Air Force on Secret Space Plane: Nothing to See Here, Move Along

The Air Force has news for anyone looking for sinister motives behind the flying branch’s latest orbital gizmo: the mysterious, high-tech X-37B space plane. The 29-foot-long robotic shuttle — vaguely labeled a “test asset” by the Pentagon — returned to earth on Friday after 224 days, nine hours and 24 minutes in space. In those eight months, observers speculated that the X-37 might be a prototype bomber, a satellite-snatching snoop or a speedy, quick-reacting sensor platform. Forget it, Richard McKinney, Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force for Space Programs, said Monday. “I applaud the ingenuity and innovation of some reports, but really it’s as described. This is a test vehicle, pure and simple.”

But a test vehicle for what? Well, for testing, McKinney said. The way he described it, the X-37 should eventually function as an orbital laboratory for new satellite components and other space gear — pricey stuff that today gets boosted into the heavens with very little realistic testing. “If we could place technology in orbit, check it out and bring back to earth, that would be significant accomplish,” he said. “The purpose of this particular mission was the vehicle. In order do the other things we talked about … we’ve got to have a vehicle to do that.”

All the same, the X-37 did carry something in its payload bay during its inaugural flight — something secret, McKinney admitted. “It’s not unusual for us to put satellites into orbit that are classified. This is no different than that.”

via Air Force on Secret Space Plane: Nothing to See Here, Move Along | Danger Room | Wired.com.

US ARMY’S SECRET UFO STUDY: “SOME ARE INTERPLANETARY”

Anthony Bragalia  – … The US Army has made some rather startling official admissions about the IPU. We learn from information that has been collectively culled from these three documents that:

· The US Army confirms that within their Department of Counterintelligence there was in fact an “Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit” or IPU

· The IPU was “disestablished” in the late 1950′s

· The IPU records were “surrendered” to the Air Force (AFOSI) in conjunction with Project Blue Book (confirming that the IPU dealt with the UFO phenomenon)

· The unit was an “in-house project” as an “interest item” for an unnamed Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence

· That the unit (they claim) lacked formal “function, mission or authority”

· That it is only through “institutional memory” that the Army knows of the IPU’s existence

The Army’s sparse responses to these researchers are disingenuous and they are internally inconsistent. And it was only after repeated inquiries over many years that the Army offered these tacit admissions about the IPU. They concur that there was an IPU- but they minimize its import and claim that they essentially know nothing more about it. They contradict themselves on this by revealing that the files did relate to UFOs (as they indicate that they were released to the Air Force’s Project Blue Book.) But they do not say under whose auspice this was done nor how they know this to be so. And they tell us when the unit was “disestablished” but they will not indicate just how they know this to be true. They somehow know when the IPU ended, but they offer nothing about when it was established. …

The Defense Central Index of Investigations (DCII) is a very little-known arm of the US Department of Defense. It is an “automated control index” that identifies and reports on investigations that have been conducted by all of the Department of Defense investigative agencies. This military and intelligence data center is one of the most complex and comprehensive in existence.

By the early 1980s, the late researcher John Frick of Melbourne, FL had become aware of a computer printout that was generated by the DCII that had related some historical UFO sightings and investigations, including those made under General Douglas MacArthur’s command. The listing of sightings had curiously ended the very year that Douglas had left the South West Pacific Area Command. The first line of the short printout read: “01 INTERPLANETARY PHENOMENON UNIT” and the column which shows “DESTROYED” has been left blank. …

Read more: The UFO Iconoclast(s): US ARMY’S SECRET UFO STUDY: “SOME ARE INTERPLANETARY” by Anthony Bragalia.

The first interplanetary craft on the record was Russian:

In 1959, Korolëv decided to attempt to reach Mars during the orbital opportunity in the Fall of 1960, and to reach Venus in early 1961. Program MV had only one year for massive preparations, including the construction of the 4-stage Molniia launch vehicle, and the 300 million kilometer range Pluton telemetry system on the Crimean peninsula.

