We Are Awake

Britain has became the first country in the world to allow babies to be created with the  DNA of three parents . The House of Lords voted Tuesday to approve the use of a groundbreaking and controversial in-vitro fertilization technique known as three-parent IVF. That followed a similar vote in the House of Commons earlier this month. The technique would likely only be used in about a dozen cases a year in the U.K. involving women with faulty mitochondria, the energy-producing structures outside a cell's nucleus. The genetic flaw can cause devastating inherited conditions in a woman's offspring including muscular dystrophy, mental retardation, and problems affecting the baby's heart and other vital organs. To prevent that, scientists remove the nucleus DNA from the mother's egg and insert it into a donor egg from which the nucleus DNA has been removed. The resulting embryo would end up with the nucleus DNA from its parents but the mitochondrial DNA from the don...

For the last decade or so, there has been a “pause” in the rate at which the Earth was warming, and scientists now think they know what caused it. “The recent slowdown in global warming has brought into question the reliability of climate model projections of future temperature change and has led to a vigorous debate over whether this slowdown is the result of naturally occurring, internal variability or forcing external to Earth’s climate system,” the authors  wrote in the abstract of a study published in the journal Science  this week. Using climate observations and models, the researchers found the Pacific multidecadal oscillation and Atlantic multidecadal oscillation contribute “a large portion of internal variability” to average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere. “Competition between a modest positive peak in the AMO and a substantially negative-trending PMO are seen to produce a slowdown or ‘false pause’ in warming of the past decade,” the...

A prominent Bangladeshi-American blogger known for speaking out against religious extremism was hacked to death as he walked through Bangladesh's capital with his wife, police said Friday. The attack Thursday night on Avijit Roy, a Bangladesh-born US citizen, occurred on a crowded sidewalk as he and his wife, Rafida Ahmed, were returning from a book fair at Dhaka University. Ahmed, who is also a blogger, was seriously injured. It was the latest in a series of attacks on secular writers in Bangladesh in recent years. A previously unknown militant group, Ansar Bangla 7, claimed responsibility for the attack, Assistant Police Commissioner S.M. Shibly Noman told the Prothom Alo newspaper. Roy "was the target because of his crime against Islam," the group said on Twitter.

1.) Street Lights  Illuminating Concepts, a lighting manufacturer based out of Farmington Hills, Mich., has installed Intellistreets in sections of towns across the United States, and even London. The wireless street lamp posts can be remotely operated and were designed for municipalities, entertainment venues and campuses to bolster sustainability and security. Las Vegas Streetlights Watch & Listen The streetlights boast a sound system and digital signage to broadcast real-time information to crowds, visual and audio emergency alerts, energy-efficient lighting, cameras, microphones and two-way communication features. While the company maintains that Intellistreets are purposed for homeland security, traffic control, public safety and advertising, discerning citizens who value their privacy and freedom likely won’t be hip to the idea of streetlights being equipped with such authority. 2.)Smartphones  Security expert and independent journalist Jacob...

An Italian doctor is moving forward with plans to transplant a human head to another body, reported New Scientist . Sergio Canavero, from the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, told New Scientist that he will announce his project officially in June at the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons’ annual meeting. Canavero has been talking about moving the head of one person to the body of another since 2013 and has presumeably been thinking about it, and its medical and ethical hurdles, far longer. The first successful head transplant took place in 1970, when the head of a monkey was attached to the body of another by Robert White at Wast Western Reserve University School of Medicine, New Scientist said. The monkey lived for nine days, until the body rejected the head. Because the spinal column wasn’t attached, though, it couldn’t move. But times have changed, Canavero said. “I think we are now at a point when the tehcnical aspects are all fe...

Predictably, it’s come to this and its very shameful: A new study out of Europe suggests that future marketers may bypass traditional research techniques entirely — and just read your mind instead. As reported in the  Journal of Marketing Research , a team out of  Erasmus University  in the Netherlands is using EEG monitors to solve an old showbiz dilemma — how to predict a hit movie. Well, sort of. The research team showed test participants a series of 18 movie trailers, screened in random order. Participants were also hooked up to an EEG machine, which recorded brain activity. After watching each trailer, the subjects were asked to rate the preview and indicate how much they would pay for a DVD of each film. Finally, after having watched all 18 trailers, the subjects were presented with DVDs of all the films and told to choose three that they could take home. The study found that EEG readings could be used to predict which films the subject would choose wit...

Our ability to respond to the challenges of the fast-changing world comes from our brains' ability to flexibly combine and repurpose the neural resources that evolution has provided us, researchers report. Online dating, chatty smartphones and social media played no role in the evolution of our ancestors, yet humans manage to deal with and even exploit these hallmarks of modern living, they noted. "This repurposing allows us to do a lot with a little. Our brains have the flexibility to form new combinations of pre-existing computations and deploy these computations rapidly and flexibly in new contexts," explained study co-author Thalia Wheatley from the Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, US. Wheatley and her team described three kinds of repurposing, each happening at three distinct timescales. The first - evolutionary repurposing - is exhibited in all animals and it describes how evolution "uses what's in the room" to solve a novel problem. It hap...

