Technology is Used for Control: The Impact of Science on Society

TruthStream Media
March 28, 2020



Rulers want to marginalize their competitors and control their populations; so why would science be used for the betterment of the many? Think about it next time you hear grandiose claims about how much some philanthropist plans to save the world. Then look up how Tesla's free energy plan was kept from the world. It has often been assume that technology is magically in our hands for our betterment and delight. But insider authors including Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, Jaques Ellul and Edward Bernays have all made clear that these are tools that make centralized control easier and more all encompassing. The rise of the Scientific Dictatorship, which Russell describes in his Impact of Science on Society, puts individual freedom under threat, and society under the thumb of scientists working for the rulers. Technological aids for controlling fertility, genetically altering agriculture, people and animals, and for advancing the scope of war are all discussed, and all strengthen, not weaken, the power handed to the controllers.

UN Wants Artificial Intelligence to Advance Agenda 2030

The New American
August 10, 2017

Imagine a world where supercomputers programmed by totalitarian technocrats make virtually every important decision for you, in addition to manipulating you at every turn. Such a dystopian future for the world may not be that far off — at least if humanity continues on its current course. And the technocrats behind the plan barely even bother to conceal their agenda at this point.  

The United Nations is now openly plotting with Big Business and Big Government to exploit Artificial Intelligence (AI) to further its agenda, especially the totalitarian ideology it calls “sustainable development.” Multiple UN bureaucracies have convened summits this year for that purpose, bringing together leading experts in the field from around the world. The goal: To harness AI and Big Data for what the UN considers to be “the global good.”

Now, the UN is even seeking to hire an “Artificial Intelligence Advisor” to help weaponize emerging technologies and AI to advance its totalitarian UN “Agenda 2030” and the so-called “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) at the center of it. At the same time, the potential threat posed by AI is being cited as a pretext to further empower the UN to create global “laws” and regulations. And unsurprisingly, when the dangers of AI were mentioned, it was almost always in the context of empowering transnational institutions to “deal” with them by further empowering government and globalists.

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Read Books, Live Longer?

The New York Times
August 3, 2016

Reading books is tied to a longer life, according to a new report.

Researchers used data on 3,635 people over 50 participating in a larger health study who had answered questions about reading.

The scientists divided the sample into three groups: those who read no books, those who read books up to three and a half hours a week, and those who read books more than three and a half hours.

The study, in Social Science & Medicine, found that book readers tended to be female, college-educated and in higher income groups. So researchers controlled for those factors as well as age, race, self-reported health, depression, employment and marital status.

Compared with those who did not read books, those who read for up to three and a half hours a week were 17 percent less likely to die over 12 years of follow-up, and those who read more than that were 23 percent less likely to die. Book readers lived an average of almost two years longer than those who did not read at all.

They found a similar association among those who read newspapers and periodicals, but it was weaker.

“People who report as little as a half-hour a day of book reading had a significant survival advantage over those who did not read,” said the senior author, Becca R. Levy, a professor of epidemiology at Yale. “And the survival advantage remained after adjusting for wealth, education, cognitive ability and many other variables.”

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Scientists Meet In Secret To Discuss Creating A Synthetic Human Genome

New York Times
May 13, 2016

Image courtesy of the National Human Genome Research Institute

WRITTEN BY: ANDREW POLLACK MAY 13, 2016

TN Note: Huxley’s Brave New World is coming to life right before our eyes. Who needs parents? Babies are created in the lab for their pathetic, predetermined existence: Alphas, Gammas, Deltas, Epsilons. Natural procreation is not allowed, and all ‘accidental’ pregnancies will be terminated. All of society is “stratified by genetically-predestined caste.” Science is god. Technocrats and Transhumans are undoubtedly doing a ‘happy dance’ right now.

Scientists are now contemplating the creation of a synthetic human genome, meaning they would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes.

The prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community, because it might be possible — if someone were able to create a totally artificial genome — to implant that genome into embryos and create human beings without parents.

While the project is still in the idea phase, and also involves efforts to improve DNA synthesis in general, it was discussed at a closed-door meeting at Harvard Medical School in Boston on Tuesday. The roughly 150 attendees were told not to contact the media or to tweet about the meeting.

