Triangle UFO chases car in Texas at 120 mpg, emits column of light, becomes sphere

Two Texas witnesses driving west on Highway 73 near Winnie on February 16, claim they observed and then were followed by a triangle-shaped UFO that was 100 feet off of the ground, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.

The witness report includes a detailed account of how they attempted to out run the UFO at speeds of 120 mph, a column of light coming from the object, and then the object turning into a sphere.

The object moved away when two oncoming vehicles approached.

Winnie is in Chambers County, Texas, population 2,914 ….

TX, February 16, 2010 – Eerily silent, Heightened Visual alertness,Feeling of being completely vulnarable. MUFON Case # 21927.

My friend and I were in route from Port Arthur to Houston, traveling west bound on Highway 73, we had just passed the landfill(between Winnie Tx.)The time was about 11:45Pm. We were visiting my aunt, in ICU in Port Arthur.

I had just activated(the Google Navigator) on my 3G phone. I was thinking to myself how cool!, we are tracking in virtual time on a satalite map…”this must be the way we appear from an arial view.”

At that same instant my friend who was driving,in a calm collective manner says “See I told you that there are UFO’s around here!” I looked up, my eyes immeadiately fixated, to the top left corner of the windshield.

And….Sure enough!!! There IT was!!!! traveling east bound, about 200 ft above the hwy. It appeared to be pulsating a irradescent/flouresent bright rainbow color, however all of the colors displayed at the same time…….. There were three Rumboid shaped pulsating objects they seemed to be seperate, but yet as one unit?!?!? silently/fluidly traveling east bound,paralell to hwy 73 … I asked my friend”DID YOU SEE THAT?!?!WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!!???? four times, I also rolled all of the car windows down and I opened the sun roof.

This was to reassure myself that we were’nt just seeing a reflection off of the car’s glass and the fact that my friend confirmed four times that we were both seeing the same phenomina. As I opened the sun roof,never taking my eyes off of the object, I popped my head up through the sun roof,and said WOW!!!! that’s no reflection!!! That’s a Bonified UFO! That very instant, the object made an immeadiate U-turn!!!!!!!!!

And now it was following us down hwy73!!! I never once left visual contact with the object. I jumped down into my seat and shouted”THEY ARE COMING!!!!THEY ARE FOLLOWING US!! keep in mind that this is a dark and desolate hwy at this time of the night.

I kept my eye on it, while my friend was franticly speeding up to get away! I could see the same colors pulsating 100FT above the pavement behind us!!,but it seemed very different than what colors you or I are use to???!!!

I was almost hypnotysed by this strange sight… I could see the triangle shaped pulsating Rumboids getting larger, and closer, leaving and getting smaller, and yet not moving at all?!!?!?!? well my friend, as strange as it may sound, all of this was taking place simutaneousley, My eyes and brain were not quiet sure how to process all of this together

We became panicked and sped up to approx. 120mph. Again this thing never changed perspective, of course we were speeding, but the object stayed behind us, but not ever moving?!!??!!?

My friend says to me”STOP STARING AT IT”!!

The object got almost to the back of my car, then I noticed a yellow/amberish colored column of light slowly coming down to the ground from the object… then the column of light became very very bright, nontransparent, and became almost like an orange fire ball. I could see the grass and the dirt flying about ,under this fireball!! I started screaming”"”"THEY ARE GOING TO BLOW US UP!!!!!!!”"”"” that instanst, the object started to wobble?

And the air all around it seemed to ripple as if it were H20?!?!?! Then the object became one with the column of orange/yellow light, it reminded me of how Mercury looks on a hard surface. And all in the same split second, the object then became a bright large sphere, with the same pulsating colorfull pattern… I was shell shocked!!!! Did i just see that take place in this demension/this planet/this Whatever!!!!! By this time I could feel a presence in my persona,,,,not anything unusual,,,no strange voices, but almost like my subconcious was suddenly in charge?!!?!I never once felt threatened in that sense, but I was subtlely able to become aware of this new/unfamilair feeling in my head?!?!

