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Post by towhom on Sept 11, 2009 6:59:32 GMT 4
You Can Believe Your Eyes: New Insights Into Memory Without Conscious AwarenessScienceDaily Sep. 10, 2009www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090909122056.htmScientists may have discovered a way to glean information about stored memories by tracking patterns of eye movements, even when an individual is unable (or perhaps even unwilling) to report what they remember. The research, published by Cell Press in the September 10th issue of the journal Neuron, provides compelling insight into the relationship between activity in the hippocampus, eye movements, and both conscious and unconscious memory. The hippocampus is a brain region that is critical for conscious recollection of past events but the precise role of this area in memory remains controversial. According to one theory, even if explicit retrieval fails, the hippocampus might still support expressions of relational memory (e.g., memory for the co-occurrence of items in the context of some scene or event) when sensitive, indirect testing methods are used. To test this theory, Drs. Deborah Hannula and Charan Ranganath, both from the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine participants' brain activity while they attempted to remember previously studied face-scene pairings. During scanning, participants were shown a previously studied scene along with three previously studied faces and were asked to identify the face that had been paired with that scene earlier. Eye movements were also monitored during the task and provided an indirect measure of memory. During each test trial, participants frequently spent more time viewing the face that had been previously paired with the scene—an eye-movement-based memory effect. What is more surprising is that hippocampal activity was closely tied to participants' tendency to view the associated face, even when they failed to identify it. Activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area required for decision making, was sensitive to whether or not participants had responded correctly and communication between the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus was increased during correct, but not incorrect, trials. The findings may shed light on the role of the hippocampus in memory and awareness, as they suggest that even when people fail to recollect a past event, the hippocampus might still support an expression of memory through eye movements. Furthermore, the results suggest that even when the hippocampus is doing its job, conscious memory may depend on interactions between the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. One implication of the results is that eye movements might be used to indirectly assess memory and hippocampal function in cognitively impaired patients, children, or others who might have difficulty with conventional memory tests. More intriguing is the possibility that these measures might also track memory in uncooperative individuals. "It is conceivable that eye-tracking could be used to obtain information about past events from participants who are unaware or attempting to withhold information," offers Dr. Hannula. "In other words, there may be circumstances in which eye movements provide a more robust account of past events or experiences than behavioral reports alone."The researchers include Deborah E. Hannula and Charan Ranganath, of the University of California, Davis, Davis, CA.
Adapted from materials provided by Cell Press, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.Memories Exist Even When Forgotten, Study SuggestsScienceDaily Sep. 10, 2009www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090909122100.htmA woman looks familiar, but you can't remember her name or where you met her. New research by UC Irvine neuroscientists suggests the memory exists – you simply can't retrieve it. Using advanced brain imaging techniques, the scientists discovered that a person's brain activity while remembering an event is very similar to when it was first experienced, even if specifics can't be recalled."If the details are still there, hopefully we can find a way to access them," said Jeff Johnson, postdoctoral researcher at UCI's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory and lead author of the study, appearing Sept. 10 in the journal Neuron. "By understanding how this works in young, healthy adults, we can potentially gain insight into situations where our memories fail more noticeably, such as when we get older," he said. "It also might shed light on the fate of vivid memories of traumatic events that we may want to forget." In collaboration with scientists at Princeton University, Johnson and colleague Michael Rugg, CNLM director, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the brain activity of students. Inside an fMRI scanner, the students were shown words and asked to perform various tasks: imagine how an artist would draw the object named by the word, think about how the object is used, or pronounce the word backward in their minds. The scanner captured images of their brain activity during these exercises. About 20 minutes later, the students viewed the words a second time and were asked to remember any details linked to them. Again, brain activity was recorded. Utilizing a mathematical method called pattern analysis, the scientists associated the different tasks with distinct patterns of brain activity. When a student had a strong recollection of a word from a particular task, the pattern was very similar to the one generated during the task. When recollection was weak or nonexistent, the pattern was not as prominent but still recognizable as belonging to that particular task."The pattern analyzer could accurately identify tasks based on the patterns generated, regardless of whether the subject remembered specific details," Johnson said. "This tells us the brain knew something about what had occurred, even though the subject was not aware of the information." In addition to Johnson and Rugg, Susan McDuff and Kenneth Norman of Princeton worked on the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Irvine. Original article written by Jennifer Fitzenberger, University Communications.More "Fringe" techniques in action...
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Post by towhom on Sept 11, 2009 7:09:57 GMT 4
Hey Noddie- Check this out...'Dung Of The Devil' Plant Roots Point To New Swine Flu DrugsScienceDaily Sep. 10, 2009www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090909103009.htmScientists in China have discovered that roots of a plant used a century ago during the great Spanish influenza pandemic contains substances with powerful effects in laboratory experiments in killing the H1N1 swine flu virus that now threatens the world. The plant has a pleasant onion-like taste when cooked, but when raw it has sap so foul-smelling that some call it the "Dung of the Devil" plant. In the study, Fang-Rong Chang and Yang-Chang Wu and colleagues note that the plant, Ferula assa-foetida, grows mainly in Iran, Afghanistan and mainland China. People used it as a possible remedy during the1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed between 20 to 100 million people. Until now, however, nobody had determined whether the plant does produce natural antiviral compounds. Chang and Wu identified a group of chemical compounds in extracts of the plant that showed greater potency against influenza A (H1N1) than a prescription antiviral drug available for the flu. "Overall, the present study has determined that sesquiterpene coumarins from F. assa-foetida may serve as promising lead components for new drug development against influenza A (H1N1) viral infection," the authors write.Journal reference: Lee et al. Influenza A (H1N1) Antiviral and Cytotoxic Agents from Ferula assa-foetida. Journal of Natural Products, 2009; 090819140720088 DOI: 10.1021/np900158f Adapted from materials provided by American Chemical Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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Post by towhom on Sept 11, 2009 7:32:22 GMT 4