Organizers said the project in some ways would be a follow-up to the original Human Genome Project, which was aimed at reading the sequence of the three billion chemical letters in the DNA blueprint of human life. The new project, by contrast, would involve not reading, but rather writing the human genome — synthesizing all three billion units from chemicals.

But such an attempt would raise numerous ethical issues. Could scientists create humans with certain kinds of traits, perhaps people born and bred to be soldiers? Or might it be possible to make copies of specific people?

“Would it be O.K. to sequence and then synthesize Einstein’s genome?” Drew Endy, a bioengineer at Stanford and Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University, wrote in an essay criticizing the proposed project. “If so, how many Einstein genomes would it be O.K. to make and install in cells, and who would get to make and control these cells?”

Scientists and ethicists are already raising concerns about using new gene-editing techniques that could change individual traits in embryos. But it would be possible to make much more extensive changes by synthesizing an entire genome.

Professor Zoloth said in an interview that the project could be risky without any well-defined benefit. She also criticized the surreptitious meeting. “It is O.K. to have meetings that are private, but it has not been characteristic of the field to have meetings that are secret in addition to being private.”

George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and one of the organizers of the proposed project, said the characterization was a misunderstanding, and that in reality the project was aimed more generally at improving the ability to synthesize long strands of DNA, which could be applied to various types of animals, plants and microbes.

“They’re painting a picture which I don’t think represents the project,” Dr. Church said in an interview. “If that were the project, I’d be running away from it.”

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The Elite Knew Mass Unemployment and Unrest Was Coming A Long Time Ago

Aaron Dykes
January 27, 2016

(But they did nothing to stop it.) The technocrats and robber barons have been steering the ship for some time now. 

The technology of the day has caught up to us sooner than anybody realized, and now robots and automation is destroying hundreds of millions of human jobs across the globe.

Entire sectors will no longer be employed, and desperate people will turn to riots, looting and unruly behavior. Some may even turn on the "Davos elite" and other ruling members of the oligarchy.

As the talking points of their latest discussions at Davos indicate, they are worried about the revolutionary potential as wave of mass unemployment prepares to hit. The ultra wealthy control more now than ever, as the Middle Class is completely destroyed and the struggling and poor turn to government for help.

Yet the scientists and technicians who unleashed Cybernetics brought it upon the population intentionally. 

Norbert Wiener, the foremost expert in this field, discusses the violent potential of technological revolution for jobs and economic survival. 

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Top Scientist: UN “Climate Finance” Is Subsidy for Kleptocracy

The New American
January 27, 2016

PARIS — The international wealth-redistribution schemesof the United Nations, justified under the guise of battling alleged man-made global warming, are really a massive subsidy to kleptocrats ruling poor countries paid for by the poor and middle classes of wealthier and freer nations, according to internationally renowned physicist Dr. Fred Singer.  

On top of that, the professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia said, the burden of proof in attributing climate changes to human activities is on man-made global-warming theorists seeking to regulate and control carbon dioxide, and not on skeptics. And so far, the alarmists have failed to demonstrate that mankind is responsible forany measurable impact on the climate, he said.    

Speaking at the Heartland Institute's “Day of Examining the Data” conference in Paris, which took place during the UN's COP21 climate summit last month, Singer and other scientists from around the world denounced the global-warming alarmism coming out of the nearby UN confab. Among other concerns, the experts said there was no climate crisis — much less a man-made one — and that the real agenda of the UN involves primarily money and power, not the climate.

Dr. Singer, an atmospheric and space physicist with unassailable scientific credentials, told The New American in an interview after his speech that climate science was far from settled, and that taxpayer money distributed by governments was buying the cooperation of scientists. He also suggested that human impacts on the climate, if there are any, are likely to be so tiny as to be completely insignificant.

“The climate has always been changing — warming and cooling, warming and cooling,” Singer said. “So we assume that this is a continuing process. The fact that we are now fairly well advanced in the industrial revolution — it has no influence on natural forcing, we don't affect what the sun does, we don't affect the volcanoes. So the null hypothesis, which means the normal way events go, we would assume that all changes in climate, even today, are due to the same kinds of natural forcing.”