Gleb Iu. Maksimov, a brilliant young department head in OKB-1, designed two probes. Object 1M would fly by Mars, and 1V would land on Venus. These were the first spacecrafts to include all the essential elements necessary for a long-range planetary mission:

• Temperature Regulation System
• Solar-Powered Batteries
• Three-Axis Stabilization
• High-Gain Parabolic Antenna
• Mid-Course Correction Engine
• ….  (Source: mentallandscape )

Venera 3 was launched by a Tyazheliy Sputnik (65-092B) rocket.

The spacecraft was to take data of the Venusian atmosphere as it descended by parachute to the surface, and then transmit that data back to Earth, giving Soviet scientists information on pressure, temperature, and the composition of the atmosphere.

It contained a radio communication system, along with scientific instruments and electrical power sources.

The 2,112 pound (958 kilogram) spacecraft, designated as Venera 3MV-3 by its manufacturer (Lavochkin), crash-landed on the surface of Venus on March 1, 1966.

Its communications system failed before it could return to Earth any useful information.

Also called Venus 3, the spacecraft does become the first human spacecraft to make physical contact with another planetary body, besides the Moon.

… (Source: cwru.edu)

 

Foil Those Electronic Pickpocket Stoppers

… says electronic security expert Bruce Schneier, crystallizing the view of many: “As weird as it sounds, wrapping your passport in tinfoil helps. The tinfoil people, in this case, happen to be correct.”The issue is bigger than just the new style of passports, which contain chips that emit information that can be read by a scanner. We’re also talking about your Metro SmarTrip card, your employee ID/building access card, your automatic highway toll pass, the newest wave of credit cards and gas purchasing cards, even digital drivers’ licenses being developed in some states.All of these nifty and oh-so-convenient bits of plastic employ versions of what’s known as radio frequency identification technology, or RFID. That is, they toss out bits of data that are caught by receivers, with little or no contact, just through the air in some cases. The new credit cards, such as MasterCard’s PayPass, don’t have to be swiped through a machine. …

some security watchdogs assert the need to cover, or shield, these cards when they aren’t in use. A thin metalized nylon can do the trick, based on the classic Faraday cage design, to disrupt RFID communications.

…  A couple of years ago, when the State Department announced the new style of passports, EPIC recommended that people wrap their passports in tinfoil. Instead, the State Department addressed such concerns by embedding metallic shielding in the front and back cover of the passport books. In addition, the new “passport cards” to be offered to U.S. citizens who travel frequently between the United States and Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean will come with similarly shielded sleeves.

The fact that the State Department has resorted to shielding material — does that mean the threat is real, that shielded wallets for other types of cards are a good idea? Schneier, for one, thinks the passport books are still vulnerable when they are open.

But spokesmen for the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security say the shields are just an extra level of security for documents that are already safe because of encryption and the nature of the information on them. Even when the passport books are open, the digital information can be read by a scanner no more than a few inches away, says spokesman Steve Royster. …via Electronic Pickpocket Stoppers – washingtonpost.com.

Hills alive with UFOs

A PROSPECTOR who went to find gold in the hills thinks he may have found something better – evidence that aliens really do exist.

Adam Cainero believes he captured a photograph of an alien spacecraft hovering above an escarpment near Majors Creek, in the Southern Tablelands near Braidwood.

After an unsuccessful weekend fossicking for gold Mr Cainero and a friend were making the long trip home when he stopped to take a snap of the steep mountain they had driven down.

When he got home, Mr Cainero said he realised he had found gold of another kind after all.

“I just took a picture of the mountain range and the sun was in my eyes so I just kind of pointed and shot,” Mr Cainero said. “Then we looked at the picture – we were, like, no way.”

With its shape and its position in the sky, Mr Cainero said he immediately knew the black object was a UFO.