Sounds lunicital ,I know!!!! but like I said, there is no vocabulary that we have as a species that could come close to propperly describing these events,senses,feelings,”phenominas”

We continued for for few minutes, then I noticed two cars traveling east bound were coming,after what seemed like an eternity!! I was wide eyed of course waiting to see if those cars would notice what was following us. Sure enough…….they all slammed on thier brakes and pulled to the side of the road!!! at that time the object behind us, backed down and in a split second, the sphere divided into two and disapered!!!!!!

I feel like someone else out there had to have seen something. if so please share. ..

via Texas witnesses report UFO chase along Highway 73 near Winnie.

Lost Nazi nuke-project uranium found in Dutch scrapyard

… mysterious bits of uranium found last year in a Dutch scrapyard originated in the Nazi nuclear-weapons programme of the 1940s.

Forensic nuke scientists at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) traced the two pieces of metal – described as a cube and a plate – back to their exact origins and dates. Apparently both came from ores extracted at the “Joachimsthal” mine in what is now the Czech Republic, though the two are from different production batches.

The cube, according to specialists at the JRC’s Institute for Transuranium Elements (ITU), was produced in 1943 for the Nazi nuclear programme … The plate was apparently part of experiments by Heisenberg’s collaborator Karl Wirtz. Most historical analysis, with hindsight, suggests that the Nazi nuclear research programme never got very close to developing an atomic weapon. There was no equivalent of the Manhattan Project; rather, different lines of research were followed in different labs. …

After the war, Heisenberg said that he and his colleagues had always been doubtful of the potential of nuclear fission as an explosive. Furthermore, they had taken good care not to [emphasize] that aspect of the research … to their Nazi masters, for reasons of self-interest.

via Lost Nazi nuke-project uranium found in Dutch scrapyard • The Register.

Google gets go-ahead to buy, sell energy

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has authorized Google Energy to buy and sell electricity in bulk like any other utility.

The FERC, the agency with oversight of the U.S. power grid, signed an order (PDF) on Thursday that grants Google Energy market-based rate authorization. This paves the way for the search giant to not only better manage its own energy costs, but to possibly add electricity marketer to its repertoire of services.

The order specifically grants Google Energy–a subsidiary of Google–the rights “for the sale of energy, capacity, and ancillary services at market-based rates” while acknowledging that neither Google Energy nor its affiliates “own or control any generation or transmission” facilities.

Google has expressed a desire for access to larger amounts of renewable energy to help produce the electricity it consumes as part of its vast search-engine empire. Google has long maintained that its goal is to become a carbon-neutral company. As a side note, it’s not unusual for large companies to be granted the authority to trade in the wholesale electricity market for the purpose of managing their own energy costs.

As recently as January–after Google Energy made its request to FERC–the company maintained that its expressed immediate wish was for more control over electricity pricing to more effectively gain access to affordable renewable energy.

“Right now, we can’t buy affordable, utility-scale, renewable energy in our markets. We want to buy the highest quality, most affordable renewable energy wherever we can and use the green credits,” Google representative Niki Fenwick told CNET News at the time.

But it seems that Google may actually enter the energy business. The search giant formed the Delaware-based subsidiary called Google Energy in December and when asked about it, hinted at a future in energy.

“We don’t have any concrete plans. We want the ability to buy and sell electricity in case it becomes part of our portfolio,” Fenwick told CNET News in January.

Google’s escalating interest in energy
Prior to that obvious play, the company has been testing the energy industry waters through green energy technology investment, and research.

In 2007, Google pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help engineers and scientists figure out a way to generate 1 gigawatt of clean electricity and make it cheaper than coal.

In 2008, Google CEO Eric Schmidt presented an energy plan–complete with explicit math calculations–to back up an idea for how the U.S. could eventually get 100 percent of its electric power generation from renewable sources, cut emissions by half, create more jobs, and decrease overall energy costs.