The burden of proof, then, is on the alarmists demanding trillions of dollars and vast new controls over humanity under the guise of battling alleged anthropogenic (man-made) global warming (AGW) — not the other way around. “The null hypothesis that has to be disproven or amended is that natural forcings are changing the climate, simply because it's always been that way and we would assume that it would continue that way,” Singer emphasized. “So the burden of proof definitely has to be on the people who want to control CO2.” Other speakers at the summit emphasized that CO2 is the gas of life, not pollution.

And overcoming that burden will be a very tough, assuming it is even possible. “In all honesty, I will tell you that they have a very difficult job, I don't want that job of having to prove that,” said Singer, founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). “We're quite open to the idea that maybe CO2 does have some influence, but it has to be demonstrated,” he continued. “So far, they have not been able to demonstrate uniquely to our satisfaction that CO2 has any measurable influence.”

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Military suit with suspended armor, computer makes debut

USA Today
May 31, 2015

The so-called military 'suit of the future' makes its debut in Tampa. The suit contains built-in night vision, computers and communication systems as well as a metal skeleton.

Children who watch too much TV may have 'damaged brain structures'

Daily Mail
January 10, 2014

*The more time a child spends watching TV, the more profound the changes

*It leads to more grey matter in the regions around the frontopolar cortex area of the brain -      towards the front and side of the head

Watching too much television can change the structure of a child's brain in a damaging way, according to a new study.

Researchers found that the more time a child spent viewing TV, the more profound the brain alterations appeared to be.

The Japanese study looked at 276 children aged between five and 18, who watched between zero and four hours TV per day, with the average being about two hours.

Too much TV can change the structure of a child's brain in a way which can lead to lower verbal intelligence

MRI brain scans showed children who spent the most hours in front of the box had greater amounts of grey matter in regions around the frontopolar cortex - the area at the front of the frontal lobe.

But this increased volume was a negative thing as it was linked with lower verbal intelligence, said the authors, from Tohoku University in the city of Sendai.

They suggested grey matter could be compared to body weight and said these brain areas need to be pruned during childhood in order to operate efficiently.

‘These areas show developmental cortical thinning during development, and children with superior IQs show the most vigorous cortical thinning in this area,’ the team wrote.

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Method of recording brain activity could lead to mind-reading devices, Stanford scientists say

The Almagest
December 7, 2013

A brain region activated when people are asked to perform mathematical calculations in an experimental setting is similarly activated when they use numbers — or even imprecise quantitative terms, such as “more than”— in everyday conversation, according to a study by Stanford University School of Medicine scientists.

Using a novel method, the researchers collected the first solid evidence that the pattern of brain activity seen in someone performing a mathematical exercise under experimentally controlled conditions is very similar to that observed when the person engages in quantitative thought in the course of daily life.

“We’re now able to eavesdrop on the brain in real life,” said Josef Parvizi, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurology and neurological sciences and director of Stanford’s Human Intracranial Cognitive Electrophysiology Program. Parvizi is the senior author of the study, to be published in Nature Communications. The study’s lead authors are postdoctoral scholar Mohammad Dastjerdi, MD, PhD, and graduate student Muge Ozker.

The finding could lead to “mind-reading” applications that, for example, would allow a patient who is rendered mute by a stroke to communicate via passive thinking. Conceivably, it could also lead to more dystopian outcomes: chip implants that spy on or even control people’s thoughts.

“This is exciting, and a little scary,” said Henry Greely, JD, the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and steering committee chair of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, who played no role in the study but is familiar with its contents and described himself as “very impressed” by the findings. “It demonstrates, first, that we can see when someone’s dealing with numbers and, second, that we may conceivably someday be able to manipulate the brain to affect how someone deals with numbers.”

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Has Comet ISON Made the Trip Past The Sun?

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!!
Mark Matheny
November 28, 2013

The Comet known as "ISON" has apparently made it's pass around the Sun (Perihelion). From the video provided by the Cybertribe News Network the comet seems to pass around the sun, and then become visibly much brighter as it is seen again.


According to Fox News, most scientists had declared the comet dead as it made it's way closer to the sun, but now it seems that this comet of dirty space ice may just have survived.

"It certainly appears as if there is an object there that is emitting material," said Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

NASA.gov published a predicted journey video of the Comet back in July of this year saying that it could be possible that the comet would be destroyed by the sun's heat as it travels closer to it.