Model Backs Green Tea And Lemon Claim, Lessens Need To Test AnimalsScienceDaily Sep. 10, 2009www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090909151919.htmAn animal study at Purdue University has shown that adding ascorbic acid and sugar to green tea can help the body absorb helpful compounds and also demonstrates the effectiveness of a model that could reduce the number of animals needed for these types of studies. Mario Ferruzzi, associate professor of food science and nutrition, adapted a digestion model with human intestinal cells to show that adding ascorbic acid to green tea would increase the absorbability of catechins found in the tea. Catechins, a class of polyphenols common in tea, cocoa and grape, are antioxidants thought to fight heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and other health problems. Ferruzzi, Elsa Janle, a Purdue associate research professor of foods and nutrition, and Catrina Peters, a Purdue graduate student in nutrition, were able to demonstrate that adding ascorbic acid, sucrose or both together increases by as much as three times the amount of catechins that can be absorbed into the bloodstream. The results of the in vivo study compared well with those predicted by the in vitro model. "This model may be used as a pre-emptive screening tool at very little cost before you do expensive tests on animals or humans," said Ferruzzi, whose findings were published in the early online edition of the journal Food Research International. "If you want to get human screening off the ground, it takes months. If you want to use this model, it takes hours." The model charts how the digestive stability, solubility and absorption of polyphenols changes based on modifications to a beverage's formula. It will not be exact in terms of measurements, but when compared to the in vivo test in rats, the model's predictions matched directionally to the in vivo study and were relatively close proportionately.Ferruzzi said testing with the model could allow researchers to predict how a new product formula might change the product's properties, reducing the number of animals needed for testing to only products that showed desired characteristics in the model. The model also can be adapted to simulate the digestive characteristics of other animals or humans as originally intended. "As long as we know the typical gastrointestinal conditions of an animal and the volumes, we can adapt the model to mimic those conditions," Ferruzzi said. "You don't have to do expensive precursor studies." The in vivo study backed up the model study that showed adding sugar and vitamin C to green tea enhanced the body's ability to absorb polyphenols. Ferruzzi said that adding lemon juice or other citrus juice to tea would do the trick, or consumers could look for ready-to-drink products that contain 100 percent of the recommended amount of vitamin C or ascorbic acid on the ingredient list. "Having that vitamin C seems to do it," Ferruzzi said. "And if you don't want to squeeze a lemon into your cup, just have a glass of juice with your green tea." Connie Weaver, head of the National Institutes of Health Purdue University-University of Alabama at Birmingham Botanical Research Center for Age-Related Diseases, which funded the research, said the study's focus was an important part of understanding how to get the most out of compounds considered beneficial. "There is a lot of interest in bioactive materials to protect people from disease and promote better health," Weaver said. "What's been totally ignored is the way these materials are found in foods in combination with other ingredients. How they're involved in the food matrix can affect how you absorb these health promoters."Ferruzzi said the next step in the research is to stage a human clinical trial. Adapted from materials provided by Purdue University. Original article written by Brian Wallheimer.
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Post by towhom on Sept 11, 2009 7:44:29 GMT 4
Dramatic Biological Responses To Global Warming In The ArcticScienceDaily Sep. 11, 2009www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090910142348.htm"The Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past," says Eric Post, associate professor of biology at Penn State University. Post leads a large, international team that carried out ecosystem-wide studies of the biological response to Arctic warming during the fourth International Polar Year, which ended in 2008. The team's results will be reported on 11 September 2009 in the journal Science. The team's research documents a wide range of responses by plants, birds, animals, insects, and humans to the warming trend. The scientists found that the increase in mean annual surface temperature in the Arctic over the last 150 years has had dramatic effects. In the last 20 to 30 years, for example, the seasonal minimal sea ice coverage has declined by a staggering 45,000 square kilometers per year. Similarly, the extent of terrestrial snow cover has declined steadily, with earlier melting and breaking up and an earlier start to the growing season. "Species on land and at sea are suffering adverse consequences of human behavior at latitudes thousands of miles away," declares Post. "It seems no matter where you look -- on the ground, in the air, or in the water -- we're seeing signs of rapid change."The study led by Post shows that many iconic Arctic species that are dependent upon the stability and persistence of sea ice are faring especially badly. Loss of polar ice habitat is causing a rapid decline in the numbers of ivory gull, Pacific walrus, ringed seal, hooded seal, narwhal, and polar bear. The researchers found that Polar bears and ringed seals, both of which give birth in lairs or caves under the snow, lose many newborn pups when the lairs collapse in unusually early spring rains. These species may be headed for extinction. The research also reveals that species once confined to more southerly ranges now are moving northward. Among the most visible invaders are red foxes, which are displacing Arctic foxes from territories once too cold for red foxes. Some of the less showy invaders that the scientists found also are moving northward include the winter moth, which defoliates mountain birch forests, and species of Low Arctic trees and shrubs, which affect the dynamics of trace-gas exchange. The presence of more shrubs and trees promotes deeper snow accumulation, increasing soil temperatures during the winter, and more microbial activity in the soil, which in turn makes the habitats more suitable for shrubs. Increasing the shrub cover may lengthen the period during the plant growing season when the tundra acts as a carbon-dioxide sink. Countering this change, the research reveals, are musk oxen and reindeer, which browse on shrubs, limiting their carbon-soaking capacity and northward expansion to the High Arctic. Grazing, trampling, and defecation by these herbivores promote the growth and spread of grasses, which further attract geese. The geese in turn influence the productivity of lakes, where they rest and graze. The research indicates that complex aquatic and marine food webs like these are extremely vulnerable to alteration due to changes in temperature, precipitation, and nutrient load from the land. The paper by Post's research team shows that the effects of Arctic warming have been dramatic so far, especially since the warming amounts to only about 1-degree Celsius over the last 150 years. Post said it is difficult to predict what will happen with the anticipated 6-degree warming over the next century."The results of our studies so far reveal widespread changes, but also a surprising heterogeneity in biological responses to warming," comments Post. For example, the study shows that wild reindeer on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard actually have benefited from melting of snow during winter, and perhaps also from the earlier seasonal loss of snow cover. With less snow cover and a longer growing season, these nonmigratory reindeer have taken advantage of the increased plant abundance, with the result that reindeer populations and their ability to reproduce are up, while mortality is down. In contrast, migratory caribou in Low Arctic Greenland and elsewhere are declining in numbers, the study found. The caribou have not been able to adjust their calving season to keep it synchronized with changes in plant growth. Thus, the research shows, the time when the females need the most food no longer matches the time of maximum food availability, so fewer calves survive. The research suggests that hotter summers may result in more insects and parasites to prey on the caribou, which in turn may reduce the annual caribou harvest by local indigenous peoples. "Inuit hunters at my study site in Greenland have all but given up on hunting caribou there. What will be the next component to disappear from their traditional lifestyle, a lifestyle that has worked for thousands of years?" wonders Post. Many questions remain unanswered as scientists wrestle with forecasting future events and developing plans to conserve the fragile Arctic ecosystems. Because there are relatively few species in the Arctic, ecosystems in this region may be more vulnerable to changes in its climate. "There is little functional redundancy among species in Arctic ecosystems," explains Post. "Therefore, relatively small shifts in species ranges or abundances may cause fundamental changes in a unique ecosystem that also is important for tourism and traditional cultures." Why do some parts of the ecosystem appear to be unaffected by rising temperatures, while others seem to be heading for collapse? For example, despite heavy harvest and changing environmental conditions, sockeye salmon production in Bristol Bay, Alaska, has remained relatively stable or even increased over the last century. Though hundreds of salmon populations are scattered throughout a range of habitats, the system somehow has compensated for these serious demands. It has long been assumed that the most important biological activities in the Arctic occur during the growing season, but the work highlighted by Post's team suggests otherwise. One natural winter warming episode in the sub-Arctic led to vegetation damage so extensive that plant productivity in the following summer was reduced by 26 percent over an area of at least 1400 square kilometers. In a different area, there was an unexpectedly large release of methane into the atmosphere at the onset of autumn soil freezing. Though working in the Arctic in the autumn and winter poses logistical problems, the findings indicate the importance of monitoring the dynamics of the ecosystem year-round.
