25 Characteristics of an Alpha Male

November 1, 2012 By Chad Howse

Characteristics of a Real Man

The Alpha Male, the real man, a man’s man, a warrior, a stand-up guy. It doesn’t matter what you call him, he’s a leader, the guy others look to for motivation, inspiration, and often with a hint of jealousy. He’s the man women want, without inention the center of attention.

He’s the guy, the man.

Here’s 25 characteristics that make a man the alpha. Leave your additions (or subtractions) in the comments section.

1. The alpha male is persistent. There’s no quit in this man. He’s the tortose not the hare. He’s the last man standing.

2. The alpha male can defend himself and his family. He can handle himself with his fists, to put it another way.

3. The alpha male is in peak physical shape. He’s strong and athletic as well as aesthetically pleasing to the opposite sex.

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4. The alpha male is courageous. He doesn’t lack fear, rather, he accepts that it exists and faces it at every opportunity.

5. The alpha male can entertain. He has a sense of humor and can have a group of people hanging on his every word – he’s a good story teller.

6. The alpha male has stories to tell. He’s lived – and is living – a unique life. He’s made mistakes, but he’s able to find humor in them. He’s had adventures that everyone wants to hear about.

7. The alpha male can laugh at himself. This is an over-looked characteristic of an alpha male, but a ne

cessary one. You can’t make fun of the alpha male because he’ll join in, no one can make fun of him better than he can.

8. The alpha male is humble. Some of this comes from his ability to laugh at himself. No matter what he accomplishes, his head will never balloon, and if it does, he has the ware-with-all to come back down to earth before it gets out of hand.

9. The alpha male is learned, educated. A degree isn’t a prerequisite, but a thirst for knowledge is. He wants to learn, and he does. This helps him relate to people from every social and economic standing. He can converse intelligently with the business man and the preacher. The history buff and the sports nut.

10. The alpha male is a man’s man. He’s a hard guy not to like or want to have a beer with. He’s tough, often quiet, composed, but can joke and shoot the shit with anyone.

11. The alpha male knows the value of every word, he doesn’t talk simply to hear the sound of his own voice. His words are chosen carefully. He respects their power. Whether he’s writing or speaking, he doesn’t speak to be hear, he speaks when he has something of value to say. He’s never the loudest one in the room.

12. The alpha male has a purpose. This may be his most defining trait. Where many wander through life trying to find their Self, the alpha male is too busy creating his Self. Every day he does something to bring himself closer to his goal. He isn’t a wanderer, he’s going places; it’s so obvious that everyone around him can see it.

13. The alpha male is a hard worker. He knows that nothing great is accomplished without hard work and a definite purpose.

14. The alpha male is a warrior not a worrier. He understands that cetain things aren’t under his control. He does everything he can to control what hecan, but doesn’t worry about what he can’t. He’s not worried about tomorrow, he’s too busy working for today.

15. The alpha male doesn’t pick a fight, but he ends it if he’s in one. He isn’t a bully. He isn’t an emotional wreck that looks for a fight at every corner. But, if the logical thing to do is to fight because the situation calls for it, he will. He’ll also never hit a man when he’s down. He isn’t fighting to destroy, but to defend.

16. The alpha male has style. He takes pride in how he looks and people respect him for that. He also knows how to dress like a man. You’d never call the alpha male a metrosexual.

17. The alpha male knows who he is, his values govern his life. He doesn’t stray from these values, in fact he stands up for them. Even when he stands alone in what he believes is right, he digs his heels in and fights.

18. The alpha male knows how to treat a lady. He respects women, often because he’s had some great one’s in his life. He’s chivalrous.
He helps his lady at every chance. He helps her reach her dreams, all-the-while moving closer to attaining his own.

19. The alpha male isn’t a sucker. He isn’t a clinger. He doesn’t go out of his way to please everyone because that’s a futile endeavor. He won’t let a woman run his life. He’s his own man. Though he worships the ground his lady walks on, he knows how to pick ‘em. He won’t be with a control-freak or a jealous woman. He has the social intelligence to see that storm before it peeks it’s nasty little head.

20. The alpha male is a man of value. “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” Einstein knew that success is reached if you’re valuable to others. The alpha male is a man of value and values. He makes the lives of others better by being a part of them.

21. The alpha male helps others, he’s generous. He has his purpose, but he knows that life isn’t merely about accomplishments, but about leaving a legacy. That legacy is how he made others feel, and how he helps others accomplish their dreams.

22. The alpha male is a leader who leads by example. He doesn’t tell people how to live, but lives in the manner he sees as best to live.

23. Alpha males throughout history, Achilles, William Wallace, and Napoleon, saw opportunity where others saw failure. The alpha male will fail, but he won’t see failure as the end. He’s sees it as a necessary part of the experience, a stepping-stone. Knowing this allows him to try things others won’t, and to work harder when others usually quit.

24. The alpha male is stubborn. When he starts something he’s passionate about, no one can stop him or pull back on the reigns. He’s in it until the end. He’s also open-minded and willing to listen to other points of view. He knows he’s flawed and stubborn, so he gives way and learns from people who are better than him.

25. The alpha male doesn’t try to be an alpha male. That’s where so many fail. He is interested in life, in living. He’s fascinated by the world around him, in becoming the best man he can possibly become. He genuinely cares about people. He passionately works hard. He’s excited by life, by the opportunity that each day presents. He’s genuine in every facet of who he is. Each of the characteristics are possessed by him naturally, or will be as he grows as a man. Bred from curiosity, a genuine kindness, and a warrior’s heart, he is who he is, and all others follow him wherever he will lead them.

First monkeys with customized mutations born

First monkeys with customized mutations born

Milestone for targeted gene-editing technology promises better models for human diseases.
By Helen Shen
30 January 2014
Shared via http://www.nature.com/news/first-monkeys-with-customized-mutations-born-1.14611



Twin cynomolgus monkeys born in China are the first with mutations in specific target genes.


The ultimate potential of precision gene-editing techniques is beginning to be realised. Today, researchers in China report the first monkeys engineered with targeted mutations1, an achievement that could be a stepping stone to making more realistic research models of human diseases.

Xingxu Huang, a geneticist at the Model Animal Research Center of Nanjing University in China, and his colleagues successfully engineered twin cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) with two targeted mutations using the CRISPR/Cas9 system — a technology that hastaken the field of genetic engineering by storm in the past year. Researchers have leveraged the technique to disrupt genes in mice and rats2, 3, but until now none had succeeded in primates.

"This is an important step," says Feng Zhang, a synthetic biologist who was not involved in the study, but who has helped to develop CRISPR technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "It shows that the system is working."
Primate push

Transgenic mice have long dominated as models for human diseases, in part because scientists have honed a gene-editing method for the animals that uses homologous recombination — rare, spontaneous DNA-swapping events — to introduce mutations. The strategy works because mice reproduce quickly and in large numbers, but the low rates of homologous recombination make such a method unfeasible in creatures such as monkeys, which reproduce slowly.