A comet’s journey through the solar system is perilous and violent. A giant ejection of solar material from the sun could rip its tail off. Before it reaches Mars -- at some 230 million miles away from the sun -- the radiation of the sun begins to boil its water, the first step toward breaking apart. And, if it survives all this, the intense radiation and pressure as it flies near the surface of the sun could destroy it altogether.Right now, Comet ISON is making that journey. It began its trip from the Oort cloud region of our solar system and is now travelling toward the sun. The comet will reach its closest approach to the sun on Thanksgiving Day -- Nov. 28, 2013 -- skimming just 730,000 miles above the sun’s surface. If it comes around the sun without breaking up, the comet will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere with the naked eye, and from what we see now, ISON is predicted to be a particularly bright and beautiful comet.
Cataloged as C/2012 S1, Comet ISON was first spotted 585 million miles away in September 2012. This is its very first trip around the sun, which means it is still made of pristine matter from the earliest days of the solar system’s formation, its top layers never having been lost by a trip near the sun. Scientists will point as many ground-based observatories as they can and at least 15 space-based assets towards the comet along the way, in order to learn more about this time capsule from when the solar system first formed. NASA.gov

Most scientist are doubtful that the comet was able to survive the perihelion but are still analysing the skies and the data before saying the comet has dissipated. 

"At this point, I do suspect that the comet has broken up and died," says Karl Battams, a comet scientist for the Naval Research Laboratory, who joined a NASA and Google+ chat from Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona. "Let's at least give it a couple of more hours before we start writing the obituary." USA Today

If the comet survives, it should pass by earth as close as 40 million miles at around December 26th.

The name given to the comet -ISON- stands for International Scientific Optical Network.

Technocracy And The Making of China

August Forecast & Review
May 22, 2013

It was no mis­take of his­tory that China trans­formed from a Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship into a neo-authoritarian Technocracy.

In this regard, the influ­ence of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, its mem­bers and poli­cies on the world stage can hardly be quan­ti­fied. The Com­mis­sion, founded by David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski in 1973, drew mem­ber­ship from North America, Europe and Japan. Out of approx­i­mately 300 mem­bers, only 86 were orig­i­nally from the United States, and yet they cor­po­rately devised and pushed poli­cies that suited the entire mem­ber­ship, and did so under a vir­tual cloak of invis­i­bility that lasts even into 2013.

Today, we reap the “ben­e­fits” of Tri­lat­eral manip­u­la­tion. The Euro­pean economy is trashed, Japan’s economy is still smol­dering from the mid-1990′s and the U.S. is much worse off today than in the late 1960′s. But, the polit­ical sys­tems of these coun­tries are not much better off than their economies. The fruit of decay in the United States is painfully evi­dent with a frac­tured and con­tentious politic that defies rec­on­cil­i­a­tion on even the most minor issues.

My friends at Coali­tion for a Pros­perous America and Economy in Crisis, among others, are working hard to offset messed-up trade poli­cies that put Amer­ican industry in the toilet over the last 30 years. As long as we have some freedom of speech left, orga­ni­za­tions like these are a wel­come voice, even if they are shouted down by the global free-trade cartel.

How­ever, people need to know where and how this all started, and who was respon­sible for it. Only by under­standing the gen­esis of glob­al­iza­tion can modern eco­nomics, pol­i­tics and social trends be under­stood. Can anyone say, “Pin the tail on the donkey?”

Thirty-five years ago, in the November 1978 and April 1979 issues of Tri­lat­eral Observer, Antony C. Sutton and myself wrote the fol­lowing analysis on China. We warned of the dis­as­trous effects that would result if these poli­cies moved for­ward, and we thor­oughly exposed the mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion who were almost solely respon­sible for China’s ascen­dent rise as a world power. That no one lis­tened at the time is self-evident, because nothing changed and no one resisted. (For clar­i­fi­ca­tion, names of Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers are in bold type.)

Tri­lat­eral China Policy

The policy of “nor­mal­iza­tion” of rela­tions with Com­mu­nist China – in effect a pro­gram to build China tech­no­log­i­cally into a super power – was imple­mented by Zbig­niew Brzezinski.