Google has also invested hundred of millions in green energy technology research and start-up companies with projects in wind, solar, solar thermal, and geothermal. It has invested in projects to develop plug-in hybrid cars and has developed with its own “smart charging” software for plug-in electric vehicles.

The company has launched its own energy pilot projects including a 1.6-megawatt solar installation for its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, thought to be the largest corporate-owned installation in the U.S….

via Google gets go-ahead to buy, sell energy | Green Tech – CNET News.

Golden Bough from Roman mythology ‘found in Italy’

Italian archaeologists claim to have found a stone enclosure which once protected the legendary “Golden Bough”.

In Roman mythology, the bough was a tree branch with golden leaves that enabled the Trojan hero Aeneas to travel through the underworld safely.

They discovered the remains while excavating religious sanctuary built in honour of the goddess Diana near an ancient volcanic lake in the Alban Hills, 20 miles south of Rome.

They believe the enclosure protected a huge Cypress or oak tree which was sacred to the Latins, a powerful tribe which ruled the region before the rise of the Roman Empire.

The tree was central to the myth of Aeneas, who was told by a spirit to pluck a branch bearing golden leaves to protect himself when he ventured into Hades to seek counsel from his dead father.

In a second, more historically credible legend, the Latins believed it symbolised the power of their priest-king.Anyone who broke off a branch, even a fugitive slave, could then challenge the king in a fight to the death. If the king was killed in the battle, the challenger assumed his position as the tribe’s leader.

The discovery was made near the town of Nemi by a team led by Filippo Coarelli, a recently retired professor of archaeology at Perugia University.

After months of excavations in the volcanic soil, they unearthed the remains of a stone enclosure.Shards of pottery surrounding the site date it to the mid to late Bronze Age, between the 12th and 13th centuries BC. …

via Golden Bough from Roman mythology ‘found in Italy’ – Telegraph.

Scientists create tiny RNA molecule with big implications for life’s origins

An extremely small RNA molecule created by a University of Colorado at Boulder team can catalyze a key reaction needed to synthesize proteins, the building blocks of life. The findings could be a substantial step toward understanding “the very origin of Earthly life,” the lead researcher contends.

The smallest RNA enzyme ever known to perform a cellular chemical reaction is described in a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper was written by CU graduate student Rebecca Turk, research associate Nataliya Chumachenko and Professor Michael Yarus of the molecular, cellular and developmental biology department.

Cellular RNA can have hundreds or thousands of its basic structural units, called nucleotides. Yarus’ team focused on a ribozyme — a form of RNA that can catalyze chemical reactions — with only five nucleotides.

Tom Blumenthal, a professor and chair of the MCDB department, noted that Tom Cech, a Nobel laureate and distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry at CU, and Professor Norman Pace of MCDB, independently discovered that RNA can act as an enzyme, carrying out chemical reactions. That “pioneering work” has been carried on further by Yarus, Blumenthal said.

Because proteins are complex, one vexing question is where the first proteins came from, Blumenthal said. “It now appears that the first catalytic macromolecules could have been RNA molecules, since they are somewhat simpler, were likely to exist early in the formation of the first life forms, and are capable of catalyzing chemical reactions without proteins being present,” he said.

“In this paper the Yarus group has made the amazing discovery that even an extremely tiny RNA can by itself catalyze a key reaction that would be needed to synthesize proteins,” Blumenthal said. “Nobody expected an RNA molecule this small and simple to be able to do such a complicated thing as that.”

The finding adds weight to the “RNA World” hypothesis, which proposes that life on Earth evolved from early forms of RNA. “Mike Yarus has been one of the strongest proponents of this idea, and his lab has provided some of the strongest evidence for it over the past two decades,” Blumenthal said. …

via U. of Colorado scientists create tiny RNA molecule with big implications for life’s origins.

Remember Magnesium If You Want to Remember

…Begun at MIT, the research started as a part of a post-doctoral project by Dr. Inna Slutsky of TAU’s Sackler School of Medicine and evolved to become a multi-center experiment focused on a new magnesium supplement, magnesium-L-theronate (MgT), that effectively crosses the blood-brain barrier to inhibit calcium flux in brain neurons.