"We need some non-human primate models," says Hideyuki Okano, a stem-cell biologist at Keio University in Tokyo. Human neuropsychiatric disorders can be particularly difficult to replicate in the simple nervous systems of mice, he says.

Previous attempts to genetically modify primates have relied on viral methods4, 5, which create mutations efficiently, but at unpredictable locations and in uncontrolled numbers. Prospects for primates brightened with the emergence of the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing system, which uses customizable snippets of RNA to guide the DNA-cutting enzyme Cas9 to the desired mutation site.

Huang and his team first tested the technology in a monkey cell line, disrupting each of three genes with 10–25% success. Encouraged, the scientists subsequently targeted the three genes simultaneously in more than 180 single-celled monkey embryos. Ten pregnancies resulted from 83 embryos that were implanted, one of which led to the birth of a pair with mutations in two genes: Ppar-γ, which helps to regulate metabolism, and Rag1, which is involved in healthy immune function.
'Interesting demonstration'

Stem-cell researcher Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, calls the result an interesting demonstration, but says that it offers little scientific insight. "The next step is to see if we can learn anything from it," says Jaenisch, who pioneered the use of transgenic mice in the 1970s.

The combined mutations in Ppar-γ and Rag1 do not represent a particular disease syndrome, says Huang, although each gene is associated with human disorders.The group has yet to fully analyze the monkeys' condition, and must run further tests to assess whether the mutations occurred in all ot the animals' cells."Our first aim was to get it done, to get it to work," Huang says. But the finding suggests that researchers could one day model other human conditions involving multiple mutations.

The race is already on to create more CRISPR-modified monkeys, and with greater reliability. Zhang and his colleagues are working to optimize the technology for primate cells, in order to boost mutation efficiency. Okano's team is analyzing unpublished results from monkey models of autism and immune dysfunction, recently created with older gene-editing technologies; they, too, are now trying their luck with CRISPR. And Huang's group is expecting results from eight other pending pregnancies.

"There are a lot more things to do," says Huang.

ARTICLE SHARED VIA:

 http://www.nature.com/news/first-monkeys-with-customized-mutations-born-1.14611

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Why Giraffes Don't Get Dizzy

In just a second or two, a giraffe can lift its head from ground level to the sky, some 15 feet up, and never get a head rush.

"If we did that we'd certainly faint," says physiologist Graham Mitchell of the University of Wyoming.

Mitchell and his team report in the July 1 issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology that a hefty, hard-working heart and high blood pressure keep a giraffe free of fainting spells.

How it works

A giraffe's head fills with blood when it is near the ground, and blood pressure there doubles. When the beast raises its head up for a bite in the trees, the blood drains out.

This happens to us too. You can feel light-headed if, after hanging upside down and getting red in the face, you quickly turn right-side up. If your blood pressure drops too low, not enough blood flows to your brain, and you can pass out.

With such long necks, giraffes spend a lot of time moving their heads from down low to up high, and so they need a way to keep blood flowing to the brain so they don't get woozy.

Scientists once thought that vessels in the giraffe's neck siphoned blood from the heart to the brain. However, Mitchell's research suggests getting the blood to the brain of an erect giraffe involves a powerful pump and very high blood pressure—twice as high as ours.

26-pound heart

Giraffes have big hearts, weighing up to 26 pounds. When a giraffe lifts its head, blood vessels in the head direct almost all of the blood to flow to the brain, and not to other parts of the head such as their cheeks, tongue, or skin.

At the same time, the animal's thick skin and an unusual muscle in the jugular vein—veins don't normally have muscles—add pressure to the vein, which carries blood from the head back to the heart.

"It's a much more advanced anti-fainting mechanism than we have," Mitchell said.

Rare White Giraffe Photographed

NASA to place an asteroid into orbit around the Moon

NASA will likely be funded $105 million for a new mission proposed by the Obama administration. President Obama will likely request the $105 million when he releases his federal budget request for 2014 next week. In the mission, NASA will seek out a 500-ton near-Earth asteroid (NEA) about 25-foot long, capture it, and drag it into orbit around the Moon. NASA will then send astronauts, via NASA’s upcoming Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket, to the asteroid in 2021 to study it and grab samples.




$78 million of the funding will be for NASA to develop the technologies for this mission. The goal is for NASA to be able to develop an asteroid-grabbing robotic spacecraft by 2017, and have an asteroid in orbit around the moon by 2019. The other $27 million will be used for discovering the best asteroid for this mission. This mission will also compliment NASA’s other projects, including the “science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars,” according to Senator Bill Nelson.

Unfortunately, it’s going to take a lot more than $105 million to successfully complete the mission. A study done by Caltech’s Keck Institute for Space Studies in Pasadena estimated that it may cost up to $2.6 billion in order to successfully drag the 500-ton asteroid into orbit around the moon. However, the mission would open new doors for space exploration. The Keck mission concept team stated,


“Experience gained via human expeditions to the small returned NEA would transfer directly to follow-on international expeditions beyond the “Earth-moon system: to other near-Earth asteroids, [the Mars moons] Phobos and Deimos, Mars, and potentially someday to the main asteroid belt.”

The NASA team says that a 25-foot asteroid is the best choice because it’s too small to be a threat to the Earth, and it would just burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. NASA also announced that it has two other missions planned for 2017. One will be the $200 million TESS project, which will scan nearby stars for exoplanets, and the other is the NICER project, which will observe and measure the variability of cosmic X-ray sources

10 Life Lessons by Albert Einstein

10 Life Lessons by Albert Einstein by Selim Yeniçeri



1. FOLLOW YOUR HOBBIES

What is your hobby? What are you most curious about? Reading was my greatest hobby, and I’m ever hungry for knowledge. Eventually, this hobby became a career that enabled me to get paid while learning, and even made me a name. Follow your hobbies, and the talents you brought to this world; even if you are unaware of them for now, they will be awakened, and you will succeed!

2. PERSEVERANCE IS INVALUABLE

Are you patient enough to go to the end? Postal stamps are said valuable, because they stick to the envelope until they reach to their destination. Be like a postal stamp, and finish what you start. And always remember: it’s not how you start, but how you finish!

3. FOCUS ON TODAY

You can’t ride two horses at the same time. You can do some things, but if you try to do everything, you end up doing nothing. Focus on now, and give your whole attention and energy to what you do at the moment. If you can do that, you can do everything you want… in turn.

4. IMAGINATION GIVES STRENGTH

Your imagination determines your future. Einstein says, “The real measure of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.” Use your imagination, and build it like a muscle. Without imagination, you can’t even know what you want to succeed at.

5. MAKE MISTAKES

Don’t be afraid of mistakes. Yes, you may get harmed, or lose some things when you make mistakes. And yes, sometimes you can make fool of yourself, perhaps in front of others. Just be confident of yourself, and even laugh at your own mistakes; but most importantly, learn from your mistakes. Nobody can do something right at first try.

