With sincere condolences to the brave editors of Charlie Hebdo.

No One Murdered Because Of This Image
(the Onion, Sep 13, 2012)

WASHINGTON — Following the publication of the image above, in which the most cherished figures from multiple religious faiths were depicted engaging in a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity, no one was murdered, beaten, or had their lives threatened, sources reported Thursday. The image of the Hebrew prophet Moses high-fiving Jesus Christ as both are having their erect penises vigorously masturbated by Ganesha, all while the Hindu deity anally penetrates Buddha with his fist, reportedly went online at 6:45 p.m. EDT, after which not a single bomb threat was made against the organization responsible, nor did the person who created the cartoon go home fearing for his life in any way. Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day. Read More »

How do people get new ideas?
by Isaac Asimov, 1959.
(First publication: MIT Technology Review, October 20, 2014)

Presumably, the process of creativity, whatever it is, is essentially the same in all its branches and varieties, so that the evolution of a new art form, a new gadget, a new scientific principle, all involve common factors. We are most interested in the “creation” of a new scientific principle or a new application of an old one, but we can be general here.

One way of investigating the problem is to consider the great ideas of the past and see just how they were generated. Unfortunately, the method of generation is never clear even to the “generators” themselves.

But what if the same earth-shaking idea occurred to two men, simultaneously and independently? Perhaps, the common factors involved would be illuminating. Consider the theory of evolution by natural selection, independently created by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. Read More »

Final words of 2014.

Happy 2015!

Corticothalamic phase synchrony and cross-frequency coupling predict human memory formation
by Catherine M Sweeney-Reed, Friedhelm C Schmitt, Alan Richardson-Klavehn et al.
eLife 2014;10.7554/eLife.05352
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05352
http://elifesciences.org/content/early/2014/12/23/eLife.05352.full.pdf (December 23, 2014)

Abstract
The anterior thalamic nucleus (ATN) is thought to play an important role in a brain network involving the hippocampus and neocortex, which enables human memories to be formed. However, its small size and location deep within the brain have impeded direct investigation in humans with non-invasive techniques. Here we provide direct evidence for a functional role for the ATN in memory formation from rare simultaneous human intrathalamic and scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings from 8 volunteering patients receiving intrathalamic electrodes implanted for the treatment of epilepsy, demonstrating real-time communication between neocortex and ATN during successful memory encoding. Neocortical-ATN theta oscillatory phase synchrony of local field potentials and neocortical-theta-to-ATN-gamma cross-frequency coupling during presentation of complex photographic scenes predicted later memory for the pictures, demonstrating a key role for the ATN in human memory encoding. Read More »

Simultaneously warming up and illuminating x-mas dinner.
(Kids, don't try this at home!)

Useful hints for prospective illegal immigrants,
by CIA (via WikiLeaks):

Surviving Secondary
An Identity Threat Assessment of
Secondary Screening Procedures at
International Airports

PDF-download: https://wikileaks.org/cia-travel/

Dissent: accountable anonymous group communication
by dedis@yale (http://dedis.cs.yale.edu/)

The Dissent project is a research collaboration between Yale University and UT Austin to create a powerful, practical anonymous group communication system offering strong, provable security guarantees with reasonable efficiency. Dissent's technical approach differs in two fundamental ways from the traditional relay-based approaches used by systems such as Tor:

#    Dissent builds on dining cryptographers and verifiable shuffle algorithms to offer provable anonymity guarantees, even in the face of traffic analysis attacks, of the kinds likely to be feasible for authoritarian governments and their state-controlled ISPs for example.

#    Dissent seeks to offer accountable anonymity, giving users strong guarantees of anonymity while also protecting online groups or forums from anonymous abuse such as spam, Sybil attacks, and sockpuppetry. Unlike other systems, Dissent can guarantee that each user of an online forum gets exactly one bandwidth share, one vote, or one pseudonym, which other users can block in the event of misbehavior. Read More »

... so Christmas!

NASA’s Kepler Reborn, Makes First Exoplanet Find of New Mission
December 18, 2014 (RELEASE 14-335)

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft makes a comeback with the discovery of the first exoplanet found using its new mission -- K2.

The discovery was made when astronomers and engineers devised an ingenious way to repurpose Kepler for the K2 mission and continue its search of the cosmos for other worlds.

"Last summer, the possibility of a scientifically productive mission for Kepler after its reaction wheel failure in its extended mission was not part of the conversation," said Paul Hertz, NASA's astrophysics division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Today, thanks to an innovative idea and lots of hard work by the NASA and Ball Aerospace team, Kepler may well deliver the first candidates for follow-up study by the James Webb Space Telescope to characterize the atmospheres of distant worlds and search for signatures of life." Read More »

Truffles make cannabis-like high
The black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) contains anandamide.
by Nic Fleming (BBC)

[...] Mauro Maccarrone, of the Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Italy, and colleagues have revealed the highly-prized fungi produce anandamide, a compound that triggers the release of mood-enhancing chemicals in the human brain, and does so using the same biological mechanism as tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the chemical responsible for producing the mind-bending effects of marijuana.