Published recently in the scientific journal Neuron, the new study found that the synthetic magnesium compound works on both young and aging animals to enhance memory or prevent its impairment. The research was carried out over a five-year period and has significant implications for the use of over-the-counter magnesium supplements. … “We are really pleased with the positive results of our studies,” says Dr. Slutsky. “But on the negative side, we’ve also been able to show that today’s over-the-counter magnesium supplements don’t really work. They do not get into the brain.

“We’ve developed a promising new compound which has now taken the first important step towards clinical trials by Prof. Guosong Liu, Director of the Center for Learning and Memory at Tsinghua University and cofounder of Magceutics company,” she says.

While the effects were not immediate, the researchers in the study — from Tel Aviv University, MIT, the University of Toronto, and Tsighua University in Beijing — were able to assess that the new compound shows improved permeability of the blood-brain barrier. After two weeks of oral administration of the compound in mice, magnesium levels in the cerebral-spinal fluid increased.

Toward a more “plastic” brain

“It seems counterintuitive to use magnesium for memory improvement because magnesium is a natural blocker of the NMDA receptor, a molecule critical for memory function. But our compound blocks the receptor only during background neuronal activity. As a result, it enhances the brain’s ‘plasticity’ and increases the number of brain synapses that can be switched on,” says Dr. Slutsky.

“Our results suggest that commercially available magnesium supplements are not effective in boosting magnesium in cerebro-spinal fluid,” she says. “Magnesium is the fourth most abundant mineral in the body, but today half of all people in industrialized countries are living with magnesium deficiencies that may generally impair human health, including cognitive functioning.”

Before the new compound becomes commercially available, Dr. Slutsky advises people to get their magnesium the old-fashioned way — by eating lots of green leaves, broccoli, almonds, cashews and fruit. The effects on memory won’t appear overnight, she cautions, but with this persistent change in diet, memory should improve, and the effects of dementia and other cognitive impairment diseases related to aging may be considerably delayed.

via American Friends of Tel Aviv University: Remember Magnesium If You Want to Remember.

Related: MIT: Magnesium may reverse middle-age memory loss (2004)

Humans to launch genetic attack on insects: Flightless mosquitoes to help control dengue fever

A new strain of mosquitoes in which females cannot fly may help curb the transmission of dengue fever, according to UC Irvine and British scientists.

Dengue fever causes severe flulike symptoms and is among the world’s most pressing public health issues. There are 50 million to 100 million cases per year, and nearly 40 percent of the global population is at risk. The dengue virus is spread through the bite of infected female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, and there is no vaccine or treatment.

UCI researchers and colleagues from Oxitec Ltd. and the University of Oxford created the new breed. Flightless females are expected to die quickly in the wild, curtailing the number of mosquitoes and reducing – or even eliminating – dengue transmission. Males of the strain can fly but do not bite or convey disease.

When genetically altered male mosquitoes mate with wild females and pass on their genes, females of the next generation are unable to fly. Scientists estimate that if released, the new breed could sustainably suppress the native mosquito population in six to nine months. The approach offers a safe, efficient alternative to harmful insecticides.

Study results appear in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the week of Feb. 22. The research is receiving funding support from the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health through the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, which was launched to support breakthrough advances for health challenges in the developing world.

“Current dengue control methods are not sufficiently effective, and new ones are urgently needed,” said Anthony James, Distinguished Professor of microbiology & molecular genetics and molecular biology & biochemistry at UCI and an internationally recognized vector biologist. “Controlling the mosquito that transmits this virus could significantly reduce human morbidity and mortality.”

Using concepts developed by Oxitec’s Luke Alphey, the study’s senior author, researchers made a genetic alteration in the mosquitoes that disrupts wing muscle development in female offspring, rendering them incapable of flight. Males’ ability to fly is unaffected, and they show no ill effects from carrying the gene.

