Carina Thompson

 

Off the Cuff

 Today, while I was minding my own business at my own home, the doorbell rang, and a middle-aged gentleman and his son were standing on the porch smiling...  I did not know them but I just knew that they were selling something that I immediately thought had something to do with the local high school.  But, when I opened the door, the first comment out of the mouth of the child was targeted as he asked me directly if I wanted to attend his church.

His father tried to open the storm door, but I held it close to the door frame and said that we already had a church...  thanked them...  then shut the door.  My wife who was standing in the kitchen asked me not to be so rude.  While I did not think I was being rude and acted no differently than I would have to any other door-to-door salesperson, my wife thought I should have been nicer to religious people.

For me...  a door-to-door salesperson is a door-to-door salesperson...  there ain't no difference just because they are selling a local church.

Why is a local church trying to build up its attendance?  Is their church not completely full on Sundays or are they trying to increase revenues?  Either way, it benefits them more than it does me.

Am I saying that I am not religious?  NO!  My beliefs are my own, but I will tell you this, I am against institutionalized religion, not religion as a belief.  I have a strong religious belief and will never lessen, in fact, it gets stronger as I get older...

But again, my beliefs are not in question here...  what is a concern, is why other churches and their congregations try to push their beliefs and their churches on you.  If I want to attend a church I will because I made that decision not because one of their members came to my door and invited me...  I probably will not attend because they came to my door as I would not want to share my beliefs with someone who had that kind of personality.

Putin

Caucasian Born

 

Skateboard

Psychedelics Maps Conscious Awareness

Graph showing relation between type of drug, descriptive words and neurotransmitter. 

Credit: Danilo Bzdok

Psychedelics are now a rapidly growing area of neuroscience and clinical research, one that may produce much-needed new therapies for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia. Yet there is still a lot to know about how these drug agents alter states of consciousness.

In the world’s largest study on psychedelics and the brain, a team of researchers from The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) and Department of Biomedical Engineering of McGill University, the Broad Institute at Harvard/MIT, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, and Mila—Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute have shown how drug-induced changes in subjective awareness are anatomically rooted in specific neurotransmitter receptor systems.

The researchers gathered 6,850 testimonials from people who took a range of 27 different psychedelic drugs. In a first-of-its-kind approach, they designed a machine learning strategy to extract commonly used words from the testimonials and link them with the neurotransmitter receptors that likely induced them.

The interdisciplinary team could then associate the subjective experiences with brain regions where the receptor combinations are most commonly found—these turned out to be the lowest and some of the deepest layers of the brain’s information processing layers.

Using thousands of gene transcription probes, the team created a 3D map of the brain receptors and the subjective experiences linked to them, across the whole brain. While psychedelic experience is known to vary widely from person to person, the large testimonial dataset allowed the team to characterize coherent states of conscious experiences with receptors and brain regions across individuals. This supports the theory that new hallucinogenic drug compounds can be designed to reliably create desired mental states.  READ MORE...

Curious Dog

 

A Stoneage Woman

Oscar Nilsson, a forensic artist based in Sweden, spent 350 hours reconstructing the Stone Age woman's likeness. (Image credit: Oscar Nilsson )



A Stone Age woman who lived 4,000 years ago is leaning on her walking stick and looking ahead as a spirited young boy bursts into a run, in a stunning life-size reconstruction now on display in Sweden.


Although her likeness is new — it debuted last month in an exhibit about ancient people at Västernorrlands Museum — researchers have known about this woman's existence for nearly a century. During the construction of a road in the hamlet of Lagmansören in 1923, workers found her skeletal remains buried next to the remains of a child, likely a 7-year-old boy.


"With our eyes and perhaps in all times, you tend to think that this is a mother and son," said Oscar Nilsson, the Sweden-based forensic artist who spent 350 hours creating the lifelike model. "They could be. Or they could be siblings: sister and brother. They could be relatives, or they could just be tribe friends. We don't know, because the DNA was not that well preserved to establish this relationship."


But as Nilsson molded the woman's posture and sculpted her face, he pretended that she was near her son who was scampering ahead of her. "She's looking with the mother's eyes — both with love and a bit of discipline," Nilsson told Live Science. This stern but tender gaze looks as if she's on the cusp of calling out to the boy, telling him to be careful.  READ MORE...

Garbage Trucks

 

Creating Matrer

E = MC2 MAY BE the most quotidian equation in physics. Everyone’s heard of it and it’s been proven time and again. Did you convert mass into energy? Go tell it to the stars, whose light is generated from mass lost during nuclear fusion.

But there is another way to imagine this fundamental equation.

“You can actually look at this process from both sides,” Daniel Brandenburg, a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, tells Inverse.

“In our case, we wanted to take light and convert it into matter.”

