Digital Wallets: Cashless through digitalisation
In contrast to physical cash transactions that mandate bank details and have certain limitations, a digital wallet possesses a rich digital signature that captures the when, why, what, where and why of a transaction. This digital signature leveraged along with customer data and social data empowers different stakeholders across the payment ecosystem to understand their customers better.
Second mysterious black hole discovered in Siberia
A second mysterious black hole has been found in Siberia one week after a similar deep crater was found in the region.
Locals discovered the second hole, which is smaller than the first, 88km from the village of Antipayuta.
Local Mikhail Lapsu told NBC that: "Inside the crater itself, snow can be seen."
Scientists who visited the original hole put the phenomenon down to global warming.
"It causes an 'alarming' melt in the under soil ice, releasing gas and causing an effect like the popping of a Champagne bottle cork," Anna Kurchatova from the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre told the Siberian Times.
Warm water melting Antarctic ice
Australian researchers have identified how warm water is increasingly pushing out cold water around Antarctica prompting further ice melt and greater sea level rise.
Protesters rally against water shutoffs outside the Detroit water department in May. The group chanted, "Water is a human right." (Jessica J. Trevino / Associated Press)
Thousands go without water as Detroit cuts service for nonpayment
"It's frightening, because you think this is something that only happens somewhere like Africa," said Hill, a single mother who is studying homeland security at a local college. "But now I know what they're going through — when I get somewhere there's a water faucet, I drink until my stomach hurts."
Hill is one of thousands of residents in Detroit who have had their water and sewer services turned off as part of a crackdown on customers who are behind on their bills. In April, the city set a target of cutting service to 3,000 customers a week who were more than $150 behind on their bills. In May, the water department sent out 46,000 warnings and cut off service to 4,531.
Professor Colleen Loo. Photo: Grant Turner, Mediakoo
‘Game changing’ drug could be effective in suicide prevention
A drug traditionally used as an anaesthetic and sometimes used recreationally could be effective in preventing suicide and lifting the mood of severely depressed patients, according to a UNSW academic who has trialled the drug in Sydney.
Ketamine, which has the street name ‘special K’, has been shown to be effective in most patients who were part of the trial, at least temporarily. The participants were suffering from Major Depressive Disorder and had exhausted all other medical treatments.
“This is a game-changer in treating depression,” says UNSW Professor Colleen Loo, who is the lead author of a study published in the World Journal of Biological Psychiatry. “The real advantage here is that the effect is almost instantaneous and that it appears to work on the majority of patients.”
A jury in Moscow has found five men guilty of taking part in the 2006 murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, though investigators have yet to identify who ordered the killing.
The journalist, human rights activist and fierce critic of president Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin was gunned down in the lobby of her Moscow apartment in 2006, raising alarm about the danger faced by those challenging Russian authorities.
Australian government spies and companies monitor billions of private mobile phone calls
Mobile phones are the real weak link, they have revolutionised communications and monitoring [spying], Professor Ball said.
Australian citizens are supposed to be protected from an army of electronic eavesdroppers by strict laws that forbid agencies such as the ASD from spying on their own citizens within Australia. However thanks to the Snowden leaks we know that such protections count for little when it comes to the deeply interwoven and complex world of America’s spy agencies and their loyal allies including Australia and Britain. A leaked slide prepared by the NSA’s Special Source Operations group proves the point; “Much of the world’s communications flow through the US. Your target’s communication could easily be flowing into and through the US,” it says.
The idea goes beyond just not being interfered with. It takes on a stronger notion, whereby the individual is empowered to look others straight in the eye without fear or deference; what Petit calls the eyeball test.
‘Polybius describes theliber —the free person—as having no dominus, a commander or master. You have a range of choices on your own terms. Just as there is no master, there is no public domination either and that space is created by common law; a law that all share in the making of.’
Identical twins Jim Lewis and Jim Springer were only four weeks old when they were separated; each infant was taken in by a different adoptive family. At age five, Lewis learned that he had a twin, but he said that the notion never truly "soaked in" until he was 38 years old. Springer learned of his twin sibling at age eight, but both he and his adoptive parents believed the sibling had died. The two were finally reunited at age 39. The similarities the twins shared not only amazed one another, but researchers at the University of Minnesota as well. The very fact that you had twin siblings separated at birth bearing the same name, both 6 feet tall and weighing exactly 180 pounds is pretty incredible. But there's more.