“We always see really weird things as we go out to places where there is no one around,” he said.

There had been talk among fossickers about UFOs being in the area, he said. “A lot of people I know who go into the bush reckon they have seen one,” Mr Cainero said.

Earlier this year The Daily Telegraph revealed the suburbs around Gosford, on the Central Coast, were the state’s biggest hot spot when it came to UFO sightings, with dozens of cases reported every year. Each month people turn up to meetings to share their UFO experiences.

The region was the scene of one of Australia’s most baffling UFO cases – a series of sightings in 1995 and 1996 – reported by police and many other credible witnesses.

Residents saw shiny UFOs hovering above water.

via Hills alive with UFOs | The Daily Telegraph.

Pointy mountain behind clouds?

NASA’s arsenic microbe science slammed

A recent high-profile astrobiology discovery led by a NASA scientist is being called into question by a B.C. microbiologist, who says the science was sloppy.

“I don’t know whether the authors are just bad scientists or whether they’re unscrupulously pushing NASA’s ‘There’s life in outer space!’ agenda,” wrote University of British Columbia Prof. Rosie Redfield on her blog about the study, which was published Dec. 2 in Science.

In a blog post over the weekend, Redfield described the study led by astrobiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon as “lots of flim-flam, but very little reliable information.”

Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues reported that a microbe found in California can use arsenic — an element that is usually toxic to living things — instead of phosphorus to make chemical building blocks of life such as DNA, proteins and fats. The bacteria were grown in an environment with very high arsenic and almost no phosphorus.

The discovery was hailed as “something different than life as we knew it.” NASA scientists said it opened the possibility of finding life in parts of the universe that might otherwise be considered uninhabitable. …

One of the key findings of the NASA study was that the microbe’s DNA was partly made of arsenic instead of phosphorus, based on chemical analyses.

But Redfield disagreed, writing that the paper “doesn’t present ANY convincing evidence that arsenic has been incorporated into DNA (or any other biological molecule).

In an interview Monday, Redfield said the methods used by the researchers were so crude that any arsenic they detected was likely from contamination. There is no indication that the researchers purified the DNA to remove arsenic that might have been sticking to the outside of the DNA or the gel the DNA was embedded in, she added. Normally, purifying the DNA is a standard step, Redfield said: “It’s a kit, it costs $2, it takes 10 minutes.”

She also questioned why the researchers analyzed the DNA while it was still in the gel, making the results more difficult to interpret: “No molecular biologist would ever do that.”

Redfield also disagreed with the paper’s conclusion that the bacteria had to rely on arsenic to build molecules such as DNA because there wasn’t enough phosphate (a form of phosphorus) available in the samples with the lowest levels. Her arithmetic showed that in fact, there was enough phosphate to account for the amount of bacteria that grew.

“That shocked me,” she said.

Redfield added that there was actually very little arsenic in the DNA of bacteria grown in an environment high in arsenic and low in phosphorus. In fact, the amount was only twice that of the cells grown without arsenic: “That’s a level of difference that could be easily explained by very minor contamination.” 

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/12/06/arsenic-microbe-dna-nasa-wolfe-simon.html#ixzz17SDTROXY

Government can’t print money properly

…Because of a problem with the presses, the federal government has shut down production of its flashy new $100 bills, and has quarantined more than 1 billion of them — more than 10 percent of all existing U.S. cash — in a vault in Fort Worth, Texas, reports CNBC.

“There is something drastically wrong here,” one source told CNBC. “The frustration level is off the charts.”

Officials with the Treasury and the Federal Reserve had touted the new bills’ sophisticated security features that were 10 years in the making, including a 3-D security strip and a color-shifting image of a bell, designed to foil counterfeiters. But it turns out the bills are so high-tech that the presses can’t handle the printing job.