That it turns out is a lot less mundane.

On his 143rd birthday, Inverse celebrates the world’s most iconic physicist — and interrogates the myth of his genius. Welcome to Einstein Week.

Brandenburg is a member of the STAR collaboration, a group of more than 700 scientists from 15 countries who use BNL’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC (pronounced “Rick”), to smash gold nuclei together at 99.995 percent the speed-of-light.

For this experiment, the researchers were more interested in the near misses than the hits. Ultra-high-energy photons encircle the gold nuclei like an aura, and auras collide as nuclei zoom past one another. When photons (particles of light; massless, pure energy) collide, they generate an electron and a positron, its antimatter counterpart — both particles that have a mass. This is known as the Breit-Wheeler Process.

“The part that makes the Breit-Wheeler process so hard to achieve is getting photons that have enough energy,” explains Brandenburg. “We’ve crossed this threshold where we can convert the photons into a real electron-positron pair. And that’s where we really can achieve what Einstein talked about, where we take the energy from the photons.”

THE EINSTEIN CONNECTION
E = mc2 is an outgrowth of Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which says that an object’s speed affects how it experiences space and time relative to other objects. (His theory of general relativity adds gravity into the mix.) About two decades after Einstein’s seminal 1905 paper on the matter, two theoretical physicists, Gregory Breit and John Wheeler took his by then famous and accepted equation and deduced the requirements for turning light into matter.  READ MORE...

Robin

My Biased Views

When Tomorrow Arrives...  it is always today...

and...  for some reason, we are always disappointed because today never or hardly ever unfolds like we wanted it to...

Therefore...  we never fully appreciate the life that we have been given...  and life was given to each and every one of us without our consent...  although, we never look at it from that perspective...  but, none of us chose to be given life...  and yet, life we were given.

Why do you suppose that is?

After living my life for 74 years plus the nine months I was in the womb, I am glad that I was given life even though I have not really accomplished much of anything.

• I have lived overseas
• I am a Vietnam Veteran
• I did survive the 1960's
• I did graduate from college
• I did get married twice
• I am a father
• I did work for 45 years
• I did write a lot of stuff
• I have been on numerous cruises
• I am debt-free
• I did save enough money for retirement
• I am a cancer survivor

I am not wealthy and have never been wealthy and I am glad or rather fortunate that I am not wealthy because I don't think I would be very good at being wealthy as I would always want to give it away to those who did not have much.

That is not a good personality to have if someone is wealthy...  even though it is the right thing to do.

All of my tomorrows arrive when I am sleeping as they are always here, without fail, when I awake...  and, the older I get the faster my days seem to pass by...  so much so that I constantly find myself telling people I never have a bad day.

To some degree, we are all biased and that is probably because of the way we were raised and the influence on us from those who raised us or taught us in school.  We are biased because of our experiences whether they were negative or positive or a combination of both.  Age causes us to be biased because we no longer have to listen to all the shit that we are being told.  And, we are biased because of our race and our gender regardless of how strong we try to deny that is the case.

It is because of all of this, that todays hardly ever or seldom unfold as we wanted them to unfold.

 

Caught

Endless Love

 

Bobcat

Unleashing Limitless Energy

Since its launch in 2020, a pioneering energy company called Quaise has attracted some serious attention for its audacious goal of diving further into Earth's crust than anybody has dug before.

Following the closure of first round venture capital funding, the MIT spin-off has now raised a total of US$63 million: a respectable start that could potentially make geothermal power accessible to more populations around the world.

The company's vision for getting closer to the center of the Earth is to combine conventional drilling methods with a megawatt-power flashlight inspired by the kind of technology that could one day make nuclear fusion energy possible.

Geothermal energy has become the forgotten renewable. With solar and wind increasingly dominating the market of green energy, efforts to tap the vast reservoir of heat deep beneath our feet remain stubbornly well behind.

It's not hard to understand why. Despite being a perfectly good choice of clean, uninterrupted, limitless power, there are very few places where hot rocks suitable for geothermal energy extraction sit conveniently close to the surface.

Quaise aims to change that by developing technology that will allow us to bake holes in the crust to record depths.

To date our best efforts at chewing our way through the planet's skin have bottomed out at around 12.3 kilometers (7.6 miles). While the Kola Superdeep Borehole and others like it may have reached their limit, though, they nonetheless represent amazing feats of engineering.  READ MORE...

Reunion

 

Computer Program Predicts Civilization End

In 1704, Isaac Newton predicted the end of the world sometime around (or after, “but not before”) the year 2060, using a strange series of mathematical calculations. Rather than study what he called the “book of nature,” he took as his source the supposed prophecies of the book of Revelation. 

