We Are Awake

                                 Oles Gumenyuk LVIV: He fought alongside the Nazis, then against them. He tried to drive the Soviets out of his native Ukraine, and spent 11 years in a prison camp in Russia.   What does that make Oles Gumenyuk - a fascist? Or a hero? It depends on who you ask.   Mustachioed and vigorous despite his 90 years, he calls himself a freedom fighter, proud of having served in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in World War II.   "We were warriors, fighters, patriots. We were proud people and never asked for compassion from our enemies," he said in an interview in his apartment in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.   Seventy-five years on, it's a controversial boast. In Ukraine's latest conflict, "fascist" is the insult hurled by pro-Russian separatists -- and Russian media - at the Kiev government side.   The epithet harks back to th...

Bad news, Bible-bashers – it seems unlikely that Noah actually ushered two of each species onto a giant ark a few thousand years ago. In fact, ordinary rocks show that Biblical creationism is absolute piffle, a University of Washington expert has said. David R Montgomery stirred up the hornet’s nest of true believers this week by claiming that ordinary conglomerate rocks prove that geological history is FAR more complex than one simple flood. Writing for   The Conversation , he says, ‘There’s a slab of polished rock on the wall outside my department office that refutes so-called Flood Geology: the view that a global, world-shattering flood explains geologic history after the initial creation of Earth by God.  This eight-foot-long slab is a conglomerate – a rock made from water-worked fragments of older rocks. ‘Preserved in it, you can see the original particles of sand, gravel and cobbles made of various kinds of rock. And if you look closely you can see ...

What's that, you say - our universe is a figment of our imagination? Not so much. When you hear the world "hologram", you might immediately assume that we're talking about something akin to Princess Leia being projected by R2-D2 in Star Wars. She's there, but only sort of. In a study produced by Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) this week, mathematical researchers suggest that there's a possibility that our universe is, indeed, a hologram. We might just be living in a 2D space, rather than 3. What the scientists at TU Wien suggest is that while we perceive our universe in 3D, it may only be 2D. Just like a hologram on a credit card. It looks to us to be something we can experience in three dimensions, but in fact it's flat. "In 1997," said scientist Daniel Grumiller of TU Wien this week, "the physicist Juan Maldacena proposed the idea that there is a correspondence between gravitational theories in curved anti-de-sitter spac...

MIAMI: Global scientists renewed calls to halt controversial research to genetically edit human embryos after a Chinese team published details of a breakthrough attempt in this new frontier in science. First reported by Nature News on Wednesday, the paper by Junjiu Huang, a gene-function researcher at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, and colleagues appears in a little known online journal called Protein and Cell. In the paper researchers describe how they changed the genomes of embryos obtained from a fertility clinic. The embryos could not have resulted in a live birth because they had an extra set of chromosomes after being fertilized by two sperm. Researchers "attempted to modify the gene responsible for beta-thalassemia, a potentially fatal blood disorder, using a gene-editing technique known as CRISPR/Cas9," said the report in Nature News. The researchers injected 86 embryos and waited 48 hours for the molecules that replace the missing DNA to act. ...

Melbourne:  Ever heard of a 4D printed automatic valve that can change shape according to surrounding needs? Well, scientists have already developed one. As 3D printing gets increasingly popular, scientists have moved on to 4D printing that takes 3D printing to an entirely new level! Researchers have started to develop 3D printed materials that morph into new structures, post production, under the influence of external stimuli such as water or heat – hence the name, 4D printing. As 3D printing gets increasingly popular, scientists have moved on to 4D printing that takes 3D printing to an entirely new level! In the 4D printing, a structure is built up layer by layer into the desired shape – much as in 3D printing – but these new materials are able to transform themselves from one shape into another, much like a child’s Transformer toy. This ground-breaking science promises advancement in myriad fields such as medicine, construction, automation and robotics, the res...

Here's one instance where Israel is on the same side as many other countries in the Middle East. On Friday, April 24, Armenians around the world will mark the centennial of what they  call   the "Great Catastrophe," when an unraveling Ottoman Empire ordered the forced deportation of ethnic Armenians. Estimates vary, but between 300,000 and 1.5 million Armenians perished in 1915 and 1916 -- victims of hideous abuse and systematic slaughters that WorldViews   detailed here . The Armenian government and diaspora are insistent about what this was:  a genocide . But many other countries, including Israel and the United States, don't recognize what happened a century ago as a "genocide." Instead, official statements refer to the " Events of 1915 ," massacres, " terrible carnage " and a "humanitarian tragedy." The reason for this skittishness is nationalist politics. Successive Turkish governments have roundly re...

Despite the high figure, experts believe it could be much higher after researchers were able to track only half of the rainforest because of cloud cover. Deforestation of the   Brazilian   Amazon almost tripled last month compared with March 2014, say researchers. Scientists from Imazon, a Brazilian non-profit reseach institution fear that the true figure may be higher. They use a programme developed by Google Earth to   detect deforestation , but were able to track only half of the rainforest because of cloud cover. Earlier this month, Greenpeace called for an end to deforestation and said removal of the rainforest had contributed to the drought affecting São Paulo. “Extreme events such as drought episodes – much like the crisis faced by the south-east – will become   increasingly more frequent and intense with climate changes ,” said Cristiane Mazzetti, of Greenpeace’s Amazonia campaign. According to Imazon,   22 square miles of rainfores...

The Xenophobia or more appropriately Afrophobic attacks in South Africa have been widely condemned and rightly so but there has been a superficial outlook at the problem. The  South African  blacks have been roundly condemned but my take, as a person who lived in a number of foreign countries including South Africa and has a hands on experience and a helicopter view of the problem is rather a bit more objective.  I would like to share  my broader view of problem while outlining the root causes of the xenophobic attacks through a holistically approach because the causes are both  internal  and external. It is important to point out that African countries leaders and their economic mismanagement is partly to blame. To start with, my experience and most African people in South Africa is that a substantial number of South African blacks have two major psychological problems that are a direct result of the hundreds of years of apartheid and...

                                                                         PIC It will blow away your mind.

·          ALAN GREENSPAN,  former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, recently warned that "a significant market event" that could  quadruple the cost of living  is inevitable, making food, gas and energy unaffordable.  A deeper look into his earlier works reveals this insight:  "Deficit spending is simpy a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process." ·          LARRY SUMMERS,  former Treasury Secretary under Clinton and Lead Economic Advisor for Obama until 2011, has publicly shared grave concerns about the creation of the  Asian Infrastructure Bank  and what it means for the U.S. economy.  He believes that  the U.S. Dollar's status as the world's reserve currency is in jeopardy. ·          DAVID STOCKMAN,  who served under Ronald Reagan as the Director of the ...