A high ranking Admin­is­tra­tion source is reported as saying: “This was Zbig’s baby more than anyone else’s.:

From out­side the White House (from a top policy maker who gen­er­ally sides with Cyrus Vance):

“Zbig is really riding high now. He had the cen­tral role behind the scenes, and he was all alone in the press play. I’m told the Pres­i­dent thinks Zbig did 99 per­cent of the work on China.”

More likely, how­ever, the China policy was for­mu­lated and imple­mented by a Tri­lat­er­alist troika: Jimmy Carter, Cyrus Vance and Brzezinski. And this policy was only a con­tin­u­a­tion of a policy begun under a “Repub­lican” Admin­is­tra­tion, that of Richard Nixon andHenry Kissinger, another Trilateralist.

The heady effect that these vast policy making exer­cises have on these men, almost an infan­tile reac­tion, is well reported in the Wash­ington Post on Feb­ruary 8, 1979 with the head­line, China Policy: A Born-Again Brzezinski,describing how Brzezinski excit­edly describes his meeting with Teng [aka Deng Xiaoping]:

FEBURARY 1979 — The eyes sparkle with excite­ment even days later. The arms erupt in sudden sweeping ges­tures when he talks about it. And that causes the photos — about a dozen of them — to fly out of Zbig­niew Brzezinski’s hands and scatter over the floor of his office as he is speaking.

 ”Here’s Cy… and here I am… and there is Teng right between us…. “

 Brzezinski is talking in that quick. clipped, excited style that is his way, and he is pointing at one photo that remains in his hand while he bends to scoop up the rest, talking all the while.

 ”It’s amazing, when you think of it. The leader of a bil­lion people — having dinner in my house just two hours after he arrived in this country!

 ”I mean, it really is rather amazing!”

Zbig­niew Brzezinski (left) and Deng Xiaoping (right) – 1979

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The Robot Reality: Service Jobs Are Next to Go

CNBC
March 27, 2013

Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sample matza bread offered to them by small robots during a tour of a technology exposition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

If you meet Baxter, the latest humanoid robot from Rethink Robotics – you should get comfortable with him, because you'll likely be seeing more of him soon.

Rethink Robotics released Baxter last fall and received an overwhelming response from the manufacturing industry, selling out of their production capacity through April. He's cheap to buy ($22,000), easy to train, and can safely work side-by-side with humans. He's just what factories need to make their assembly lines more efficient – and yes, to replace costly human workers.

But manufacturing is only the beginning.

This April, Rethink will launch a software platform that will allow Baxter to do a more complex sequencing of tasks – for example, picking up a part, holding it in front of an inspection station and receiving a signal to place it in a "good" or "not good" pile. The company is also releasing a software development kit soon that will allow third parties – like university robotics researchers – to create applications for Baxter.

These third parties "are going to do all sorts of stuff we haven't envisioned," says Scott Eckert, CEO of Rethink Robotics. He envisions something similar to Apple's app store happening for Baxter. A spiffed-up version of the robot could soon be seen flipping burgers at McDonalds, folding t-shirts at Gap, or pouring coffee at Starbucks.

"Could [Baxter] be a barista?" asks Eckert. "It's not a target market, but it's something that's pretty repeatable. Put a cup in, push a button, espresso comes out, etc. There are simple repeatable service tasks that Baxter could do over time."

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Boeing missile flies over buildings, fries computers with microwaves

GeekWire
January 14, 2013

This is stuff you only see in the movies.

“Today, we made science fiction science fact,” says Keith Coleman, CHAMP Program Manager forBoeing Phantom Works, in the video above.

And he’s right. In what could potentially change modern day warfare, Boeing and the U.S. Air Force successfully tested the Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP). The missile’s primary purpose is to disable computers and other electronics from a distance, using microwaves.

Last Tuesday over the Western Utah desert, the test was directed by a Boeing Phantom Works team, along with members from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate team, and Raytheon Ktech, suppliers of the High Power Microwave source.

The pre-programmed CHAMP missile flew over its first target and shot out a burst of High Power Microwaves at a two story building, successfully knocking out rows of personal computers and electrical systems in the building. The missile ended up hitting all seven of its targets in what the company described as a highly-successful test.

It’s groundbreaking in the sense that there is now a legitimate non-lethal weapon that can defeat electronic targets without collateral damage.