While such predictions have always been central to Christianity, it is startling for modern people to look back and see the famed astronomer and physicist indulging them. For Newton, however, as Matthew Stanley writes at Science, “laying the foundation of modern physics and astronomy was a bit of a sideshow. He believed that his truly important work was deciphering ancient scriptures and uncovering the nature of the Christian religion.”

Over three hundred years later, we still have plenty of religious doomsayers predicting the end of the world with Bible codes. But in recent times, their ranks have seemingly been joined by scientists whose only professed aim is interpreting data from climate research and sustainability estimates given population growth and dwindling resources. 

The scientific predictions do not draw on ancient texts or theology, nor involve final battles between good and evil. Though there may be plagues and other horrible reckonings, these are predictably causal outcomes of over-production and consumption rather than divine wrath. Yet by some strange fluke, the science has arrived at the same apocalyptic date as Newton, plus or minus a decade or two.

The “end of the world” in these scenarios means the end of modern life as we know it: the collapse of industrialized societies, large-scale agricultural production, supply chains, stable climates, nation states…. Since the late sixties, an elite society of wealthy industrialists and scientists known as the Club of Rome (a frequent player in many conspiracy theories) has foreseen these disasters in the early 21st century. 

One of the sources of their vision is a computer program developed at MIT by computing pioneer and systems theorist Jay Forrester, whose model of global sustainability, one of the first of its kind, predicted civilizational collapse in 2040. “What the computer envisioned in the 1970s has by and large been coming true,” claims Paul Ratner at Big Think.    TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS, CLICK HERE...

Dogsled

 

Survival Skills

Water. The elixir of life that is essential to creating food, oceans, plants, animals, and humans. We’re made up of a large percentage of water and we can’t go three days without it. So knowing how to purify something that is 100% necessary for survival is an essential skill.

Aside from the improved taste, smell, and appearance, purifying water removes contaminants like waterborne arsenic, endocrine disrupters, selenium, and manganese. Drinking purified tap water is also better for the environment, as it helps to reduce pollution from plastic bottles, as well as environmental costs. Long-term consumption of bacteria-laced water could also cause health issues such as cancer, nervous system effects, and gastrointestinal illnesses.

What Are Some Methods To Purify Water?
There are a wide variety of options for purifying water. Some cost next to nothing, and others require a little bit more dough. Here are some of our favorites:

Filtration
This process involves taking those solid particles from water and removing them via a filter medium. Think of it as straining the particles from water, similar to straining water from pasta with a colander. Filtration shines when it comes to removing tiny compounds like pesticides, and it’s considered very affordable since most of the water is retained during the purification process. Examples of this type of method include ion exchange, mechanical, and absorption filters.

Chlorination
Chlorine has been around for a while, and it’s pretty effective against parasites and microorganisms. Chlorine tablets are typically used, but be sure to contact your doctor first if you have a thyroid condition. Tablets should also be used in heated water so they dissolve better. To purchase one of these water purification products, check out your local hardware store or an online giant like Amazon.

Boiling
This is by far the cheapest method for purifying water and all you need is a heat source and a metal vessel, like a teapot. You have to wait for the water to reach a rolling boil and then cool down before you drink it, but this is a great way to purify water from almost any source when no other option is available.  READ MORE...

Moving Carpet

My Daily Journey

The Hindu religion/philosophy revolves around four basic principles...  the first is that god exists...  the second is that all human beings are divine...  the third is that there is a unity of existence...  and the fourth is a religious harmony...

In short ->>  God has created divine humans and in so doing has also created an environment of unity and harmony with all living things.

Christians believe in god but only see god as divine even though we were created in his image...  because of our sins for which jesus died, we cannot be divine.  Christians see our environment as something that was created for us and are not concerned with there being any unity or harmony unless it is with god.

This fundamental difference puts us in a position where we do not value life the same as Hindus because we see our purpose has serving god and not necessarily living in harmony and unity with one another.

perhaps Christians can learn a lesson here...

For the hindus there is a concept called karma...  which is basically the theory that for every cause there is an effect or for every effect there must have been a cause to generate it...  

While Christians have this in common with the hindus we don't live our lives based upon this concept...  in fact, we rarely think about it outside of a medical context.

However, we are beginning the understand the concept of unintended consequences which is a result of cause and effect but from the standpoint that the effects were never anticipated...  when perhaps they should have been.

A good example of this is the defund the police movement.

Hindus believe that there is a spark of god inside everyone's soul...

But what is the soul?

Is the soul the essence of the human being that which separates s/he from all other living creatures?

Hindus live a life that revolves around their philosophies of life whereas those who live in the USA live a life of conveniences...