In her book Entwined Lives, Nancy Segal lists the following shared characteristics:
I wonder what abominations lie uncovered beneath the tit and glitter lacquered grime and scum they serve up daily? We will never know the true extent of their dishonesty. We are dealing with experts in propaganda who will stop at nothing to see their version of events prevail, and on the rare occasions when the truth emerges, like a hernia popping through gorged corpse, they apologise discreetly for their ignoble flatulence in a mouse-sized font for hippo-sized lies. They dispose of the truth as expertly as Pulp Fiction's "Wolf" disposed of Marvin's body, these wolves of pulp fiction. - Russel Brand
Computer files stored accurately on DNA
By translating computerised files into DNA similar to that found in plants and animals, the researchers claim it is possible to store a billion books' worth of data for thousands of years in just a small test tube.
US biologist suggests sending DNA sequencing machine to Mars
Prominent US biologist Craig Venter, decoderof the human genome, has suggested sending a DNA sequencing machine to Mars to search for ancient microorganisms. If the machine finds anything there it will decode the genome and send its DNA sequence back to Earth where bioengineers would reconstruct a synthetic Martian gene.
Doctors complicit in torture at CIA, military prisons: study
An independent report says medical professionals helped design, enable and participated in "torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment" of detainees.
Collaboration at US prisons in Afghanistan, Guantanamo and the CIA's secret detention sites began after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York.
"It's clear that in the name of national security, the military trumped [the Hippocratic Oath], and physicians were transformed into agents of the military and performed acts that were contrary to medical ethics and practice," said study co-author Gerald Thomson, a professor of medicine emeritus at Columbia University.
Study to focus on Arctic after Greenland Sea found to have warmed 10 times faster than global ocean
A long-term study has found the Greenland Sea is warming 10 times faster than the global ocean.
"Because the changes in temperature are so fast - faster than the average of the rest of the ocean - then the contribution [to rising sea levels] is larger than expected for this region," Dr Raquel Somavilla Cabrillo, AWI scientist and lead author of the study said.
An oarfish, which can grow up to 17 metres in length. (Catalina Island Marine Institute)
Oarfish deaths in California revive earthquake myths
Some Californians have been spooked by the rare appearance of oarfish washing up on the state's beaches in the past week.
The giant snake-like fish are linked to a number of myths, including one from Japan that says when it comes ashore, an earthquake will follow.
In the land of the San Andreas Fault, people perhaps listen more carefully to harbingers of doom.
A new international climate change study shows unprecedented temperatures could regularly hit the globe by as early as 2020.
Chinese boy's eyes gouged out by organ traffickers
A six-year-old boy in China has reportedly had his eyes gouged out, blinding him for life, in a gruesome attack that may have been carried out by a ruthless organ trafficker.
The child's eyes were found nearby but the corneas were missing, reports said, implying that an organ trafficker was behind the harrowing attack.
Sinkhole swallows security guard in Shenzhen, China
CCTV footage captures the moment a security guard in China disappears into a sinkhole which opens up underneath him. People tried to reach the man but he died soon after the accident. Before the collapse, residents in the southern city of Shenzhen had complained of tremors from a nearby construction site.
FLASHBACK - March 5, 2013
A Florida man fell into a sinkhole that opened suddenly beneath the bedroom of his suburban Tampa home, calling out to his brother for help as he fell, the brother said Friday.
"I ran toward my brother's bedroom because I heard my brother scream," Jeremy Bush said. "Everything was gone. My brother's bed, my brother's dresser, my brother's TV. My brother was gone."
This is one o
f the most important books ever written on the clandestine world of the UFO cover-up.
Grant Cameron and Scott Crain do more than demonstrate the reality of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth.
Through tenacious investigation and impeccable research, they shine a light into the CIA, NSA, Air Force, Navy, and other inside groups that have managed this secret for decades.
And their conclusion is inescapable and shocking: this is a secret that the insiders themselves struggle to understand and contain.
The authors investigate the key elements behind the secrecy and the reality of the extraterrestrial presence on Earth.
Book: UFOs, Area 51, and Government Informants: A Report on Government Involvement in UFO Crash Retrievals