 Richard Dawkins has called on schools to protect children from being indoctrinated by their religious parents. The renowned evolutionary biologist and atheist argued that parents were given too much power over their children’s educations, and that it was time to give more rights back to the individuals themselves. “There is a balancing act and you have to balance the rights of parents and the rights of children and I think the balance has swung too far towards parents,” he said.  “Children do need to be protected so that they can have a proper education and not be indoctrinated in whatever religion their parents happen to have been brought up in.” Physicist Lawrence Krauss, who also took part in the interview with  The Irish Times ,  agreed. “That means parents have a limited — it seems to be — limited rights in determining what the curriculum is,” Krauss said. “The state is providing the education, it’s trying to make sure all children have e...

Here are some tips that will help you boost your immunity levels With the weather changing everyday and more and more people falling prey to air-borne diseases, perhaps the best way of taking precautions is to boost your immunity system. Here are some tips for the same - Vitamins : The most important thing your body needs is an ample supply of vitamins, especially vitamin D. If you get enough vitamin D for your body, it will help prevent every health problem - ranging from a normal cold to the fatal cancer. Regular intake of salmon and fortified milk can help in increasing your vitamin D level. Soluble fiber : Make sure you get your daily dose of soluble fiber. Soluble fibers help in recovering from bacterial infections quickly and are also a good precautionary measure against air-borne and water-borne diseases. Make sure your daily diet includes citrus fruits, apples, beetroot, carrots beans and oats. Weight issues : Make sure you are not overweight and if you are, exercise regular...

The secret software being used to predict US inmates FUTURE crimes. Questionnaires often with more than 100 questions  Include offender's education, family, income, job status, history of moving, parents' arrest history and whether he or she has a phone Score is affixed to each answer to help parole boards decide on risk The survey results and questions are clouded in secrecy Some states never release the evaluations Fears the surveys are leading to at risk prisoners being released  States are trying to reduce prison populations with secretive, new psychological assessments to predict which inmates will commit future crimes and who might be safe to release, despite serious problems and high-profile failures, an Associated Press investigation has claimed.  These programs are part of a national, data-driven movement to drive down prison populations, reduce recidivism and save billions.  They include questionnaires often with more than 100 quest...

Participants were treated with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive and painless procedure that uses low-level electricity to stimulate specific brain regions.  The key to mind wandering was when this stimulation was applied to the frontal lobes, the team said. When we daydream, brain is freed up to process tasks more effectively Daydreaming 'offers a positive, simultaneous effect on task performance' Team also discovered applying electric currents can trigger daydreams  Daydreaming can be good for you and actually boost the brain, researchers have found. They say that while we daydream, the brain is actually more effective.  They believe that when we daydream, it is freed up to process tasks more effectively. According to the new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a wandering mind can impart a distinct cognitive advantage. Scientists at Bar-Ilan University were able to show an external s...

A bill that would require clear labeling of foods with genetically engineered (GE) ingredients, called the Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act, has been introduced in Congress. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) are lead sponsors of the bill, which is similar to one introduced by Boxer and DeFazio in 2013 but not voted on by Congress. “I applaud Senator Boxer and Representative DeFazio for their leadership, and urge their colleagues to join them, and stand up for the 93% of Americans who want to know if their food has been genetically modified,” said Tom Colicchio, owner of Craft Restaurants and co-founder of Food Policy Action, who was present at the bill’s introduction. The proposed legislation would put the responsibility of developing a GE food labeling policy on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In other genetically modified organism (GMO) food news, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has ap...

Researchers have developed a paper-like material that can be used to boost capacity of batteries in electric vehicles and personal electronics. The material has the potential to boost by several times the specific energy, or amount of energy that can be delivered per unit weight of the battery. The paper-like material, developed by researchers at the University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering, is composed of sponge-like silicon nanofibres more than 100 times thinner than human hair. Mihri Ozkan, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Cengiz S Ozkan, a professor of mechanical engineering, used a technique known as electrospinning to produce the nanofibres, whereby 20,000 to 40,000 volts are applied between a rotating drum and a nozzle, which emits a solution composed mainly of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS), a chemical compound frequently used in the semiconductor industry. The nanofibres are then exposed to magnesium vapor to pro...

In February 2015 alone over 300 people have died from swine flue across the country against a pan-India figure  218 swine flu deaths in 2014. "This year, swine flu deaths have more than doubled compared to the previous year taking the toll to 624," says  a Times of India report . As many as 38 deaths were reported on Monday itself. Union Health Minister J.P.Nadda on Tuesday reviewed the drug shortage for swine flu patients. He held a high-level meeting in which a committee was formed to visit hospitals and look into the drug shortage. What is Swine Flu? Swine Flu, also known as H1N1 type A influenza, is a human disease. The name 'Swine Flu' stuck because originally the disease transmitted from pigs to humans. But the current pandemic break trasmits from human to human, according to this  article on  The Health Site . Also known as pig influenza, swine flu, hog flu and pig flu, H1N1 is not commonly known to transfer from pigs to humans a...