A Short History on Slavery

 

Climbing

The Width of an Atom

There’s been no greater act of magic in technology than the sleight of hand performed by Moore’s Law. Electronic components that once fit in your palm have long gone atomic, vanishing from our world to take up residence in the quantum realm.

But we’re now brushing the bitter limits of this trend. In a paper published in Nature this week, scientists at Tsinghua University in Shanghai wrote that they’ve built a graphene transistor gate with a length of 0.34 nanometers (nm)—or roughly the size of a single carbon atom.

The gate, a chip component that switches transistors on and off, is a critical measure of transistor size. Previous research had already pushed gate lengths to one nanometer and below. By scaling gate lengths down to the size of single atoms, the latest work sets a new mark that’ll be hard to beat. “In the future, it will be almost impossible for people to make a gate length smaller than 0.34 nm,” the paper’s senior author Tian-Ling Ren told IEEE Spectrum. “This could be the last node for Moore’s Law.”

Etching a 2D Sandwich
Transistors have a few core components: the source, the drain, the channel, and the gate. Electrical current flows from the source, through the channel, past the gate, and into the drain. The gate switches this current on or off depending on the voltage applied to it.

Recent advances in extreme transistor gate miniaturization rely on some fascinating materials. In 2016, for example, researchers used carbon nanotubes—which are single-atom-thick sheets of carbon rolled into cylinders—and a 2D material called molybdenum disulfide to achieve a gate length of one nanometer. Silicon is a better semiconductor, as electrical currents encounter more resistance in molybdenum disulfide, but when gate lengths dip below five nanometers, electrons leak across the gates in silicon transistors. Molybdenum disulfide’s natural resistance prevents this leakage at the tiniest scales.

Building on this prior work, the researchers in the most recent study also chose molybdenum disulfide for their channel material and a carbon-based gate. But instead of carbon nanotubes, which are a nanometer across, they looked to go smaller. Unroll a nanotube and you get a sheet made of carbon atoms called graphene. Graphene has all kinds of interesting properties, one of which is excellent conductivity. The width and length of a graphene sheet are, of course, bigger than a nanotube—but the edge is a single carbon atom thick. The team cleverly exploited this property.  READ MORE...

Seal Slide

 

Tasmanian Tiger

The University of Melbourne is establishing a world-class research lab for de-extinction and marsupial conservation science thanks to a $5 million philanthropic gift.

The gift will be used to establish the Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research (TIGRR) Lab, led by Professor Andrew Pask, which will develop technologies that could achieve de-extinction of the thylacine (commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger), and provide crucial tools for threatened species conservation.

“Thanks to this generous funding we’re at a turning point where we can develop the technologies to potentially bring back a species from extinction and help safeguard other marsupials on the brink of disappearing,” Professor Pask, from the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne said.

“Our research proposes nine key steps to de-extinction of the thylacine. One of our biggest breakthroughs was sequencing the thylacine genome, providing a complete blueprint on how to essentially build a thylacine.”

“The funding will allow our lab to move forward and focus on three key areas: improving our understanding of the thylacine genome; developing techniques to use marsupial stem cells to make an embryo; and then successfully transferring the embryo into a host surrogate uterus, such as a dunnart or Tasmanian devil,” Professor Pask said.

The thylacine, a unique marsupial carnivore also known as the Tasmanian wolf, was once widespread in Australia but was confined to the island of Tasmania by the time Europeans arrived in the 18th century. It was soon hunted to extinction by colonists, with the last known animal dying in captivity in 1936.  READ MORE...

Puppies

 

Wanr A Speedier Chromebook?

Do a web search for "how to install Chrome OS on a laptop" or anything like that and you likely discovered that it can't be done... at least, not the same way that you're able to install the latest Windows OS or a version of Linux. Google's Chrome OS isn't available for consumers to install, but you can get the next best thing: Neverware's CloudReady Chromium OS.

CloudReady looks and feels nearly identical to Chrome OS, but it can be installed on nearly any laptop or desktop, whether Windows or Mac. And although Neverware has paid versions for enterprise and education users, its Home Edition is free for personal use. You don't get tech support, and it can't be managed with the Google Admin console, but again: free.

Google acquired Neverware in December 2020, and in February 2022 it announced the first public fruits of that acquisition: Chrome OS Flex, a more robust version of CloudReady that's still free for home use. A stable release of Chrome OS Flex is expected to roll out in the second quarter of 2022. At that time, computers already running CloudReady will automatically update to Chrome OS Flex. Until then, you can download and use an early version, though the company cautioned that you should expect bugs while it's improving the system.

However, the current version of CloudReady Home Edition is still available. It was incredibly helpful to me during the pandemic's early days, converting an old HP netbook that could barely function under the weight of Windows 10 into a Chromebook capable enough for schoolwork online through Google Classroom and other services.       READ MORE...

Bears