6. LIVE AT THE MOMENT

The only way to shape your future is to live at the moment as much and productively as possible. You can’t take yesterday back, and you can’t jump forward in time. The only time that matters is now. If you can learn how to harness the power of now, as Eckhart Tolle emphasizes, you can create a future as in your dreams.

7. ADD AND CREATE VALUE

Of course, at the beginning of my career, I couldn’t earn so much of a penny for a very long time. People used to tell me I was fighting against windmills, and that it would be better if I find a regular job with a salary, translating books in my spare time. Frankly, it would divide my time, energy, and resources, so I don’t think I would be so successful. Furthermore, probably I would get in comfort zone due to little money I earned as salary, and I would give up of translating books. But following my dream enabled me to create hundreds of books that people who don’t know English could read, and eventually, name and quality brought the income. When you do something real good – and you do good when you’re in love with something, as I was in love with books – it turns into gold inevitably. Money does not bring success, but success brings money.

8. DON’T EXPECT DIFFERENT RESULTS DOING THE SAME THING

Four plus four always equals eight. It’s always same. But when you multiply instead of adding, it equals twice of it. As long as you follow the same routine everyday, your life will be same until the last day. If you want to change your life, change yourself first. Your entire world changes when you change.

9. THE MOST VALUABLE KNOWLEDGE COMES FROM EXPERIENCE

There is a joke in Turkish literature. The great folkloric Nasreddin Hodja, famous with his quick wits, falls from the roof of his house. While writhing in pain on the ground, villagers gather around him to help, and some of them suggest about calling the village physician. Hodja turns to them through his pain, and scolds them: “To hell with the physician! Bring me someone who has fallen from a roof!” You can discuss or read about something, but it gains you only a philosophical understanding. If you really want to know something, you have to experience it. The best way to learn something is doing it.

10. LEARN THE RULES SO THAT YOU PLAY BETTER

You have to learn the rules when you do something. Every area in life has its own rules, key players, teams, trend setters, etc. Therefore, when you plan to start something new, you have to learn what is what and who is who. Observe the key players, Duplicate their tactics, As you gain more experience, try new things. As blogging masterJohn Paul Aguiar says: “Test! Test! Test!” Observe to learn the rules, duplicate to gain experience, test new tactics to refine your own identity and style!

Watch Comet Pan-STARRS Race Around The Sun

Have you seen it at sunset yet?
By Rebecca BoylePosted 03.19.2013 at 5:00 pm0 Comments


Comet Pan-STARRS From L.A., March 12 Wikimedia Commons

Comet Pan-STARRS is visible in many parts of the U.S. around sunset, and it was at its peak brightness a few days ago when it made its closest pass to the sun. As they approach our star and warm up, dirty cosmic snowballs like Pan-STARRS grow bright tails, or comas, which are made of dust and ice particles that reflect light.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center stitched together some observations from the STEREO observatory, which watches the sun. The comet moved around the star from March 10 through 15 and gradually grew brighter.

In the video, Earth is the unmoving bright spot on the right, and the sun’s light comes from the left. The swirly vapors on the left are coronal mass ejections. While it looks like one CME goes right past Pan-STARRS, it actually wasn’t in the same plane, because the comet’s tail didn’t move as the CME went by.

Pan-STARRS is named for a synchronized wide-field telescope project developed at the University of Hawaii. Since it became operational in 2010, the first telescope in the system has discovered more than 345 near-Earth asteroids (including 29 potentially hazardous ones) and 19 previously unobserved comets—including the project’s namesake. It will be visible in the western sky at dusk for a few more days.

Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson

by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 14, 2013 9:29 AM


GENEVA (AP) — The search is all but over for a subatomic particle that is a crucial building block of the universe.

Physicists announced Thursday they believe they have discovered the subatomic particle predicted nearly a half-century ago, which will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape.

The elusive particle, called a Higgs boson, was predicted in 1964 to help fill in our understanding of the creation of the universe, which many theorize occurred in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang. The particle was named for Peter Higgs, one of the physicists who proposed its existence, but it later became popularly known as the "God particle."

The discovery would be a strong contender for the Nobel Prize. Last July, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, announced finding a particle they described as Higgs-like, but they stopped short of saying conclusively that it was the same particle or was some version of it.

Scientists have now finished going through the entire set of data.

"The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is," said Joe Incandela, a physicist who heads one of the two main teams at CERN, each involving several thousand scientists.

Whether or not it is a Higgs boson is demonstrated by how it interacts with other particles and its quantum properties, CERN said in the statement. After checking, scientists said the data "strongly indicates that it is a Higgs boson."

The results were announced in a statement by the Geneva-based CERN and released at a physics conference in the Italian Alps.

CERN's atom smasher, the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider that lies beneath the Swiss-French border, has been creating high-energy collisions of protons to investigate how the universe came to be the way it is.

The particle's existence helps confirm the theory that objects gain their size and shape when particles interact in an energy field with a key particle, the Higgs boson. The more they attract, so the theory goes, the bigger their mass will be.

After meditation, conservatives lean left

by Jessica Lewis-Toronto on Monday, March 11, 2013

"The conservative part of religious belief has played an important role in holding cultures together and establishing common rules. The spiritual part, on the other hand, helps cultures renew themselves by adapting to changing circumstances," says Jordan Peterson. (Credit:Lily/Flickr)

U. TORONTO (CAN) —After a spiritual exercise like meditation, people endorse more liberal views, new research shows.

“There’s great overlap between religious beliefs and political orientations,” says one of the study authors, Jordan Peterson of University of Toronto’s department of psychology. “We found that religious individuals tend to be more conservative and spiritual people tend to be more liberal.

“Inducing a spiritual experience through a guided meditation exercise led both liberals and conservatives to endorse more liberal political attitudes.”

Straight from the Source

Read the original study

DOI: 10.1177/1948550612444138

Lead author Jacob Hirsh the Rotman School of Management says, “While religiousness is characterized by devotion to a specific tradition, set of principles, or code of conduct, spirituality is associated with the direct experience of self-transcendence and the feeling that we’re all connected.”

In three studies, the researchers—Hirsh, Peterson, and Megan Walberg, also from the department of psychology—examined their participants’ political views in relation to their religiousness and spirituality.

In the first study, they asked 590 American participants whether they identified as Democrat or Republican. In the second study, they measured 703 participants’ political orientations and support for the major US and Canadian political parties.

The researchers confirmed that religiousness was associated with political conservatism, while spirituality was associated with political liberalism. These associations were in turn due to the common values underlying these orientations: conservatism and religiousness both emphasize the importance of tradition, while liberalism and spirituality both emphasize the importance of equality and social harmony.

In the third study, the researchers recruited 317 participants from the US and asked half to complete a spiritual exercise consisting of a guided meditation video. Those who watched the video were asked to close their eyes and breathe deeply, imagining themselves in a natural setting and feeling connected to the environment. They were then asked about their political orientation and to rate how spiritual they felt.