"People have thought of the Arctic as a relatively simple ecosystem that is easily understood, but in fact it is very complex," explains Post. "Not all populations within a given species respond similarly to warming because physical and landscape features that interact with climate can vary tremendously from site to site. I think response heterogeneity is going to be one of the keys to species persistence, community integrity, and ecosystem function as the Arctic continues to warm."Post's team calls for establishing a pan-Arctic series of integrated baseline studies to monitor the physical drivers of climate change and the biological responses to them over the long term. "We've seen a great deal of emphasis recently on the melting of Arctic ice," Post says. "The broad, rapid, and in some cases devastating changes documented in this paper remind us of why it's important to give consideration to the consequences of rising temperatures." In addition to Eric Post at Penn State University, the team he led was comprised of biologists, ecologists, geographers, botanists, anthropologists, and fish and wildlife experts from the University of Alberta and the Canadian Wildlife Service in Canada; Aarhus University and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark; the University of Helsinki in Finland; the Arctic Ecology Research Group in France; the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources in Greenland; the University Centre on Svalbard, the University of Tromsø, and the Centre for Saami Studies in Norway; the University of Aberdeen and the University of Stirling in Scotland; Lund University and the Abisko Scientific Research Station in Sweden; the University of Sheffield in the UK; and the Institute of Arctic Biology and the U.S. Geological Service at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, the Environment and Natural Resources Institute of the University of Alaska-Anchorage, and the University of Washington in the United States.
Support was provided by Aarhus University, The Danish Polar Center, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Journal reference: Eric Post, Mads C. Forchhammer, M. Syndonia Bret-Harte, Terry V. Callaghan, Torben R. Christensen, Bo Elberling, Anthony D. Fox, Olivier Gilg, David S. Hik, Toke T. Høye, Rolf A. Ims, Erik Jeppesen, David R. Klein, Jesper Madsen, A. David McGuire, Søren Rysgaard, Daniel E. Schindler, Ian Stirling, Mikkel P. Tamstorf, Nicholas J.C. Tyler, Rene van der Wal, Jeffrey Welker, Philip A. Wookey, Niels Martin Schmidt, and Peter Aastrup. Ecological Dynamics Across the Arctic Associated with Recent Climate Change. Science, 11 September 2009: 1355-1358\ DOI: 10.1126/science.1173113
Adapted from materials provided by Penn State.
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Post by towhom on Sept 11, 2009 17:04:39 GMT 4
Today is September 11, 2009.
May the souls of the innocent lead us from the paths of war to ones of peace.
Everywhere.
Many Blessings to all.
Sally Anne
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Post by towhom on Sept 11, 2009 23:27:07 GMT 4
2,000-year-old menorah depiction foundTemple in Jerusalem was destroyed by Roman legions in 70 A.D.MSNBC updated Sept. 11, 2009 2:01EDTwww.msnbc.msn.com/id/32797473Anonymous / AP / 8:54 a.m. ET, 9/11/09 [/i][/size] In this undated handout photo made available by the Israeli Antiquities Authority on Friday, Sept. 11, 2009, showing an ancient stone engraved with a seven-branched candelabra, or menorah, seen at a synagogue in the northern Israeli town of Midgal, near Tiberias, after archeologists uncovered the carved stone. The menorah was engraved in stone around 2,000-years ago and found in a synagogue recently discovered by the Sea of Galilee and is thought to be one of the earliest depictions of a menorah. JERUSALEM - Israeli archaeologists have uncovered one of the earliest depictions of a menorah, the seven-branched candelabra that has come to symbolize Judaism, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Friday. The menorah was engraved in stone around 2,000 years ago and found in a synagogue recently discovered by the Sea of Galilee. Pottery, coins and tools found at the site indicate the synagogue dates to the period of the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem, where the actual menorah was kept, said archaeologist Dina Avshalom-Gorni of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The artist might have seen the menorah during a pilgrimage and then recreated it in the synagogue, she suggested. A small number of depictions of the menorah have surfaced from the same period, she said, but this one was unique because it was inside a synagogue and far from Jerusalem, illustrating the link between Jews around Jerusalem and in the Galilee to the north. The menorah, depicted atop a pedestal with a triangular base, is carved on a stone which was placed in the synagogue's central hall. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by Roman legions in 70 A.D. The Arch of Titus in Rome, erected to mark the Roman victory, depicts troops carrying the menorah from Jerusalem to symbolize the defeat of the Jews. The menorah became a Jewish symbol and is featured today on Israel's official emblem. Most other depictions of the menorah were made only after the temple's destruction, and if this finding is indeed earlier it could be closer to the original, said Aren Maeir, an archaeology professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. "If you have a depiction of the menorah from the time of the temple, chances are it is more accurate and portrays the actual object than portrayals from after the destruction of the temple, when it was not existent," he said. The ancient prayer house was discovered in the town of Migdal, usually identified as the birthplace of the New Testament's Mary Magdalene, whose name is thought to be based on the town's.
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Post by locoaz2009 on Sept 12, 2009 3:55:14 GMT 4
CONSEQUENCES" cannot be voided by any method. They will occur. Jim Sinclair’s Commentary Finally the message given here on JSMineset, "CONSEQUENCES" is being picked up by others. The message will now spread and communicate. CONSEQUENCES" cannot be voided by any method. They will occur. The Coming Consequences of Banking Fraud September 09, 2009 J. S. Kim The Double Dip Recession, or the “W” shaped recovery that a minority of economists, such as Joseph Stiglitz, is now stating as a strong possible outcome of this current rally, should not be discussed in the realm of economics but rather in the more apropos realm of financial fraud. The fact that the upleg of the “W” shaped recovery that is occurring now will inevitably crumble in spectacular fashion will not be a result of any free market principle, but rather the direct consequence of a fraudulent scheme executed by an elite global financial oligarchy, otherwise known as Central Banks. If the mission of this current manufactured leg-up in Western stock markets was to fool the world into believing that global economies are recovering, then clearly, up until this point, the mission has been a resounding success. For those unfamiliar with the term “blowback”, it’s a CIA term that was first used in March 1954 to describe the unintended consequences of US government international activities kept secret from the American people. Though this term has primarily been used to describe the consequences of covert military operations, “blowback” is an appropriate term to use to describe the coming consequences of banking fraud because the US government, US Federal Reserve, Wall Street, the US Treasury, and the Exchange Stabilization Fund have all engaged in domestic and international financial and monetary transactions that have been kept secret from the world, and that will have severe and negative consequences in the not so distant future. In fact, I predict that the blowback of these activities will not only exceed, but far exceed, the fallout the world experienced in 2008 at the prior apex of this current crisis. Most people today can not even fathom how bad the situation will become primarily because of all the secrecy that the banksters have engaged in – in US Treasury markets, the gold markets, the US dollar markets, agriculture commodities, stock markets, and financial markets – in hiding reality from the people. In an article I wrote three months ago, on June 10, 2009, titled, “Can Rising Stock Markets Serve as a Confirmation of a Crashing Economy?”, I stated, “Whether I am right or wrong about US markets tanking by summer’s end/fall’s beginning, if [we] position [our] investment assets based upon an understanding of the fraudulent monetary system, [we] can still continue to create wealth.” While true, I was a bit early in raising the proposition of a stock market correction the month before; I amended my prediction in June upon realizing the breadth of the manipulation schemes occurring in Western stock markets. In today’s markets, only a complete investment novice would try to predict market behavior without accounting for the massive government intervention schemes and forays into stock markets as well as the computerized manipulation of daily trading volume. One of the main reasons, but not the only one, that I amended my target for the end of this rally this past June to the fall season is the fact that fall normally marks the return of much higher daily trading volume from the traditional summer lulls. Thus, it is a much more difficult proposition for Central Banks and computerized trading programs to manipulate a continued rise in stock markets in the face of higher daily trading volumes. However, should daily trading volume remain surprisingly low or muted this fall, as is also a possibility, I have no doubt that this market rise can persist for an extended period longer before these false gains are eventually flushed away (but, of course, not before all US financial executives have had ample time to exit their positions quietly). In fact, the development of this false rally was the main topic of my article. The other scenario, one that includes a significant rise in daily trading volumes that trigger the start of a second massive decline in Western stock markets, would not surprise me either. It’s just a matter of observing the signs that forecast the waning efficacy of the fraudulent stimulus of Western markets (or for this matter, the fraudulent stimulus of Chinese stock markets too). Remember that it is only the timing of this decline that I am uncertain of, but I am very certain that a significant decline of a shocking nature is coming. The last time I issued an adamant warning of a similar nature was on April 23, 2008, when again, the only issue about a market crash was timing, though the US S&P 500 index peaked just 18 business days after I wrote that article and proceeded to fall by more than 50%. To truly gain more clarity regarding this recent Western stock market rally, consider a hypothetical scenario in which a person was kept ignorant of any action in the US stock markets for the entire previous six months. Instead, imagine that he or she was given the task of predicting US market behavior over the past six month period solely based upon cold, hard US financial and economic data stripped bare of any of the media-slanted headlines that perpetually spin bad economic data as positive or “less bad” than it truly is. Based upon the economic data produced from the last six months, what do you think this person would conclude? That stock markets have soared during this time or that they had crashed? Of course, factor in the plethora of evidence about numerous PPT interventions to “save” markets during this time, and the strong US stock market rally no longer seems so illogical. But strip away any evidence of free-market manipulation and interference and in the face of true, undistorted economic data, our current market rally would be enormously puzzling. And this point alone should be sufficient to tell you how this rally will end. The inevitable conclusion of this rally isn’t just about the unsustainability of the massive bailout programs implemented by global Central Banks that have engineered this current market rally out of thin air, but its manifestation should trigger an investigation into the outright fraud committed by Wall Street, banking institutions, and Central Banks that has been aided and abetted by financial journalists. For example, consider the following stories: Demographers recently reported that Florida, the state known as the “mecca” for wealthy retirees in America, suffered its first population decline last year in more than 60 years, an event that delineates the collapse in wealth of American retirees and an event that is likely to repeat this year. At the end of this past July, one of the largest ports in America, Long Beach, reported that the 20% year-over-year cargo business decline is among the sharpest since the Great Depression. This is not a trend specific to Long Beach. “It’s phenomenal how much things fell away even since December,” said Paul Bingham, managing director of global trade and transportation for IHS Global Insight, the business research firm that monitors North America’s biggest ports for the National Retail Federation. As of September 4, 2009, shadowstats.com reported that unemployment in the US is now near 21% and is showing no signs of improving any time soon (when factoring in discouraged workers, part-time workers that can’t find full-time work, unemployed workers that have fallen off the unemployment roll, etc.). In fact, yesterday, Manpower’s Employment Outlook Survey reported that US employers’ hiring plans for the upcoming fourth quarter dropped to the lowest level in the history of its survey which dates back to 1962. On August 15th, when BB&T (BBT) purchased failed US bank Colonial Bank, it wrote down Colonial Bank’s loans and real estate collateral by 37% and Colonial Bank’s construction loans by 67%. Yes, 67%! The severe markdowns of Colonial Bank’s assets should have set off warnings akin to a five-alarm fire among the financial media, but it did not, for the media increasingly caters to the interests of the elite bankers of this world at the cost of truth and freedom. If there are several things we can deduce from Colonial Bank’s failure, it is the following. Though the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) refuses to disclose the names of the banks on its “watch list”, it can be safe to assume that a bank just does not go bankrupt overnight and that the process of going bankrupt can be predicted many months in advance by personnel with access to a bank’s financial statements and knowledge of its true financial condition. In fact, various newspaper articles reported that Colonial Bank was in negotiations with the FDIC as early as March, 2009, yet not one time, did the FDIC force Colonial Bank to come clean regarding its true financial health before it finally shuttered the bank five months later. The fact that the FDIC is spotting massive trouble in the American banking system and covering it up should be massively worrisome to Americans. Because revelations regarding the truth about a US bank’s health only seem to occur after it fails, the favored handling of American banks with kid gloves by the FDIC should immediately beg the question, “How many more US banks are legitimately bankrupt today and just operating on fumes?” Personally, I would not be surprised if sometime within the next six months, a considerably larger US bank failure causes a massive ripple effect of much greater consequence. Banks that are currently struggling with unreported and covered-up deepening problems of loan delinquencies such as Wells Fargo (WFC), may be among the large banks that are candidates for future bankruptcy despite the public categorization of such institutions in the “too-big-to-fail” category. Unfortunately, Wells Fargo, from a political standpoint, does not have the “most favored bank” status of a Citigroup (C) or JP Morgan (JPM), two institutions deserving of bankruptcy but clearly favored by the US Federal Reserve and the US government. When one considers the fact that all government or state produced economic statistics have been massively distorted towards the side of optimism and away from reality throughout this global financial crisis, one should be even more worried when the occasional sparse negative statistic is reported, for it is likely that these statistics too are misrepresenting the truth. Thus, in the face of all negative news that points to zero foundation and zero economic structural improvements, how has a multi-month stock market rally been able to spread across Asia, Europe and the US? Again, the answer is fraud, and thus should be analyzed through the prism of fraud and not the false prism of “economics”. There is no “economics” behind this latest global stock market rally, only fraud. For many weeks in August, just four stocks accounted for as much as 40% of composite volume on the NYSE: Citigroup, Bank of America (BAC), Freddie Mac (FRE) and Fannie Mae (FNM). In early 2007, Citigroup, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac accounted for roughly 1% -3% of NYSE volume, a far cry from its recent 35%+ collective weight of the composite NYSE volume. Remember that this huge volume anomaly persisted not just for one day but for weeks on end during August. If Citigroup, Bank of America, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a pharmaceutical collective that just discovered a cure for cancer and AIDS, then such volume anomalies would make sense. However, such massive trading volumes, as a percent of composite volume for the entire NYSE index, makes zero sense for companies, that for all intents and purposes, are on government bailout lifelines. It makes no sense, that is, unless massive free-market intervention is occurring in an attempt to save these firms. Again, when viewed through the “fraud prism”, such activity makes complete sense. It is obvious that the “Rise of the Machines” has created markets that are now dominated by computerized high frequency trading programs that can execute trades as quickly as 0.5 milliseconds and have as their sole purpose the creation of short-term market distortions driven by statistical arbitrage that can be used to game the system and cheat their clients. Though this link describes how this scheme works in commodity markets for those that have been following the New York Stock Exchange, the use of high frequency trading programs to game the system at the expense of the retail investor has been glaringly obvious especially in the trading behavior exhibited this past summer. The ironic part of this huge scam that has merely just re-inflated another massive stock market bubble is that the segment of the public that is so easily angered by government bailouts, billion dollar bonus plans for Wall Street executives and the chicanery of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs (GS) (and justifiably so), are the very same people that so passively accept the mountain of lies that passes for financial reporting today (inexplicably so). It is ironic that this same collective of people, instead of rejecting this mountain of lies, continues to listen to their financial advisers at global commercial investment firms, even though these advisers are the same group of people that miserably failed to see the crash that started in the spring of 2008, when the factors behind the pullback back then was just as clear as the factors behind the future pullback that will occur in the near future. It is ironic that this same group of people continues to support, participate and fund a system that cares only about using their clients’ money to lie, cheat and steal from them when a simple withdrawal of funds from the system is the antidote to ignorance-induced paralysis that will once again create massive crisis-induced losses in the future. Pulling one’s money from one’s current firm and switching to another firm that participates in this web of lies and deceit is not a solution either. It is ironic that it is the same group of people that so readily accepts the Western media’s correct analysis of China’s stock market as a huge bubble through the lens of Austrian economic principles that simultaneously rejects any similar notion as applicable to US or UK stock markets, and instead, readily embraces heavily flawed and unsound Keynesian economic principles when evaluating Western stock markets. It is ironic that the same group of people that foolishly equates being “American” with blind support of the US stock market (i.e. “being bearish on the US market is un-American!”) is also completely ignorant of both the massive fraud that is perpetrated in US stock markets as well as the tenets of the US Constitution that sound great objections and warnings to the ruinous and foolish monetary policies that are implemented by bankers as their “solution” to our current economic crisis. And finally, the greatest irony of all is that the anger that brews inside those that have been tragically hurt by this crisis can coexist with the failure to recognize that it matters not in America if the President has the last name Clinton, Bush or Obama – that monetary and fiscal agenda inside the US for the last 17 years has not wavered nor changed one iota during this period of time because it was not these men that have been in charge of the economy but the men that manufactured these men’s rise to power and that control the US Federal Reserve and the world’s Central Banks, and thus the global monetary policy. If one can not see the connection between Presidents, Prime Ministers and the banking families that rule Central Banks, one merely needs to open up a newspaper and follow their lives after they leave government office. It is not just a coincidence that ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after leaving office, took a part-time consulting job with JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon that reportedly pays him $5 million per year as well as another well-paid consulting position with Zurich Financial Services. In office, Mr. Blair was a consultant to the banking oligarchs in secret; out of office, he is free to be a consultant publicly. And one can be certain that current UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US President Barack Obama will be offered very considerable salaries and fees by the world’s top financial oligarchs as thanks for their current and past service to them once they leave office as well (especially Gordon Brown, for selling out his countrymen and selling more than half of England’s bank reserves to ensure that the financial oligarchs could maintain the US dollar as the de-facto international currency for 10 additional more years than it deserved to hold this status). In the end, what is the most frustrating facet of these huge con games executed by the financial oligarchs is that the group of people that this article is most intended to help is often the group of people that will take most offense to this article and most steadfastly refuse to see the truth. Instead, they will only realize the truth when the economic future unfolds to the blueprint of those of us the media labels as “gloom and doomers” because we base our predictions on reality instead of fantasy and lies. Instead of labeling us as “gloom and doomers”, if the media at large ever conducted an unbiased analysis of the predictions of the “gloom and doomers” for the past 3 years, they would discover that the “gloom and doomers” have been spectacularly accurate in the majority of their calls while the financial demagogues they continually fawn over (that only serve the interests of the bankers) have been spectacularly wrong in the vast majority of their predictions. Yet, those that serve the international banking cartel with glowing and rosy predictions of economic recovery never suffer the negative consequences of being wrong all the time as the mass media all too happily continues to provide the largest public platform and the loudest voices to these people. Perhaps, if it is accurate to label “gloom and doomers” as realists, then one should label the optimists that make their calls based upon perpetrated fraud as banking shills and cogs in the investing machine, for their societal contribution of greatest significance is an opiate cocktail for the masses that is a mixture of deceit and lies mixed with unbridled optimism. As they often say that life imitates art, I close my article today with a speech from the film “V for Vendetta” that is frighteningly relevant if you listen to this speech with a critical ear and replace the references to the war on terror in this speech with the current war the bankster fraudsters are committing against the people. A sound money backed by precious metals, can be the people’s liberation from this war. Anything that falls short of such a solution will be just another scam in an already long line of scams, of a solution sold to the masses, that in reality, is no solution at all. jsmineset.com/LOCOAZ
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Post by locoaz2009 on Sept 12, 2009 3:59:54 GMT 4
Here is a cheat sheet on how to react to market data releases in a 1932 or hyperinflation type equity market rally:
Weak data = Fed ease, stocks rally ;D Consensus data = lower volatility, stocks rally ;D Strong data = economy strengthening, stocks rally ;D Bank loses $4bln = bad news out of the way, stocks rally ;D Oil spikes = great for energy companies, stocks rally ;D Oil drops = great for the consumer, stocks rally ;D Dollar plunges = great for multinationals, stocks rally ;D Dollar spikes = lowers inflation, stocks rally ;D Inflation spikes = will inflate all assets, stocks rally ;D Inflation drops = improves earnings quality, stocks rally ;D
IT IS FUNNY... BUT THIS IS GOING ON EVERY DAY
LOCOAZ
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Post by locoaz2009 on Sept 12, 2009 4:11:41 GMT 4
Possible October surprises By Martin Hutchinson Economists' crystal balls are clouded right now. They see signs of a burgeoning global recovery, but retail sales and other key data surprise with their weakness. There is no sign of inflation, yet commodity prices are extraordinary strong, given we are in the depths of a major recession. The reality is that fiscal and monetary experiments have been tried that have never been tried before, and their combined effect is only beginning to be felt. Conventional wisdom, based on the experience of the 1970s, holds that over-expansionary monetary policies should lead to inflation, while large budget deficits should lead to higher interest rates. Yet there is little sign of accelerating consumer price inflation at present (although Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's 3am fear of deflation has also not appeared), while interest rates have trended down in the last few weeks, contrary to expectations of "crowding out" from the US Treasury's unprecedentedly large budget deficit. Were the adverse effects of excessive money creation and huge budget deficits not to appear at all, much of economic theory would have to be rewritten. It would mean that excess money creation could magically disappear, leading to no real world effects. It would also mean that budget deficits ad infinitum could be financed, as the global pool of capital simply expanded to accommodate them. Economically, the world would have invented a perpetual motion machine, in which government could create resources at will without adverse side effects. Perpetual motion machines being impossible in the physical world, one's natural skepticism supposes them to be impossible in the economic world. Hence the adverse effects of excessive money creation and budget deficits must either be delayed or be appearing in some novel form, so that observers looking for a repetition of the 1970s do not spot them. As soon as the problem is posed in this way, the evidence becomes obvious. Commodities prices are far higher in real terms than they were at the top of the 2000 boom, while gold is on the verge of breaking through its record high and soaring into unknown territory. In itself, that makes no economic sense; in a deep recession such as the current one, where markets are allegedly fearful of deflation, commodities and gold prices should be extremely weak. Commodities and gold therefore are the destination of this year's hot money and are forming the new bubble. They are a hedge against inflation, obviously, but they are also a hedge against prolonged recession, since the authorities have made it very clear that in such a case they would continue ad infinitum their current loose money policies. That makes sense. Stocks, the most likely bubble suspect, are held back by recessionary earnings and prospects. It becomes impossible for even the most enthusiastic Wall Street analyst to push up stocks beyond a certain level if the raw material of "stories" is not there, and in this economy the stories are decidedly absent. China of course sees its stock market soaring to ever greater heights, since its domestic funding sources have lots of money and very few alternatives, but that market is still largely independent of the world as a whole. As for housing, in most national markets there is a huge inventory overhang, together with a backlog of borrowers heading slowly for foreclosure, so that too is unlikely to see much of a takeoff. Bonds are an interesting case. From December to June, 10-year Treasury bond yields backed up from 2.07% to 4%. That's what one would expect with the ludicrous levels of deficit, more than 10% of US gross domestic product in both 2009 and 2010, that the United States is currently running. However, yields then backed off; the 10-year Treasury bond is currently yielding about 3.4% and the Treasury is able to fund hundreds of billions of new confetti-like financing with the utmost ease. That suggests a fair-sized bubble has developed in the T-bond market. With the world in recession, yet with Asian central banks and other institutions generating massive cash flows because of easy money, the most obvious place to put those flows remains T-bonds. If this is a bubble, however, it is an extraordinarily vulnerable one. At any moment, a modest resurgence in US inflation or difficulty in a long dated T-bond auction could cause confidence to flee the Treasury bond market and yields to leap uncontrollably upwards. The current situation is unstable. The problems caused by excessively lax fiscal and monetary policies are indeed appearing, but not yet in a form that forces policymakers and economic participants in general to take action. The rise in commodity prices will remove purchasing power from Western economies and push up their consumer price indices, but it has not yet done so since it has been offset by the natural deflationary effects of recession. The recent modest decline in Treasury bond yields conceals an increasingly unstable bubble, and it is only a question of time before that bubble bursts. Given the current predilections of the world's central bankers, it is likely that when the T-bond bubble bursts, they will rush to the printing presses, the Fed buying Treasuries in a frantic attempt to stabilize the bond market. In all but the shortest term, that is unlikely to work; it will cause a spiraling increase in gold, oil and other commodities prices that will make it clear to the doziest Federal Open Market Committee member that the punchbowl has been drained dry and the party of monetary profligacy must end. October 2009 is unlikely to produce another banking crisis. It may very well, however, produce a crisis of confidence in the Treasury bond market, followed by an economic relapse as interest rates are forced upwards and high commodity prices reduce purchasing power in those Western countries that are heavy net consumers of commodities. If October 2009 fails to produce a full-scale T-bond rout, it will not be long delayed thereafter; the resurgence in consumer price inflation caused by continually rising commodity prices will eventually cause even central bankers to demand higher yields. Either way, the flood of money that has poured into commodities, bonds and the stock market cannot prop them up for much longer. Like previous such floods, it must eventually reverse, and its reversal will cause yet another round of bankruptcies and unexpected disasters. The "Great Moderation" of which Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke spoke so lovingly before the present unpleasantness was always a myth. In reality, the flood of easy money from 1995 caused a succession of bubbles, each one more devastating than the last once it burst. Monetary policy since 1995 has been wholly immoderate, expanding the St Louis Fed's broad measure of money, MZM, by 8.7% annually since spring 1995, 82% faster than the 4.7% annual rise in nominal GDP. Its long-term results have been and will continue to be equally immoderate. The laws of economics have not been repealed. It is indeed not possible to run a huge fiscal deficit without destabilizing the bond market; attempting to finesse the problem by creating excessive money simply causes spiraling commodities prices and subsequent inflation. Equally, an over-stimulative monetary policy will find an outlet either in consumer prices or in asset prices, though it may take a considerable time to do so. Apart from instability, the long-term costs of excessively cheap money are beginning to be seen in the US economy itself. By allowing money to remain so cheap for so long, and by running incessant payments deficits, the United States has surrendered the advantage of its superior long-established capital base, narrowing its capital cost advantage over emerging markets and exporting that capital to countries with less profligate approaches. Huge budget deficits, themselves worsening the trade deficit, merely export yet more US capital to the surplus nations. That makes it inevitable that the years ahead, in which the United States will no longer enjoy a capital advantage over its lower-wage competitors, will see highly unpleasant declines in US living standards. Job losses within the US in the current downturn are steeper than in any previous recession, even though the output decline is only equivalent to those of 1973-75 and 1981-82. Income differentials have widened unpleasantly, as the working class jobs in manufacturing are outsourced to Asia while the cheap money has created a parasitic and unpleasant class of financial manipulators at the top of the distribution. Only a decade of sound money and sound budgets will rectify these problems, and halt the decline in US living standards. Needless to say, we are a very long way from even the start of such a decade. There really are no free lunches in this world. Of all the attempts to create a free lunch, or a perpetual motion machine, the delusion by government that it can create wealth is the most dangerous. www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KI09Dj04.htmlLOCOAZ
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Post by locoaz2009 on Sept 12, 2009 4:24:39 GMT 4
USA Sick and Ready to Collapse for Three Reasons The map of the collapse of the United States in 2010, made by Russian scientist of politics Igor Panarin, has received millions of views in the United States over one day only. The Wall Street Journal published the map on its front page at the end of 2008. Alaska is pictured on the map as a part of Russia. Hawaii were shown as a territory of Japan, whereas four new states were pictured on the territory of the USA: the Californian Republic, the Central North American Republic, the Texas Republic and the Atlantic America, which included the traditional states. BREAKING NEWS The collapse of the Twin Towers marked the start of the new era The strangest creatures living on Earth More... In spite of the fact that the map was published many months ago, it attracted public attention only a while ago. Will the United States break up like the USSR did? Anatoly Vasserman, a political advisor, believes that Igor Panarin created the map on the base of several important arguments. First and foremost, the US state debt has skyrocketed from $2 trillion to $11 trillion within a decade. The USA will never be able to pay off the debt. Secondly, the political structure of the nation is vulnerable. There is neither universal legislation in the country, nor common traffic rules. The US Army does not execute its major function – defense – anymore since many foreign nationals prefer to serve in the army to obtain the US citizenship. Thirdly, the split of elites, which was especially visible under the conditions of the crisis. The problems, which Panarin named, are absolutely real. However, there is only one thing that is real: America will not be able to cope with these problems. The USA is sick, but the illness began a long time ago and had a number of exacerbations. However, none of those illnesses has ever resulted in the collapse of the nation. The USA survived several immigration and economic crises. There was the split of elites before – it once resulted in the civil war between the North and the South. Winston Churchill once said that Americans will find a way out of a difficult situation only after they try all other ways. It goes without saying that the map of the United States will remain unchanged in 2010. Igor Panarin made his map in 1998, although it did not produce any attention on either the Russians or the Americans. Any American knows that the economy is based on a large market. The larger the market can be, the faster the nation can overcome economic difficulties. America has never suffered from any crisis after WWII, that is why they perceive the current crisis so painfully. However, the interest, which so many Americans have shown to the research of the Russian professor, proves they treat the imminent threat seriously. The USA will not take a risk of triggering a global war. If it does, the nation will suffer from much greater damage than it did during WWII. There were no intercontinental ballistic missiles 70 years ago. However, the nation can provoke smaller, local wars, for example a conflict between China and India. If it happens, the USA will not try to have Russia involved in any regional conflict because Russia, for the time being, is the only state that is technically capable of destroying America. english.pravda.ru/world/americas/08-09-2009/109155-usa_collapse-0LOCOAZ
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Post by towhom on Sept 12, 2009 4:44:04 GMT 4
Good evening Johnny et al.
How are you and your minions?
Since I can't be bothered with monitoring your site, I have no clue on how you are currently twisting away at the truth these days.
I also wonder (in my spare moments of complete boredom - which is NOT often...) - why you and yours cannot seem to get beyond the "hostile" emotion-packed rhetoric that centers around "issues that do not exist or are manipulated into existence based on alcohol or drug-induced visions".
It would seem to me that if you and your cohorts are as intelligent as you all profess to be, you would apply yourselves to more constructive paths.
Self-destruction (which is your true mantra) never leads to re-construction.
I am quite sure you or one of your buddies will "cut and paste" this onto your site and respond with some "negative nonsensical hit-and-miss psychological tripe". That's fine. That's what you do best anyway.
I only hope that one day you will all "dry-out" and realize that life is what you make it.
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Post by towhom on Sept 12, 2009 4:52:05 GMT 4
Googling Food Webs: Can an Eigenvector Measure Species' Importance for Coextinctions?PLoS Computational Biology Received: June 1, 2009; Accepted: July 29, 2009; Published: September 4, 2009www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000494AbstractA major challenge in ecology is forecasting the effects of species' extinctions, a pressing problem given current human impacts on the planet. Consequences of species losses such as secondary extinctions are difficult to forecast because species are not isolated, but interact instead in a complex network of ecological relationships. Because of their mutual dependence, the loss of a single species can cascade in multiple coextinctions. Here we show that an algorithm adapted from the one Google uses to rank web-pages can order species according to their importance for coextinctions, providing the sequence of losses that results in the fastest collapse of the network. Moreover, we use the algorithm to bridge the gap between qualitative (who eats whom) and quantitative (at what rate) descriptions of food webs. We show that our simple algorithm finds the best possible solution for the problem of assigning importance from the perspective of secondary extinctions in all analyzed networks. Our approach relies on network structure, but applies regardless of the specific dynamical model of species' interactions, because it identifies the subset of coextinctions common to all possible models, those that will happen with certainty given the complete loss of prey of a given predator. Results show that previous measures of importance based on the concept of “hubs” or number of connections, as well as centrality measures, do not identify the most effective extinction sequence. The proposed algorithm provides a basis for further developments in the analysis of extinction risk in ecosystems. Author SummaryPredicting the consequences of species' extinction is a crucial problem in ecology. Species are not isolated, but connected to each others in tangled networks of relationships known as food webs. In this work we want to determine which species are critical as they support many other species. The fact that species are not independent, however, makes the problem difficult to solve. Moreover, the number of possible “importance'” rankings for species is too high to allow a solution by enumeration. Here we take a “reverse engineering” approach: we study how we can make biodiversity collapse in the most efficient way in order to investigate which species cause the most damage if removed. We show that adapting the algorithm Google uses for ranking web pages always solves this seemingly intractable problem, finding the most efficient route to collapse. The algorithm works in this sense better than all the others previously proposed and lays the foundation for a complete analysis of extinction risk in ecosystems. Complete article available for download at the link displayed above.
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Post by towhom on Sept 12, 2009 7:37:20 GMT 4
How to Create Quantum Superpositions of Living ThingsTechnology Review / arXiv Blogs Thursday, September 10, 2009www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24101/First photons, atoms and molecules. Now physicists want to create a quantum superposition of a virus, which will allow them to perform Schrodinger's Cat experiment for real. One of the great challenges for quantum physicists is to find quantum behaviour in macroscopic objects. There are obvious examples of quantum behaviour on a large scale, such as superconductivity and superfluidity, but physicists want more. Having created quantum superpositions of photons, electrons, atoms and even molecules, one of the current obsessions is to create a quantum superposition of a living thing, such as a virus. The question is how to do this and whether it makes any sense to say these things are living at all.[Note: On the other hand, the quantum superposition of this particular thought pattern could suggest the lack of intelligence in its application in a "quantum state of excitement"... ]This is an experiment that will be hard. But today Oriol Romero-Isart from the Max-Planck-Institut fur Quantenoptik in Germany and a few buddies suggest that it is achievable with current technology and outline the challenges that will have to be tackled to pull it off. The experiment will first involve storing a virus in a vacuum and then cooling it to its quantum mechanical ground state in a microcavity. Zapping the virus with a laser then leaves it in a superposition of the ground state and an excited one. This works only if the virus behaves like a dielectric, can survive the vacuum and appears transparent to laser light, which would otherwise rip it apart. As luck would have it, Romero-Isart and Co. say that several viruses fit the bill. The common flu virus is known to be able to survive in a vacuum, seems to have the required dielectric properties and may well be transparent to a careful choice of laser light. The tobacco mosaic virus, to all intents and purposes a dielectric rod, looks like another good candidate.But does it make any sense to say that a large molecule in its ground state is somehow alive? It's difficult enough now to define what life means. Throw a quantum superposition into the mix and the biologists who ponder these problems are likely to implode. Nevertheless, many groups are currently looking to create superpositions of things like tiny cantilevers and micromirrors, so viruses certainly look achievable in the near future. And beyond that, why not bigger organism such as the tardigrade (or water bear) which can grow to 1.5 mm in length. But why bother? Performing a Schrodinger's cat experiment would be fun (although not for the virus). Romero-Isart and pals go further and say the work will "experimentally address fundamental questions, such as the role of life in quantum mechanics and differences between many-world and Copenhagen interpretations". Perhaps. But their contention that it will also address "the role of consciousness in quantum mechanics" seems a step too far (although a flu virus may beg to differ). Ref: Towards Quantum Superposition of Living OrganismsarXiv Oriol Romero-Isart, Mathieu L. Juan, Romain Quidant, J. Ignacio Cirac [v1] Tue, 8 Sep 2009 12:00:08 GMT Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)arxiv.org/abs/0909.1469AbstractThe most striking feature of quantum mechanics is the existence of superposition states, where an object appears to be in different situations at the same time. Up to now, the existence of such states has been tested with small objects, like atoms, ions, electrons and photons, and even with molecules. Recently, it has been even possible to create superpositions of collections of photons, atoms, or Cooper pairs. Current progress in optomechanical systems may soon allow us to create superpositions of even larger objects, like micro-sized mirrors or cantilevers, and thus to test quantum mechanical phenomena at larger scales. Here we propose a method to cool down and create quantum superpositions of the motion of sub-wavelength, arbitrarily shaped dielectric objects trapped inside a high–finesse cavity at a very low pressure. Our method is ideally suited for the smallest living organisms, such as viruses, which survive under low vacuum pressures, and optically behave as dielectric objects. This opens up the possibility of testing the quantum nature of living organisms by creating quantum superposition states in very much the same spirit as the original Schrodinger’s cat “gedanken” paradigm. We anticipate our essay to be a starting point to experimentally address fundamental questions, such as the role of life in quantum mechanics, and differences between many-world and Copenhagen interpretations. Complete article available for download in multiple formats at the link displayed above.
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Post by towhom on Sept 12, 2009 8:03:38 GMT 4
Vibration enhanced quantum transportarXiv F. L. Semião, K. Furuya, G. J. Milburn [v1] Wed, 9 Sep 2009 23:28:39 GMT Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) PACS numbers: 05.60.Gg,71.35.-yarxiv.org/abs/0909.1846AbstractIn this paper, we study the role of a collective vibrational motion in the phenomenon of electronic energy transfer (EET) between chromophores with different electronic transition frequencies. Previous experimental work on EET in conjugated polymer samples has suggested that the common structural framework of the macromolecule introduce correlations in the energy gap fluctuations which cause coherent EET. We present a simple model describing the coupling between the chromophores and a common vibrational mode, and find that vibration can indeed lead to an enhancement in the transport of excitations across the quantum network. Furthermore, in our model phase information is partially retained in the transfer process from a donor to an acceptor, as experimentally demonstrated in the conjugated polymer system. Consequently, this mechanism of vibration enhanced quantum transport might find applications in quantum information transfer of qubit states or entanglement.Complete article available for download in multiple formats at the link displayed above.
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Post by towhom on Sept 12, 2009 8:39:06 GMT 4
Time-Resolved Upconversion of Entangled Photon PairsarXiv Kevin A. O'Donnell, Alfred B. U'Ren [v1] Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:03:29 GMT Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) PACS numbers: 42.50.Dv, 03.65.Ud, 42.65.Lm, 42.65.Rearxiv.org/abs/0909.2007AbstractIn the process of spontaneous parametric downconversion, photons from a pump field are converted to signal and idler photon pairs in a nonlinear crystal. The reversed process, or upconversion of these pairs back to single photons in a second crystal, is also possible. Here, we present experimental measurements of the upconversion rate with a controlled time delay introduced between the signal and idler photons. As a function of delay, this rate presents a full width at half maximum of 27.9 fs under our experimental conditions, and we further demonstrate that group delay dispersion of the photon pairs broadens this width. These observations are in close agreement with our calculations, thus demonstrating an ultrafast, nonclassical correlation between the signal and idler waves. Complete article available for download in multiple formats at the link displayed above.
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