“The technology is completely species-specific, as the released males will mate only with females of the same species,” Alphey said. “It’s far more targeted and environmentally friendly than approaches dependent upon the use of chemical spray insecticides, which leave toxic residue.”

“Another attractive feature of this method is that it’s egalitarian: All people in the treated areas are equally protected, regardless of their wealth, power or education,” he added.

James and Alphey have pioneered the creation of genetically altered mosquitoes to limit transmission of vector-borne illnesses. While their current work is focused on the dengue fever vector, they noted that this approach could be adapted to other mosquito species that spread such diseases as malaria and West Nile fever.

via Flightless mosquitoes developed to help control dengue fever.

If we can do this with insects, I wonder if aliens altered the DNA of our early ancestors. Sci Fi ideas: Two different alien factions fought a war on this planet long ago and we are the remains of biological weapons designed by one side.

A midday nap markedly boosts the brain’s learning capacity

If you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don’t roll your eyes. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour’s nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.

Conversely, the more hours we spend awake, the more sluggish our minds become, according to the findings. The results support previous data from the same research team that pulling an all-nighter – a common practice at college during midterms and finals –- decreases the ability to cram in new facts by nearly 40 percent, due to a shutdown of brain regions during sleep deprivation.

“Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness but, at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap,” said Matthew Walker, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the lead investigator of these studies.

In the recent UC Berkeley sleep study, 39 healthy young adults were divided into two groups – nap and no-nap. At noon, all the participants were subjected to a rigorous learning task intended to tax the hippocampus, a region of the brain that helps store fact-based memories. Both groups performed at comparable levels.

At 2 p.m., the nap group took a 90-minute siesta while the no-nap group stayed awake. Later that day, at 6 p.m., participants performed a new round of learning exercises. Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. In contrast, those who napped did markedly better and actually improved in their capacity to learn.

These findings reinforce the researchers’ hypothesis that sleep is needed to clear the brain’s short-term memory storage and make room for new information, said Walker, who is presenting his preliminary findings on Sunday, Feb. 21, at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego, Calif. …

- EA

New tool illuminates connections between stem cells and cancer

Researchers have a new tool to understand how cancers grow — and with it a new opportunity to identify novel cancer drugs. They’ve been able to break apart human prostate tissue, extract the stem cells in that tissue, and alter those cells genetically so that they spur cancer.

Owen Witte, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles, will present the findings on February 20, 2010, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Many tissues contain pools of stem cells that replenish the tissue when it’s damaged or when changes take place. For instance, stem cells in the skin produce new cells to replace those irreparably damaged by the sun, and stem cells in the breast create milk-producing cells when a woman is pregnant. The hallmark of these stem cells is that they self-renew. This means that in addition to making cells with a specific function, they also make many new stem cells.

Mounting evidence suggests that these self-renewing cells are also tied to cancer. They tend to collect mutations, says Witte, and not much separates tumor cells, with their capacity for unchecked growth, from healthy, tissue-forming stem cells. “These cells have a huge capacity for self-renewal, and when the pathways that control self-renewal are augmented or changed, they can form tumors,” says Witte.

Many scientists suspect that although tumors are made up of many cells, only the tumor cells derived from stem cells contribute to the growth of the tumor. For certain cancers, such as breast cancer and leukemia, that idea is well established. For others, such as prostate cancer, which Witte studies, the data are not conclusive.

Witte’s group has been analyzing the relationship between tissue stem cells and cancer stem cells in the prostate. They have been attacking this problem by dividing mouse prostate tissue into its component cell types, culturing those cells, and then reassembling them to understand how they interact. Now, for the first time, they’ve accomplished that feat with human tissue. Importantly, they’ve also engineered specific genetic changes into human prostate stem cells to transform them into cancer cells.

The group is in the early stages of putting the technique to use, but Witte says it offers some distinct advantages for developing new cancer drugs. Cells can be grown directly from a prostate tumor for use in experiments, but without knowing the precise genetics of those cells, scientists may never know why they became cancerous. Drugs that are effective in stopping their growth may not have the same impact on prostate tumors driven by different gene mutations. Starting from prostate stem cells, Witte knows exactly which genetic changes have made a cell cancerous.

