'Super-material' graphene gets government backing | Science | The Guardian
UK will commercialise material with technological applications ranging from telecommunications and electronics to energy production and distribution.
The atom-thick honeycomb lattice of carbon conducts electricity a million times better than copper, is transparent and is stronger and more stretchable than other conductors.
Ice sheet warming faster than thought: study
A study of temperature records over more than half a century shows the west Antarctic ice sheet is warming nearly twice as quickly as previously thought.
A re-analysis of temperature records from 1958 to 2010 revealed an increase of 2.4 degrees Celsius over the period, three times the average global rise.
Escape from Freedom, known as The Fear of Freedom outside North America, is a book by the Frankfurt-born psychologist and social theorist Erich Fromm.
First published in the US by Farrar and Rinehart in 1941, the book explores humanity's shifting relationship with freedom, with particular regard to the personal consequences of its absence.
Its special emphasis is the psychosocial conditions that facilitated the rise of Nazism.
Student expelled for refusing spychip
A student in a Texas school district has been told she is to be expelled for refusing to wear a student ID badge that essentially places her in an “electronic concentration camp".
“Regimes in the past have always started with the schools, where they develop a compliant citizenry,” John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute said.
“They are getting students used to living in a total surveillance state where there will be no privacy, wherever you go and whatever you text or email will be watched by the government."
Moscow bans protest against political repressions 'due to lack of political repressions'
The Moscow authorities have refused to grant permission for a rally against “political repressions” and “violations of human rights,” saying that state law does not recognize such a phenomenon in the country.
Scientists unlock nature's hydrogen secrets
Professor Pace says the discovery takes a leaf out of nature's handbook, for the first time identifying the specific water molecules in a plant's photosystem that are converted into oxygen.
"Nature very early on in the evolutionary process on Earth figured out how to do this particular piece of chemistry with close to 100 per cent efficiency," he said.
Bank of England official: Occupy Movement right about global recession
The Occupy Movement has found an unlikely ally in a senior Bank of England official, Andrew Haldane, who has praised protesters for their role in triggering an overhaul of the financial services sector.
Mathematics showed changes in actual raw voting data that had no statistical correlation other than programmable computer fraud. This computer fraud resulted in votes being flipped from Democrat to Republican in every federal, senatorial, congressional and gubernatorial election since 2008 (thus far) and in the 2012 primary contests from other Republicans to Mitt Romney.
ASIO insulted by statements it could abuse data retention powers
David Irvine, director-general at ASIO, has said it is insulting to think ASIO staff would abuse powers given to it around data retention.
“Most ASIO officers would find it frankly insulting to think that an organisation which prides itself on acting in accordance with the law and very, very heavy accountability processes would allow itself to deviate into unwarranted intrusions into privacy,” Irvine told Background Briefing yesterday.
[ Thankfully powers such as those proposed are not and have never been abused by aneyone, ever. ]
A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife
As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences. I grew up in a scientific world, the son of a neurosurgeon. I followed my father’s path and became an academic neurosurgeon, teaching at Harvard Medical School and other universities. I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.
"According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent," Alexander writes in the cover story of this week's edition of Newsweek
"You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever."
"You have nothing to fear."
"There is nothing you can do wrong."
BOOK: Proof of Heaven
by Dr Eben Alexander [Book & Audio formats]
Women shelved in Ikea's Saudi catalogue
Swedish home furnishing retailer Ikea has landed itself in hot water in its home country after women and girls were airbrushed out of some of the pictures in its Saudi Arabian catalogue.
A version of Ikea's yearly catalogue, published on its Saudi website, shows images that are identical to those in other editions except for one detail: the women are gone.
Agence France Presse's slap to photographers
Agence France Presse filed a complaint against Haiti-based photographer Daniel Morel, claiming heengaged in an “antagonistic assertion of rights” after the photographer objected to the use by AFP of images he posted online of the Haitian earthquake.
+++
As the traditional news media business model disintegrates, photojournalists across the world are finding themselves unemployed. Picture editors have found a novel approach to sourcing photography content: facebook and twitter.
Editors simply copy images from online, without attribution, approval or payment to the photographer.
In this example, AFP took a photographer's work, credited it to another person, sold it for thousands of dollars, paid nobody, and then sued the original photographer for “antagonistic assertion of rights”.
Priceless Tibetan Buddha statue looted by Nazis was carved from meteorite
A priceless Buddha statue looted by Nazis in Tibet in the 1930s was carved from a meteorite which crashed to the Earth 15,000 years ago, according to new research.