More than 1 billion unusable bills have been printed. Some of the bills creased during production, creating a blank space on the paper, one official told CNBC. Because correctly printed bills are mixed in with the flawed ones, even the ones printed to the correct design specs can’t be used until they ‘re sorted. It would take an estimated 20 to 30 years to weed out the defective bills by hand, but a mechanized system is expected to get the job done in about a year.

Combined, the quarantined bills add up to $110 billion — more than 10 percent of the entire U.S. cash supply, which now stands at around $930 billion.

The flawed bills, which cost around $120 million to print, will have to be burned.

The new bills are the first to include Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s signature. In order to prevent a shortfall,the government has ordered production of the old design, which includes the signature of Bush administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. …

via Government can’t print money properly – Yahoo! News.

List of facilities ‘vital to US security’ leaked

A long list of key facilities around the world that the US describes as vital to its national security has been released by Wikileaks.

In February 2009 the State Department asked all US missions abroad to list all installations whose loss could critically affect US national security.

The list includes pipelines, communication and transport hubs.

Several UK sites are listed, including cable locations, satellite sites and BAE Systems plants.

BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says this is probably the most controversial document yet from the Wikileaks organisation.

The definition of US national security revealed by the cable is broad and all embracing, he says.

There are obvious pieces of strategic infrastructure like communications hubs, gas pipelines and so on. However, other facilities on the list include:

* Cobalt mine in Congo
* Anti-snake venom factory in Australia
* Insulin plant in Denmark

In Britain, the list ranges from Cornwall to Scotland, including key satellite communications sites and the places where trans-Atlantic cables make landfall.

A number of BAE Systems plants involved in joint weapons programmes with the Americans are listed, along with a marine engineering firm in Edinburgh which is said to be “critical” for nuclear powered submarines. …

via BBC News – List of facilities ‘vital to US security’ leaked.

What good could  releasing this do? The little possibility (hope?) I had that Wikileaks is backed by some rogue part of the CIA playing some tricky little game is fading fast.

Is this wikileaks information joyride is a big bucket of Bush blow-back?  Not only did he turn the rest of the world against the US with his attitude and preemptive war, but…

…There is a terrible irony here since this centralised method of exchanging key diplomatic communications was instituted as part of the efforts in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to get different parts of the US government machine talking to each other better. – BBC

 

Zinc, Tinnitus and Immune System Health

The inner ear contains the highest concentration of zinc of any organ. Numerous clinical studies have shown a correlation between zinc deficiency, tinnitus and sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) . SNHL is the most common type of hearing loss, occurring in 23 percent of the population older than 65 years of age. The term “sensorineural” is used to indicate some pathological change in structures within the inner ear or in the acoustic nerve.

One study showed that, “With zinc supplementation in patients who are marginally zinc deficient, there has been improvement in tinnitus and sensorineural hearing loss in about one-third of elderly adults.”(1) Another clinical trial showed supplementation with 34-68 mg of zinc over a two week period produced”. . . a significant decrease in the numeric scale (of the tinnitus).”(2) A French study using zinc to treat tinnitus found, “. . . positive results in about 52% of cases: in 15% there was a good amelioration and in 37% there was a smaller but significant amelioration of their symptoms. . . . (it is) more efficient in types of tinnitus of a continuous character than in other types.”(3)

…  Zinc plays a major role in keeping the thymus going. The thymus gland orchestrates the workings of the immune system. The thymus is big and robust when we are young but declines with age. When we are born, the thymus, tucked in the neck behind the top of our collarbone, is bigger than our heart. The shrinking starts at puberty and by the time we’re sixty, it’s a pale shadow of its former self. This parallels the rapid decline of our immune system. The shrinkage of the immune system is one of the most visible signs of aging.

Until recently, the experts considered this slow decline as an irreversible decline of advancing age. This is simply not true. French researchers recently found that immune systems of even the aged could be reversed. A group of institutionalized people, aged 73 to 106 years, was given a daily dose of 20 milligrams of zinc. All subjects were deficient in zinc. Their thymulin activity shot as much as 50 percent in just a couple of months. There were no side effects.

via Zinc, Tinnitus and Immune System Health – Tinnitus Information Center.