“Here you can preprogram the genetic buffet, and then evaluate a compound in the face of those specific changes,” says Witte.

That precision should speed the development of a new generation of fine-tuned cancer therapies. The new system should give scientists a firmer grasp of the genetic makeup of cells that are affected by particular compounds, and by extension, help clinicians identify the drugs that will best help particular patients. “The field of cancer research has produced a significant number of major new targeted therapies,” says Witte. “Now we have to understand how best to use those therapies.”

via New tool illuminates connections between stem cells and cancer.

Somewhat related and interesting:

Dalhousie Medical School cancer researcher Dr. Patrick Lee has proven that a common virus can infect and kill breast cancer stem cells. This breakthrough finding is published in the current issue of Molecular Therapy, the journal of the American Society of Gene Therapy.

It is only within the past few years that the scientific community has understood the full significance of cancer stem cells and the urgent need to find a means of eliminating them.

“Cancer stem cells are essentially mother cells,” explains Dr. Lee, Cameron Chair in Basic Cancer Research at Dalhousie Medical School. “They continuously produce new cancer cells, aggressively forming tumours even when there are only a few of them.”

Cancer stem cells are difficult to kill as they respond poorly to chemotherapy and radiation. As Dr. Lee notes, “You can kill all the regular cancer cells in a tumour, but as long as there are cancer stem cells present, disease will recur.”

Dr. Lee is optimistic that his team has found the key to destroying cancer stem cells. The researchers have recently shown that human reovirus, a common virus that does not cause disease, effectively targets and kills cancer stem cells in breast cancer tissue.

“We suspected that reovirus might be effective against cancer stem cells, because we have shown time and again how well it destroys regular cancer cells,” remarks Dr. Lee, who was the first in the world to discover that a benign and naturally occurring virus could selectively infect and kill cancer cells without harming healthy cells. A Calgary-based company, Oncolytics Biotech Inc., is testing reovirus in clinical trials to prove the treatments are safe and effective. … – sciencedaily (Apr. 9, 2009)

Neuroscientist: Think twice about cutting music in schools

… “People’s hearing systems are fine-tuned by the experiences they’ve had with sound throughout their lives,” says Kraus. “Music training is not only beneficial for processing music stimuli. We’ve found that years of music training may also improve how sounds are processed for language and emotion.”

Researchers in the Kraus lab provided the first concrete evidence that playing a musical instrument significantly enhances the brainstem’s sensitivity to speech sounds. The findings are consistent with other studies they have conducted revealing that anomalies in brainstem sound encoding in some learning disabled children can be improved with auditory training.

The Kraus lab has a unique approach for demonstrating how the nervous system responds to the acoustic properties of speech and music sounds with sub-millisecond precision. The fidelity with which they can access the transformation of the sound waves into brain waves in individual people is a powerful new development.

The neural enhancements seen in individuals with musical training is not just an amplifying or volume knob effect,” says Kraus. “Individuals with music training show a selective fine-tuning of relevant aspects of auditory signals.”

By comparing brain responses to predictable versus variable sound sequences, Kraus and her colleagues found that an effective or well-tuned sensory system takes advantage of stimulus regularities, such as the sound patterns that distinguish a teacher’s voice from competing sounds in a noisy classroom.

They previously found that the ability of the nervous system to utilize acoustic patterns correlates with reading ability and the ability to hear speech in noise. Now they have discovered that the effectiveness of the nervous system to utilize sound patterns is linked to musical ability.

“Playing music engages the ability to extract relevant patterns, such as the sound of one’s own instrument, harmonies and rhythms, from the ‘soundscape,’” Kraus says. “Not surprisingly, musicians’ nervous systems are more effective at utilizing the patterns in music and speech alike.” …

via Neuroscientist: Think twice about cutting music in schools.

Right. Music is essential. It is vitamin M.

PS. I re-posted a few of my older songs tonight (box.net on the left) with some new tweaks.