The relic bears a Buddhist swastika on its belly – an ancient symbol of luck that was later co-opted by the Nazis in Germany.
Analysis has shown the statue is made from an incredibly rare form of nickel-rich iron present in falling stars.
The 1000-year-old carving, which is 24cm high and weighs 10kg, depicts the god Vaisravana, the Buddhist King of the North, and is known as the Iron Man statue.
As icebergs melt, so does Greenland's distaste for mining
As icebergs in the Kayak Harbour pop and hiss while melting away, this remote Arctic town and its culture are also disappearing as the climate changes.
Narsaq's largest employer, a prawn factory, closed a few years ago after the crustaceans fled north to cooler water. Where once there were eight commercial fishing vessels, there is now one. As a result, the population here, one of southern Greenland's major towns, has been halved to 1500 in just a decade.
Suicides are up.
South African miners charged with murder of colleagues shot by police
Platinum miners were arrested following strikes in South Africa have been charged with the murder of their 34 colleagues who were shot dead by police.
Prosecuting authorities in the North West Province brought murder charges against 270 mineworkers based on an old apartheid-era law related to “common purpose".
Under this law, any form of unrest resulting in deaths allows the state to prosecute any people involved in the struggle, even if they were fighting against injustice. (workers.org)
The murder charge – and associated charges for the attempted murder of 78 miners injured at the Marikana mine near Johannesburg – was brought by the national prosecuting authority under an obscure Roman-Dutch common law previously used by the apartheid government.
UPDATE
Film highlights the temptations and perils of blind obedience to authority
"How much can people be talked into and how readily will they defer to an authority figure of sufficient craft and cunning?"
That question was answered 50 years ago by the infamous experiment conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram, in which an authority figure in a lab coat instructed participants to deliver what they were told were increasingly severe electric shocks to someone in another room whom they could hear but not see.
Even as the screams became louder and more agonizing, two-thirds of the participants were induced fully to comply by delivering the increased electric shocks.
Rail is a gigantic scam for siphoning off public money
Nearly 20 years after John Major's disastrous privatisation, this is the reality of Britain's railway: a byword for bewildering fragmentation, unreliability and exorbitant cost – and a gigantic scam for siphoning off public money into the pockets of monopoly contractors.
Rachel Corrie verdict exposes Israeli military mindset
Corrie's parents have not received justice, but their quest reveals the lie of the IDF's claim to be the world's 'most moral army'.
Rachel Corrie was crushed by a military bulldozer nine years ago as she tried to stop the Israeli army going about its routine destruction of Palestinian homes.
Rachel Corrie lies on the ground fatally injured by the Israeli bulldozer.
Neil Armstrong's last interview: rare glimpse of man and moon mission
Was the moon landing faked?
"People love conspiracy theories," he replied. "I mean, they are very attractive. But it was never a concern to me because I know one day, somebody is going to go fly back up there and pick up that camera I left."
Trapwire surveillance system exposed in document leak
Papers released by WikiLeaks show US department of homeland security paid $832,000 to deploy system in two cities
It sounds like something from the film Minority Report: a CCTV surveillance system that recognises people from their face or walk and analyses whether they might be about to commit a terrorist or criminal act. But Trapwire is real and, according to documents released online by WikiLeaks last week, is being used in a number of countries to try to monitor people and threats.
Witness sightings have been recorded, over at least 60 years, of cougars, panthers or pumas in a wide stretch of Victoria from Gippsland to the Otways, the Grampians, central Victoria and at Beechworth in the northeast.
Melbourne-based big cats researcher Michael Moss said "there is no doubt they (big cats) are out there," adding that the recent rediscovery of the Tiger Quoll in the Otways again proved how easy it was for animals to remain undetected in wilderness area for long periods of time.
Arctic ice cap on course for record melt
United States scientists say the Arctic ice cap is melting at a startlingly rapid rate and may shrink to its smallest-ever level within weeks as the planet's temperatures rise.
University of Colorado researchers say the summer ice in the Arctic is already nearing its lowest level recorded, even though the melt season is not yet over.
"The numbers are coming in and we are looking at them with a sense of amazement," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre at the university.
Spy v Spy: - The Australian-born James Bond, George Lazenby, passed up a lucrative seven-movie contract to join the peaceniks. Now, on the 50th anniversary of the movie franchise, he's still talking like a hippy and the movie execs are wondering if he should get a ticket to all the parties they're planning.