“In the near future, this technology may be used to render an enemy’s electronic and data systems useless even before the first troops or aircraft arrive,” Coleman said in a press release.

Article was originally posted at Geek Wire on October 23, 2012

'Minority Report' software hits the real world

France24
July 23, 2012

An employee demonstrates the use of a data glove to navigate a map on a computer screen at Los Angeles-based software company Oblong Industries' offices in Washington in June 2012. The software behind the film "Minority Report" -- where Tom Cruise speeds through video on a large screen using only hand gestures -- is making its way into the real world.

AFP - The software behind the film "Minority Report" -- where Tom Cruise speeds through video on a large screen using only hand gestures -- is making its way into the real world.

The interface developed by scientist John Underkoffler has been commercialized by the Los Angeles firm Oblong Industries as a way to sift through massive amounts of video and other data.

And yes, the software can be used by law enforcement and intelligence services. But no, it is not the "pre-crime" detection program illustrated in the 2002 Steven Spielberg sci-fi film.

Kwin Kramer, chief executive of Oblong, said the software can help in searching through "big data" for information. It can also create souped-up video-conference capabilities where participants share data from multiple devices like smartphones and tablets, integrated into a large video display.

"We think the future of computing is multiuser, multiscreen, multidevice," Kramer told AFP.

"This system helps with big workflow problems."

A key part of the system is the gesture interface, which the company calls the "g-speak" spatial operating environment.

That grew out of a project by Underkoffler -- then a scientist at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- for "Minority Report," before he became chief scientist at startup Oblong.

"We have demo versions of this kind of software which show exactly the 'Minority Report' user experience, allowing you to move back and forth in time, or to zoom in to look at details," Kramer said.

He said the same software can help businesses to "allow better collaboration, visualization and analysis of large amounts of data.

"You can have a lot of data but it's hard to make use of that," Kramer said.

"It can be on different machines and hard to access. This allows multiple people to look at that."

Gestural interfaces have been developed for other firms including Microsoft's Kinect but Oblong says it has far more sophisticated systems which can use Kinect and more.

Some highly sensitive systems use a data glove which can be more precise than ordinary hand movements.

Oblong has contracts with firms such as Boeing, General Electric and Saudi Aramco to help in analyzing large amounts of data. It is also developing a gestural interface for onboard computers with automaker Audi.

It has raised an unspecified amount of venture capital from investors including Foundry Group, Energy Technology Ventures and Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners.

Brad Feld, managing director at Foundry Group, said Oblong offers "a path to fundamentally change the way we interact with computers."

Yet the question Oblong often gets is how users can get the "Minority Report" software.

David Schwartz, the company's vice president for sales, said "We get calls from people in the military who say, 'I want the 'Minority Report' interface."

He said the systems could be used for a realistic version of high-tech software interfaces on TV shows like "CSI."

"They would like to get it for free," he added.

What makes the real-life version of the software different from the one seen on film is that Oblong does not supply the analytics of the futuristic "pre-crime" division.

That does not prevent a company or law enforcement agency from using the software and adding its own analytics.

"We think law enforcement and intelligence are big data users and we think our technology is the leader," Kramer said.

He said Oblong currently has no government customers in the United States or abroad but offers itself as "a core technology provider."

Still, Oblong leverages its role in the movies to get in the door, even if the software is not quite the same.

"I think most people look at those 'Minority Report' interfaces and imagine how they could use that flexible system in their own office or designs studio," Kramer said.

"It isn't science fiction, it's real."

New Rules for Making Hybrid Animal-Humans



Genetically engineered mice containing human DNA are already a mainstay of research into new drugs for diseases like cancer



FOX News.com

July 23, 2011

Scientific experiments that insert human genes or cells into animals need new rules to ensure they are ethically acceptable and do not lead to the creation of "monsters," a group of leading British researchers said on Friday.

While humanizing animals in the name of medical research offers valuable insights into the way human bodies work and diseases develop, clear regulations are needed to make sure humanization of animals is carefully controlled.

Extreme scenarios, such as putting brain cells into primates to create talking apes, may remain science fiction, but researchers around the world are constantly pushing boundaries.

Chinese scientists have already introduced human stem cells into goat fetuses and U.S. researchers have studied the idea of creating a mouse with human brain cells -- though they have not actually done so.

