might be better, and evolving to suit that vision. It’s a slight distinction, but an important one. “There’s the hubris of wanting to create life,” Lipson said. “It’s the ultimate challenge, like going to the moon.”
In its violent early years, Earth was a molten hellscape that ejected the moon after a fiery collision with another protoplanet, scientists now suspect. Later, it morphed from a watery expanse to a giant snowball that nearly snuffed out all existing life. Then hyper-hurricanes with waves as high as 300 feet pummeled the newly thawed ocean. But that’s nothing compared with the celestial turmoil and fireworks in the 9 billion years before the birth of our planet. Science and history documentarian Dan Levitt’s upcoming book, What’s Gotten Into You: The Story of Your Body’s Atoms, From the Big Bang Through Last Night’s Dinner, evokes a series of striking and often forceful images in tracing how our cells, elements, atoms and subatomic particles all found their way to our brains and bones and bodies. The nearly incomprehensible explosions, collisions and temperatures, though, were essential for life. A disturbance in Jupiter’s orbit, for example, may have sent a hail of asteroids to Earth, seeding the planet with water in the process. And the molten iron forming Earth’s core has created a magnetic field that protects us from cosmic rays. “So many things happened that could’ve gone another way,” Levitt said, “in which case we wouldn’t be here.” He didn’t initially set out to parallel the turbulence in the universe with upheavals in the scientific world, but it definitely came with the territory. “So many scientific certainties have been overthrown since our great-grandparents were alive,” he said. “That’s part of the fun of the book.” Throughout the book, he points out six recurring mental traps that have blinded even brilliant minds, such as the view that it’s “too weird to be true” or that “if our current tools haven’t detected it, it doesn’t exist.”
The future belongs to those who prepare for it, as scientists who petition federal agencies like NASA and the Department of Energy for research funds know all too well. The price of big-ticket instruments like a space telescope or particle accelerator can be as high as $10 billion. So this past June, the physics community began to consider what they want to do next, and why. In the 1980s, Dr. Turner was among the scientists who began using the tools of particle physics to study the Big Bang and the evolution of the universe, and using the universe to learn about particle physics. Dr. Spiropulu, born in Greece, was on the team in 2012 that discovered the long-sought Higgs boson. This article reprints a conversation with the two scientists to discuss the research disappointments of the last 20 years and the challenges ahead. As Turner notes, “The quest for the fundamental rules is not over. Why two different kinds of building blocks? Why so many “elementary” particles? Why four forces? How do dark matter, dark energy, gravity and space-time fit in? Answering these questions is the work of elementary particle physics.” Spiropulu added, “The curveball is that we don’t understand the mass of the Higgs, which is about 125 times the mass of a hydrogen atom.” (Editor’s note: If the nature of reality as physicists understand it interests you, this article provides a good synopsis of the big open questions. Spoiler alert: How soon will physicists get it all figured out? – It’ll be a while. Paywall waived.)
Bryan Johnson is 45 years old but, according to a new report, his test results show he has the heart of a 37-year-old and the lungs of a young adult. Doctors say he has the gum inflammation of a 17-year-old, and a device that tracks Johnson’s rate of nighttime erections is like that of a teenager’s. Johnson is a biotech entrepreneur who hopes to game nature’s course of aging and have the organs and health of an 18-year-old by going through an intense data-driven experimental program he’s called Project Blueprint. Johnson could spend up to $2 million on his body this year and there are early glimpses that show he may be on track to unlocking the secret to age reversal. The program is led by Oliver Zolman, a 29-year-old physician who calls himself the “rejuvenation doctor,” and is supported by a team of more than 30 health experts, according to the report. While it’s still in its experimental stage and is constantly being tweaked, the health program consists of an intense daily regimen of carefully curated supplements, meals, exercise, and a slew of bodily tests. Johnson’s 5 a.m.-mornings for example start with two dozen supplements for all kinds of purported health benefits. His meals, a mix of solid and soft foods, are vegan and restricted to 1,977 calories a day. He exercises daily, with three high-intensity workouts a week, and goes through blood tests, MRIs, and colonoscopies each month. All of his efforts in 2021 have amounted to what Johnson claims to be a world record epigenetic age reversal of 5.1 years. (Editor’s note: This doesn’t sound like the quality of life most of us are looking for.)
The entire incident was caught on camera during a live stream on the Mutekimaru’s Channel on YouTube. The channel is famous for its clips of fish playing video games on the Nintendo Switch through motion detection tracking software, which can track fish as they swim through a tank and use the information to input commands on the video game system based on where the fish are positioned. However, things went awry during a live stream of a group of fish playing Pokémon Scarlet and Violet after Mutekimaru stepped away. The video game crashed, but the gaming system continued to follow the fish’s inputs leading to the Nintendo Store, where users can purchase games and other downloadable content. The fish managed to swim in a way that allowed them access to the store before exiting and re-entering, after which they made a purchase. The fish eventually charged 500 Yen through the Nintendo Store – equivalent to about $3.85 – to a credit card already saved on the Switch account. Unbeknownst to the owner, the fish also exposed his credit card information to the public on the live stream during the purchase. The swimmers also downloaded the N64 emulator and used the gold coins saved up from purchases through the owner’s Nintendo shop to buy a golfing digital cosmetic from Nintendo Switch Sports. In 2020, Mutekimaru’s fish successfully finished Pokémon Sapphire in just over 3,000 hours. (That would take normally human players about 30 hours of gameplay to accomplish). The team of fish that plays video games in the tank is switched out every 12 hours for the fish’s health. For tech details on how to wire up your fish, see this.
Amaru, along with about 40 other dogs, is part of a play group organized by Mo Mountain Mutts — a local dog walking and training business, run by husband-and-wife duo, Mo and Lee Thompson. The Thompsons lead off-leash pack walks up to three times a day, but what has captured the attention of people worldwide are hilarious videos showing how they collect their canine clients: A recent TikTok video (embedded) of several dogs confidently boarding the bus on their own with big wagging tails was viewed more than 50 million times. It documents the Thompsons’ regular pickup routine. At one point, the minibus stops in front of Amaru’s home, where he is seated in the front yard — clearly expecting them. From inside the bus, the Thompsons open the doors for the pup, and he happily leaps in. Once entering the bus, the dogs typically sniff around and greet the other canine passengers, before climbing onto their assigned seat — which the Thompsons have trained them to do. Then, their harness gets secured, and the same process is repeated as the rest of the pack, about 12 dogs, is picked up. The seats are carefully selected based on factors such as a pup’s personality, age and manners. Most dogs head directly to their designated seat without being guided. (Paywall waived.) (Editor’s note: The TikTok segment seems to have full sound – dogs chewing their treats, etc. – but we’ve never before seen 8-10 dogs so well behaved and not barking. These trainers are amazing. In case you’re dubious, here’s another clip with full sound and a bus full of quiet dogs.)
The future is like heaven. Everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.
– James Baldwin
A special thanks to: Karen Elkins, Chas Freeman, Ursula Freer, Diane Petersen, Abby Porter, Bobbie Rohn, Steve Ujvarosy, and all of you who have sent us interesting links in the past. If you see something we should know about, do send it along – thanks.