As they say, the dose is the poison. I don’t think anyone should be taking more than 30 mg / day and what you should take really depends on what you are already getting in your diet. You can die from too much zinc.  What a world this is: If you wear false teeth, you might have zinc poisoning from denture creme. Too much zinc can cause  neurologic disease (panic attacks according to some, heart problems, etc.) and abnormally low copper levels in your blood (hypocupremia).

Zinc plays a role in building your DNA and RNA. Zinc also aides in the healing of wounds and is need for tasting and smelling. Keeping a normal level of zinc will help protect your from illness because zinc helps regulate your immune system. Zinc is found in seafood, lean beef and pork, nuts, eggs, cheese, poultry and soybeans.  …

An overdose from a single large does of zinc can cause symptoms within 30 minutes. An acute overdose can cause severe nausea, vomiting, headaches, fatigue, loss of appetite, diarrhea and abdominal cramps. … A chronic overdose occurs when you consume slightly high doses of zinc on a regular basis for too long. Symptoms of a chronic overdose include a weakened immune system. If your immune system is weakened, your risk of urinary tract problem including infections is increased. Chronic overdose can lead to anemia, low levels of good cholesterol and a reduced ability to absorb antibiotics and other minerals like iron.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Recommended Daily Allowance of zinc for adult males is 11 mg and 8 mg for adult females. This is the minimum amount you would need to get from food or supplements to ensure that your body has enough zinc. According to the National Institutes of Health, adults should not get more than 40 mg of zinc a day from food or supplements. Higher levels of zinc may lead to acute and chronic overdoses.

Read more: Zinc Overdose Symptoms | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_5447938_zinc-overdose-symptoms.html#ixzz17OxyPF8f

Zinc is an extremely most abundant trace element in the brain. Substantial amounts of zinc exist in the presynaptic vesicles, and are released with glutamate during the neuronal excitation. Synaptically-released zinc is believed to play crucial roles in normal brain functions. Therefore, zinc deficiency impairs brain development and capabilities of learning and memory. Notwithstanding, recent studies have indicated that excess zinc is linked with several neurodegenerative diseases and has a causative role in delayed neuronal death after transient global ischemia.

Read more: http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/200607/000020060706A0107217.php

So, if I have ringing in my ears, I’ll try a little bit of Wheat Germ

Toasted wheat germ provides 17mg of zinc per 100g serving which is 112% of the RDA, crude (untoasted) wheat germ provides 12mg (82% RDA).

Or pumpkin seeds or chocolate. This is great. Got me motivated to cut up those pumpkins and roast the seeds tonight with some butter, cinnamon and sea salt.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a cheap painless way to test your trace element levels? Here is one place, but I’m not sure of the prices.

Small daily aspirin dose ‘cuts cancer risk’

A small daily dose of aspirin substantially reduces death rates from a range of common cancers, a study suggests.

Research at Oxford University and other centres found that it cut overall cancer deaths by at least a fifth.

The study, published in the Lancet, covered some 25,000 patients, mostly from the UK.

Experts say the findings show aspirin’s benefits often outweighed its associated risk of causing bleeding.

Aspirin is already known to cut the risk of heart attack and stroke among those at increased risk. But the protective effects against cardiovascular disease are thought to be small for healthy adults, and aspirin increases the risks of stomach and gut bleeds.

However, this latest research shows that when weighing up the risks and benefits of taking aspirin, experts should also consider its protective effect against cancer.

Those patients who were given aspirin had a 25% lower risk of death from cancer during the trial period and a 10% reduction in death from any cause compared to patients who were not given the drug.

via BBC News – Small daily aspirin dose ‘cuts cancer risk’.

Further losing my hearing isn’t worth the risk to me.  I’ll take daily exercise.  Have you heard that aspirin may work by killing a fungus? Something else natural that reduces mycotoxins (like honey, yes honey) may have the same benefit without the risks. Perhaps one reason is that honey contains, among many other things, salicylic acid, a compound that is chemically similar to but not identical to the active component of asprin. Salicylic acid does cause hearing loss in rats, but not if they have enough zinc.  Interesting. I wonder if zinc will help the ringing in my ears.

NOTE: Never give honey to a child under a year old. “About 10 percent of honey contains dormant Clostridium botulinum spores, which can cause botulism in infants.” (link)

… Is there a down side to this [aspirin] success story? The answer lies in the many well-documented — but poorly reported — side effects of the drug, both short and long term.

ASPIRIN SIDE EFFECTS

• Bleeding Gastrointestinal Irritation (heartburn, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, inflammatory bowel disease)
• Increased gastric permeability and altered immunity
• Gastrointestinal hemorrhage (ulcers): A Searle news release noted that GI complications caused by NSAIDs remain one of the most prevalent drug toxicities in the nation — leading to approximately 76,000 hospitalizations and 7,600 deaths annually — a mortality rate comparable to that of asthma, cervical cancer, or melanoma (skin cancer).
• Hemorrhagic stroke: heavy doses of 325-milligram adult aspirin (for example 15 or more tablets a week), can double the risk of hemorrhagic stroke. Older women with high blood pressure, taking large doses of aspirin, can triple their risk of hemorrhagic stroke; in elderly patients with atrial fibrillation, the benefit of prophylactic aspirin to prevent strokes is unproven.
• Aspirin can prolong pregnancy and childbirth and lead to bleeding in both baby and mother.
• Susceptible regular aspirin or acetaminophen users are two to three times more likely to have the beginning stages of chronic kidney failure, compared with individuals who did not use these painkillers on a regular basis. About 15% of the people on dialysis today are there as a result of the damage that Tylenol and/or aspirin did to their kidneys.
• Both aspirin and acetaminophen may also be associated with diverticular disease of the colon.
• Asthma
• People who are taking aspirin in combination with the blood-pressure-lowering ACE inhibitor drugs after angioplasty may be at risk for a dangerous drug interaction and a three-fold increase in risk of death.
• Prolonged aspirin use may raise risks for cataracts; the long-term (more than 10 years) use of aspirin is associated with a 44% higher increase of posterior subcapsular cataracts, compared with nonusers or short-term users of the drug. Posterior subcapsular cataracts are the most common and most disabling form of cataract. This aspirin-related risk is larger among younger (under 65 years of age) individuals compared with older subjects. (Ophthalmology 1998; 105:1751-1758).
• Chronic rhinitis and nasal polyps: aspirin sensitivity sinusitis may cause long-term facial pain, headaches and a loss of smell.
• Hives (urticaria)
• Hyperactivity
• Reye’s Syndrome in children; aspirin is the leading cause of poisoning in young children.
• Ringing in the ears (tinnitus)
• Hearing loss
• Vertigo
• Mental confusion
• Drowsiness
• Excessive sweating and thirst
• Inhibition of cartilage repair and accelerated cartilage destruction …

There are some researchers and clinicians who have been able to demonstrate a direct link between the presence of fungi in the body and cardiovascular disease of all kinds. This is known as the “fungal mycotoxin etiology of atherosclerosis” and has been promoted by Dr. Costantini and other researchers working for the World Health Organization. According to these doctors, aspirin is an antifungal drug which can go a long way towards offsetting the negative effects of fungi and their mycotoxins. They believe that it is this antifungal property of aspirin which prevents heart disease, stroke and cancer — diseases all suspected to have a fungal mycotoxin etiology. Dandruff, a scalp condition caused by fungi, often responds well to shampoos containing aspirin or salicylate derivatives.  …

via VitalityMag