The researchers report that, compared to those in the control group, participants who meditated felt significantly higher levels of spirituality and expressed more liberal political attitudes, including a reduced support for “tough on crime” policies and a preference for liberal political candidates.

“Spiritual experiences seem to make people feel more of a connection with others,” says Hirsh. “The boundaries we normally maintain between ourselves and the world tend to dissolve during spiritual experiences. These feelings of self-transcendence make it easier to recognize that we are all part of the same system, promoting an inclusive and egalitarian mindset.”

The researchers hope that these findings can not only advance our understanding of spirituality, but also help future political dialogue.

“The conservative part of religious belief has played an important role in holding cultures together and establishing common rules. The spiritual part, on the other hand, helps cultures renew themselves by adapting to changing circumstances,” says Peterson.

“Both right and left are necessary; it’s not that either is correct, it’s that the dialogue between them produces the best chance we have at getting the balance right. If people could understand that both sides have an important role to play in society, some of the unnecessary tension might be eliminated.”

The paper is published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Source: University of Toronto

Anti Aging Drug Breakthrough Achieved

Anti Aging Drug Breakthrough Achieved

By Lyle J. Dennis, M.D.

Publishing his work in the prestigious journal Science, David Sinclair of Harvard reports a breakthrough in the development of drugs that can block the aging process.

The article is entitled Evidence for a Common Mechanism of SIRT1 Regulation by Allosteric Activators, and reveals how interaction with a single amino acid in the SIRT1 enzyme is crucial for the ability of drugs that can activate the enzyme.

SIRT1 is an enzyme in the class of molecules called Sirtuins. Significant research shows that activation of sirtuins reduces cellular aging through its interaction with other cellular master switches such as FOXO3a and PGC-1a

“At the cellular level,” explain the authors. “SIRT1 controls DNA repair and apoptosis, circadian clocks, inflammatory pathways, insulin secretion, and mitochondrial biogenesis”

Resveratrol a polyphenol found in red wine and grapes may be a weak natural activator of sirutin and has been linked in some studies with the extension of animal lifespan. Data on these sitruin activators or STACs is inconsistent. “The legitimacy of STACs as direct SIRT1 activators has been widely debated,” write the authors.

In the present study, the researchers developed a sirtuin activation assay. They tested 117 experimental STACs and were able to prove that the enzyme could be directly activated and uncovered the exact molecular mechanism by which this occurred.

The authors conclude:


The data presented here favor a mechanism of direct “assisted allosteric activation” mediated by an N-terminal activation domain in SIRT1 that is responsible for at least some of the physiological effects of STACs. Thus, allosteric activation of SIRT1 by STACs remains a viable therapeutic intervention strategy for many diseases associated with aging.

“Ultimately, these drugs would treat one disease, but unlike drugs of today, they would prevent 20 others,” says Sinclair, from Harvard University. “In effect, they would slow ageing.” He points out this research shows something never previously described ”In the history of pharmaceuticals, there has never been a drug that tweaks an enzyme to make it run faster,” he said.

From this work, Sinclair believes safe new drugs of this class could be available in as little as five years. There will still be the need to prove their effectiveness.

“Now we are looking at whether there are benefits for those who are already healthy. Things there are also looking promising,” he says. ”We’re finding that ageing isn’t the irreversible affliction that we thought it was,”

“Some of us could live to 150, but we won’t get there without more research,” he adds.

Full Text Reference

Supreme Court: You Can't Challenge Secret Law Because It's Secret

Supreme Court: You Can't Challenge Secret Law Because It's Secret
By Adam Serwer
| Wed Feb. 27, 2013 8:46 AM PST



Eugene Sergeev /Shutterstock

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not after you. But you'll never be able to prove it.

That's the gist of the Supreme Court's Tuesday ruling in Amnesty v. Clapper, the challenge to the Bush administration's 2008 warrantless wiretapping law filed by human rights activists, attorneys and journalists who say the law makes it likely they will be unlawfully surveilled. The vote was 5-4, with the conservative justices backing up the Obama administration and the Democratic appointees dissenting. At issue was not the law itself, but whether the plaintiffs had "standing"—the legal requirement that plaintiffs prove that the law they're suing about would actually affect them. The Supreme Court said these plaintiffs couldn't prove the government would spy on them.

"It's a disturbing decision," Jameel Jaffer, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. "This ruling insulates the statute from meaningful judicial review and leaves Americans' privacy rights to the mercy of the political branches."

In 2008, Congress amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which made the government seek warrants from a secret court in order to spy on suspected foreign agents, in order to retroactively legalize the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program. The law, which allows the government to intercept communications without a warrant as long as it believes one party to the communication is overseas, passed with the support of then-Senator Barack Obama, who made a since-broken promise to reform the law. Civil liberties groups sought to have the law overturned, but the Supreme Court decided Tuesday that because the plaintiffs couldn't prove they had been spied on by the government, they can't challenge the law.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, told the plaintiffs that any harm done to them was merely "speculative" and "hypothetical," which meant that they could not prove a concrete harm that would justify allowing them to challenge the law. "Respondents have no actual knowledge of the Government's targeting practices," Alito wrote.

Well, of course they don't. Whom the law targets is a secret!

Alito's argument relies on an obvious paradox: He writes that the plaintiffs can't prove they were harmed and so can't challenge the law. But the reason the plaintiffs can't prove they were harmed is that the US government doesn't tell people when it's eavesdropping on them. Under Alito's reasoning, as long as the US government engages in unconstitutional activities behind a cloak of secrecy, there's no problem, because no one could ever possibly prove that they were actually affected.

The plaintiffs had argued that because their work brought them into contact with people the US government would be interested in keeping tabs on—some of them represent detainees at Guantanamo Bay, for example—they had a reasonable expectation that the government would violate their constitutional rights by subjecting them to warrantless surveillance. Simply believing that they might be spied on by the US government, they said, had forced them to drastically alter their behavior. Although the law technically forbids "targeting" of American citizens, it allows collection of communications where one point of contact is in the US and another is abroad.

Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the four Democratic-appointed dissenters, agreed that the plaintiffs had reason to worry. In fact, he said the government wouldn't be doing its job if it weren't interested in some of the people the plaintiffs were in contact with.

"We need only assume that the government is doing its job (to find out about, and combat, terror­ism) in order to conclude that there is a high probability that the government will intercept at least some electronic communication to which at least some of the plaintiffs are parties," Breyer wrote.

Alito defended his ruling by noting in the opinion that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court evaluates the government's spying operations. (Civil libertarians counter that the FISA court operates in secret.) Furthermore, Alito argues, "if the Government were to prosecute one of respondent-attorney's foreign clients using [evidence gathered from warrantless wiretapping law], the Government would be required to make a disclosure."

But there's no reason for the government to do that, says Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, precisely because it could result in court scrutiny. And even if the government ever did introduce evidence gathered through warrantless surveillance in court, it would mean of the potentially thousands of innocent people subjected to warrantless wiretapping (the government won't say how many Americans have had their communications intercepted) who were never prosecuted would never know their rights had been violated.

But assuming there's no harm done just because you can't know you've been spied on misses the point. "If the watchman is invisible," Sanchez says, "then everyone has to act as though they're being watched all the time."

5 Homeland Security ‘Bots Coming to Spy on You (If They Aren’t Already)

5 Homeland Security ‘Bots Coming to Spy on You (If They Aren’t Already)
BY ROBERT BECKHUSEN
02.08.13
6:29 AM
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It's been 10 years since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) started up operations. During that decade, DHS has moved to the forefront of funding and deploying the robots and drones that could be coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

DHS funds research and development for surveillance robots. It provides grant money by the hundreds of thousands to police agencies to buy their own. And sometimes it's bought and deployed robots -- for their skies, the ground and the waters -- of its own, usually concentrated along the border. It's not clear how many of those robots police operate, and law enforcement isn't by any means the only domestic market for the 'bots. But the trend lines point toward more robotic spy tools for law enforcement in more places -- with more DHS cash.

But it's not going to be simple. The Federal Aviation Administration is cautious about opening the skies to unmanned vehicles -- so much so that Congress and the Obama administration ordered it to ease up on restrictions by 2015. But not all spy robots fly. DHS is also developing robots that resemble fish, and deploys tunnel-bots deep into drug-smuggling tunnels along the border.

Here are five examples.

Above:
1.) Predator B

Unarmed Predator surveillance drones inside the United States have had a rocky history. The Department of Homeland Security's sub-agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has flown them off-and-on along the U.S.-Mexico border since 2004. Flights were suspended in 2006 after one of them crashed in Arizona, and drone flights were suspended again in 2010 after a Predator lost communications with its operators. At one point, drone boosters in Congress allocated funding for more drones than CBP had people to fly them.

How things have changed. In the past two years, DHS expanded Predator flights into the Caribbean to hunt for drug traffickers, and has taken to using the drones in an ad-hoc program to help out local police agencies, such as during a June 2011 standoff between SWAT officers and alleged cattle rustlers in Washington state. The drones have been used more broadly than that, reportedly assisting in police investigations from the Midwest to Texas. DHS has also gotten around to expanding its drone fleet. In November, DHS was revealed to be planning to expand its inventory of 10 Predators to 24, and isconstructing a testing ground for small surveillance drones at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

But in the years to come, the Predator is likely to have a numerically more marginal role as more law enforcement agencies join the drone bandwagon -- it's exceedingly likely the Predator will remain an exclusive item for the federal government. That is, a federal government putting the machines to work snooping on domestic turf.

Photo: Customs and Border Protection




2.) BIOSwimmer

Catch it if you can. In September, the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate premiered a prototype of its tuna-shaped robot called BIOSwimmer, developed by Boston Engineering Corporation. The concept revolves around eventually deploying the swimming robot to use in port security operations, and could prove to have several advantages over human divers. For one, it can get into tighter spaces, and can work in areas that have been contaminated with oil or other hazardous chemicals that could pose a risk to human health. But mainly, it's designed to inspect ships and "flooded bilges and tanks, and hard to reach areas such as steerage, propulsion and sea chests," noted a DHS statement.

The flapping motion is also designed to reduce power consumption, and the robot itself is designed with the intention of its sensors being easily swapped out between missions. There's no public timeline for when it's expected to be deployed, if it makes it that far -- the tuna 'bot is still an experimental design. But it's generally a good idea to start on a small scale.

Photo: Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate

3.) ShadowHawk
In a way, the trials of the ShadowHawk represent why police drones remain limited, at least for the time being. The Department of Homeland Security handed $220,000 to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department -- just north of Houston, Texas -- for one of these 50-pound helicopter drones in 2011. Aside from a mishap in which developer Vanguard Defense Industries crashed a ShadowHawk into the department's armored SWAT vehicle during a photo-op, it seemed like a great idea. The drone has a maximum speed of 55 miles per hour, a range of 15 miles, and a turbine engine powered by jet fuel that can keep it in the air for more than an hour. For surveillance, it can be equipped with a Sony FCB EX-1020 camera or a Photon 320 thermal imaging camera, and in theory would've allowed the county's law enforcement to cease relying on over-worked and tight-budgeted agencies in Houston for aircraft.

In theory, that is. Actually using the drone is another question. The FAA has only granted Montgomery County authorization to train with the drone over a one-mile-wide piece of rural land in the county's northwest corner -- away from the county's built-up suburbs to the south -- and not for actual police work.The drone is also too heavy, exceeding the 25-pound limit for domestic drones set by the FAA. (The limit was 4.4 pounds until a 2012 agreement between the Justice Department and the FAA bumped it up.) That had the chief deputy in the county fuming. The deputy, William McDaniel, argued to the House Homeland Security Committee (.pdf) last summer that the FAA should be removed from overseeing and approving drone operations in the United States, "other than the regular, routine review of agency flight operations to insure [sic] flight safety rules are being followed." That doesn't sound too likely, which means Montgomery County might have ended up with a brick for a drone -- at a cost of more than 200 K's in DHS money.




4.) Versatrax 150

The past decade has seen a big build-up in border security under Homeland Security's watch, including a doubling of Border Patrol agents and hundreds of miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. But to keep their wares flowing, the drug cartels in Mexico have turned to an inventive tactic: digging more and more tunnels deep underground. Then in 2008, the DHS tunnel task force -- a joint team of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the DEA -- got its hands on a Versatrax 150 crawler-bot, designed by Canadian robotics firm Inuktun.

But the Versatrax wasn't first intended to be used for border security -- it's a pipe inspection robot more commonly used by sewage and water workers. The machine is waterproof, has a 500-foot tether cable and can travel at a rate of 30 feet per minute. A high-resolution camera can rotate in all directions, and the robot itself can squeeze through an opening as small as six inches in diameter. Border tunnels can also be dangerous places, at the risk of collapse and even booby-trapped -- with no telling who's inside or what weapons they may be carrying. The Versatrax was designed for sludging its way through sewer tunnels, so it's not that big of a leap.

Photo: Jason Thomas Fritz/Wired




5.) Draganflyer X6

The Draganflyer X6 mini-helicopter is perhaps the first police drone to see regular active use inside the United States by a local police agency. In July 2010, the Mesa County Sheriff's Office in western Colorado used funding from the Department of Homeland Security to buy one of the machines, while also becoming one of the first police agencies for the FAA to authorize using the drones for police work. Weighing about four and a half pounds, the X6 can only stay in the air under its own power for about 20 minutes, but can travel at 30 miles per hour -- allowing it to travel about six miles in one go. The drone packs either a Panasonic DMC-ZS20 camera or an infra-red thermal imaging camera, and can transmit video (when it's not recording) in real-time back to an operator. The camera is stabilized against vibration, and a sensor head made of carbon fiber contains the gyros, accelerometers, GPS receiver and a barometric pressure sensor to keep it in the air. Mostly, the sheriff's office claims it uses the drones to map out crime scenes and traffic accidents, although the office claims (.pdf) it's been used to help a SWAT team track an armed suspect, and photograph a minor airplane crash.

Meanwhile, the DHS provided more than $80,000 to the Seattle Police Department for a pair of X6 drones. The department claims it intends to use the drone for criminal investigations and search-and-rescue operations. But Seattle hasn't yet been approved by the FAA to use them in actual police work beyond training officers in how to fly it, and it hasn't made it this far without objections from civil libertarians. On Feb. 4, Seattle City Councilman Bruce Harrell proposed legislation to prohibit the department using its drones for "general surveillance" -- that is, spying on anything or anyone other than an individual suspect with a warrant.

Photo: Mesa County Sheriff's Office

Why Do Certain Songs Give You Goosebumps?

Why Do Certain Songs Give You Goosebumps?
SOURCE: NME

Anyone who claims to know exactly why you and I love listening music is lying. It helps get through daily life sure, but how and why does it make us feel better? Humans have been listening to music for as long as we have been writing. The oldest examples of musical instruments are in excess of 40,000 years old, which gives us a problem – the evidence for how we came to love music is lost in time.

Faced with this dilemma scientists attack the puzzle from the other direction; they search the minds of modern humans for clues as to why we love music. One of the most recent clues came from a brain study of probably the most intense physical and emotional musical experience that exists – the chill.

This phenomenon goes by many names including goosebumps, thrills, shivers, frisson and even ‘skin orgasms’. Not everyone has experienced a musical chill but if you have had one then you will recognise the description; the hairs on the back of your neck and arms may stand to attention and a wave of nerves may whisk its way up your spine causing your head and/or torso to tick/convulse.

The musical chill response is involuntary. You can’t experience it in the absence of the trigger music and most people claim it is reliable, strong and impossible to control. Why does certain music give us chills? And what does this tell us about why we love music? Valarie Salimpoor and her colleagues from McGill (Canada) set out to examine real time brain responses of people as they were experiencing musical chills. The first thing that they discovered is that there is probably no magic formula for a musical chill, other than the fact that they often coincide with a sudden change in the music, such as the entry of a singer or a flip in harmony. Each volunteer was asked to bring in their own ‘chill music’ and the selection included jazz, classical, techno, rock and popular music, including Led Zeppelin, Tiesto and Rodriguez.

The researchers found activation in an ancient, centrally based brain system called the dopaminergic reward pathway; structures associated with pathway, such as the striatum and nucleus accumbens, were flushed with the brain-pleasing neurotransmitter ‘dopamine’ just before and during musical chills. This reward brain response is associated with motivation and addiction.

We typically experience this type of brain response to biologically rewarding stimuli; things that help us survive, like sex and high fat foods. Modern music does not really help us survive so it is effectively piggy-backing on this reward brain system. This system can also get hijacked by chemicals that modify mood. On the face of it therefore, this part of your brain reacts to sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

The researchers found activation in an ancient, centrally based brain system called the dopaminergic reward pathway; structures associated with pathway, such as the striatum and nucleus accumbens, were flushed with the brain-pleasing neurotransmitter ‘dopamine’ just before and during musical chills. This reward brain response is associated with motivation and addiction.

We typically experience this type of brain response to biologically rewarding stimuli; things that help us survive, like sex and high fat foods. Modern music does not really help us survive so it is effectively piggy-backing on this reward brain system. This system can also get hijacked by chemicals that modify mood. On the face of it therefore, this part of your brain reacts to sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

Why Do We Want To Squeeze Cute Things? Studying how adorable animals can turn us aggressive

Why Do We Want To Squeeze Cute Things?
Studying how adorable animals can turn us aggressive
By Shaunacy Ferro 01.24.2013 at 3:45 pm


Egbert Don't you just want to pinch his little hamster cheeks? Keith Pomakis via Wikimedia Commons

Seeing something cute actually does bring out aggression in us, according to a paper presented at Society for Personality and Social Psychology's annual meeting in New Orleans last Friday.

Researchers found 109 people to look at pictures of animals -- cute, funny and "neutral" photos of fluffy, fluffy puppies. The lucky participants then rated how they felt about the pictures: whether they agreed with the statement like "I just can't handle it!" (or perhaps "It's so fluffy I want to die!" whether they made them want to squeeze something or whether they were suddenly seized with the impulse to say something like "grr!" The cuter the animal, the more aggressive the response.

The study's researchers, led by Rebecca Dyer, a graduate student in psychology at Yale University, dubs the phenomenon "cute aggression."

"We think it's about high positive-affect, an approach orientation and almost a sense of lost control," she said. It's so adorable, it drives you crazy.

But for the sake of thoroughness, researchers did a second experiment to test whether the aggression was simply verbal, or whether people really did want to act out in response to wide-eyed kittens and cherubic babies. Volunteers were given bubble wrap and told they could pop as much of it as they wanted.

When faced with a slideshow of cute animals, people popped 120 bubbles, whereas people watching the funny and neutral slideshows popped 80 and 100 bubbles respectively.

Dyer's suggests that one reason we have so much pent-up aggression over cute pictures is that seeing something cute, like a baby, drives us to want to take care of it. But we can't reach through a photograph to cuddle it, so we get frustrated -- and then aggressive.

Another possibility is that it's just too much of a good thing -- sometimes we portray an onslaught of positive emotion in a negative way, like when you're so happy you cry. Dyer speculates that giving positive emotions a negative spin might help us regulate that high energy.

So the next time an aunt moves in to pinch your cheeks, just think -- you can't help being cute. And if there are any follow up studies, I'd happily volunteer to look at some puppies -- kittens and bunnies are within my expertise, too.

[LiveScience]

Quotes of the Day Photos

Evidence grows for narcolepsy link to GSK swine flu shot

Insight: Evidence grows for narcolepsy link to GSK swine flu shot
By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent, Reuters
Jan. 22, 2013 12:03AM PST

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Emelie is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares. When she wakes up, she's often paralyzed, unable to breathe properly or call for help. During the day she can barely stay awake, and often misses school or having fun with friends. She is only 14, but at times she has wondered if her life is worth living.

Emelie is one of around 800 children in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe who developed narcolepsy, an incurable sleep disorder, after being immunized with the Pandemrix H1N1 swine flu vaccine made by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline in 2009.

Finland, Norway, Ireland and France have seen spikes in narcolepsy cases, too, and people familiar with the results of a soon-to-be-published study in Britain have told Reuters it will show a similar pattern in children there.

Their fate, coping with an illness that all but destroys normal life, is developing into what the health official who coordinated Sweden's vaccination campaign calls a "medical tragedy" that will demand rising scientific and medical attention.

Europe's drugs regulator has ruled Pandemrix should no longer be used in people aged under 20. The chief medical officer at GSK's vaccines division, Norman Begg, says his firm views the issue extremely seriously and is "absolutely committed to getting to the bottom of this", but adds there is not yet enough data or evidence to suggest a causal link.

Others - including Emmanuel Mignot, one of the world's leading experts on narcolepsy, who is being funded by GSK to investigate further - agree more research is needed but say the evidence is already clearly pointing in one direction.

"There's no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Pandemrix increased the occurrence of narcolepsy onset in children in some countries - and probably in most countries," says Mignot, a specialist in the sleep disorder at Stanford University in the United States.

30 MILLION RECEIVED PANDEMRIX

In total, the GSK shot was given to more than 30 million people in 47 countries during the 2009-2010 H1N1 swine flu pandemic. Because it contains an adjuvant, or booster, it was not used in the United States because drug regulators there are wary of adjuvanted vaccines.

GSK says 795 people across Europe have reported developing narcolepsy since the vaccine's use began in 2009.

Questions about how the narcolepsy cases are linked to Pandemrix, what the triggers and biological mechanisms might have been, and whether there might be a genetic susceptibility are currently the subject of deep scientific investigation.

But experts on all sides are wary. Rare adverse reactions can swiftly develop into "vaccine scares" that spiral out of proportion and cast what one of Europe's top flu experts calls a "long shadow" over public confidence in vaccines that control potential killers like measles and polio.

"No-one wants to be the next Wakefield," said Mignot, referring to the now discredited British doctor Andrew Wakefield who sparked a decades-long backlash against the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot with false claims of links to autism.

With the narcolepsy studies, there is no suggestion that the findings are the work of one rogue doctor.

Independent teams of scientists have published peer-reviewed studies from Sweden, Finland and Ireland showing the risk of developing narcolepsy after the 2009-2010 immunization campaign was between seven and 13 times higher for children who had Pandemrix than for their unvaccinated peers.

"We really do want to get to the bottom of this. It's not in anyone's interests if there is a safety issue that needs to be addressed," said GSK's Begg.

LIFE CHANGED

Emelie's parents, Charles and Marie Olsson, say she was a top student who loved playing the piano, taking tennis lessons, creating art and having fun with friends. But her life started to change in early 2010, a few months after she had Pandemrix. In the spring of 2010, they noticed she was often tired, needing to sleep when she came home from school.

But it wasn't until May, when she began collapsing at school, that it became clear something serious was happening.

As well as the life-limiting bouts of daytime sleepiness, narcolepsy brings nightmares, hallucinations, sleep paralysis and episodes of cataplexy - when strong emotions trigger a sudden and dramatic loss of muscle strength.

In Emelie's case, having fun is the emotional trigger. "I can't laugh or joke about with my friends anymore, because when I do I get cataplexies and collapse," she said in an interview at her home in the Swedish capital.

Narcolepsy is estimated to affect between 200 and 500 people per million and is a lifelong condition. It has no known cure and scientists don't really know what causes it. But they do know patients have a deficit of a brain neurotransmitter called orexin, also known as hypocretin, which regulates wakefulness.

Research has found that some people are born with a variant in a gene known as HLA that means they have low hypocretin, making them more susceptible to narcolepsy. Around 25 percent of Europeans are thought to have this genetic vulnerability.

When results of Emelie's hypocretin test came back in November last year, it showed she had 15 percent of the normal amount, typical of heavy narcolepsy with cataplexy.

The seriousness of her strange new illness has forced her to contemplate life far more than many other young teens: "In the beginning I didn't really want to live any more, but now I have learned to handle things better," she said.

TRIGGERS?

Scientists investigating these cases are looking in detail at Pandemrix's adjuvant, called AS03, for clues.

Some suggest AS03, or maybe its boosting effect, or even the H1N1 flu itself, may have triggered the onset of narcolepsy in those who have the susceptible HLA gene variant.

Angus Nicoll, a flu expert at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), says genes may well play a part, but don't tell the whole story.

"Yes, there's a genetic predisposition to this condition, but that alone cannot explain these cases," he said. "There was also something to do with receiving this specific vaccination. Whether it was the vaccine plus the genetic disposition alone or a third factor as well - like another infection - we simply do not know yet."

GSK is funding a study in Canada, where its adjuvanted vaccine Arepanrix, similar to Pandemrix, was used during the 2009-2010 pandemic. The study won't be completed until 2014, and some experts fear it may not shed much light since the vaccines were similar but not precisely the same.

It all leaves this investigation with far more questions than answers, and a lot more research ahead.

WAS IT WORTH IT?

In his glass-topped office building overlooking the Maria Magdalena church in Stockholm, Goran Stiernstedt, a doctor turned public health official, has spent many difficult hours going over what happened in his country during the swine flu pandemic, wondering if things should have been different.

"The big question is was it worth it? And retrospectively I have to say it was not," he told Reuters in an interview.

Being a wealthy country, Sweden was at the front of the queue for pandemic vaccines. It got Pandemrix from GSK almost as soon as it was available, and a nationwide campaign got uptake of the vaccine to 59 percent, meaning around 5 million people got the shot.

Stiernstedt, director for health and social care at the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, helped coordinate the vaccination campaign across Sweden's 21 regions.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says the 2009-2010 pandemic killed 18,500 people, although a study last year said that total might be up to 15 times higher.

While estimates vary, Stiernstedt says Sweden's mass vaccination saved between 30 and 60 people from swine flu death. Yet since the pandemic ended, more than 200 cases of narcolepsy have been reported in Sweden.

With hindsight, this risk-benefit balance is unacceptable. "This is a medical tragedy," he said. "Hundreds of young people have had their lives almost destroyed."

PANDEMICS ARE EMERGENCIES

Yet the problem with risk-benefit analyses is that they often look radically different when the world is facing a pandemic with the potential to wipe out millions than they do when it has emerged relatively unscathed from one, like H1N1, which turned out to be much milder than first feared.

David Salisbury, the British government's director of immunization, says "therein lies the risk, and the difficulty, of working in public health" when a viral emergency hits.

"In the event of a severe pandemic, the risk of death is far higher than the risk of narcolepsy," he told Reuters. "If we spent longer developing and testing the vaccine on very large numbers of people and waited to see whether any of them developed narcolepsy, much of the population might be dead."

Pandemrix was authorized by European drug regulators using a so-called "mock-up procedure" that allows a vaccine to be authorized ahead of a possible pandemic using another flu strain. In Pandemrix's case, the substitute was H5N1 bird flu.

When the WHO declared a pandemic, GSK replaced the mock-up's strain with the pandemic-causing H1N1 strain to form Pandemrix.

GSK says the final H1N1 version was tested in trials involving around 3,600 patients, including children, adolescents, adults and the elderly, before it was rolled out.

The ECDC's Nicoll says early warning systems that give a more accurate analysis of a flu strain's threat are the best way to minimize risks of this kind of tragedy happening in future.

Salisbury agrees, and says progress towards a universal flu vaccine - one that wouldn't need last-minute changes made when a new strain emerged - would cuts risks further.

"Ideally, we would have a better vaccine that would work against all strains of influenza and we wouldn't need to worry about this ever again," he said. "But that's a long way off."

With scientists facing years of investigation and research, Emelie just wants to make the best of her life.

She reluctantly accepts that to do so, she needs a cocktail of drugs to try to control the narcolepsy symptoms. The stimulant Ritalin and the sleeping pill Sobril are prescribed for Emelie's daytime sleepiness and night terrors. Then there's Prozac to try to stabilize her and limit her cataplexies.

"That's one of the things that makes me feel most uncomfortable," she explains. "Before I got this condition I didn't take any pills, and now I have to take lots - maybe for the rest of my life. It's not good to take so many medicines, especially when you know they have side effects."

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Will Waterman)

The Madness of Excellence (Video)

Jane Goodall Comments on Bigfoot (2002)

Transcript of Dr. Jane Goodall's Comments on NPR Regarding Sasquatch

On Friday, September 27, 2002, during National Public Radio's (NPR) Talk of the Nation: Science Friday with Ira Flatow, Dr. Jane Goodall made a striking comment on her strong beliefs that large "undiscovered" primates, such as the Yeti or Sasquatch, do indeed exist.

The following is a transcript of the relevant portion of the program:

Dr. Goodall: As for the other, you're talking about a yeti or bigfoot or sasquatch.

Ira Flatow: Is that what he's talking about?

Dr. Goodall: Yes, it is and ...

Ira Flatow: Is that the message I'm missing here?

Dr. Goodall: I think that's the message you're missing and ...

Ira Flatow: (To the caller) Is that right?

Caller: Pretty much.

Ira Flatow: (Laughing) I'm out of the loop. Go ahead.

Dr. Goodall: Well now, you'll be amazed when I tell you that I'm sure that they exist.

Ira Flatow: You are?

Dr. Goodall: Yeah. I've talked to so many Native Americans who all describe the same sounds, two who have seen them. I've probably got about, oh, thirty books that have come from different parts of the world, from China from, from all over the place, and there was a little tiny snippet in the newspaper just last week which says that British scientists have found what they believed to be a yeti hair and that the scientists in the Natural History Museum in London couldn't identify it as any known animal.

Ira Flatow: Wow.

Dr. Goodall: That was just a wee bit in the newspaper and, obviously, we have to hear a little bit more about that.

Ira Flatow: Well, in this age of DNA, if you find a hair there might be some cells on it.

Dr. Goodall: Well, there will be and I'm sure that's what they've examined and they don't match up. That's what my little tiny snippet says. They don't match up with DNA cells from known animals, so -- apes.

Ira Flatow: Did you always have this belief that there., that they, that they existed?

Dr. Goodall: Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist. (Chuckles.)

Ira Flatow: (To the caller) Alright?

Caller: Thank you.

Ira Flatow: Thanks for calling. (To Goodall) Well, how do you go looking for them? I mean, people have been looking, right? It's not like, or has this just been, since we don't really believe they can exist, we really haven't really made a serious search.

Dr. Goodall: Well, there are people looking. There are very ardent groups in Russia, and they have published a whole lot of stuff about what they've seen. Of course, the big, the big criticism of all this is, "Where is the body?" You know, why isn't there a body? I can't answer that, and maybe they don't exist, but I want them to.

That's one horny chimp! Primate found to be addicted to porn

That's one horny chimp! Primate found to be addicted to porn

Spanish primatologist recounts his observations of Gina, a chimpanzee that only wanted to watch pornography when a television and remote control was placed in her enclosure.

BY LEE MORAN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 2013, 8:33 AM

Gina (not pictured) was found to prefer watching pornography by her handlers rather than any other form of television entertainment.

Gina is one naughty chimp.

Gina, a resident of the Seville Zoo in Spain, chose to solely watch adult entertainment channels when a television and remote control was placed in her enclosure.

Primatologist Pablo Herreros, writing in Spanish newspaper El Mundo, claimed he made the discovery some years ago on a tour of the nation's chimpanzee enclosures.

During his research trip he conducted surveys on the behavior of the animals.

Herreros wrote, “What I could never imagine were the surprises prepared for me by a female of this species called Gina who inhabited Seville Zoo.”

“Due to the intense interior lives that these animals have, you have to enrich their environment to stimulate them physically and psychologically,” Herreros wrote. “These usually consist of artificial mounds, toys and other inventions that require them to be active and sharpen their wits. It is the equivalent of occupational therapy for humans.”

To enliven Gina's nights, officials apparently decided to install a television, protected behind glass, and gave her a remote control so she could change the channels herself.

And enliven herself she did.

“The surprise was when they found that within a few days, Gina was not only using the remote control perfectly well, but that she also used to choose the porn channel for entertainment, as many of us would have done, ” Herreros wrote. “Although a small study estimated that porn films are only watched for about 12 minutes on average, the truth is that human and non-human primates possess an intense sexual life.”

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/primate-found-addicted-porn-article-1.1239610#ixzz2I4KYHuTZ

Asteroid 'Apophis' Won't Kill Us All in 2036

Asteroid 'Apophis' Won't Kill Us All in 2036

By David Murphy
January 12, 2013 05:16pm EST

:

Congrats! Come 2036, you'll still be here – as opposed to being blown apart by a giant asteroid that was initially thought to have a great-than-zero chance of striking Earth when it swings around in 2036.

Well, you might not still be here – who knows! – but the Earth should still be around and intact. NASA scientists have officially ruled that the asteroid Apophis, an approximately 885-foot-long hunk of rock that just passed within nine million miles of Earth this past Wednesday, will not be the herald of humanity's doom come 20 or so years from now. That's a bit more of a relief than the approximate 2.7 percent chance scientists had first assigned as a strike probability to Apophis when the asteroid was discovered in 2004.

"The impact odds as they stand now are less than one in a million, which makes us comfortable saying we can effectively rule out an Earth impact in 2036. Our interest in asteroid Apophis will essentially be for its scientific interest for the foreseeable future," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, in a statement.

While Apophis' 2029 flyby of Earth will still set records for the closest such pass by an object of the asteroid's size, it's not going to have sky-watchers sweating bullets as was previously thought. Astronomers had initially feared that the close pass had a chance to send Apophis flying through a galactic "keyhole" – not a term stolen from the comic books, we note, but a half-mile-wide area of space that would then set Apophis on the perfect path for smacking into the planet when the asteroid came back around in 2036.

That said, don't count Apophis out completely just yet.

"But/And ... there are more radar observations to integrate in ... as well as optical tracking both now and for the next several years. Apophis isn't going away ... the impact possibilities are simply shifting around a bit with refinement of the tracking data. 2036 is now less probable; 2068 is now more probable (but still very low)," wrote Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart to Cosmic Log's Alan Boyle.

It's expected that scientists will be able to pull in more data about Apophis' exact track by the end of February. For now, however, you can safely keep your next thirty years' worth of dinner plans intact.

For more tech tidbits from David Murphy, follow him on Facebook or Twitter (@thedavidmurphy).