Maccarrone believes truffles use it to attract animals to eat their fruiting bodies, so that their spores are spread more widely and they have a better chance of reproducing.

Black truffles get their colour from dark melanin pigments. Research published by Maccarrone and his colleagues in 2012 showed that in humans melanin production is triggered by the release of anandamide. Some scientists call the compound the bliss molecule because of its role in mood, appetite, memory, pain, depression and fertility. Its name comes from “ananda”, the Sanskrit word for extreme delight or bliss. [...] Read More »

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Data graphed here are examples from the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory's detection of Martian organics in a sample of powder that the drill on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover collected from a rock target called "Cumberland." (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

December 16, 2014
NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

Research Papers:

Mars methane detection and variability at Gale crater
by NASA research team
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1261713
Published Online December 16 2014

Abstract
Reports of plumes or patches of methane in the Martian atmosphere that vary over monthly timescales have defied explanation to date. From in situ measurements made over a 20-month period by the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) of the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on Curiosity at Gale Crater, we report detection of background levels of atmospheric methane of mean value 0.69 ± 0.25 ppbv at the 95% confidence interval (CI). This abundance is lower than model estimates of ultraviolet (UV) degradation of accreted interplanetary dust particles (IDP’s) or carbonaceous chondrite material. Additionally, in four sequential measurements spanning a 60-sol period, we observed elevated levels of methane of 7.2 ± 2.1 (95% CI) ppbv implying that Mars is episodically producing methane from an additional unknown source. Read More »

The British Medical Journal
Christmas 2014: Going to Extremes
Special Research Edition
http://www.bmj.com/thebmj

Effect of monthly vitamin D3 supplementation in healthy adults on adverse effects of earthquakes: randomised controlled trial
by Sandy Slow, Christopher M Florkowski, Stephen T Chambers, et al.
BMJ 2014; 349 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g7260 (Published 16 December 2014)

Objective To determine whether supplementation with vitamin D improves resilience to the adverse effects of earthquakes.
Design Opportunistic addition to an established randomised double blind placebo controlled trial.
Setting Christchurch, New Zealand, where a prolonged series of catastrophic earthquakes beginning on 4 September 2010 occurred, which caused widespread destruction, fatalities, and extensive psychological damage. Read More »

John Kiriakou (*9 Aug 1964) presently imprisoned in Loretto, Pennsylvania. (The New York Times, Jan 25, 2013)

Federation of American Scientists / Project on Government Secrecy:
USA v. John Kiriakou: Selected Case Files

Anne-Catrin Märzke (actress & singer)
(new homepage)

Zeitgenössische Mutmaßung über den tatsächlichen Antrieb des Besslerschen Perpetuum mobile (1716).

Asche zu Asche
Jeremy Rifkin träumt von einer besseren Welt
(Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2. September 2002, Seite 16)

Die Welt geht zugrunde, soviel ist gewiss, und zwar aus einer ganzen Reihe von Gründen. Beispielsweise durch die Klimakatastrophe, ausgelöst vom Treibhauseffekt der Abgase bei der Verbrennung fossiler Brennstoffe. Oder durch Fundamentalismus und Terrorismus, welche – wen wundert’s? – gerade in der Bevölkerung über den letzten verbliebenen Ölquellen in Saudi-Arabien, Irak und Iran ihre mächtigste Brutstätten haben. Aber noch vor allem übrigen müssen wir aus dem offensichtlichen Grund mit dem baldigen Ende unserer Zivilisation – so wie wir sie kennen – rechnen, dass uns schlicht die Ressourcen ausgehen. Read More »

Most likely final resting place of MH370
(by assumption of The Independent Group, Archimedes, and others):
Underwater Search Area 2 (outlined on map in magenta)
searched by FUGRO DISCOVERY since 4 December 2014.

MH370 Operational Search Update, 10 December 2014
by the  Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) to coordinate the Australian Government's support for the search into missing flight MH370:
http://www.jacc.gov.au/families/operational_reports/files/MH370_Operational_Search_Update_20141210_EN.pdf

UPDATE — 17 December 2014:
"On Saturday 13 December, Fugro Discovery experienced a system issue with a component of the search equipment. Search activities have been suspended while the issue is remedied."

Synthetic aperture sonar acoustic image of the seafloor gathered by GO Phoenix in the Indian Ocean, searching for MH370.
(Source: Phoenix International & SL Hydrospheric.)

(Reliable) Analysis of MH370 Final Major Turn Timing
by Michael Exner, Richard Godfrey, Sid Bennett (Members of the Independent Group), December 8, 2014

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ra7ylx9la7p4l7u/MH370%20Final%20Major%20Turn_Rev2.pdf?dl=0