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Digital Vendetta

Darpa takes on Zombie Pigs

Posted by Digital Vendetta – 14/01/2010

Remember all those SF movies where it takes suspended animation to travel to a distant planet or galaxy? Ripley, the buff female protagonist in the film Aliens, spends 57 years in “hypersleep” — without aging — before being rescued. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is now funding research that may one day bring humans to a zombie-like form of hibernation. The motivation, however, is not so much space travel as emergency trauma care for wounded soldiers on the battlefield.

Zombie Pig

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Federal Reserve Seeks to Protect U.S. Bailout Secrets

Posted by Digital Vendetta – 14/01/2010

Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve asked a U.S. appeals court to block a ruling that for the first time would force the central bank to reveal secret identities of financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest government bailout in U.S. history.

The Federal Reserve

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan will decide whether the Fed must release records of the unprecedented $2 trillion U.S. loan program launched after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. In August, a federal judge ordered that the information be released, responding to a request by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.

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Swine Flu “False Pandemic” Biggest Pharma-Fraud Of The Century

Posted by Digital Vendetta – 14/01/2010

The Council of Europe will launch a probe into pharmaceutical companies after reports that vaccine manufacturers pressured the World Health Organization into declaring swine flu pandemic seeking increase in profits.

It was supposed to be a deadly pandemic, but is so far is nothing more than a serious cold.

Shhh it's a secret.

And it has left a lasting headache as a debate rages over whether pharmaceutical companies deliberately misled governments about the seriousness of swine flu to make them stockpile vaccines.

The legal standards organization, the Council of Europe, will gather the arguments.

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Domestic Espionage Alert: Spy Drone Discovered

Posted by Digital Vendetta – 14/01/2010

KPRC news in Houston recently filmed a secret experiment by law enforcement agencies including the Dept. of Homeland Security of a drone intended to spy on Americans.

New Secret Drone

The drone uncovered during this investigation are not like the large, expensive models used by the military for targeted strikes on militants half a world away.  These are manufactured by Insitu out of Bingen, Washington (corporate offices located in Australia), only weigh about 40 pounds (18.1 kg) before monitoring equipment is installed. This model has the capacity to stay airborne for up to a day.

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Nasa’s new space telescope finds five new planets outside our solar system.

Posted by Digital Vendetta – 10/01/2010

Nasa’s new planet-hunting telescope has discovered its first five worlds beyond our Solar System.

Numerous planets have been found before by other telescopes, such as Hubble, but the sole mission of the Kepler observatory – launched last year – has been to find potential ‘Earths’ elsewhere in our galaxy.

Unfortunately life is unlikely to survive on the new planets as they are thought to generate hellish heat. Estimated temperatures of the worlds range from 1,200 to 1,650 degrees Celsius, hotter than molten lava.

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Golden Ratio Discovered in Quantum World

Posted by Digital Vendetta – 10/01/2010

Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB), in cooperation with colleagues from Oxford and Bristol Universities, as well as the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, have for the first time observed a nanoscale symmetry hidden in solid state matter. They have measured the signatures of a symmetry showing the same attributes as the golden ratio famous from art and architecture.

The magnetic field is used to tune the chains of spins to a quantum critical state. The resonant modes (“notes”) are detected by scattering neutrons. These scatter with the characteristic frequencies of the spin chains. (Credit: Image courtesy of Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres)

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Device turns thoughts into speech

Posted by Digital Vendetta – 04/01/2010

[via MSNBC.com originally written by Irene Klotz]

Scientists have successfully tested a system that translates brain waves into speech, raising the prospect that people left mute by stroke, Lou Gehrig’s disease and other afflictions will one day be able to communicate by synthetic voice.

The system was tested on a 26-year-old man left paralyzed by a brain stem stroke, but with his consciousness and cognitive abilities intact. The condition is known as “locked-in syndrome.” In this condition, communication by eye movement or other limited motion is possible, but extremely cumbersome.

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TSA Threatens Blogger Who Posted New Screening Directive

Posted by Digital Vendetta – 04/01/2010

[via Wired.com, originally written by Kim Zetter]

In the wake of public outcry against the Transportation Security Administration for serving civil subpoenas on two bloggers, the government agency has canceled the legal action and apologized for the strong-arm tactics agents used.

Travel writer and photographer Steven Frischling, who was served with a subpoena by two TSA agents on Tuesday, told Threat Level that he received a phone call Thursday evening from John Drennan, deputy chief counsel for enforcement at TSA, telling him the administration was withdrawing its subpoena.

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Survivalism Lite

Posted by Digital Vendetta – 04/01/2010

[via newsweek.com, originally written by Jessica Bennett]

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include comment from FEMA head Craig Fugate.

Lisa Bedford is what you’d imagine of a stereotypical soccer mom. She drives a white Tahoe SUV. An American flag flies outside her suburban Phoenix home. She sells Pampered Chef kitchen tools and likes to bake. Bedford and her husband have two young children, four dogs, and go to church on Sunday.

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