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Estonia to give DNA test and advice to citizens

Biology

Health and Medicine

Date: April, 2018

Source: New Scientist

Estonia plans to test the DNA structure of 100,000 residents and give advice regarding their predispositions to certain diseases so that they could adopt healthier lifestyles and take preventive measures.
“We want to invest in preventing or delaying the onset of common chronic diseases by using genetics to identify people at high risk,” says Jevgeni Ossinovski, Estonia’s minister of health and labour.
The country plans to do it eventually for the entire population.
Source: New Scientist, April 7-13, 2018
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Google with your Mind

Psychology

Technology

Date: April, 2018

Source: New Scientist

Two scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a device that could detect what one is thinking, send Google queries and get replies from the Internet.

Arnav Kapur and Pattie Maes, the developers, called it AlterEgo, consisting of a headset that puts sensors in seven areas on the cheeks, jaw and chin, and which detects signals in these speech-related areas. In a demonstration with New Scientist writer Chelsea Whyte,  Kapur was asked several questions such as the population of Santiago, Chile, the square root of 360,005 and the product of two large numbers. Kapur just repeated the questions in his mind. The computer responded with the correct answers. In a test with eight people, AlterEgo could recognize words and numbers with 90% accuracy.
AlterEgo is just one of several artificial intelligence softwares being developed to read thoughts through brain waves or nerve signals. The implications can be alarming. The technology now is still in its infancy, but it seems only a matter of time before such devices can really read our thoughts with high accuracy.


Source: New Scientist, April 7-13, 2018
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Children’s Vocabulary Skills Linked to Family Income

Psychology

Education
Date: March, 2014
Source: NAEYC

Children’s vocabulary skills are linked to their economic backgrounds. A research by Stanford University shows that “by 3 years of age, there is a 30 million word gap between children from the wealthiest and poorest families. A recent study shows that the vocabulary gap is evident in toddlers. By 18 months, children in different socio-economic groups display dramatic differences in their vocabularies. By 2 years, the disparity in vocabulary development has grown significantly”.

Source: https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/feb2014/the-word-gap

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Telekinetic Able to Lift Table

Parapsychology
Date: June, 2017
Source: Journal of Scientific Exploration

A research on a telekinetic subject in Brazil appeared to show that he was able to lift one side of a table by putting his palms on the surface of the table. The research was done between June 2014 and December 2015, with five video cameras recording the events. Measuring instruments were used to record physical, physiological, and environmental variables.

Sources: Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 159–186, 2017. https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/31/jse_31_2_Gimeno.pdf

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Reincarnation Case Study in Japan Involving Suicide

Parapsychology
Date: December, 2016
Source: Journal of Scientific Exploration

This is a case study of a Japanese who remembers his past life where he committed suicide. In his previous life, he belonged to the same family and thus the claimed memories and the facts could be compared more easily. The subject was also able to describe memories of his life–between–life.

Source: Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 524–536, 2016; https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/30/jse_30_4_Ohkado.pdf

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More Europeans Becoming Non-Religious

Religion
Date: March, 2018
Source: The Guardian

A recent report published by Prof. Stephen Bullivant Of St. Mary’s University in London showed that more and more Europeans consider themselves as without religion. “Christianity as a default, as a norm, is gone, and probably gone for good – or at least for the next 100 years,” Bullivant said. His report is based on a social survey in 2014-16 among European countries.

Czech Republic is the least religious country in Europe, with 91% of people ages 16-29 having no religious affiliation. The figures in Sweden, Netherlands and Estonia are between 80-90%. UK follows with 70%. The most religious country is Poland, but still with 17% of young adults considering themselves as non-religious.

Article on the Website

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Creativity Linked to Alpha Brain Waves

Psychology
Biology
Humanities
Education
Date: March 2018
Source: New Scientist

If you need to produce your best creative work, try boosting your alpha brainwaves.
Joel Lopata at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and his colleagues have found that people with more synchronised alpha waves are more creative and produce work of higher quality.

Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2162646-very-creative-people-have-a-special-kind-of-brain-activity/

Creative People%u2019s Brain Activity

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Artificial Intelligence Can Interpret Brain Scans to Know What a Person Sees

Psychology
Technology
Date: March 2018
Source: New Scientist

Artificial Intelligence in Japan is now able to guess what a person sees by analyzing brain scans.

An article in New Scientist states that “the AI is given an image of a person’s brain, taken with an fMRI scanner. The fMRI scanner shows the surges in blood flow that correspond with activity, so the different parts of the brain involved in processing the image light up on the scan. From this, the AI then produces a caption based on what it thinks the person was viewing. For example, one caption it generated was ‘A dog is sitting on the floor in front of an open door,’ which correctly described the scene.”

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.02210.pdf

New Scientist, March, 2018

 

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Why Big Bang May Not Be the Beginning

Space Sciences
Date: March, 2018
Source: New Scientist

A theory in modern cosmology is suggesting that the Big Bang may not be the beginning of the universe. The Big Bounce Theory propounded by a number of physicists state that prior to the Big Bang the universe underwent contraction due to pressure until it reached a point that it expanded again. They say that the universe may have been undergoing continuous contraction and expansion. Paul J. Steinhardt of Princeton University, one of the proponents of the Cyclic Theory, says that this theory attempts to resolve the “homogeneity, isotropy, and flatness of the universe,” among other things observed.

This view is similar to the Hindu view about the periodic manifestation and dissolution (manvantara and pralaya) of the universe, a view also adopted by the Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky.

Sources: New Scientist, March 14, 2018; https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23731690-700-why-the-big-bang-was-not-the-beginning/

Why Big Bang was not the beginning

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Electric Gravity in an Electrical Universe

Space Sciences
Physics
Date: August 2008
Source: Holoscience.com

Ralph Sansbury of MIT’s magnet laboratory proposes an electromagnetic theory of gravity. According to this view, gravity is the result of the aligning of electric dipoles in subatomic particles — protons, neutrons and electrons.

In her writings, H. P. Blavatsky made the startling statement that gravity is not a force of nature.[SD1, p. 490 et seq.] This was supported by her teachers. For example, in 1882 Mahatma K.H. wrote that “there is no gravitation properly speaking; only attraction and repulsion”.[ML93B] According to Blavatsky, the agent behind the phenomenon of attraction and repulsion is Fohat, whose chief manifestation on the physical plane is electricity and magnetism.

The “Electric Universe” Project (now “Thunderbolt” Project) has been advertising for years that all previous scientists like Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Hawking, Penrose, … were ignorant of the reality of Physics, and that everything in the Universe can be explained by electric fields. This approach is very attractive for theosophists, because it has similitude with the Ancient Wisdom teachings, but it fails, up to now, to provide with any mathematical model – except the Birkland Field Theory – which would explain any of the observed physical phenomenon like cosmogenesis, baryogenesis, standard model, etc.

Source: http://www.holoscience.com/wp/electric-gravity-in-an-electric-universe/

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Cosmology – Models of Cyclic Universe

Space Sciences
Astrophysics
Date: January, 2018
Source: Quanta Magazine

More and more scientific models of the universe are challenging the Big Bang theory in favor of a Big Bounce Model.
Superstrings / Membranes & M-Theory are the focus of current Cosmology studies.
Stephen Phillips – The Mathematical Connection Between religion and Science, 2009,  gives an accurate update of the current science streams in physics, including Supersymmetry, Supergravity and Superstrings Models.
Sources: