“Last week, in the harsh desert climate of Abu Dhabi, construction started on a city that will house 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses but use extremely little energy, and what it does use will come from renewable sources. The initial building is a new research institute that the founders hope will be the seed for the equivalent of a Silicon Valley of the Middle East, only one centered not on information technology but on renewable energy.

The city, which is expected to cost $22 billion, will implement an array of technologies, including thin-film solar panels that serve as the facades and roofing materials for buildings, ubiquitous sensors for monitoring energy use, and driverless vehicles powered by batteries that make cars unnecessary. Indeed, the city’s founders hope that it will serve as a test bed for a myriad of new technologies being proposed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

The new zero-emissions city, which is being built near the city of Abu Dhabi in the center of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is part of the Masdar Initiative, a $15 billion government-funded investment program designed in part to ensure that the UAE’s prosperity won’t be linked exclusively to its oil. Its leaders say that the project will give the country a leadership position in renewable energy. If it’s successful, says Sultan al Jaber, Masdar’s CEO, “we’ll be sitting on top of the world.”

Thanks to TechnologyReview.com for the article:Building the Zero-Emissions City

Why are we not doing this in America?  High Tech is changing the world quickly, and old school thinking is going to get america left behind.  Its time for Talented, Intelligent, Visionary people to take this country back, and help renew it and lead it into a Great Future.  The current leaders, both on stage and behind the curtain only seek to enslave us and our DNA.  Help me rise up and herald a new non violent revolution.  One based on Human rights, renewed sense of ethics and spirituality, and “Green” Science/Technology.

omegaprojectmusic.com

There’s blood in the water, and the sharks are circling.  Why is it that when you mess up in this world, there is always someone there to make money?  Why is it that when you are sick, there is always someone there to make money?  Why is it that when God touches your heart, there is always someone there to make money?  Our worlds belief structure creates a self perpetuating vicious cycle of greed and fear.  Everyone alive has had a moment where they were down, whether physically or spiritually.  Its what you do when you are down that this is all about.  Most people break when they are down.  They give up, succumb to control, and admit defeat.  They allow their lives and energy to be leached off of by the vampires who set this whole system up.  Most people become bitter, dwelling on what could have been, or stewing with envy and rage at someone who threw them off course.  They forget that light kills Vampires…  To have someone tell you about climbing a mountain is one thing, but to climb the mountain yourself, that is a whole other story.  Tribulation brings understanding, and understanding brings true compassion.  And The Compassionate ONE is what this world is starving for.  The Compassionate ONE drives the sharks and vampires away with the power of thought, voice, and action.  The power of inner light.  Cry not for yourself, cry for the millions oppressed worldwide.  Sing the Song of Their Liberty!  Take the fear and greed of the vampires and sharks and let it fire up your will to succeed!  For the Greatest Revenge is Success!

omegaprojectmusic.com

Will computers think for themselves?  Will humans be able to reprogram our own biology, making us “super human”?  Will our kids be born into a world where every item is “smart”.  Michio Kaku, another one of my favorite modern philosophers and Great Minds tackles these questions in “Visions of the Future: The Intelligence Revolution“

This video does a great job illustrating the vast changes underway on our world.  By 2020 a microchip with the computing power of a modern cellphone will cost about $.01.  As this draws nearer, chips will begin to be embedded in everything truly leading to the “ubiquity era” with thousands of computers per user.  Humans will then (if not already) begin hard-wiring our minds with more processing power and altering our DNA to dramatic results.  Humans may no longer be Homo Sapien and may self selectively evolve into Cyber Sapiens.

THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR!

Question of the Day:
Do you think humans will achieve this great change in our very essence?

“Images of colliding galaxies show them spinning, sliding and slipping into one another, wreaking stellar destruction that will give birth to new and larger galaxies.”

See the full article here.

Insects linked with computers….   Its a brave new world my friends…

THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR!!

Microsoft just released the report on their 2007 conference Being Human: Human-Computer interaction in the year 2020.  When a heavyweight like Microsoft throws their weight behind a concept, no longer does Ray Kurzweil seem so “fringe”.  Human-Computer interaction is indeed going to change Microsoft argues, going from the Mobility Era (with multiple computers per user) into the Ubiquity era (with thousands of computers per user).   This is a landmark report. Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar a year company, and with them openly touting a new OS called “Singularity” and releasing reports on “Human-Computer Interaction”, it is now only a matter of time before the public at large acknowledge and accept the undergoing changes worldwide.  Have no doubt my friends, THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR…

Read Being Human: Human Computer Interaction in the Year 2020

Are supercomputers on the verge of creating Matrix-style simulated realities? Michael McGuigan at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, thinks so. He says that virtual worlds realistic enough to be mistaken for the real thing are just a few years away.

In 1950, Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, proposed the ultimate test of artificial intelligence – a human judge engaging in a three-way conversation with a machine and another human should be unable to reliably distinguish man from machine.

A variant on this “Turing Test” is the “Graphics Turing Test”, the twist being that a human judge viewing and interacting with an artificially generated world should be unable to reliably distinguish it from reality.

“By interaction we mean you could control an object – rotate it, for example – and it would render in real-time,” McGuigan says.

Photoreal animation

Although existing computers can produce artificial scenes and textures detailed enough to fool the human eye, such scenes typically take several hours to render. The key to passing the Graphics Turing Test, says McGuigan, is to marry that photorealism with software that can render images in real-time – defined as a refresh rate of 30 frames per second.

McGuigan decided to test the ability of one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers – Blue Gene/L at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York – to generate such an artificial world.

Blue Gene/L possesses 18 racks, each with 2000 standard PC processors that work in parallel to provide a huge amount of processing power – it has a speed of 103 teraflops, or 103 trillion “floating point operations” per second. By way of comparison, a calculator uses about 10 floating operations per second.

In particular, McGuigan studied the supercomputer’s ability to mimic the interplay of light with objects – an important component of any virtual world with ambitions to mimic reality.

He found that conventional ray-tracing software could run 822 times faster on the Blue Gene/L than on a standard computer, even though the software was not optimised for the parallel processors of a supercomputer. This allowed it to convincingly mimic natural lighting in real time.

Not there yet

“The nice thing about this ray tracing is that the human eye can see it as natural,” McGuigan says. “There are actually several types of ray-tracing software out there – I chose one that was relatively easy to port to a large number of processors. But others might be faster and even more realistic if they are used in parallel computing.”

Although Blue Gene/L can model the path of light in a virtual world both rapidly and realistically, the speed with which it renders high-resolution images still falls short of that required to pass the Graphics Turing Test.

But supercomputers capable of passing the test may be just years away, thinks McGuigan. “You never know for sure until you can actually do it,” he says. “But a back-of-the-envelope calculation would suggest it should be possible in the next few years, once supercomputers enter the petaflop range – that’s 1000 teraflops.”

But others think that passing the Graphics Turing Test requires more than photorealistic graphics moving in real-time. Reality is not ’skin deep’ says Paul Richmond at the University of Sheffield, UK. An artificial object can appear real, but unless it moves in a realistic way the eye won’t be fooled. “The real challenge is providing a real-time simulation that includes realistic simulated behaviour,” he says.

Fluid challenge

“I’d like to see a realistic model of the Russian ballet,” says Mark Grundland at the University of Cambridge. “That’s something a photographer would choose as a subject matter, and that’s what we should aim to convey with computers.”

Grundland also points out that the Graphics Turing Test does not specify what is conveyed in the virtual world scene. “If all that is there is a diffusely-reflecting sphere sitting on a diffusely-reflecting surface, then we’ve been able to pass the test for many years now,” he says. “But Turing didn’t mean for his vision to come true so quickly.”

McGuigan agrees that realistic animation poses its own problems. “Modelling that fluidity is difficult,” he says. “You have to make sure that when something jumps in the virtual world it appears heavy.” But he remains optimistic that animation software will be up to the task. “Physical reality is about animation and lighting,” he says. “We’ve done the lighting now – the animation will follow.

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Thanks for the amazing article to Technology.NewScientist.com

If you enjoy eating exotic mushrooms, are interested in their nutritional and medicinal value and if you would like to learn how to establish mushrooms in your yard, garden or woods, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets will not disappoint you.

If the subtitle How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World intrigues you, it should. Paul Stamets’ thirty years of experience in “engaging fungi”, his original theories and research will reveal a world that many of us never knew existed. He calls Mycelium Running “A mycological manual for rescuing ecosystems”.

The text is divided into three parts with a foreword by the author’s long time friend Dr. Andrew Weil. 360 high quality photos and concise, useful graphs and charts enrich the text. You will see mushrooms the likes of which you never imagined.

Mr. Stamets has a wonderful writing style; friendly, funny and scientific all at the same time. He describes fungi as the “grand recyclers” of nature, their cobweb like growth under logs as “mycomagicians”.

Part One, The Mycelial Mind, contains four chapters:

* Mycelium as Nature’s Internet

* The Mushroom Life Cycle

* Mushrooms in Their Natural Habitat

* The Medicinal Mushroom Forest

Stamets describes mycelium as “the neurological network of nature” that can “expand to thousands of acres in size in cellular mats achieving the greatest mass of any individual organism on this planet”.

Mycelium is a single-celled organism that travels several inches a day. That means there is only one cell wall that protects this organism from pathogens, yet it thrives more prolifically that any plant or animal on the planet.

In fact, it is mycelium’s vast structural network that is responsible for decomposing plant debris, at the same time providing nutrients to the plant and animal kingdoms. In other words, mycelium is earth’s life support system and should be understood, respected and protected as such.

A mushroom is the fruit of mycelium. They produce spores capable of traveling great distances on the wind, on clothing, in animal feces and even on envelopes and packages in our mail.

There are four types of fungi: saprophytes, parasites, mycorrhizal and endophytes. The saprophyte subtype is largely responsible for recycling organic debris and providing nutrients to the plant and animal world.

Mycorrhizal fungi are vital to the health of forests because it transports nutrients to different species of trees.

The chapter The Medicinal Mushroom Forest discusses the ancient knowledge of the value of mushrooms to both the human body and the forest ecosystem with useful charts of commonly collected wild edible mushrooms from NW North America including chanterelles, matsutake and hedgehogs.

Various mushroom varieties possess potent anti-microbial properties. The author notes that a “moldy cantaloupe sent to an army research lab in 1941″ led to the identification and extraction of strains of penicillium chrysogenum that led to the commercial synthesis of penicillin.

Mr. Stamets’ own research led to the discovery that the extract of mycelium from the mushroom Fomitopsis officinalis “protects human blood cells from infection by orthopox viruses including the family of viruses that includes smallpox.”

Specific varieties of mushrooms possess antiviral activity against such viruses as hepatitis B, herpes simplex, HIV, influenza, pox, and tobacco mosaic virus. A useful table lists various mushrooms and their antiviral activities.

Several varieties of mushrooms are sources of other medicinal compounds including triterpenoids and glycoproteins. Pages 38-39 provide a cross index of Mushrooms and Targeted Therapeutic Effects including mushroom activity against specific cancers.

Mr. Stamets presents strong evidence that fungi from old growth forests have potential as sources for new and vital medicines. And he emphasizes the essential importance of preserving this priceless resource.

Part II - Mycorestoration

In Mycorestoration the author presents his original thought, theories and research into how mycelium and their fruit, mushrooms, can be harnessed for uses that support the health of humans and our ailing planet. In this fascinating section of the book, the author presents the reader with “fungal opportunities underfoot”.

These original concepts are presented in four forms: Mycofiltration, Mycoforestry,Mycoremediation and Mycopesticides.

Mycorestoration is defined as the selective use of fungi to repair or restore the weakened immune systems of environments.

Mycofiltration uses mycelium as a membrane to catch and filter upstream contaminants including microorganisms, pollutants and silt. Talk about filtration capacity, Mr. Stamets says that “more than a mile of mycelial cells can infuse a gram of soil”.

The text illustrates how we can use mycelium on farms, in our own urban and suburban environments, in watershed districts, in factories, on roads and other stressed habitats to filter protozoa, bacteria, viruses, bacteria, silt and chemical toxins.

Mycelial mats, called “bunker spawn” mature in months and can be used for years to prevent downstream pollution. Mr. Stamets discusses his own research in microfiltration and presents directions for building and installing mycelium microfilters.

Mycoforestry is the use of fungi to sustain forest communities by preserving natural forests, recycling woodland debris, sustaining replanted trees with the goal of strengthening the forest ecosystem.

Mr. Stamets emphasizes that contrary to conventional thought our forests are not “renewable” resources and discusses how carbon cycles that fuel the food chain can take centuries, if not thousands of years to establish.

For example, in Oregon a honey mushroom mat found on a mountaintop covered over 2400 acres and is thought to be about 2200 years old. “Nurse” logs in this forest increase soil depth and enrich the habitat for the fungi, plant and animal kingdoms.

The reader must wonder how many regions like this exist on planet earth today.

According to the author, acceleration of this process is possible by using wood chips as a spawning medium for fungi. This method has the potential to prevent forest fires because as mycelium grows on the wood chips they draw moisture to the forest floor in a sponge like way.

Mr. Stamets urges forest pathologists to develop strategies that utilize mycelium to improve forest health.

Mycoremediation is the use of fungi to degrade or remove toxins from the environment. According to the author fungi can be used to degrade heavy metals including lead, and mercury, industrial toxins including chlorine, dioxin, PCBs and organophosphates.

This potential is viewed in the perspective of the hierarchy of organisms in the fungi, plant, bacterium and animal kingdoms, a hierarchy which begins and ends with fungi.

Photos in this chapter illustrate diesel contaminated soil “under attack” by oyster mushrooms which thrive on the contaminated soil and regenerate it by neutralizing the contaminant. When they die and rot they provide a healthy environment for new plant growth. The contaminated soil in which mushroom growth was not introduced remained just that, barren and contaminated.

The goal of mycorestoration is to match fungi species to contaminants to enable the “destruction of toxins that enable other restoration strategies”.

Mycopesticides involve the use of fungi to control pest populations, including carpenter ants and termites. Mr. Stamets relates a personal story of how he used mycelium as a natural pesticide to rid his house of carpenter ants.

He has applied for patents to use this biotechnology which protect groundwater and habitats from damage by conventional toxic pesticides, as a natural method of eliminating termites, ants and flies. He calls the technology “green mycotechnology”.

Part III - Growing Mycelia and Mushrooms includes six chapters:

* Inoculation Methods: Spores, spawns and stem butts

* Cultivating Mushrooms on Straw and Leached Cow Manure

* Cultivating Mushrooms on logs and stumps

* Gardening with Gourmet and medicinal mushrooms

* Magnificent Mushrooms: The Cast of Species

* Nutritional properties of mushrooms

This section introduces readers to methods for inoculation, cultivation and gardening with mushrooms. Excellent photos, graphs and charts help the reader to visualize and practically apply the processes.

Mr. Stamets says that the key to growing mushrooms is to first grow mycelium and that the most important technique is learning how to use wild, or natural spawn because it has the advantage of being acclimated to its habitat.

The mycelium grower is described as a “herdsman” and the mycomotto is “move it or lose it”. The author explains that no matter how successful you may be at getting mycelium to grow it will “consume its habitat” and will move on, if not supplemented with its basic nutrient needs.

Stamets explains that “Your job is to become embedded into the mind-set of this digestive cellular membrane, to run with mycelium”.

Using fungi in the garden builds soil, improves yield and decreases fertilizer requirements. Photos illustrate the increased size of vegetables grown in mycelium rich soil.

Edible mushrooms are good sources of protein, are very low in simple carbohydrates and fats and are high in antioxidants, selenium, potassium, copper, B vitamins and fiber.

Nutritional content of mushrooms depends on variety and where they are grown. For example, button mushrooms grown in Texas and Oklahoma contain higher levels of selenium than those grown in Florida and Pennsylvania.

Pages 198-199 provide a very useful chart listing the nutritional properties of 16 edible mushrooms.

Mushrooms are rich sources of enzymes including cellulose, lignan peroxidases, laccases, manganese superoxide dismutases, enzymes known for their ability to decompose plant fiber.

According to the author, enzyme inhibitors in mushrooms are protective against breast and prostate cancer. Aromatase inhibitors that interrupt the conversion of androgens to estrogens are significant to those at risk for breast cancer. 5 alpha reductase inhibitors are significant to those at risk for enlarged prostate and prostate cancer.

Graphs provide additional information on mushroom variety and content of these valuable nutritional compounds.

The final chapter of the book is Magnificent Mushrooms: The Cast of Species

This section provides in-depth descriptions, distribution, habitat, harvesting hints, nutritional profile, medicinal properties, flavor, preparation and cooking tips, mycorestoration potential and comments for a long list of mushrooms including shiitakes, oyster, and morels.

This is valuable, useful information for anyone interested in utilizing the benefits of mushrooms for health, both human and planetary.

Certainly Paul Stamets book Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Save the World will grow the ranks of mycophiles world wide. Because the science of mycorestoration is in its infancy, Mycelium Running will likely inspire a new generation of mycologists to implement the author’s original discoveries and make future discoveries of their own, discoveries that benefit both mankind and the environment.

As Dr. Andrew Weil said in the introduction “I find this book exciting and optimistic because it suggests new, nonharmful possibilities for solving serious problems that affect our health and the health of our environment”.

Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets - Ten Speed Press, 2005. 339 pp 360 color photos

Other books by Paul Stamets:

* Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms (2000)

* The Mushroom Cultivator with coauthor Jeff Chilton (1983)

Founder of fungiperfecti @ (http://www.fungi.com/) and (http://fungi.com/mycomeds/info.html)

(Book Review) by Teri Lee Gruss, MS Human Nutrition (see all articles by this author)

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Full disclosur, the above article is from NaturalNews.com - Keep up the great works! Thanks for the article!

A prominent Health Organization has warned that there is an ongoing semi-covert movement by state and federal governments to claim ownership of every newborn baby’s DNA for the purpose of genetic research without the consent of individual citizens.

A pending bill on the floor of the Minnesota House and Senate will strip citizens of genetic privacy and DNA ownership rights, The Citizens Council on Healthcare has warned.

“Today, a state genetic privacy law requires informed parent consent for government testing, ownership and research on the DNA of the newest Minnesota residents. The Minnesota Department of Health wants to eliminate the informed consent requirements. A bill to remove consent requirements for government ownership and genetic research will soon be voted on by the Minnesota House and Senate.” The CCHC website explains.

“Thus far, the state of Minnesota has illegally collected and claims ownership to the DNA of 780,000 children (soon to be voting adults) and has provided the DNA of 42,210 children to genetic researchers without parent consent. Approximately, 73,000 children are born in Minnesota every year. About 4.2 million children are born across the nation. All of them are losing their genetic privacy and DNA ownership rights.” the organization’s report continues.

The state treats the activity as an “opt out” program, whereby if the parents of the newborn infant do not specifically opt out of the process, the state presumes its has “informed consent” and that the parents have opted in.

CCHC President Twila Brase has warned that the databases housing the DNA could form the basis for a new eugenics movement, the practice of “perfecting” the human race through genetic manipulation, previously endorsed by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and toyed with by the likes of Adolf Hitler.

Ms. Brase explained in a statement last month that state Health Department officials are now seeking exemption for the so called “DNA Warehouse” from Minnesota privacy law. This would enable state officials to continue to take the DNA of newborn infants without consent.

Essentially this would mean that eventually every person’s DNA would be collected at birth, warehoused by the state in what is known as a “genomic biobank”, and sold or given away to private or governmental genetic researchers, who may manipulate, alter or splice the DNA in any way they see fit.

Such information would represent a goldmine to employers, insurance companies, medical institutions, and big pharma.

Under such conditions we are faced with the prospect of a society that is literally the mirror image of the nightmarish vision outlined by Aldous Huxley in his 1932 novel Brave New World, where individuals are categorized in a social hierarchy according to their genetic traits.

Watch Twila Brase explain the possible consequences of the pending DNA profiling legislation:

Ms. Brase has been warning of the ongoing move for a a number of years. In January 2007 she issued a written testimony to the Minnesota legislature on the unethical and hidden uses of harvested DNA by the state.

Read the 18 page PDF document here.

Recently, Minnesota based researcher and activist Marti Oakley revealed that, according to her polling, the majority of parents or grand parents of newborns have no idea that this is happening.

She writes:

Further, not one knew that they had the right to demand the blood and tissue samples be destroyed after 45 days per written request. Even had they known, and the samples were destroyed (you would have no way of knowing if they really were) the information gleaned from them would still be available and on file…..in perpetuity.

Also unknown to at least the new parents in Minnesota, is that once that 45 days has lapsed, the state now claims that they “own” the DNA of that child.

Though the Minnesota case has received recent public attention, such DNA harvesting is not restricted to that state and is being undertaken nationwide.

The National Conference of State Legislatures lists for all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, the various statutes or regulatory provisions under which newborns’ DNA is being collected.

DNA of newborns has been harvested, tested, stored and experimented with by all 50 states. In addition, all 50 states are now routinely providing these results to the Department of Homeland Security.

In the UK, a similar DNA harvesting program was rejected in 2005 by The Human Genetics Commission, who cited cost and ethical problems in a report to government ministers.

However, DNA profiling of all newborn babies has since been called for by lawmakers and most recently by senior police officers.

Oppose the Minnesota Department of Health’s refusal to fully inform parents

Currently, there is a monumental effort under way by The Citizens Council on Health Care to petition the state to oppose illegal State government ownership of the blood, DNA and genetic test results of newborn citizens in Minnesota. http://www.cchconline.org/petition/babyDNA2007.php

The CCHC is calling on Governor Tim Pawlenty to direct the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) to comply with Minnesota state privacy law, to fully inform parents of the genetic testing process and their legal rights–and to dismantle MDH’s illegal warehouse of newborn citizen DNA. (Contact Sue Jeffers directly at: S1U2E3@aol.com )

For more resources on this issue visit the CCHC website.

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Thanks to infowars.net for a great article!

“Having a big belly in your 40s can boost your risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia decades later, a new study suggests.”

see the rest of the article here - Big belly boosts risk of later dementia