Such controversial research needs special oversight, according to a report from Britain's Academy of Medical Sciences on the use of animals containing human material.

Using animals with limited humanized traits is not new. Genetically engineered mice containing human DNA are already a mainstay of research into new drugs for diseases like cancer.

But Martin Bobrow, a professor of medical genetics at the University of Cambridge, who led the Academy's working group, said there were three areas of particular concern.

"Where people begin to worry is when you get to the brain, to the germ (reproductive) cells, and to the sort of central features that help us recognize what is a person, like skin texture, facial shape and speech," he told reporters.

His report recommends that government should put in place a national expert body, working within the existing system for regulating animal research, to oversee such sensitive areas.

British ministers said they welcomed the report and would consider its recommendations carefully.

Bobrow said other countries would need to follow suit with their own rules, as their scientists and regulators also recognized the need to address potential public concerns.

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Scientists Abuzz Over Controversial Rumor that God Particle Has Been Detected

Mike Wall, Senior Writer,
LiveScience.com Mike Wall, Senior Writer,
livescience.com – Mon Apr 25, 8:00 am ET

 

A rumor is floating around the physics community that the world's largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle."

The controversial rumor is based on what appears to be a leaked internal note from physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile-long particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. It's not entirely clear at this point if the memo is authentic, or what the data it refers to might mean — but the note already has researchers talking.

The buzz started when an anonymous commenter recently posted an abstract of the note on Columbia University mathematician Peter Woit's blog, Not Even Wrong.

Some physicists say the note may be a hoax, while others believe the "detection" is likely a statistical anomaly that will disappear upon further study. But the find would be a huge particle-physics breakthrough, if it holds up.

"If it were to be real, it would be really exciting," said physicist Sheldon Stone of Syracuse University.

Hunting for the Higgs
The Higgs boson is predicted to exist by prevailing particle-physics theory, which is known as the Standard Model. Physicists think the Higgs bestows mass on all the other particles — but they have yet to confirm its existence.

Huge atom smashers — like the LHC and the Tevatron, at Fermilab in Illinois — are searching for the Higgs and other subatomic bits of matter. These accelerators slam particles together at enormous speeds, generating a shower of other particles that could include the Higgs or other elemental pieces predicted by theory but yet to be detected. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]

The leaked note suggests that the LHC's ATLAS particle-detection experiment may have picked up a signature of the elusive Higgs. The signal is consistent, in mass and other characteristics, with what the Higgs is expected to produce, according to the note.

However, some other aspects of the signal don't match predictions.
"Its production rate is much higher than that expected for the Higgs boson in the Standard Model," Stone told SPACE.com in an email interview. So the signal may be evidence of some other particle, Stone added, "which in some sense would be even more interesting, or it could be the result of new physics beyond the Standard Model."

Too soon to tell
Stone was quick to point out that the note is not an official result of the ATLAS research team. Therefore, speculating about its validity or implications is decidedly preliminary.

"It is actually quite illegitimate and unscientific to talk publicly about internal collaboration material before it is approved," Stone said. "So this 'result' is not a result until the collaboration officially releases it."
Other researchers joined Stone in urging patience and caution before getting too excited about the possible discovery.

"Don't worry, Higgs boson! I would never spread scurrilous rumors about you. Unlike some people," Caltech physicist Sean Carroll tweeted today (April 22).

While it's still early, some researchers have already begun to cast doubt on the possible detection. For example, Tommaso Dorigo — a particle physicist at Fermilab and CERN, which operates the LHC — thinks the signal is false and will fade upon closer inspection.

Dorigo — who said he doesn't have access to the full ATLAS memo — gives several reasons for this viewpoint. He points out, for example, that scientists at Fermilab didn't see the putative Higgs signal in their Tevatron data, which covered similar ground as the ATLAS experiment.
 
Dorigo feels strongly enough, in fact, to put his money where his mouth is.
"I bet $1,000 with whomever has a name and a reputation in particle physics (this is a necessary specification, because I need to be sure that the person taking the bet will honor it) that the signal is not due to Higgs boson decays," he wrote on his blog today. "I am willing to bet that this is NO NEW PARTICLE. Clear enough?"
 
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